Royals

Chapter 50

*Emily's dress above*

I walked down my central staircase with an unusual wobble to my legs. It was already four o'clock in the afternoon, and Anastasia had just returned home from school. My mother trailed behind Ana, her arms consumed with bags of takeout food.

"Chinese for dinner," she sighed, setting all but one of the bags down on the table and making her way to her office.

"How was your first day off?" Ana smiled, tossing me a can of soda.

"Slept through it," I answered, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes to emphasize my point. "How was school?"

"It was alright," she shrugged. "I told my friends that Mommy and Daddy were getting a divorce and they all felt really sorry for me. One of my friends even bought me a cookie at lunch; it was weird."

"A good weird or a bad weird?" I asked, silently wondering whether or not she liked the attention.

"Bad weird," she murmured. "Pass me the rice, will you?"

"I'm sorry," I whispered, pouring a bit of pale rice onto her plate.

"Did you see him today?" Anastasia asked in a hushed voice, keeping her eyes to the ground.

"Joey? He was just dropping off something for me," I answered, curious about her suddenly enigmatic behavior.

"No, not him," she muttered, clopping some sweet and sour chicken onto her plate. "Dad."

"Um, no, I haven't seen him. Was he here when you woke up?"

"Nope, and I have a feeling he's not here right now," she whispered in as close to a muted tone as she could muster.

"What are you talking about? He's not supposed to leave until this weekend," I argued, beginning to panic. "Ana, it's only Tuesday."

She looked at me with a feather soft expression, her eyes melting into a puddle of despair. Her lips were quivering, and she looked as if she yearned to speak, but was too terrified of the words that would come out. They would most likely rush out in a slovenly glop, shaky and weary.

If she was going to speak, I didn't offer her the opportunity to. Rather, I dropped my plate onto the table, ignoring the clash of the ceramic against the wood. Disregarding the loose pieces of food that fell from my plate, I sprinted to my dad's room.

Empty.

I checked the basement.

Empty.

His office.

Empty.

The entire upstairs. The ground floor. The garage. Outside.

Empty. Empty. Empty. Empty.

He left us. He left me.

"Emily, why are you running around?" my mother screamed, her voice echoing throughout the otherwise silent house.

I slowly walked towards her office, not wanting to disturb the noiselessness. When I arrived, she was typing into her laptop and speaking into her Bluetooth. She shuffled around a few papers in agitation until she finally found what she was looking for, sighing in relief and blabbing on about it into her earpiece.

In the corner of her desk, she had an envelope with the word "Confidential" labeled across its midpoint in an unforgiving shade of scarlet. However, there was a scattering of papers sticking out of it. I focused on the countless words and lines printed on the paper, and without even having to ask, I knew what it was.