Christmas with the Leclerc's

17

~ desperate ~
December 17

I stare down at my plate filled with delicious breakfast, scraping my fork against the hard material of the plate.

I have zero appetite.

Only one thing fills my mind. Charles hasn't shown up to breakfast today.

I woke up in his bed this morning, to find it empty, no trace left of him anywhere. When I asked Pascale about it, she shrugged it off, telling me not to worry.

But with the whole realization I came to last night, it's quite hard to just not worry. At this point Charles has taken over my brain, no other thoughts being allowed in.

"Did you sleep well?" Carla softly asks besides me, giving me her usual sweet smile. She must be able to tell how worried I am, because her eyes are coated with sympathy as she looks at me.

"Yeah, how about you?" I ask, forcing on a tight smile. She replies with a nonchalant answer, and we go back to listening to the others' chatter.

Or well I pretend to listen to it. In reality it all pretty quickly drowns out as worry once again takes over my head.

Every possible place where he could be, somehow hurts me. I can't deny the idea of him hooking up with a girl.

It seems like the most likely thing, but it hurts me to even think about it. He wouldn't leave me all alone in his bed, right...?

Every other option has something to do with Charles not being okay, and that might just be even worse. With everything he's been through lately, it physically hurts to even think about him being in even more pain.

"Caro do you want to build a snowman?" Julius asks me in a shout, immediately grasping my attention. My head turns in his direction with a smile.

--❄--

Julius runs out of the front door in his adorable snowsuit, the sound of the snow crunching under his boots filling the air.

"It needs to be at least this big!" Julius tells me excitingly, standing on his tiptoes and lifting his arm as high up in the air as he can, to show the height the snowman needs to be.

"You know what? I actually think it should be even taller, look at all the snow we have!" I answer with a smile, following him into the private parking lot, where there's the most snow.

"It should be as tall as Papa!" Julius replies, grinning at me as he cutely runs in the snow. Charles. I had finally gotten free from the worry, but now it floods back even harder.

I smile at Julius, as he throws himself into the snow. "Make a snow angel!" I tell him with a smile, towering over him as he lays in the glittering snow.

He quickly does as I suggested, shifting his arms and legs in the snow. He proudly smiles at me, as he gets up to see the angel.

"Wait I can do one next to yours" I quickly say, dropping down into snow even though I'm wearing jeans and a short coat.

Julius laughs as I do the motion with my legs and arms, looking up at the sky, hundreds of tree tops drizzled with snow in my view.

I stand up, my jeans completely drenched smiling at Julius as we step back to look at them. We both look at them in silence, a sweet feeling filling my bones.