Cassidy stood in front of the chapel helplessly and fixated her eyes conspicuously on her grieving family members.
They were all dressed in black clothes.
She could see Kevin sniff and his radiant leo eyes had a tint of red in it.
Cassidy shook her head slowly and quickly diverted her stare when they looked towards her.
Thankfully, they didn't see her, or rather, they didn't recognize her.
She was dressed in a black hijab that covered her body completely.
The hijab had an opening only in the eye region and it allowed her see everything around.
Cassidy slowly pinched herself.
She let out a pained wince.
It wasn't a dream.
Her mother was gone. The voice of the priest inside the chapel brought her back to consciousness.
" I read of a reverend who stood to speak at the funeral of his friend. He referred to the dates on her tombstone from the beginning to the end.
He noted that first came the date of her birth and spoke of the following dates with tears, but he said what mattered most of all was the dash (-) between those years.
For that dash represented all the time she spent alive on earth.
For it matters not, how much we own - the cars, the house, the cash.
What matters is how we live and love and how we spend our dash.
So think about this long and hard, are there things you'd like to change?
For you never know how much time is left.
You might be at dash (-) mid-range."
****
Cassidy could hear the voice of the priest sink down slowly.
She walked away from the chapel slowly and hailed down a cab.
****
Cassidy stepped into her parents' room.
She hurried to the bed and placed her hand under it.
She touched nothing, and when she darted towards the huge wardrobe, she stopped in front of the mirror that lay on the wall.
As Cassidy looked back at her reflection in the mirror, she could only think of the words her mother had said to her.
Right, she was truly a disappointment.
****
Cassidy sighed in satisfaction when she found the big box in the wardrobe.
She stopped.
Something caught her sight and she let out a pained whimper.
" What?"
No, it wasn't pain because her facial expression said otherwise.
Cassidy rubbed her eyes and looked again.
This was only a big, brown wrap.
Why did it look as if something else was there?
She pulled out the wrap and threw it out quickly.
A gun fell out.
" Gun?" she said unconsciously underneath her sharp breath.
Doubt arose inside her.
" Father would never..."
She sighed to chase away the delusional thoughts that had risen in her head and stop herself from completing her sentence.
Cassidy knew her father could be anything but not a murderer....he would never do such.
Quickly, Cassidy trudged out of the house with the box and wrap like a prowling robber.
*****
Cassidy lay down on her stomach.
The hotel room had a beautiful colour combination that gleamed brightly.
It had tints of colours and it looked like the rainbow colour.
Soon, she let the darkness claim her and drifted off in unconsciousness.
****
Cassidy was jolted to consciousness by the bright, dispersed ray of sunlight that found its way into her room through the window.
She yawned and rubbed her eyes, and quickly pulled the big box towards herself.
Some notes popped out of the box when she opened it.
" ...seems like you've been waiting for me all this while," she whispered softly to herself.
The day she accidentally found out about her mother's illness, she hadn't gotten a chance to read the notes.
The first note she pulled out had a date on it.
She emptied the content of the box on her bed and sorted them carefully.
Some of the notes looked dusty.
The first note she opened had an old date on it.
The note had ' I'm sorry' on it.
Cassidy pulled out the second note.
It had the same thing as the first.
Cassidy discovered that the other notes had the same thing written on them.
The only note that had a longer range of words was written recently.
It had ' Your father will find you' on it.
Cassidy chortled uncontrollably.
What father?
Was it the one that had chased her far away?
It surely didn't make any sense.
The abrupt ring of her phone distracted her.
" Hello," she said.
" It's Kevin," someone said on the other end.
Cassidy pulled out the phone from her ear and glanced at the screen.
" It's Kevin," he said again in what seemed like a whisper.
She choked on her breath.
" Kevin?"
" I'll be leaving with auntie Theresa," he announced.
Cassidy could feel some sadness in his voice.
It seemed like something was wrong somewhere.
" And I'll miss you," he added.
" I'll miss you too."
" And I think you should know this..." he uttered softly again.
" What am I supposed to know?" she cut him off impatiently.
" I...I...I...I don't know how to say this," he began again.
" .... say what?"
" .... but father was the one behind mother's death."
Crunching hit Cassidy's ears, and crashing through the incessant thudding in her heart, unease slithered down her spine.
Her voice was suddenly high-pitched.
" What are you saying?"
Kevin could be at his childish pranks again.
She knew he literally did make a joke out of everything as a child that he was, but he shouldn't have made a joke about their mother's death.
She saw her father mourn their mother, there wasn't any way he could be behind her death.
Cassidy opened her mouth and closed it a few times, but no words came out.
She took a deep breath through her nose and let it out in a shaky exhale.
" You're joking, right?
" Mother died from cancer, didn't you know that?"
A pained whimper escaped her lips as Kevin hung up on the phone.
Cassidy huddled the covers of the bed and gripped the sheets.
Her head was in a mess.