Flashback
Don't leave me. The sentence pounded through my head. But she was already gone.
Mom went missing 1 year ago exactly today and every day I miss her even more. As my uncle and I gathered under the grey sky, the air hung heavy with sorrow. The scent of freshly cut roses mingled with the scent of rain was a bittersweet reminder of her.
My uncle, my only remaining relative, chose the funeral date. A year had passed, searching, hoping, and the inevitable gradual acceptance that Mom might never return. And so, as the rain clouds gathered above, my uncle's decision became evident.
If Mom remained missing for a year, he had said, this day would mark the final act of farewell.
I still remember watching the news that day, the day they brutally murdered people in the Luxe Hotel - the hotel where Mom was staying for a business meeting. I wondered why she had gone and what I could have done to make her stay.
Somehow, I feel like it was my fault and that I could have told her not to go. I was all alone at home, feeling lost and confused. So, I quickly called my uncle - the one number my mum made me memorize, except hers.
I cried and sobbed profusely to him, shouting
"She's dead, she's dead uncle, she's dead!". My uncle quickly got a plane to Monaco, and we tried to go to the hotel, but everything was closed off within a one-mile radius. However, with my uncle's connections, we managed to get to the police scene, where we waited for her or her body to come out. She never came.
The rain began to fall softly, droplets like tears from the heavens, as they lowered her empty casket into the ground. I clenched my hands into fists, feeling the cold touch of my necklace, a family heirloom that had always been worn by the women in our line that Mom gave to me.
She told me to never lose it.
As they entered an empty casket into the earth, I felt a burning sensation welling within me. The rain fell harder now which matched the turmoil in my heart. Where was she? Where was Mom?
I needed to know the truth.
Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and months turned into a year. But the truth remained elusive. No one knew what happened to Mom. The police had no leads, and the investigation had gone cold. Mom and the ones that were killed got no justice.
My uncle continued to search for answers, but every lead turned out to be a dead end. I couldn't shake the feeling that Mom was still out there somewhere. I held onto that hope, even as the months passed by. But as the anniversary of her disappearance approached, that hope began to fade.
I gazed upward at the sky, just like we used to do when we lay on the grass and watched the clouds float by. Today, the sky was dressed in a quilt of fluffy clouds, like the ones we'd point at and imagine shapes in. I half-hoped that maybe, just maybe, Mom was up there somewhere, trying to send me a message through those fluffy clouds.
As I turned away from the casket, raindrops clung to my lashes, mingling with my tears. I vowed to find her by facing the secrets that had woven a tangled web around her life and my own. And so, under the grey sky and the relentless rain, my journey began.