The One Who Left

- Chapter Two -

I look around at my new home with a wary eye.

This was strange, no shouts or yells or accusations yet. "Welcome to Seaview, California Lilah!" My father says enthusiasm pouring from his every word (even though he's faking it so much the plants can taste his falsely honeyed words). I still don't feel welcome, despite the effort of his greeting - opting rather to look around instead of my father. Derek was good looking, light skinned with a heart stopping smile, grey eyes - lighter, blending in with blues and greens - with blond hair, like his new family.

It's our old house - coined Thistlewood by my mother; the letters engraved in the very house itself, that fact surprises me the most - and angers me the most. If he wanted to replace Mom and I - did he have to do it here? Of all places.

This was my home before mom won custody of me. Before we moved to New York. Before my father stopped being a father.

But that was before. The aftermath of that was gut churningly painful. The porch swing Derek built for me - no longer white but a sanded down rich oak. The beautiful statues mom swore was a gift from Grandma, missing, replace by a fountain which I found immeasurably gaudy. Why waste time on a tiny fountain when you had the sea to your back?...unlike in New York; where the best anyone could do was the dirty lake water in the Hudson.

Derek Sterling became more and more repulsive to me. He changed nothing, he never changed... all he did was replace. He replaced mom and I, he replaced the house but kept the foundation. Always kept the foundation. He couldn't replace that, as he couldn't replace the ocean. A steady thrum beneath my feet, the ocean smelt as it always had - it echoed the same sound it always made.

I wish I could've shown mom how beautiful it looked now. Apparently people still remembered me from back then.

They said I look just like my mother. Dad didn't even ask me about her. I think know he knows she's dead now, but he didn't ask. So I didn't say anything. He could rot in curiosity if his need to know arose.

We walk to the porch in the uneven silence. Me two steps behind. I hated this. This never knowing what to expect. This uncomfortable moment of unease. This horrible expectation. I didn't know what to expect, on a normal day in a normal world - they'd be scandalised by the arrival of Derek's legitimate daughter, but with the contract - who knew how they'd react.

Dad swings the door open suddenly, revealing pair of girls and a woman who look like they could all be sisters. "These are my daughters Morgan and Madison Sterling and my wife Jessica Sterling." Derek introduces. "Everyone, this is Delilah Kade." They blink at me and I blink at them. "Who's this?" A girl with sparkly glittered strawberry blond hair accuses and her sister pulls her back. That must be Morgan, the shyer one. "Your stepsister." The woman, Jessica, flowed beside her husband. His arm slung around her waist. I pull a face, she was younger than him by a good decade or so. 

The twins look at me with open curiosity and I bare my teeth at them, scaring them for a moment. "She's feral." Madison sniffs daintily. "She's family." Her mother replies with steel in her voice. Morgan hides behind her mother and my blank mask returns, veiling my truest of emotions. My envy and jealously of the twins having a mother and a man who wanted to be their father. "Aren't you Lilah." Derek prompts me and I give him a rancorous grin. "Of course, Derek." I can't conceal all my emotions. Derek will soon learn that trapping me will be met with resistance and me toeing the line between what is accepted and what is not.

The family of four look at her with shock. I shrug, I've never been one to back down from a fight. Morgan tucks back her light blond hair behind her ear. Morgan was just as pretty as her twin but more subtly. Hers was a quiet beauty where Madison's effect was immediatly noticeable.

Not anymore, I smirked quietly. I was no Madison but I had a plan... setting the siblings up against each other. Cruel but necessary if I wanted to go back to NYC, where I truly belonged.

Jessica urges her daughters toward me and they look at me, hesitancy in their eyes. I may be because I scared them or maybe because I resembled a drowned rat. I still wore the clothes I was caught in by the NYPD - I gave off a foul strench that would alarm any sane person but we already established that Derek was a vile father. "Delilah, this is Morgan." She pushes the shy one forward. "And this is Madison." The other one sneers at me, wow it's not even been a full hour since I've arrived and I already have an enemy. Yippee.

The majority of the family - not including Madison - give me welcoming smiles, but I'm not ready. Not ready to return their lack of hostility, not ready to accept, not ready for any of this.

Madison is a bit taller than me with shoulder length beach blonde hair with sparkly pink streaks in it. Her bright blue eyes and full pouty lips curled up in an accusing sneer, turned smile with a jab to her ribs from her mother. But I see the fear she tries so hard to hide. I smell it.

A look that not only conveys her instant dislike but also her anxious thoughts - now that I've returned maybe she'll lose her father. I scoff, I want no part of Derek.

But it's amazing how closely she resembles a Barbie doll; perky breasts, pink lips, blue eyes, strawberry blonde hair, the kind of tan only lucky model types can get and a perfectly proportioned body... with a smile so fake it deserves to be plastic.

Morgan looked exactly the same, identical, but she had no streaks in her hair, it just seemed to be a light blonde and her smile was surprisingly genuine.

Jessica looks just like her daughters. Her strawberry blonde hair pulled back into a professional looking ponytail. The woman looks just like Madison and Morgan but her age shows. A sleek blonde in her once only strawberry blond hair, crows feet in the corners of her eye and the type of tired smile only working citizens can pull off. She, Morgan and Madison share their bright blue eyes. Like mother, like daughters.

"Welcome to the family Delilah." Jessica greets me. I give them a weak half smile, inwardly wishing to be anywhere but here.

Not that they know that, because the entire family seems to breathe in relief. "Come on let me show you to your room." Derek murmurs and I perk up.

"I know the way." I say pulling my duffel bag up the stairs and into my old room. "Delilah wait!" Dad says panicking running behind me.

It's too late. I think as I stand there frozen, the shock with a stupid mixture of outrage and disappointment floods me. 

They gave my room to Madison I realise with a funny sort of unhappiness.

Dad's moved on. I should've known nothing would stay the same. I don't know why I expected it to be the same. Stupid. I'm so stupid, I think to myself as my eyes well up with emotion.

My once lavender blue walls now a hot pink. My telescope. Gone. "Oh dear." Jessica whispers softly.

The fairy lights that decorated the top of my bed. Gone. In it's place a bunch of boy band pictures. 

The white cupboards now a soft violet. The creamy wooden floorboards now a rich brown.

My old bookshelf stripped. Making way for a huge vanity decorated with pictures of Madison and her friends.

This room used to be my haven. Mom and I decorated it together. Stupid to think it still would be the same. I force my tears away, a room is not worth crying over - despite memories made here; it would just remind me of the possibilities.

"Wait Delilah I can explain..." Dad looks to Jessica hopelessly. "It's fine." I say shortly. Trying to stop the conversation, avoid the topic - so as to not make me look like the broken little girl they were expecting.

It's not my room anymore. It's Madison's now. I got it, message received.

"So where is my room?" I direct the question at Madison, knowing she doesn't care. I doubt she'd care if I died in front of me.

"It's down the hall." She says trying to ignore what happened. I pick up my bag again. "Excuse me."

I know they say that when your parents divorce they don't stop loving the kid or some s**t like that. It was apparently not true in my case.

It was obvious. Dad never picked up when I called after he and Mom divorced. He never called back either. He never visited. He never invited me over for a holiday or a weekend or his wedding.

I never went to his and Jessica's wedding. 

I found out through Aunt Kate, my dad's sister a month after the wedding.

I should've taken the hint when Aunt Kate looked at me with sympathy. Or when all my letters weren't replied to. Or when they started piling up in our mailbox.

I finally got the hint when I turned 12. God, how dense was I? I should've known.

I drop my stuff on the bed. I should've taken the f*****g hint. He didn't give a damn about me.

I should've stayed with Kael. I should stayed in that damn jail cell. I walk out of the room.

"Delilah... " Jessica looks at me with unshed tears. My eyes harden. What does she want from me?

She has my dad. She has her own daughters. Can't she just leave me the f**k alone.

"I'm going out." I say. "Don't wait up." I walk out the house slamming the door behind me.

Walking to our spot. Well it's my spot now since Mom's dead.

The ocean waves crashing on the beach.

"Dellie the sea holds secrets. It keeps it. Nourishes it and gives it back to you when you need it most." Mom had told me when we sat on the rocky stones near the walkboard.

The eight year old me didn't understand that at all. I think with a laugh. "How mommy?" I remember asking.

I know she smiled. "Well if you put a seashell close to your ear you'll hear it. You'd hear the sea. Whispers of what you said to it." I remembered Dad pressing a Congo shell near my ear. I remember the astonishment on my face when I actually heard waves. 

But now. Now there's no more Mom. Now there isn't warm Sunday's on the beach with my parents. Now there isn't a dad I remember.

I realise nothing will ever be the same. Or even close to it. So I shout.

I shout at the ocean. I shout at the sea. I shout at the memories. I shout at my mother for leaving me. I shout at my dad for not caring.

I shout for me.

My pent up rage and anger and fear of starting over and disappointment disappearing with that single shout.

And then I cry.

I fall apart on that rocky stone. I cry for everything I lost. Everything I lose.

I cry with everything I have.

But all the tears in the world couldn't heal a heart that has a lost piece.