Their Favoritism Resulted In A Cruel Outcome Chapter 15
When she was alive, the Worthington name had mattered more to her than almost anything. Now, when she looked at my father and brothers, there was only stillness in her eyes.
My mother, though, didn’t leave right away.
She stood in front of my father and looked at him for a long time.
As if he sensed something, he suddenly lifted his head.
“Claire?”
My mother seemed to want to smooth his hair back, but her hand stopped halfway and dropped again.
“I really did love him,” she said softly.
“That’s why, even after the smoke started pouring in, I was still waiting for him to open the door.”
“It was because I trusted him that I kept waiting, right until the very end.”
My father couldn’t hear her.
He only kept calling her name into the empty air.
Lauren stood behind James.
James held the brooch she wore most often, clutching it so tightly in his palm that the pin had pierced his skin.
Lauren did not wipe away the blood.
Rachel looked at Luke once, then lowered her eyes and gently patted the child in her arms.
Hannah held Molly’s hand tighter.
Not one of them walked toward those men.
Only then did I finally understand: truly leaving didn’t mean holding on to hate. It meant that from now on, their joys and their griefs had nothing to do with us.
“You all go on ahead,” I said to my grandmother.
“I want to stay a little longer.”
She looked at me.
“Still can’t let go of Connor?”
“No.”
I looked at my own coffin.
“I want to hear the court’s verdict.”
It wasn’t that I wanted to watch them suffer. It was that every person who died in that detention center deserved a public answer.
My grandmother didn’t argue.
She touched my head.
“Then wait.”
“Just don’t let them take up too much of you for too long.”
“We’ll go on slowly and wait for you up ahead.”
As they turned, Molly waved at me.
The little ball of light in Rachel’s arms flickered, too.
I watched them pass through the memorial hall and walk into the white mist beyond.
There were no iron doors there.
No disabled alarm systems.
And no one left who could use the family name to demand their silence.