After I Blew Out My Sister’s Candle, My Parents Stopped Loving Me Chapter 08

After I Blew Out My Sister’s Candle, My Parents Stopped Loving Me Chapter 08

My funeral was simple.

Relatives and family friends all came, sighing, shaking their heads, and whispering ‘tragedy’ like it was a

prayer.

My mother remained knelt before my altar like a stone statue. She didn’t eat. She didn’t drink. She didn’t

speak.

When my father brought her food, she pushed it away.

When Grandpa Charles urged her to rest, she only shook her head.

She just knelt there, staring straight at my photograph.

It was a picture taken the year before. My hair was in two little braids, and my eyes were nothing but joyful

slits because I was laughing so hard.

Chloe stood behind her, a ghost herself, mechanically handing out tissues while her own face was a river of

silent grief.

The day of the burial, a light rain was falling.

My mother held my urn in her arms and refused to let go.

“Let me hold her a little longer,” she murmured.

“When she was first born, this was how I held her too…”

“She was so tiny then. So sot. in my arms…”

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“I remember thinking, this is my daughter. The daughter I nearly died bringing into this world. I’m going to

love her for the rest of my life…”

“So how did I… how did I…”

She couldn’t go on.

My father stood beside her, supporting her with reddened eyes.

My grandparents leaned on each other for support too. Both of them had grown visibly thinner.

In the days that followed, the whole house stayed buried beneath a heavy, suffocating silence.

The reason I hadn’t left yet was because my soul still had one last thing holding it here.

So I stayed.

I kept watching them.

But no one knew I was there.

I saw that Grandma Eleanor was no longer as gentle as she had once been. Whenever she looked at Chloe,

as always something bitter in her eyes.

es at dinner, Chloe would barely lift her fork before Grandma Eleanor set her plate down with a clatter and stood up from the table.

Chloe never dared say a word. She only hunched her shoulders and wrung the hem of her shirt until her

knuckles turned white.

Grandpa Charles never said it outright, but he sighed often.

“When sisters are together, the older one should know to give in to the younger one a little…”

“If you had been more generous that day as the older sister, maybe it wouldn’t have come to this…”

He never finished the sentence, but everyone understood it anyway.

Chloe kept her head down, tears trembling in her eyes, too afraid to let them fall.

Out of guilt, my father finally said, “Mom, Dad, Chloe feels terrible too. Maybe we should stop saying these

things…”

Grandma Eleanor cut him off at once, her eyes turning red again. “My most precious granddaughter is gone,

and I can’t even say a few words about it?”

“Is Chloe completely innocent in all this? If she hadn’t run away, would the whole family have left Ellie behind

to go searching for her?”

My father fell silent.

He knew my grandparents needed someone to blame, and Chloe had become the only place for all that grief

to go.

My mother said nothing at all.

She moved through the house like a hollowed-out shell. She cooked, washed clothes, cleaned, but never

spoke a single word.

Only at night did she go into my room, sit on my bed, and stay there until morning.

She had picked up the family portrait she’d torn apart that night.

By then she had already glued it back together, crookedly and carefully.

But every time she touched it, tears would begin falling again.

Watching all of it felt like being stabbed with tiny needles over and over.

That night, Chloe cried under her blanket.

She muffled her sobs into her pillow, but her small body kept shaking, and her pillow was soaked through.

I drifted to her bedside and reached out, wanting to stroke her hair.

hloe. I’m here.

bassed right through her. She couldn’t feel me.

loe cried herself to sleep.

Even in slumber, her brow remained furrowed in pain.

Then I drifted back to my own room, where my mother was sitting on my bed, holding my stuffed bunny and

crying in silence.

She hadn’t slept in two days.

She looked exhausted now, worn down to the bone.

I waved my hands anxiously in front of her.

Mom, go to sleep. Please take care of yourself. Don’t keep grieving like this for me.

I didn’t know how much time passed before she finally cried herself into sleep too.

And the moment she did, I knew I would finally be able to see her face-to-face.