ELEANOR'S POV
I don't remember the burial, not fully, but it was awful. I remember the cold, not the weather, but the way it settled inside me. Like something had cracked open in my chest and let winter in.
People kept saying things I couldn't hear. Their mouths moved. Their eyes filled. But all I saw was dirt.
Three coffins. Lined up like props in a play I never auditioned for.
My mother's had white roses on it. My sister's was covered in lilacs. My father's was plain. He hated flowers. He called them "things for women". Said they reminded him too much of things that didn't last.
I didn't cry. Everyone else did. Neighbours. Strangers. Distant relatives I didn't remember.
Aunt Riley gripped my hand and called me "sweetheart." I stared at her like she was speaking a language I'd never heard, literally. She had an accent, I think it's Dornish.
The pallbearers put them in the ground, slowly, trying not to loose balance in any of the four sides of the coffins.
I stood there, I watched it happen.
Something inside me stayed above it all, like my soul refused to touch the moment. I think it was trying to protect what little was left of me.
It was finally over. Everyone left, everyone except me. I lay there, beside Their graves, Questioning reality.
"Was this real? Are they really dead?
What happens now? The murderers, are they coming for me too?"
Questions upon questions, they couldn't stop swirling in my mind.
Aunty Riley came back for me, it was Noon,
"Let's go home now Eleanor, it's late".
I sat up, staring at my family's grave. I knew then, it was the last time I'd let their graves witness my grief.
We rode home in Aunt Riley's car. The journey was quiet. I caught Aunt Riley glancing down at me through the moon roof now and then. I didn't hold it against her. After all, I'd sat through the burial stone-faced and silent, who wouldn't think I needed a therapist?
We finally pulled up to Aunt Riley's place. She stepped out of the car, keys already in hand, and made her way to the front door.
Once inside, I hesitated. It was my first time here, and I had no idea where anything was. So I just stood near the door, waiting for her to show me to a room or anywhere, really.
"Eleanor come sit". Taking her shoes off, she sat on a sofa. I sat beside her, it seemed like there was something she wanted to tell me.
"The cops will be here tomorrow to ask a few questions," she said, watching me closely. "Or would you rather go down to the station?"
"I'll go to the station," I replied. I was sad, and she knew it. That's what made things easier. She understood that my silence wasn't rudeness; it was just grief.
"Alright then, come I'll take you to your room"
Finally!!! I exclaimed inwardly, I was exhausted and needed sleep. I followed her up the stairs.
"You can sleep here for tonight, Eleanor," Aunt Riley said before heading downstairs.
The bed reeked of alcohol, but I didn't mind. Before long, I drifted off to sleep.
The next morning, I woke up early, took a bath, and then Aunt Riley and I made our way to the police station.
I sat in a white-walled room that smelled like bad coffee and bleach. A detective named Holloway, mid-forties, thick mustachemoustache, tired eyes asked me questions in a voice so gentle it made me want to scream.
"Did you see anything? Did you hear anything before it happened?"
Yes.
No.
Maybe.
I hesitated, then told him about the smear on the wall. The eyes behind the mask. The blood.
"I... I didn't see much," I stammered.
"But I did catch a glimpse... just a silhouette, standing there on my balcony. He didn't move… just stood there, completely still, holding something that looked like a machete..."
I swallowed hard, my hands trembling.
The memory felt too close, too real—like it was waiting just behind my eyelids, ready to pounce.
But I wasn't audacious , I didn't tell him about the feeling, I didn't tell them the way some broken part of me recognized something in the killer's gaze.
That part stayed locked in my throat, a secret too heavy to spit out. I said nothing because I wasn't sure of my thoughts.
He didn't say it out loud, but I could feel it.
They didn't believe me.
I was a kid. Traumatized. Confused. Maybe I imagined it. Maybe I dreamed it.
Maybe.
I stopped answering after a while. Just stared at the table.
They stopped asking.
They didn't even let me go back to the house.
I asked once quietly, like maybe if I kept my voice soft enough, the question wouldn't sound crazy.
"I just… I want to get my shoes. The ones my mom bought me."
Detective Holloway didn't look at me. "It's a crime scene, Eleanor."
Everything I owned was bloodstained, confiscated. Or forgotten.
What came next wasn't much of a surprise, just a slow punch to the gut: foster care.
They didn't say the words to me at first , they said them around me.
I sat on a hallway bench while Holloway and my aunt talked a few feet away. They didn't even whisper.
"She's too shaken up," my aunt was saying. "And I've got my own to worry about."
"She's your niece," Holloway said.
A pause. Then her voice lowered. "My husband comes back in two weeks. You know how he is. I don't feel safe leaving her in the house with him. Not with… everything she's been through."