Empty.
That was what both I and my old room looked like as I stood in the door way of the room. My adoptive mother, Violet's laugh came from downstairs as she flirted with the moving guy. I sighed and crossed my arms, after seventeen years of living in this old house my father had decided that a new wife would also mean a new life. I would not have minded that as much if it didn't mean we would have to move across the country. I picked up the plain brown bag and slowly started moving to my mother's old study. I paused and listened to my father as he moved around packing up the stuff she left behind.
I closed my eyes taking a deep breath; I knocked on the door the rough dark maple scraped on my knuckles. The shuffling stopped and I started tugging on my bag the rough material similar to a burlap sack itching on my thumb and index finger. The door opened as the hinges groaned under the stress of time, and rust.
My father's face had gray and gold stubble under his lower lip and his usually well tamed business man's hair had dust caked on. His eyes had been rubbed red and his nose twitched as he tried not to sneeze.
I looked behind him at my mother's now un-dusted study; her paintings had been stacked against the walls and covered. The old giant fir wood desk polished, but you could still see the scuffs on the wood from where I use to play with the toy Tonka trucks.
I swallowed, my throat clamping down on its self as I spoke. "Can I keep the paintings?"
My father looked surprise, like he suspected me to say something else; my father rubbed his hand on his right cheek. I listened to the sound of the stubble scraping on his hand as he got ready to speak.
"Yeah" he said looking back at them, "I think that would be fine."
He sounded weary and was hesitant as he moved so I could grab them. I looked over at him as he took out more books and put them in boxes. I walked over to the door the seven pictures weighing heavily on my arms.
"Do you want the books?"
I looked back my father's back to me and I nodded before realizing he could not see me.
"Yeah, I think I do."
I unwrapped the first painting as the car pulled out of the driveway. The beautifully haunting green eyes of the siren stared into mine. My mother, Tirana, was a archaeologist and worked with scientist on recreating the life people lived in ancient times. My mother believed in mythology and legends of the supernatural.
She was always telling me about werewolves, vampires, sirens, and my favorite dragons. I loved these stories, but that's what they were to me stories, but to her they were true. That's what ruined her. A few months after I turned nine my mother was institutionalized, resulting in my parents divorce. My mother killed herself after a year, and my father married Violet. I recovered the siren's eyes and looked out the window as we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge.
"Iggy, honey look up the directions I forgot to print them out" Violet said as she fiddled with the air conditioning. Pulling out my phone, I clicked the app, and watched my phone as Google maps loaded. I slowly typed in Beacon Hills, and hit search.