"Will Mother come back as a ghost, Father?" A small, blonde girl clutches her father's coattails as her mother's coffin is gently settled in the grave. Lilies droop in one hand. "Jack says that his grandmother came back as a ghost. His mom says that it isn't a good thing, but he gets to talk to his grandmother."
Wiping away the tears on his face, her father squats down to his daughter's short stature. "Let's hope Mother won't come back. If she does, it'll mean she can't rest in heaven properly. And don't forget that people only come back if they have a wish that they need fulfilled. Mother was a very happy woman." He smiles, and pokes his daughter's tiny nose. "Just like you, Ella."
Ella stands there for just a moment before dusting off her skirt.
"Why is she so patronizing?" she mutters. Although the words are harsh, Ella says it fondly. Memories rush into her mind, back to before her mother died, when she, Vera, and Fiona were simply schoolmates.
A smile escapes my lips as Jack, my best friend, tickles me. We're ten years old, and this is my last memory of Jack before he moved away.
"Hey! Stop it!" I laugh. I fall from the force of my giggles. I somehow land in the eight-years' sandbox.
"Are you okay?"
I look up to see a girl staring blankly at me. She has short, black hair with bangs held by red barrettes, and her eyes are a startling emerald. "Well, are you?"
Her blank stare creeps me out, and I scramble to get up. A girl with the same green eyes is running towards the girl that asked me if I was alright. This girl is much younger than me, and probably younger than the raven-haired girl, and has soft, hazel colored hair.
"Fi, who's that?" She asks, pointing to me, and how I'm covered in sand.
"I'm Ella," I introduce myself. I then see Jack walking to me, so I wave goodbye, and start running back to where Jack is waiting.
Vera sees Ella standing there, and waves a hand across her eyes. "Hey, Ella, are you okay?"
Ella suddenly collapses, and the silver platter she's still holding clatters down to the ground for the second time. Even though Ella's unconscious, her eyes are wide open and glassed over. Her normally blue eyes are a strange shade of light blue, as if fog has suddenly invaded Ella's irises.
Vera calls lazily, "Mother, Ella's fainted again."
Vera's mother comes running down the hallway, lifting her skirt for better movement. She "tsks" and yells, "Fiona! Call the doctor!"
Vera's mother easily picks up the rather frail girl that is Ella, and sets her down onto the parlor sofa. Vera hurries to her mother with a wet towel, and places it on Ella's forehead.
"The doctor says he'll be here in fifteen minutes!" Fiona's voice carries down from her room and into the parlor.
"Can you finally see why I can't allow Ella to go to the prince's ball? She's too frail, and would embarrass us," Vera's mother mutters under her breath.
Vera hears, and her eyes light up. "Ball? What ball?" She says excitedly.
"Ella!" Ella's father storms through the room, footsteps booming through the floor. He pushes past Vera and his wife to see his daughter unconscious. "Will she be okay?"
"She'll be fine; she does this a lot," Vera off-handedly comments.
Apparently, that wasn't a comment her step-father appreciated. His eyes bulge slightly, and his face starts reddening.
"What do you mean that she does this a lot? How could you not tell me about this, Marie?!" He shouts at his wife.
Marie stands up, and says calmly, "You're never home, Charles." She waves her arm towards Ella, "Whenever you are actually home, I'd rather not elaborate to you about non-problems. Ella will be fine. The doctor is coming. Calm down."
It's rather remarkable how stoic Marie is. Her eyes don't even look the slightest bit fazed, like she had expected this to happen.
Ella's father gets angrier, and yells even louder, "What do you mean by non-problems? Don't you think I should be informed if my only daughter is randomly fainting with her eyes open and glassy?!"
Vera closes her eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath. She steps out of the room where her parents are arguing. Tears start to drip, drip down her face. Her hands clench into fists. An arm slings around her shoulders, and Vera sees her older sister hugging her as tears cloud her vision.
"Don't you hate it when parents argue?" Vera asks her sister, sniffling.
"Sometimes, but you saw how Mother was. She expected it to happen, I'd bet," Fiona answered. Fiona knew that her mother was clever, so she couldn't see how Marie hadn't expected some sort of disagreement in a marriage.
"Why are you so upset?" Fiona wonders, whispering the question in her sister's ear.
"He said 'only daughter', Fi," Vera cries softly. "When Mother married him, she promised us that we would have a new father."
Looking straight at her sister, she spoke again, "I've always wanted a father; I've never really had one. You know that."