An; I tried, tried to make this as light as possible for a dark chapter, still, I think a trigger warning is in order.

So uh, skip this if you're easily upset. Although it's actually the most important chapter Lauren-wise.

19 part I

She was six, when Lauren Lewis first knew of death.

Her cat -Snowy- died. Lauren's mother said not to cry too much for him, "he was old honey," she said when Lauren lamented on who she was to play with now, "it was his time. He's in heaven now."

The sadness lasted about a week. Snowy had been old. And Lauren's mother read her stories about heaven and Lauren figured it would be pretty mean of her to not want Snowy to go there.

Besides, she was learning to read now and do sums and everything in the world was just waiting for her to make sense of it. Numbers, puzzles, words that if she managed to put together formed lovely stories; she really had no time to think of sadness or death.

But that all changed when she was eight.

/

Lauren had never known anyone could love their tummy as much as her mother did hers nowadays.

She talked to it, and rubbed it and sang to it sometimes and she had Lauren's dad read stories to it and tell it about his day. She even had Lauren talk to it, "what do I say?" Lauren asked, rather puzzled.

It was a tummy. People don't talk to tummies. Even if her mom said it wasn't just a tummy now, it was a home to a 'very special person.'

"Anything you want." Her mother said patiently.

Lauren bit her lip in thought and narrowed her eyes at her mom's stomach, "uh- hello, tummy-"

Irene Lewis laughed, Lauren glared at her, "you said I could say anything I wanted."

"You can't call it 'tummy'."

"Then what should I call it?"

"Taylor," her mom said, running her hands through Lauren's blonde hair.

"Oh- okay. Hi Taylor, I'm Lauren, your sister," she looked up at her mother who had a wide smile on her face she mouthed for her to go on, Lauren looked back at the tummy, "I'm older than you, so I get to be boss."

"Lauren!"

"What? I just want her to set the rules early on." Her mom laughed so she knew she wasn't in trouble, "I can't wait to meet you."

And she really couldn't.

She loved that she got to help get Taylor's room ready and she got to choose some of her clothes and toys although her mom said it would be a while before Taylor got to play with some of them, "it's good to be prepared,"was Lauren's answer to that.

And for a while, Tyler was just about the best thing to happen to the Lewis's.

Until she wasn't.

They were watching TV when it happened. It was just- one minute they were laughing at something on TV and the next her mom was crying in pain and there was blood and her dad was leading her to the car and for some reason Lauren couldn't go and she had to stay with Kylie from next door who was annoying and wouldn't even tell her what was going on.

Her mom came back home the next day and went straight to her room without a word.

She never did like her tummy the same after that.

She never was the same after that.

She cried a lot. Almost all the time. She didn't seem to see people, not even Lauren who made a point to hug her all the time and kiss her a lot and play puzzles in front of her. And tell her about her days in school and spelling bees and brush her hair because she never did it herself.

She just looked at people. She never saw them.

And it made Lauren sadder that her mom was so sad than that Taylor went to heaven to be with Snowy. Her father told her that.

Yes, she was sad that Taylor would never get to be here and see all the awesome things they'd bought for her and be Lauren's little sibling. But it was really hard to miss her. And when you're sad about someone but not really miss them, you forget after a while.

But Lauren missed her mom something awful. Because unlike with Taylor who was just a lump in her mom's tummy who she sometimes talked to but couldn't wait to meet, Irene was a real live person that Lauren had known all her life but didn't know anymore.

And that broke her heart more than anything.

And that's why she didn't really know how to be sad when she went to her room to wake her up on her father's request late one August and couldn't get her to open her eyes no matter how hard she shook her.

"Daddy, she won't wake up." She reported back to her father who was busy serving food onto plates. He frowned and placed Lauren's favourite plate in front of her place on the table and told her to eat while he goes check on her.

He didn't come back down that night.

Kylie came over instead and told Lauren that her dad had said she could go over to the Bailey's and have a sleep over with Mandy. This in itself, even without taking into account that her father hadn't come down to tell her herself and the fact that Lauren hadn't asked for permission to go to the Bailey's -she didn't even like Mandy- was suspicious.

Still, Kylie took her out for ice cream and she wasn't her annoying teenage self like she usually was texting her boy friend or whoever every five seconds. Even Mandy wasn't as bad as she almost always was. So Lauren figured it was okay.

And it was okay the next day too when she stayed over the whole day and watched cartoons and played with the Bailey twins and helped them solve puzzles in minutes and looking like a genius in their eyes. Which she kinda was.

But the day after that it got boring. She missed brushing her mom's hair and telling her stuff even if she never said anything back these days.

"Can I go home today?" she asked Mrs. Bailey as politely as she could.

The woman gave her a sympathetic look, her eyes looked glassy, she looked like she wanted to hug Lauren but then she just wiped her hands off on her pretty yellow cloth that reminded Lauren of Taylor's room that no one was allowed to go into anymore, "I'm afraid not honey."

Lauren narrowed her eyes at her, "have you abducted me? That's a crime you know. My daddy-"

threw her arms around her then and completely covered Lauren with her body, whispering sorry over and over again, Lauren figured she'd let her cry and negotiate her release later.

As it turns out, she didn't have to negotiate her release because the next day her father picked her up. They oddly enough didn't drive home, they drove to a store, "we're going to buy you a dress. A pretty black one."

If it wasn't for the fact that her father seemed sadder than she had ever seen him look, Lauren would have laughed at that. Her mom hated black, she was pretty certain she'll throw the dress out or give it to goodwill as soon as she got home. Well, that's if she was in the mood to do anything today.

She wasn't in the mood, she wasn't even home- "where's mommy?" Lauren looked around the house. It seemed so empty, so quiet.

Her father looked uncomfortable, "she uh, she's with Snowy and Taylor now honey."

"Oh." Lauren said quietly. She didn't know what else to say.

/

Lauren didn't know much about funerals, but she supposed for a standard one, her mom's was as good as it got.

People came. People who used to work with her mom before she quit to raise a family. Her dads colleagues. Neighbors. Her parents didn't really have family, her mom used to say family is what you make, and she'd made hers.

They had music and flowers and Lauren had once seen a funeral on TV and it looked just like it.

Perfect.

But at the same time. It was all wrong. For one, her mom hated black, and everyone was in black, she hated flowers too, she was allergic to so many of them and they made her sneeze, she used to say they were against her. She also really, really, didn't like the slow music they played. And the food the caterers served was the kind that she used to point out to Lauren whenever they saw any on TV and say, "see honey, now that's pretentious."

And Lauren didn't know much about heaven other than when someone went there they didn't come back, but if her mom was looking down like people kept telling her, then she really hated her funeral.

...

She tried sleeping in her mom's bed the night after the funeral. It didn't smell like her, not the her Lauren wanted to remember, the one who lived before Taylor went to heaven, the one who made pancakes with smiley faces and watched Sponge Bob with Lauren. It smelt like the other her, the one after Tyler.

The one who looked but didn't see. The one who let Lauren brush her hair and cried for hours sometimes while holding Lauren so tightly she thought she'd suffocate.

The one who left without even saying goodbye.

And she really wanted it to smell like the former, because it's her she wanted to remember. So she sneaked past her father who was passed out on the couch, bottle in hand and shoes that Lauren had helped him pick still on. Pointy and funny, the kind her mother liked because they made her laugh but still managed to look important.

She sneaked to the bathroom and took her mother's shampoo and shower gel and that scent she liked and she practically drowned the sheets in them and when she pressed the sheets to her nose, they smelt exactly like her.

/

"It'll get better," that's what everyone kept saying.

What they didn't say was when things would get better.

Her father wasn't himself anymore. It was like her mother when Taylor went to heaven all over again. He was quiet, and withdrawn and he looked and looked but he never saw. He never saw how Lauren learnt to make all her mom's favourite meals by the time she was ten and how her grades were practically perfect and how she always played her mom's favourite music and how Lauren was trying everything she could to make things better, just like she did when Taylor went to heaven.

And she thought- she thought if she just did everything right, if she was good, and somehow keep a little bit of her mom then she could fix him - she could fix things- and one day she wouldn't go wake him up to come have dinner and find him dead.

But she thought wrong. Cause all that happened was that they moved and the people in this new town, they didn't really know them, "fresh start," he said. Fresh start didn't mean them trying to fix things though, fresh start meant him going around the world and making sure what happened to them never happened to anyone else, "no one should have to go through that." He said, "these people need help and they can't get it for themselves." He explained when Lauren asked him if he has to go all the way across the world to help people.

She wanted to ask if she deserved it. It had happened to her, right? Who was going to help her? But that sounded whiny and selfish and it was just going to upset him and that wasn't going to fix anything, was it now?

And there was nothing more Lauren wanted to do than just fix it.

So she smiled and hugged him , promised to be good for the nanny and told him to be safe and bring her back something nice from Haiti.

...

AN; I know this is short but it was really important to me that this part stand alone, I can't explain why, it just was. This Lauren is incredibly complicated to write and I hope by the time we're done you'll all understand her better.

Thank you for reading and reviewing even when I take years to update.