Okay guys, I know it´s like forever that I haven´t updated, but I haven´t been at home for a while.

So here is a Kate Chapter because my beta - VladdieChica - wished for it. Many thanks for betareading and reviewing by the way.

I also want to thank Donny304, Number 8.0 and athenarox for reviewing. It was my first try in first person narration for who knows how long.

The Sound of Silence

Kate

A Song by Simon & Garfunkel

It was silent in the house. Kate wasn't used to this.. She knew it as loud and full of life and laughter. Every now and then someone said "Hey Mama" when they passed her in the hall, before the person rushed in to their room again. Sometimes they would slam it, forcing Kate to admonish them.

Silent.

Silence sometimes had been here greatest wish. One moment of calm, relaxing silence. Now, it was there, the silence. She had what she wanted. But it wasn´t any good.

With Nigel and Kyle gone last year, the last of the kids had left the house and now, no one was left. Kate realized that this house was much too big for Tom and her alone.

Walking down the hall, upstairs, Kate tried to remember how it had been when the kids still lived all here. She remembered Charlie, rushing down the stairs in haste, because he was late for football training, or he wanted to visit his girlfriend Beth in Midland. Almost hearing the steps, she smiled as she remembered how he just told her good bye and then abruptly left, not really telling her where he was going,. Perhaps because he knew that she already knew.

Finally Kate reached the top of the stairs, held on to the banister for a moment, and took a deep breath. Her hand stroked the railing of the stairs, then she forced herself to let go, she starred at the hall of the top floor.

A picture of Jake on his skateboard in the house, trying out a new trick, came to her mind. Kate had to laugh when she remembered herself always almost getting a heart attack when he fell down, also she knew, that within the next moment, her son would stand up again, with a smile on his face, and say "I´m fine".

She walked along the long floor, regarding the pictures the kids drew when they were younger which still hang at the wall. One picture – she knew so well that it had been Lorraine which drew it when she was four – showed the family. It wasn´t the whole family. Only her and Tom, Nora, Charlie, Henry and Lorraine herself. That was all there was of the family then. Kate's belly had been drawn so round, she could have been pregnant with triplets, but it had only been Sarah.

The picture hung next to Nigel and Kyle's old room. The door stood open and Kate looked inside. The chamber still looked as it did when Kyle – who had the room as his own the last few years – was living in it. Suddenly, Kate saw the youngest twins again, lying, fighting on the floor, laughing and grinning simultaneously. She had to laugh, because they´d always been so happy together, even in the last years of high school, but then she remembered, that nowadays, the two weren´t so close anymore. While Kyle went to college, Nigel started to work directly at graduation.

She closed the door and went to the bathroom.

Opening the door, Kate almost thought Lorraine would be standing in front of the mirror now, turning her head to whoever entered the room, perhaps with a sigh, telling the person to go away, because she was doing her makeup. But Lorraine wasn´t there anymore. And so Kate stepped into the bathroom and regarded herself in the mirror for a while. She looked old. Her hair had grown white and her face was full of wrinkles. Her clothes weren´t modern anymore, either. What Lorraine would have said if she would have seen her now?

Kate left the bathroom and went on, walked along the floor while watching the pictures of her children. While passing Henry´s old room, something broke the silence. The sound of a clarinette reached Kates ear so that, for a short moment, she thought it was really there, and for a second she wanted to open the door to listen to it. But she knew it was all an illusion, just an illusion. So she let go of the doorknob and went on.

Something strange touched her feet and she turned her head down to see what it was.

On the wooden floor laid a paper, the handwriting delicate and flowing.
Hey Mum,
I´m sorry I came home late last night, but James took me out. It was so wonderful.
I know I should´ve called, but it was so unplanned that I forgot. Please don´t be angry, I´m helping you with dinner tonight.

Kim

Kate bit her lip. She remembered this evening very well, the first time Kim – who had always been so reliable - had not come home. That was the day she had the painful realization that her little girl wasn't so little anymore.

Turning the paper over in her hands, numbers and letters sprang to her eyes: algebra.

It was so unbelievable that Kim had been so madly in love that she used her algebra homework paper to write this letter.

Kate folded the letter and out it into her pocket, continuing her walk through the house. The walk through memories.

Tom wasn´t at home. He was out with some of his friends. He did not work anymore. Yes, they´d become old in these last years.

At the end of the floor was a window. A wooden desk was placed in front of it, but something was wrong with the picture. Normally, in the past, there´d always been a lacross stick, because this had been Sarah´s place to work – when she really worked. But the stick wasn´t there anymore. Sarah took it with her when she went away. Never again there would be the loud knock of it against a door, never again Sarah – the Sarah she used to know – would wake up and be so loud everybody else in the house would wake up, too. There was no one else in the house to wake up anymore.

Except for Tom and her.

With a sharp breath, Kate turned on her heels and stepped down the hallway very quickly. She rushed down the stairs and entered the kitchen, filled a glass with water, and drank.

Her gaze went to the window and, somehow, she almost expected Mike to appear there, hanging upside-down off the roof. Kate shook her head and leaned against the counter.

The table was clean, no dishes, no glasses. It was unnatural, Kate decided.

Then – there had always stood so many dishes and glasses and plates that Kate often had lost track of them all. And when she once tried to tidy it all up, mostly suddenly a frog had jumped out of it and had watched her with big eyes until Mark came, took it into his hands and gave her an apologizing look, being embarrassed that that he had lost his frog again.

And then, perhaps, Jessica would have entered the kitchen and told Mark to put this ugly frog away. Ready to bombard Kate with questions about physics that she sure would not be able to answer, and in the end, it would be Jessica who would explain the task to her, Kate, the mother, the adult.

Suddenly the phone rang. Kate´s heart made a jump and she rushed to the telephone to answer the call as if it was all she had been waiting for it the entire day.

"Hey Mum, it´s me, Nora."

"Hey darling. How are you doing?"

"Oh, I´m fine. See, I wondered if I could come to dinner tonight?"

"Oh darling, that would be so great."

I hope every kid got as much attention in this as the others do.

Let me see, who´s left? Tom, Henry, Kim and Kyle, I think. Did I forget one? Their are so many...