We placed her next to Prue, in the vault that we had reserved for me, in the hopes that she might find her aunt up There… wherever There was. I hadn't wanted to go to the funeral, but Leo carried me out the door early that morning, his body stiff and cold toward me as though he didn't know me anymore. The truth was that I didn't know myself.
It was a Saturday, late in September when the world isn't sure whether it should be sunny or snowing. That day it was neither, but instead it howled. The storm had blown in overnight, as though in anticipation of the burial. Nature's sick twisted way of saying, "I told you so". Perfect weather for a funeral, Grams used to say.
"Mother earth cries when one of her children dies…"
It had been raining at my mother's funeral, I remember. One of the few true memories that I have of her, but it hadn't rained like this. Giant sheets of rain pelted the roof of the limo that someone had ordered, and the windows rattled in the heavy gale as it pounded us from all sides. I ignored it all, since every sound was drowned out by her cries, then the revolting 'crack'. Over and over, all day and all night. When I slept, I dreamt it; when I was awake, I remembered. It was a demon that I couldn't vanquish, a flood that I could escape. I had run out of tears days before, and so I lay down in the back of the limo, my head rested wearily on Leo's leg. His hand on my hair wasn't comforting, it wasn't my light at the end of this incredibly long tunnel. It was dead, silent, unresponsive as I gripped his pant leg. We hadn't spoken to each other since that night, and so we went on in silent agony. I knew that he blamed me, and I wasn't surprised by it. Even I blamed myself. If I hadn't waited those extra moments, if I had been more concerned with my child than with myself, maybe none of this would have happened. Maybe she would still be here. And maybe I wouldn't be burying my heart along with my daughter.
It took a week for me to figure out that things weren't going to get any better between Leo and I, so I left. I began spending nights in hotels around San Francisco, most of them closer to the manor than I might have liked. Every few days I would move on, selecting another motel next to a highway in the red light district, another five-star colossus close to the opera house. They all became to familiar, and I would start calling them 'home' subconsciously. I didn't want to feel that attachment anymore.
Leo never came looking for me when I disappeared for a week at a time, checking in once every so often to let my sisters know that I was still alive, and not dead in a ditch with a self-inflicted bullet lodged in my skull. Paige always managed to find me when I didn't come home after a few nights, and she'd attempt to drag me out of the musty, over-priced no-tell motels. She would orb in, find me lying on the bed, watching another after school special that Melinda would never get to see, and I could almost feel her heart wrench. It hurt me to see her look at me like that, but I couldn't help it. Nothing made sense to me. Not Leo, not my sisters, not my job, being a Charmed One, not life. It was all a haze, mixed together with some potent sleeping pills, which I couldn't find my way out of. She would tell me that being home would help, that she and Phoebe could help me forget. But how could I forget? I felt trapped inside my own body, lost in a sea of pain that raged like a hurricane, and I wanted more than anything to just evaporate away.
Many a night I prayed for death, prayed to be with my daughter, but death never came, and I was left alone to drown in guilt and self-pity. There is no remedy for a broken heart, and it eats away like a cancer at your soul, until you can't see, can't feel, can't breathe, and you cease to be. I felt like half of a person every second, without my husband, without my sisters, without my daughter… nothing would ever be the same, that much I knew. I never doubted that I wouldn't ever be free of the ache in my heart, but without my family to help ease the pain, I even less than nothing. The problem was that, even though I knew that I needed them, I forced myself to believe that I didn't. There would be no connections, no emotions, no feeling of love or hate. There would be nothing. No one could bring my daughter back, so I didn't need any of them. I would become heartless, cold anything to keep me from the pain.
Days at the hotels became weeks, and weeks turned into a month, then two. Paige continued to come, each time losing faith that I would ever recover. She had taken over P3 in my absence, and I could tell that the strain was getting to her. Her face was pale the last time she came, more pale than usual, and her once brilliant brown eyes were dull and murky as she wrapped her arms around me.
"You're coming home."
A simple statement, and I was back in the manor, my head spinning as a landed abruptly on the floor of the kitchen. Phoebe looked up from her cup of herbal tea and blinked. I made my way out of the kitchen, but remained in the house. I had lost all the energy to run away, so I took up residence in the basement. I couldn't stay in my own room, since it was too close to… where it all happened. I wasted my days in a fitful sleep, and my nights sifting through all of the treasures that I had saved from my childhood for hers. Leo stopped coming to the manor once I returned, and I gave up hope of ever reconciling with him. I didn't think that it was beyond him to forgive me, I just knew that it was beyond myself to accept it. Whether or not her death could have been prevented was never the issue for me; it was my fault, end of story.
My sisters continued their tirade to get me out of the basement, to get me to move on, but that usually only resulted in broken antiques and high tension, so they called a professional. Can you believe it? Me, the eldest, wisest… well, maybe not wisest… Charmed One, seeing a shrink? Phoebe brought the woman home with her late one night. I remember it was dark and I was just waking up from another nightmare. The door from the kitchen opened up slowly, shedding a beam of light onto my mattress, and the stout, black silhouette in the doorframe was joined by two others with more slender figures. She tried to walk down the stairs, but I froze her before she could make it an inch. I remember running away, blowing past my sisters before they had a chance to stop me, and before Paige was able to orb after me without being seen. I could hear Phoebe stop her as I rushed out the front door.
"Let her go. There's nothing else we can do for her…"
The winter air was more apparent then, and I could see my breath in clouds before my face as I sprinted down the side roads, until I reached Market Street, a little over a mile away. I stopped on a corner and looked around at the area, dirty and darkened, where fools are kings and queens are prostitutes in tight red dresses. I stopped running, stopped thinking, stopped hearing. I wandered up and down the bordello in a hazr, seeking answers to questions that no one was willing or able to answer. Even with the frost in the air, my shirt clung to my chest, drenched in a frightened sweat as I passed the pitch-black storefronts. Their blank neon signs gave me a second reassurance that they wouldn't open their doors for me to warm myself. Men in rusted cars honked at me as they drove by, propositioning things from me that I was not willing to give. The women in their dresses gave me pitiful looks as they saw me, and I knew that they felt more sorry for me than they did for themselves. I cried for them, for Melinda, for myself, as I sat down on a broken cardboard box by the side of the road. The people who sauntered passed pressed coins into my hand, shaking their heads at what they thought to be another hopeless drunk.
Hours out on the street left me cold, shivering, and numb, but I remained on the box, believing it to be my shelter. All the sounds had dimmed to a low hum, leaving me alone in my thoughts, all of which scared me more than the thought of being alone on a dark street corner.
You don't deserve to live… you killed your child… your husband has abandoned you… you don't deserve to live…
They spun around in dizzying circles, chanting my worst fears and wishes like assaults on my soul. I grabbed my head, squeezing my temples to force the thoughts from my mind, but the chanting grew louder, faster, harsher. I screamed and leapt to my feet, but then it stopped. It was as though time was standing still. There was no movement on the streets, no noise, no hum, no chanting. Just people frozen in place all around me, the last stragglers from the bars and the resilient red women who waited out all night for a score, motionless on the strip. It was as thought I had frozen, albeit unwillingly, all of Market street.
I heaved involuntarily, and raised my hands to unfreeze the masses, when I heard a sound. It was soft, melodic, as it floated over the petrified avenue, and I stayed my hand as I listened. It was a piano; its chords ringing perfectly while its ivory keys clinked against the thinly grained wood. I had heard the song before… Mozart's Piano Concerto number 23, in A minor. Mel's favorite. The only song that could ever put her sleep.
My feet were moving faster than my mind, and I blinked, and I was in front of a tiny shop. The lights burned dimly, but enough to illuminate the aged, dilapidated Steinway piano in the front window. A young girl, maybe fourteen or fifteen at the most, sat at the splintering bench, her long, slender fingers massaging the dirty keys as though she was playing before a packed house at Carnegie Hall. She didn't even look at the sheet of music in front of as she drummed away, but kept her eyes closed as she listened to herself and imagined the stage and the crowd.
I stood at the window and watched, entranced with the beauty of the song that I hadn't heard in months, and the young woman who looked so familiar. Her long, dark brown hair, which cascaded down her shoulders, had a subtle curl at the ends, and it flipped out around her elbows while she played. With her eyes closed it was hard to place her face with a name, but there was something about her that drew me closer to the glass. Without realizing it, I pressed my hand against the cool, clear surface, my breath leaving a gray cloud on the window. She must have felt my presence, since she stopped suddenly and froze on the bench. She turned her head slowly, exposing her eyes to me as she did. They were large, bright, and identical to my own. For a moment they were harsh, angry that I had interrupted her concerto, but when she looked at me, deeply, as though she knew me, she became afraid. I saw her mouth form a small 'O' as her once limber hands trembled while she wiped them on her smock that revealed her to be a store employee. She turned to run into the bowels of the store, but as she did, I caught a glimpse of the white lettering on her blue plastic nametag.
Melinda.