Chapter Three
When I woke up this morning I had one blissful second of utter ignorance before I remembered everything that had happened the day before. But what was the point in remembering now when that was all I had been able to think about the night before? I groaned and pulled my covers over my head. The bright morning sunlight hurt my eyes, and I felt as if I had a brick for a head. I hadn't been able to sleep at all, but I must have fallen asleep at one point during the night, because I recalled having a nightmare about the crash which took my mother too soon from this world, only instead it was me in the car, and I was the one who had died. I shuddered at the memory of the dream. It had been so realistic; I couldn't get it out of my head. Just as I turned my head to look at the clock sitting on my side table, the phone began to ring. Groaning at the sudden violent interruption of the silence, I lay there waiting for whoever it was to hang up. But they didn't. The phone just kept on ringing. Eventually, unable to stand the incessant sound of ringing any longer, I dragged myself out of the bed to pick up the phone.
"Hello?" I croaked into the mouth piece. My throat was really dry.
"Hello? Is this Miss. Elliot Miller?"
"Yes, this is she."
"Hello, Elliot, this is Officer White, we met yesterday."
"Yes, I remember." Hearing his voice brought back yesterday's feelings of difficult breathing.
"That's good. Elliot, I have some good news for you."
"Oh, yes?" I was curious. After having the one single person who I had loved most in the world taken so suddenly away from me, how could anything ever be good again?
"Elliot, we've contacted your mother's parents, and after hearing of your situation, they have agreed to take you in."
I was shocked. My mother's parents? The same ones who had kicked her out at only sixteen and never contacted her again, because she was pregnant with me? And after over fifteen years they had been absent from my life, they wanted to take me in now?
"Elliot, are you still there?" Officer White asked after I hadn't said anything for awhile. I'd been letting the news sink in, to really understand what this all meant.
"Yes, sorry, I'm still here," I replied quickly.
"Elliot, I know you're still in shock right now, but we need you to come down to the station. Your grandparents are here. They seem very impatient to meet you. Would it be okay if we sent a car for you?"
"Um, okay."
After hanging up, I sat there bewildered for at least five minutes, before I finally got up to prepare for my first ever meeting with my grandparents.