I sit here in the dark considering what it will take to start a new life. My name is Callie. That isn’t short for anything, it’s just Callie. I have lived in the same place for the last thirty or so years. A white house with a white picket fence and blue shutters on the windows. It was the house my mom and dad built when they got married. It is one story, has three bedrooms, a formal dining area, a living room, and huge kitchen and three full baths. You would think they built it to house an army. It was just me and them though. Up until a few years ago, then it became just me.

So, let me tell you a little about me. I am thirty years old; I have no kids, never been married, and have no desire for either. I grew up an only child. My life was full of all the things I could have ever wanted. My parents weren’t rich, but they were well taken care of. They tried to give me everything I wanted. I wanted to grow up and live a life of solitude, on an island in the Pacific, away from this dumpy little town in Texas. Mom and Dad said that wasn’t an option, I needed to go to college, and make something of myself. So, I went, and I majored in nothing, and minored in everything. They finally got frustrated at putting money into school, and told me I could come back home to stay until I figured out what I wanted out of life. Again, I told them, a life of solitude on a quiet little Pacific island. Still, they said that they would prefer that I wait. Why? I would ask. They said it was in my best interest. So, as life went on around me, I got a job at the local restaurant when I was twenty. It was my first job, and I loved it! I was the hostess, the manager said I had the eyes for it. I always wondered what my eyes had to do with being hostess, but I guess he knew what he was talking about. I worked four nights a week and they were mainly the end of the week. On my days off, I would read the latest novel and just be lazy. I never spent a lot of time with my parents from the time I was about twenty up to the time that they died. They wanted me around, but were never around themselves. I always found it odd, I guess it explains a lot later.

After working at the restaurant for eight months, the manager said he needed someone to run the night shift, and wanted to know if I thought I could handle it. I was already doing most of it now. I accepted it, and worked almost seven days a week for the next year. I opened up a savings account, and called it my Pacific account. It was eventually going to get me out of this rat hole town.

I had a pretty good amount in my savings after that year. I also got promoted to district night manager. It was amazing, I was doing so well. I bought my first car, and was actually looking at an apartment closer to work, and that’s when things started happening. Mom got sick first. It started with a cough, and then the cough got worse, which lead to pneumonia. She was in and out of the hospital for the next year. The doctors tried everything and couldn’t find anything to make it go away. Dad came down with it next and after trying to juggle a full time job and caring for my parents, I had to give up the job I loved so much. They were both sick for the next year and a half or so.

On my twenty fifth birthday, I woke up, and the house was still and quiet. There was no smell of fresh coffee brewing like normal. No news on the television in the living room. It was deathly quiet. I rolled out of bed, and put my bare feet on the wood floor, and threw a robe over my nightgown, and walked through the house. It was still, to still. I knocked on my parent’s door. No answer. I could hear the small beep of their alarm through the door. I knocked again, and then turned the handle.

They were both lying on the bed. Eyes closed. It looked like they were sleeping. The only problem was that they were white, to white. Their chests did not rise and fall with the breath, that should have been there. I stood there. I expected them to reach over and turn the alarm off. I don’t know how long I stood there, finally I went to the bedside table, and turned the beep of the alarm off, and picked up the phone, and dialed 9-1-1.

The paramedics arrived rather quickly. They pronounced them dead at the scene, and called in the coroner. Tom came out, and told me, that he would be as gentle as possible with them. I left the house while they removed the bodies. I came back a few hours later, and started taking care of all the arrangements. I got in touch with family and friends, and arranged the funeral, and the viewing. My parents were well prepared, they had a life insurance policy set up, and had already bought side by side plots in the cemetery around the corner. I buried them a few days later. The funeral seemed to go on forever. I went back to the little white house, and there was an envelope taped to the door, with my name carefully handwritten in blue ink. I pulled it off, and carried it inside with all of the other correspondence out of the mailbox. Tossed it all on the counter in the kitchen, and walked into my room for the last twenty five years of my life, and looked around. It hadn’t changed much. Something in the back of my mind clicked. I went over to my wall, and starting ripping all the pictures, and cards, and dried flowers off and throwing them across the room to the little garbage can. I ran my arm along the dresser top where little glass figurines of unicorns and teddy bears crashed to the wood floor. Tears sprang up in my green eyes. I ran my hand through my brown hair. I walked over to my bed, grabbed my white Chanel blanket, and a pillow, and walked into the spare bedroom, lay down on the bed, and cried myself to sleep.

I woke up several hours later. My head felt like there were tiny little men with big hammers banging on my skull. I crawled out of the full size bed, and walked down the hall past the closed door of my parent’s room, and into the rest of the house. I grabbed some ibuprofen out of the cabinet in the kitchen and walked to my room to clean up the crazy mess I had made earlier. I walked through the doorway, and had to stop.

Everything was back in place. My figurines were on the dresser, still in one piece. All of the stuff I threw in the garbage, was back on the walls. I stood there, trying to absorb the information my brain was trying to process. I know what I did. I still had a cut on my foot from stepping in the glass on the floor. I stood there, stock still.

A knock on the door, scared me out of my thoughts. Who would be knocking this late. I went to the front door, and opened it. There on the door, was another envelope, with my name on it, in the same blue ink.

I opened the envelope, and read the letter inside:

Dearest Callie,

I am writing to you today, because your parents have passed on from this world and into their next life. I need to talk with you about their will. I know that you are an only child, but there are things that need to be told. Some of them are about the care and upkeep of the house. Please be at my office by 10:00 a.m. in the morning. The address is listed below.

Sincerely,

K

That was it. Nothing more, nothing less. I looked at my watch. It was almost midnight. I grabbed my blanket from the spare room and went to sleep on the couch, and set my phone alarm to wake me up at 8:00 a.m. It was time some questions got answered. One of them being my room. I know what I did. There was no explanation for any of it. None.

(to be continued)