MidReal Story
Legacy of Shadows
Scenario: Dark past time, young girl without father
Create my version of this story
I was only ten years old when my father disappeared.
He had been gone for three days and my mother was frantic.
She had called the police, but they said they couldn’t do anything until he had been missing for at least a week.
My mother was in no state to be reasoned with, so she called her brother, Thomas Carter, to come and help.
Thomas was my favourite uncle and I was always excited to see him.
He arrived at our house in the early hours of the morning, just as the sun was rising.
I heard his car pull up and ran out to meet him.
He got out of the car and I could see that he looked tired and stressed.
His hair was greying at the temples and he had dark circles under his eyes.
He gave me a weak smile as I ran up to him and hugged him around the waist.
“Hey there, Emily,” he said, ruffling my hair.
“What are you doing up so early?”
“I heard your car pull up,” I said, looking up at him with big brown eyes.
He gave me a sad smile and knelt down to my level.
“Your father has gone missing, sweetie,” he explained.
“Your mother called me and I came to help.”
I looked at him, not really understanding what he meant.
“When will he be back?”
I asked, looking up at him with a confused expression.
He sighed and looked down at the ground.
He looked like he had something more to say, but instead he shook his head and just said, “I don’t know.”
My mother was inconsolable when she found out that my father was missing.
She fell into a deep depression and it felt like I had lost her too.
My uncle tried his best to take care of me, but he wasn’t very good at it.
He was very reserved and quiet and didn’t talk much.
He spent most of his time at work or in his study.
But I knew he was trying his best.
He drove me to school and picked me up again in the afternoons.
He made sure I had food on the table and clothes to wear.
My mother’s disappearance had hit him hard too, but I knew he was glad that he still had me.
I was the last remaining piece of his sister that he had left.
My uncle’s house was small and modest, but it was clean and comfortable.
It wasn’t as big as our old house, but it felt more like home than our old house ever had.
He made sure I had a roof over my head and clothes on my back and for that I was grateful.
Life with my uncle was quiet and uneventful.
We didn’t have much money, so we didn’t go on holidays or day trips like other kids I knew.
My uncle wasn’t one for laughter or fun, so I didn’t have many friends over either.
My mother was still missing and I missed her terribly, but I knew better than to ask about her in front of my uncle.
Instead I asked Sarah Jennings, my best friend at school.
Sarah lived with her father and her younger sister Hannah.
Her mother had died when she was very young, so she understood how I felt when I said that I missed my mother.
“Do you think she’ll come back?”
Sarah asked me one day as we were walking home from school.
“My uncle says she’s probably gone forever,” I told her sadly.
Sarah put an arm around my shoulder and gave me a sympathetic look.
“I’m sure she’ll come back one day,” she said reassuringly.
Maybe she just got lost or something.”
“I hope so,” I said.
“I miss her.”
I missed my father too, but not as much as my mother.
I still didn’t understand why he left without saying goodbye or where he went to, but my uncle told me not to worry about him.
As the years went by, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something more to the story of my father’s disappearance than what my uncle had told me.
He said that my father had gone missing, but he never said what happened to him or why he went missing or where he went to.
It was a big mystery and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
It was like a question that was hanging in the air, unspoken but ever-present, like a ghost that wouldn’t go away.
As I got older, I could see the question reflected in my uncle’s eyes too, but neither of us dared to ask the other what was really going on, so we both stayed silent.
Our silence grew deeper as the years went by, until it felt like a chasm that separated us, cutting me off from him forever.
We lived in the same house, but it felt like we were living in different worlds, each of us trapped in our own private hell of unspoken thoughts and unshared memories of a past that wouldn’t let us go.
Our house was a small two-bedroom house with a small living room and an even smaller kitchen at the back of the house.
When we first moved in, I asked my uncle why there was only two bedrooms instead of three like in our old house, but he just shrugged his shoulders and said there were only two bedrooms available so he had no choice.
The walls were painted white and the floors were covered with brown carpeting that looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in years.
The only room that showed any sign of decoration was my bedroom.
When we first moved in, my uncle painted the walls a soft pink because he thought it would make me happy, but now they just reminded me of a time when my family was still together, which made me sad instead of happy.
I spent most of my weekends in my bedroom, lying on my bed and staring up at the ceiling.
The ceiling was covered with small patches of paint that were peeling away, but I never minded.
It gave me something to look at while I lay there, lost in thought as I thought about what my life could have been like if my father hadn’t gone missing.
“Emily, come down and eat your breakfast,” my uncle called from downstairs.
I sighed and rolled over onto my side, pulling the covers up over my head.
I wanted to stay in bed for a little while longer, but I knew better than to ignore my uncle.
If I didn’t go down soon, he would come up and get me himself, and I would be in more trouble.
“Just a sec,” I called back, throwing the covers off and sitting up.
I ran a hand through my long brown hair, pushing it out of my face as I got out of bed and went downstairs to join him for breakfast.
“Your breakfast is getting cold,” he scolded me when I walked into the kitchen.
He had a stern expression on his face and his short-cropped hair was beginning to grey around the edges, making him look older than he actually was.
I knew he would be angry at me for making him wait, but I had hoped that he would let it slide this once.
He never did though, so I should have known better than to try.
I slid into the chair across from him and gave him an apologetic smile.
“I’m sorry, Uncle Thomas,” I said.
He just grunted in response and pushed a plate across the table toward me.
It was piled high with scrambled eggs and toast, and I picked up my fork and dug into them eagerly.
We ate in silence for a few minutes before he finally spoke up again.
It’s not good to keep people waiting.”
“I know,” I said between bites.
“I’ll try harder next time.”
“You’d better,” he said, taking a sip from his coffee mug as he watched me intently.
His eyes were dark and calculating, making me feel like he could see right through me sometimes.
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat and finished eating as quickly as I could so that I could leave the room and escape his gaze.
He never said anything more on the subject though, and I got up and put my plate in the sink before heading upstairs to get ready for school.
The weight of his silence was a heavy burden I had grown accustomed to carrying around with me.
It was the same silence he had given me when I asked about my father on the day he disappeared.
It was the same silence he had given me when he arrived at our house that morning to find my mother in a panic after discovering my father was missing.
It was the same silence he used now when I tried to ask questions about what happened that day.
I knew he would never tell me what happened because it was too painful for him to talk about.
I just wished he would say something so that I didn’t have to carry around the weight of his unspoken truth all by myself.
I never learned what happened to my father on the day he disappeared.
My mother never told me why he left or where he was going.
She just came home one day and found him gone, and she panicked because she didn’t know where he was.
My uncle had been the one to find her that morning and it was him who had stayed behind to help her cope with what had happened.
My mother left us a few years later and chose to start a new life without me.
I don’t know why she chose to leave, but I like to think it was because she couldn’t bear to stay in the house where she had been so happy with him.
My uncle tried to shield me from the pain of losing both of my parents, but it was clear that it hurt him just as much as it hurt me.
