Remember that time I said life was smiling at me in some ways, and everything would be fine? Yeah, well, I got that wrong. Life sucks again.
I made dinner two nights ago. For the first time in a while, I actually put some effort into it. Like I still appreciated the art of good cuisine as I used to. I was expecting Antonio to show up, beautiful Antonio with that scar above his right hip. The army guy I've been telling you all about. He didn't show up.
They found him this morning, around sunrise. Someone dumped his body near the anacostia river. I figure they must've left his remains there past midnight, probably around 1 or 2 in the morning... What a shitty morning. I was called to the station an hour ago, at half past nine or so.
I'll tell you anything I find relevant for you to know, Sophie. In the meantime... I need to go for a walk.
She chose the last name “von Auri”, not just for crafted elegance. Auri came from the Latin word for gold, aurum, and it was fitting. Gold was beautiful, true, but malleable. Without another metal to make alloys with, gold was weak, flimsy, almost useless. It wouldn't hold up well or remain stable. Gold also happened to be precious, yes, but more often than not it could cost way more than what was its true worth.
She remembered the first months after the divorce. Her father had kept her after her mother walked away, never to return.
Sitting on the floor, playing with her toys, she'd gotten up, heading to the front door. She could only catch the sight of her mother walking away with heavy suitcases.
“Papa, where's mommy going?”, she'd ask, while she clung to her father's leg, tugging at the fabric of his pants. He'd gently pat her head, while his maroon eyes followed Clarice as she got smaller and smaller, each step bringing her farther away from their home. He had not given her an answer.
She tried to follow Clarice, of course. She was a little girl at heart, despite being twelve years old and having a much older mind, so she ran to catch up with her. She didn't get to.
“Sarah, come back here”, Hannibal told her. Her short legs had given up, and with an aching heart, she came back inside the house.
Then she had some relatively... Calm months. An almost empty place, which she could hardly call a home anymore. Hannibal had either been too cautious or had foreseen his fortune, putting the place under her name just weeks before he was arrested...
Then she'd been sent to her mother, who clearly was unhappy about it. She wouldn't let her see her half brother, let alone spend time with him or hold her, and she'd quickly learned how to take the least space possible...
At fourteen, she decided that part of her had to be put behind. Mentally, she'd started to discard her first name and her last. She'd have a better shot if no one knew who her parents were. Besides, a prodigy or not, she'd ended up in the foster system when she wasn't at college. No one would care if she changed her name.
If she tied the pain to her birth name, then maybe, just maybe, keeping her middle name and giving herself a new identity would be the way to keep enough of herself without the trauma her wholeness implicated.
“If she tied the pain to her birth name, then maybe, just maybe, keeping her middle name and giving herself a new identity would be the way to keep enough of herself without the trauma her wholeness implicated.”
THAT GOSHDARN OLD WOMAN IN THE APARTMENT ABOVE ME WONT LET ME SLEEP WITH HER INCREDIBLY LOUD TV ITS PAST MIDNIGHT MY BRO I GOTTA BE UP IN LIKE FIVE HOURS 😭
