on the carpet, her feet barely making an impression. Her mother liked to move things, to rearrange them so there was no telling where the jewelry box would be; in a drawer perhaps, a closet, beneath the bed.
You’re always looking for something. Her father’s voice came from the darkness near the bathroom. Ella didn’t jump or make a sound despite the fact that she had been surprised.
Yes, she replied. She peered into the darkness but only saw the shape of her father, a shadow of a person leaning against the doorframe.
It’s pointless you know, looking for something, he said. He was drunk. Ella could tell by the way his words dragged themselves across the room and into her ears. She remained quiet because she knew there was no sense arguing with words that could barely make it out of a person’s mouth.
It’s pointless because there’s nothing there. Nothing at all. It’s just a big, long endless day and nothing changes that. Nothing is all there is and nothing changes that. He didn’t step out of the doorway because he had no personal momentum. He was nothing but a shadow in a dark room, consumed by the inertia of his statement.
I was just doing what I was supposed to, he said.
Ella didn’t like the idea of doing what she was supposed to. She preferred doing what she was called to do. She took a step away towards the door, she would come back in the daylight when the shadows had dissipated.
No, you should take it, her father continued, you should take it all and then she’ll have nothing left. Then she’ll be forced to look at me. She’ll be forced to see that all of this is nothing anyway.
Ella took another step back.
Her father’s words were crawling with a lonely desperation. They clawed up her legs, seeking purchase in the crevices of her clothes as they tried to reach her ears. She had always thought that the things that were the centre of her parent’s world belonged to both of them, but now she could see they were her mother’s passion, her mother’s world. It changed nothing, but a small almost unnoticeable sense of empathy for her father blossomed somewhere in the recesses of her rib cage.