2 years later

I was staring at the café across the road. The cars were moving at a snail's pace the honking and shouting from all directions were quite a bother and yet I couldn't tear my eyes from the café. It had a simple glass exterior and was lit by a mellow orange light which provided the illusion of warmth. The brown leather chairs and wooden tables with black glass top were too fresh in my memory. It felt like as if it was only yesterday, but no...

"Phoebe!"
I jolted into attention at my mother's call and blinked my eyes into focus.

"Stop sticking your head out and let me lift up the glass? You're getting wet."

I touched my face and found the raindrops sticking to my nose. It had started raining, a sign of the approaching monsoons. The rain pelted down harder and my mother rolled up the glass.

My mind wandered back to the day I was at the café and I was with someone.

"What are you thinking all of a sudden!" my mother said again, impatiently tapping the steering wheel as the cars ahead of us refused to budge.

"Nothing," I lied. "Just that I need to go meet Jamie. You know things are hard for him lately."

"You, with your stubbornness have made it harder."

"Come on, mom, even if I did say to him and make him believe that I am his sister, there is no way I could let my parents know that. He has to bear that secret if he wants to keep his sister to himself."

"Anyway, it's a good progress away from all the evasion and the hide and seek," she shrugged.

"He gave me a hard time accepting the truth though," I said, smiling as I remembered the shock and the denial when I had owned up my lies and let Jamie be a part of my life. But the happiness of the reunion had actually chased away any doubts and he had accepted me with open arms.

All my leisure time these days were divided evenly between him and the children at Sarah's. Gaby was going to be two years old and I prided myself in being the one to teach him to talk.

"Do you think Sebastian is well locked up? I mean, the kids are safe right?"

"Yeah! He isn't going to get out anytime soon after what he did to..." my mother's words trailed off.

I nodded, absentmindedly playing with my thinning hairs as my mind went back to that someone who used to love these strands. How many days had it been?

Two years had passed and for all I knew, Daniel was dead. His family never returned to their home in Grant Town. I had seen the house all locked up on my way to college. The house which had once held a lively family and a boy who could make anyone smile.

"Your hairs are responding well to the cold cap thing, right? It was a great decision," my mother touched one of the strands.

I actually searched it up on the internet. With my skin and all my bandages, the hair is what a semblance of normality I wanted to retain. Chemotherapy takes away everything but by God's grace, the ice cap helped keep my skull cool so that the deadly chemo couldn't seep up there and destroy the follicles.

"But mom, it pains..." I averted my eyes.

"I know, it must be horrible to have all that cold on you. You don't actually need to put up with it. You would look beautiful anyway..."

"Come on mom, it's okay," I interrupted.
But then fell silent again.

"Phoebe, you should call Mrs Waters. She still might be coping from the loss and a little support would do wonders."

"Enough, Mom. I don't want to bring back those..."
I choked and I felt like my heart would break all over again.

"I'm sorry. I know you will never be able to forget him. You don't need to pretend before me."

"It's another phase, another life. I don't need to reminiscence the past, but I was so attached, it hurts, mom. It hurts to not know what happened to him, but I think it's better that way."

"You know what, Phoebe, at some times it seems that you're still waiting for him to come back when you certainly know he won't."

"When you know a person is dead," I sighed, "you give up hope on him. My mind knows he's gone forever, but my heart, my heart will crave for him till my end because I never got to know where he ended. And actually, I like it that way. I don't want anything to change. I don't like the finality. It's like he's off on a holiday and I'll see him at my doorstep again, grinning."

Tears brimmed in my mother's eyes and I could see them running down her cheeks which had wrinkled somewhat with age.

At that moment the traffic started to move again and my mother swallowed whatever she was going to say and I grew pensive again, rolling around in my own sea of thoughts.