29: Elise (i)

29: Elise (i)
IT FELT LIKE a long way to the house. When we finally got there, I was winded. Anna's screams and cries were coming from the porch.
“What happened?!” I asked frantically when we finally climbed the stairs and I saw my pale and tearful sister.
“Ate, Tootsie…”
Then I heard Tootsie's panting and whining. I turned from rushing to Anna because in one look I could see that aside from shock and fear, she was alright physically, towards the corner that wasn’t visible from the stairs because of a set of benches near the porch railing that blocked the view.
Tootsie Roll was lying there.
On a pool of blood.
Oh god… there was so much blood on the tiles.
“Oh my God…” I said as I knelt down. But Gian pulled me up again.
“Call Aling Celia,” he ordered me while taking his cellphone from his pocket. “I’ll call your mother. Anna, hold yourself together. Can you contact Tootsie’s vet?”
I ran to Aling Celia while wiping the tears from my cheeks. I found the old woman coming out, wearing a long skirt that she used as sleepwear.
“What is happening here? Why is someone screaming?!” she asked frantically.
I pulled her out to the porch. “Manang, something happened to Tootsie. Don’t look, okay? It’s just there’s… so much blood…”
Aling Celia already saw Tootsie, and she went hysterical, so Anna went to her to try to calm her down but they ended up crying as they hugged each other in shock.
“Tell your Tatay Jess to call the police,” Gian said to me while kneeling on one knee on the floor.
I heard the unusual tone in his voice and turned to him to observe Tootsie more closely. I also took his phone and saw that his Messenger was connecting to Tatay Jess. “W-Why the police?” I asked him while putting the phone to my ear. The phone was ringing at the other end.
He hesitated for a moment. “Someone stabbed her, baby,” he said softly. “Tell your stepfather, and then ask him to call the police.”
I froze for a moment. Tootsie wasn’t just giving birth? Someone… stabbed her?
Then, with trembling hands, I lifted the phone to my ear and told Itay Jess that someone had stabbed Tootsie Roll and she was fighting for her life.
And please, bring the vet.
Then I called the police.

SHADOW
AS I STOOD in the darkness and looked towards the house, my body trembled with emotions. My head throbbed with rage. I raised my hand and nearly fainted from the onslaught of madness when I saw the blood on my palms.
I swore I wasn’t ever going to spill blood.
She made me do it.
I closed my eyes and shook my head when I saw behind my eyelids the image of what I had found.
The two embracing on the sand, in the darkness...
Giancarlo Verrazzano, you are such a thief. You can’t have her this time.
Not this time.
My hands formed into fists at my sides as the wind carried the sound of crying from the house to me…

GIAN
TOOTSIE ROLL was barely breathing when the vet arrived with Jess and Rose. I had explained the situation to the vet over the phone, so he brought what was needed to recover the three puppies from the dying dog's belly. The puppies made it in barely seconds. They were in the pen in the laundry room, wrapped in blankets. We made a makeshift incubator using light bulbs. Poor Tootsie stopped breathing almost as soon as the vet was done with the puppies, as if she tried to stay just to save them.
I didn’t return to The Fritzelise and stayed at the resthouse that night. I couldn’t stop thinking that while Elise and I were exposed at the beach, someone had entered the property to cause this malicious harm to her family. I trembled inside because of the dark thoughts I had to push in deep because they needed me.
Anna said whoever it was hadn’t been inside the house. The door was locked when she arrived and she locked it behind her when she got inside. Tootsie had gone straight to his little nook where he slept in the balcony instead of coming in with her. It was his favorite spot. If she wanted to come inside, she would either make noise outside the door or go around the house and get inside a dog flap at one of two back doors that would allow him inside the laundry room. Anna was in the shower and hadn’t heard anything, if there was anything to hear, until she was back inside her bedroom and wearing pajamas. She thought she heard a strange whimper from Tootsie outside. That’s when she came to check on the dog and found what was found. 
They suspected it was a burglary attempt, which Tootsie might have thwarted with her life. There was just no other possible reason.
The police’s initial investigation found nothing unusual except for what happened to Tootsie. The perpetrator brought his own knife and took it away with him or might have disposed it somewhere else, because they couldn’t find any weapon. But there would be a more thorough search during the day. 
They left immediately to patrol the roads to see if they could find whoever did this to Tootsie. 
Anna was crying non-stop. Tootsie had been bought as a puppy because Anna had insisted to have a pet. She was basically hers. Her mother comforted her in her room until she fell asleep. The gloom was heavy in the house. There was nothing like it before that I could remember and I felt terrible. For the first time, I couldn’t do more than stay with them. I felt useless. 
Elise was in the laundry room with the puppies. They had to be manually fed with a bottle and Elise and her mother took turns feeding them after Anna fell asleep. Poor Aling Celia was given medicine to rest because her blood pressure had spiked.
I accompanied Jess to bury the dog in the garden. Considering her stepdaughter and I had started making out and I had no intention to stop, I should consider using honorifics with his name, but I still hadn’t gotten around to it. When Jason arrived, the three of us kept watch around the house, as none of us could sleep. Elise went inside Anna’s room to lie on her other side, as Rose already held her youngest daughter on the left. The last time I checked on them, she was hugging them both.