Chapter 97 Freedom and completeness
Richard and Melissa couldn't say anything to each other for the first few minutes. They just stared blankly into the air. Both of them had been pretending to be strong and happy all this while with the empty void of their family's absence eating them up bit by bit. Now that they listened to their last words, they got the closure they'd always wanted. Now they understood their purpose more but at this very moment, words couldn't necessarily express what they are feeling.
Melissa stood up and closed the computer and Richard pulled out the flash drive, both of them working without saying anything as they packed up the computer. Afterwards, Richard sat on the sofa and Melissa went straight to his kitchen. She knew she needed to start doing something to get her head straight. So she decided she'd cook. It was one of the few things she did with her mom.
Even though that woman wasn't always around, she'd made time for her and made sure those times were everlasting. So they'd do a whole lot of things together. She'd braid Melissa's hair, tell her stories, they'd cook. Melissa wiped tears from her face. She lifted the pots from his shelf, everything in the house was still as it used to be.
She didn't think he'd even ever entered the kitchen once. Though, he seemed to have been spending time cleaning it, or did Candice clean it? Melissa couldn't care less she checked the hanging cupboards for ingredients and surprisingly, they were all full and contained all the essentials.
The house was small, very small, but the kitchen was carved out a bit spaciously, Richard's dad also enjoyed cooking during his leisure time. Melissa stepped back and cracked her knuckles, remembering her mom's recipes and teachings and she set to do the cooking.
Richard on the other hand sat down at first, his head drowning in thoughts. There are a lot of things that he'd still want to say to this old man so they drove him deeply and unlike Melissa who was experiencing all this a second time, he was experiencing it the first time. Even though he'd visited his father's grave every fortnight. The video had actually given him more comfort than he'd expected he could get.
At last though he sat up and decided to improve the nostalgic feeling he was having, he wasn't interested in running from this moment. Even though his parents were dead, his mate was here and they both shared the same pain and if he understood Melissa well, she wouldn't want him to shrug it all off.
So he went out of the house, right into a small garage beside the house. He pulled open the iron gate and walked inside. The garage had been turned into a mini storehouse, so it was a little bit rough and full of junk. Richard used his senses to navigate the entire room, but he was there for a while before he actually finally found what he was looking for. He lifted it out from the trash.
It was an ancient music player that used very large black disks. He picked up the player and picked up the black disks. He walked back into the house and connected the entire music player to the pairs of speakers in the house. His father was a real music lover, every weekend when he came home, he'd put on different genres. He never bothered to buy modern mp3s. He was bred by that old life and he was comfortable with its archaicness. Richard never fully understood why but he did now. Old habits are really hard to change.
He flipped through the disk until he found one of his dad's favorites- "Lone Wolf Howl,' by a band named Bee Hive. It was mostly a song about companionship, love and the everlasting concept of true friendship. Richard placed the disc on its player and then placed the needle on the disk.
The whole house almost exploded, as the speakers blasted out the sound. He'd forgotten that he'd reconfigured the speaker to play with the speakers and that the speakers were on their highest volume. He quickly removed the needle as Eroca screamed from the kitchen.
"What the hell is that?" She screamed.
"Sorry," he replied. "It is my fault."
She didn't say anything afterwards and Richard went up to start setting up the speakers. He regulated the volume and played the song and it started, playing at a mild subtle volume.
At this time, Melissa was coming out of the kitchen with a large tray filled with food. "You were cooking?" Richard asked as she placed the food on the wooden table. Though he knew she was cooking it still felt like something she should ask.
"Yes," she said. "What are you doing?"
"Trying to play music," he said.
Melissa was shaking her head slowly to the rhythm unknowingly. "Come on let us eat," Melissa said.
They both sat down facing each other. and Richard was about to eat when he remembered his hand was dirty. He excused himself and Melissa watched him dreamily as he left. She patiently waited for him. He sat down and crossed his legs.
He smiled at her. "How are you feeling?"he asked first.
"Free," Melissa said. "You?"
"Complete," he replied.
She smiled and they started to dig in. "I never imagined that was what would be on the flashdrive," she said.
"Neither did I," he replied. "But you do know that as lovely as it all seems, it also means we need to be very careful and what we are dealing with is worse."
"Yeah, but now we know. They did their best to pave enough for us, it would be a failure on their part if we fail. For them, we just have to do more now," Melissa answered.
They both dug into their food eating in silence as the wind blew outside. It was obvious it would be a very windy night.
"We should eat quickly so we can get back to the palace when it's still safe, we still don't have reports on that kidnapping message from Nathaniel," he said.
"I want us to be here actually," she quickly intervened. "I want to sleep here with you," she said with a knowing smile and Richard replied with a nod as a heavy downpour began out of the blue.