silvana abaddon. d7. fin.

A parent should always want better for their child, and Miss Abaddon wanted her daughter to have everything she couldn't: safety, love, ferocity. A happy childhood. She worked herself from the ground up, from rags to riches, opening up a small business of her own to pass down. She wanted her daughter to have a sense of security as she grew up. Even if she couldn't accomplish her dreams, there was a flower shop to fall back on. Failure needed to be avoided at all costs, because Miss Abaddon already knew what it felt like to lose.

Silvana remembers a peaceful childhood. A bedroom painted yellow - the color of sunshine and joy - decorated with her doll collection. The lake sitting behind their cottage house, always the perfect temperature in summer. Picnics in the backyard. Her mother did everything in her power to make Silvana smile, but there was always a limit. Without a father figure, Silvana was left wanting more. She had questions her mother refused to answer. Who was her father? What happened to him? She dodged the question every time, leaving Silvana with vague responses and guessing games.

Curiosity grew like a cancer. When Silvana was old enough to work in her mother's flower shop, they spent even more time together on the weekends. She arranged bouquets, spoke with customers, and spent hours staring at all of the different colorful arrangements. The more people she met, the more she wondered about her father. It wasn't unheard of to be raised by a single parent, but why was she so secretive about him? Whether he was dead or had walked away from them, Silvana deserved to know. She didn't know the man personally, so she had promised her mother that the truth wouldn't hurt her feelings. Again, she rejected it. "You don't need to know about him."

The number one rule of the house was to never go into mother's room. The door was always securely locked, and she claimed it was because she had precious jewels and breakable glass vases inside. An older Silvana began to doubt that claim. Why couldn't she be trusted with glass and jewels? She wasn't a kid anymore.

Although she had never been a troublemaker, temptation was a powerful force. One day her mother rushed outside to talk to a neighbor, leaving her bedroom door unexpectedly unlocked. Silvana wanted just one peek of her mother's secrets, and that prying led her straight to a journal. She flipped through random pages until particular words caught her eye. "My husband - "

Her father.

"I couldn't stop staring at him. He was dead, and I don't regret it."

She was interrupted by her mother before she could finish the passage, but she had seen enough to understand.

Silvana was furious.

"Did you kill him?"

Despite being cornered by her revealed secret, Silvana's mother was surprisingly calm. Frighteningly so. She had never seen such a calculated expression pass over her mother's face, as if she had built a wall between them right then and there. Silvana couldn't read her anymore, and begged her to explain herself.

But she didn't. She dodged the questions again and again. "Why did you do it?"

"If it was for a good reason, would you forgive me?"

It frustrated her to run in circles. Why wouldn't she explain herself? Was it because he was hurting her? Or was there no good reason at all, and her mother was just a killer? If so, how had she gotten away with it? Did she make it look like an accident?

Silvana knew absolutely nothing.

She couldn't tell anybody either. If her mother was arrested, she had nowhere else to go. Their flower shop would be closed down, cutting off their profit. Silvana realized she was completely and utterly dependant on her mother to survive, and now she didn't trust the woman.

They didn't speak to one another for weeks. If Silvana wasn't at school, she was working a shift at the flower shop or volunteering elsewhere to help the community. Any excuse she could use not avoid home. When she was home, she spent hours outside swimming in the lake, practicing her strokes. Eventually her mom spoke to her again, and Silvana had to stop herself from uttering robotic responses. She knew her mother wouldn't accept a blatant facade, so she pretended everything was fine. She spoke enthusiastically about her classes, the shop's success, and about her friends. She didn't know if her mother truly bought the act, but it must've been good enough. They never spoke of the incident ever again, even if Silvana desperately wanted to know.

The worst part about it? Her mother burned the journal, and now Silvana wishes she had never looked inside of it.