The Sun rises and the Sun sets

Chapter one: Sunrises

The sun is low in the sky, and all I can think of is my late mother. She had dark auburn hair with piercing blue eyes. Her smile could convince anyone to do anything for her. Her voice of clothing was always simple. People often made fun of her for not wearing anything nice, but she paid no attention to them. I remember when I was young overhearing a conversation about a wedding. Of course, you’re supposed to wear nice clothes to a wedding, and my mother would have none of that.

My father made her go buy a nicer dress from a local store anyways. I tagged along with her, gaping at the stunning dresses that were hanging on the racks. Now, looking back, they were relatively plain dresses, but being a little girl at the time, they looked like gowns that a princess would wear to a ball. In the end, she chose a sky blue dress. I thought that she should buy the pink dress with sparkles, and what 6-year-old doesn’t?

I remember her cooking skills. If there were a trophy for the best cook in the house, I would award it to my father. My mother tried her hardest to cook, but in the end the recipe always spat out some science experiment. She would put something in the bowl or pot that wasn’t supposed to go in, or she would dump the wrong quantities in the bowl. It never worked out in her favor. The nights that my mother cooked often ended up with dinner being delivered to our front porch.

You should also know that she had a temper. And it was a bad temper, too. That’s why she reminds me of sunsets. The oranges and the yellows are beautiful, yes, but they can burn you quite easily. That’s how my mother was. She was very beautiful and kind, but if you made her mad, she could give you a hospital worthy burn just by using her words.

I am the exact opposite of my mother. I’m a very quiet and introverted person; my mother was loud and extroverted. I like to think a lot and not voice my opinion, but my mother voices her opinions by thinking her thoughts out loud. It doesn’t matter if her mind is on religion or her opinions about an unhealthy relationship between two people. We would be enjoying a day in the park, or sitting around the dinner table and dishes would start rambling no about some thought that she had.

I vividly remember the day that she went missing. The night before there had been a brilliant sunrise that highlighted the chaos to come. The sky turned too many shades of oranges, yellows, reds, pinks, and there was even a hint of green her and there. The next day was cloudy with rain throughout the day. I stayed home from school that day because I was still recovering from a sickness that my parents passed to me.

She had gone to work, as usual, but she didn’t come home. At first, my father thought that she was stuck in traffic. But as the hours passed, my fathers worry grew. When she didn’t come home that night, he filed a missing persons report.

It took them three weeks and two days to find and identify her body.

Ever since then, I’ve been trying to solve the mystery of my mothers murder. Sure, sometimes I can’t handle the thought that my mother isn’t coming home. Usually when that happens, I quit my investigations for the day and go cry in my room.

To make matters even worse, my father started dating this woman named Judy. I suspect that he just couldn’t bear the thought of not having some relationship with a woman in his life, so he went looking and found her on some dating app. I, personally, hate her guts. Fortunately, I’ve been able to mask those feelings from the both of them.

How could my father love another woman so soon after my biological mother’s murder? Why isn’t he demanding to know the name of the murderer? How does he not realize that my real mother is the person I need, and not some crazy woman he picked up from a coffee shop in the sketchiest side of town?

I’ve also noticed that she gets nervous whenever I talk about my mother. She turns pale with fright and rushes to the bathroom claiming that she has “stomach issues.” But seriously, why does she get nervous? Why does she turn pale? I know that she isn’t scared that my father will stop loving her, she knows well of that. Is she hiding something” If so, what?

Chapter 2: Sunsets

My father requested that they not name my mother on the news. I asked him not to because my classmates and other kids at the school will start to pity me, and I am not one known to want a pity party. In fact, I hate them almost as much as I hate Judy.

He agreed, and I went to school the next day, feeling rejuvenated and sad at the same time. I occasionally heard the kids talking about the murder of “that woman.” Literally nobody connected the dots that my mother wasn’t seen at the grocery store, wasn’t seen driving me to volleyball practice, or that she wasn’t weeding our flower beds in our front yard.

In fact, the flower beds stayed clean of weeds after my mother’s death. It’s as if the flowers knew that my mother died and that they now have to take care of themselves.

There was a new girl in my class that day, another surprise decided to make me their target. I found a note in my locker. No, it wasn’t that another girl had mistakenly placed it in my locker there instead of a boy’s locker. Also no, it wasn’t some guy writing a note to me that he liked me. It was written in a familiar print, but I couldn’t put my finger on who it belonged to. Here’s what it said:

“If I really have left, then why is this letter sitting here in your locker today?”

It feels like a riddle, but the way that it is worded is implying a genuine question. I want to find out more about the letter, so I take it to my father to find the fingerprints and identify the person that wrote this. I forgot to mention that my father is a forensic scientist, so he can help me here with this little side quest.

It may be distracting me from finding my mother’s murderer, but it also helps by taking my mind off of what had happened to her.

Once I got to my father’s office, I asked him to run a quick DNA test on the letter I found. I told my father that I found the letter in my locker today, so it must have been written either today or yesterday. He ran a quick DNA test-let me explain. Quick is the equivalent to a few hours. In normal circumstances (normal circumstances being a case), this process would take multiple weeks to months. Thankfully, this one only took a few hours.

He got home late that night and I didn’t find out the results until the next day. What he told me shocked me. He said that the DNA matched my mother’s. I told him that that’s impossible, that she is dead. He then turned very pale and told me not to tell anybody. I’m guessing that he was pale because if my mother is alive, and she is still in the area, then she knows without a doubt that he is dating while she’s still alive. I can’t imagine the fights after she gets home.

On the other hand, this is great! I don’t have to deal with Judy becoming my new mother! I also get to have my real mother back and I get to spend time with her again like we always did!

Three weeks later, the police tracked my mother down and brought her home. My first words to her were “I thought you were dead!” then my second words to her were “Thank you for saving me from that monster named Judy!”

She was thoroughly mad at my father for dating another woman, especially since he knew that she was alive. These were the words that I heard her say to my father.

Wait- he knew that she was alive?! Why couldn’t I know, why couldn’t I be let in on the secret?

They told me that some guy was following my mom, so she faked a death so that he would stop following her. In the end, they accused him of murdering her and multiple other women, and though he didn’t kill my mother, he was found guilty of killing other women.

I couldn’t believe it. If my father knew that she was alive and cheated on her, my mother could get a divorce, right? Well, that’s exactly what happened.

Turns out my father had been talking to Judy for months, and all it took was for my mother to fake a death to find out. She had been watching us secretly to make sure that everything was going alright here at home. That’s when she saw Judy’s car drive up and watched Judy get out of the car all dressed up for a date that my father was taking her on.

I ended up living with my mother, and spending more time with her than we had ever done. We were determined to let nothing come in between us, because if something happened to her, I would have to go live with my father and Judy, and I was strongly opposed to the idea.

The first night I had gone to live with my mother, a dazzling sunset had decided to happen. The sky was beautiful. The sun was dimming, and the colors in the sky were changing constantly. The reds morphed into oranges and then yellows, and just before the sun disappeared, the whole sky turned gold and signified that theses next few years were going to be golden.

The End