Prolog
In 1994 Ella was five years old. Her curls of blond thick hair was braided into two braids falling over her shoulder on each side of her head. Her finest dress – which was of course pink, her favorite color – was neatly straightened out where she sat. She didn’t dare move to make it wrinkle because she wanted to look her best for a birthday party at her grandmother’s house. Ella loved her grandmother, Mary. She always treated Ella like she was the most important person in the world to her. Somehow Ella was starting to believe it was so.
When Charles Carter, a brilliant business man from Ohio, met Lisa Jones it had been a fall day. The leaves in Boston had started to fall to the ground and in the park, there she was. The most beautiful woman in the world to him. This is how he had described the day he met her mother to Ella. He’d interrupted a conversation she had with a friend and asked her out because he just simply knew she was the one for him. She’d laughed in his face and kept walking. But When they met again in the same park a few weeks later she’d walked up to him and apologized. Ella knew the story by heart. She loved hearing her father tell the story over and over again.
“One day I will meet the one for me.” She said to her father after he’d told her the story once again.
She’d remembered the day because it was the day she’d met the boy Robert in her preschool. He was new and he was obnoxious. He’d pulled on her pigtails and called her names all day. So when she got home she’d asked her father if he couldn’t tell her the story again. He just smiled and nodded. He always did without questioning it and without even so much as a sigh. He was great. If there was one person in the whole world Ella wanted to be like it was her father; Charles Carter, the partner in a successful attorney agency in the heart of Boston.
Lisa Carter was the image of beauty with her golden hair and her perfect figure. She originated from a small town of Clyde in North Carolina where her mother still lived in an old Victorian home. Lisa was the only child of the town sweetheart. She’d won beauty contests as a teenager and dated the most popular boys in school.
She ended up in Boston during her college years and that was when she met Charles one day in the park. She had no excuse for laughing in the man’s face. He was a good looking man with short brown hair, a sturdy looking body wearing a suit perfectly. But the conversation she’d had with her friend before he came up to her were about the fact that men was always asking her out and she was always the good hearted girl to believe what they said to her. So she’d laughed him in the face just to show how she could say no to a handsome man coming up to her. It had been stupid, yes, but the outcome was still what it was. She’d fallen instantly for the capable man and the wedding was held just about a year after the day they met. When Ella was on the way Lisa was decorating the whole apartment accordingly to how it should be with a baby in the family.
The ties with Mary Jones was very close still, and Mary had been a couple times to visit the new born baby girl in Boston. But Mary never cared for the big city so Charles and Lisa took Ella to see her instead.
Today was the day Mary was turning fifty. Charles and Lisa had first decided to not go but then changed their minds. They’d packed the car with Ella in the backseat and took off. After all, Mary was turning fifty.
The radio played Lisa’s favorite song so she started singing along. Glancing over her shoulder to look at Ella, who was smiling brightly at her mother, she continued singing along.
When they turned past the diner in town with a big hamburger on the roof Ella knew they were almost there. She waited till she saw the yellow Victorian home with white shutters and a white porch in front of the house. As always she felt like she wanted to cry of happiness when she saw the house and thought of her grandmother inside.
Her parents took her around the back to the back yard full of people walking around on the lawn. There were grown up’s and children. There was a party tent raised and a buffet table at one end. Ella kept her hand in her mother’s and kept close. She thought it would just be them and her grandmother but all those people scared her.
“Lisa! Ella! Oh, how happy I am to see you!” Mary came out from the crowd of people and held out her arms for Ella. Ella took off and launched herself into her grandmother’s arms.
“Oh, my sweet blueberry pie. How I’ve missed you, child.” She set Ella down on her feet and smiled brushing her hands over Ella’s cheeks.
“You’ve grown so much. Oh, and Lisa and Charles. I’m so glad you could come.” She said and hugged her daughter and then her son-in-law. “Come, eat, have fun.”
Mary took Ella by the hand and led her toward the party tent. Lisa and Charles followed but was stopped by people they probably knew. Mary stopped in front of a mother fixing the tie of her son of about ten years old. A little girl stood next to the mother and made grimaces toward the boy.
“Mrs. Doyle, Isabella, Lucas. This is my granddaughter, Ella. She is five, like you, Isabella. Ella, this is the Doyle’s. They live next door to me.”
Ella looked at Isabella. She was a chubby short girl with short brown hair. She smiled at Ella and it was an easy smile.
“Do you wanna go play?” Isabella asked Ella.
Ella just glanced up toward her grandmother who nodded encouraging toward her.
“Mom, stop it.” Lucas finally said and pushed his mother’s hands away from his tie. “It’s fine now.” He muttered and walked off.
“Bella has been wishing for a friend tonight. Go easy on the girl, Bella.” Mrs. Doyle said to her daughter but gave her an affectionate pat on the head before Bella nodded for Ella to come with her.
Bella was constantly talking and Ella could barely get a word out but smiled as she had a feeling she would like Bella. Very much.
“What?” Bella asked and stopped as she noticed Ella’s smile.
“Nothing.” Ella said and shook her head. “You talk a lot.”
Bella giggled and shrugged. “I’ve heard that.”
When Ella’s parents came to get her she was in the middle of a story Bella was telling her. But Bella said she could continue it some other time.
Ella hugged Bella before she left because she was so happy to have met her. She quickly went to say goodbye to her grandmother and then took her mother’s hand and her father’s hand on their way around the house to the car. She was singing a song that her mother quickly got on board with and sang with her.
“Home, sweet, home.” Charles said as he started the engine and backed the car out of the driveway. “Did you have a good time, kiddo?” He asked and met Ella’s eyes in the rearview mirror.
Ella nodded and looked out at the trees passing them by. “Yeah. I like Bella.”
She saw her parents taking each others hands. She took out a napkin Bella had given her with a flower painted on. Bella had a napkin with a heart painted on that Ella had given her. That way they would remember each other when they were miles apart.
“I think my mother looked a bit more tired than usual.” Lisa said to Charles.
Charles just shrugged. “She’s got nerves of steel and an iron fist. Nothing can take her down. She might just have had a rough week. You’ll see.” He said and brought Lisa’s hand to his lips and kissed her softly.
Ella watched them from the backseat so when the truck that ran a red light honked at them, all Ella could see when she turned her head was blinding lights. A huge crash echoed through her ears. She felt her body jolt and the car spin. She screamed at the top of her lungs and when the car stopped, an eerie silence followed.
Someone moved, Ella wasn’t sure who or where. But when she felt a hand on her leg her eyes fluttered open and she could see her father’s lips moving. Soon she could hear the shouts.
“Daddy?” Ella said in a whisper.
“Ella, baby, are you alright? Please.”
She looked down at her body still strapped to the car-seat and she seemed to be okay. But then she felt a throbbing at the side of her head. “My head hurts.” She mumbled.
Charles reached for her hand. “Ella, you’re bleeding. It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay, Ella.” He grunted and when voices from outside the car reached her ears, Ella looked around.
People were surrounding them. “Daddy, I’m scared.”
“It’s okay, Ella. It’s going to be okay.” Charles said in front of him. “Help my daughter first. Get her out. Make sure she’s alright.” Ella looked up as a man tried to open the back door to her.
“Ella, this man is going to get you out. It’s going to be okay, I promise, baby.”
She nodded and when the door finally opened the man grabbed a knife and cut her loose from the seatbelt and lifted her out. He handed her over to a woman who set Ella on her feet and crouched to look at her.
“Hi, sweetie, I’m Amber. Does it hurt somewhere?”
Ella touched her hand to the side of her head and then looked at the blood on her hand when she took it down.
“Alright, you’re bleeding.” The woman moved her hair from the wound and sighed. “It’s not deep, you’re fine. Look, the ambulance is here very, very soon and they will take care of you and your parents. But for right now you need to stay here with me until they get your parents out of the car. Alright?”
Ella nodded slowly and then glanced toward the car where they were trying to get her father out. Ella wasn’t sure what was happening but her eyes were starting to blur and her body felt limb. Her eye-sight turned black and the world around her disappeared.
When Ella opened her eyes again she saw nothing but white wherever she looked. After a while her eyes adjusted and she could look around the room she was in.
Then Mary appeared by the bedside and took her hand. “My sweet, sweet girl. Welcome back.” She said and kissed Ella’s forehead. Ella could see the tears in her grandmother’s eyes and looked around, wanting to see her mother or father. But Mary was the only person in the room. “Mommy? Daddy?”
Now tears streamed down Mary’s face. “Ella, your Mom and Dad have died. They got really hurt from the car accident and couldn’t stay here with us. But I promise everything will be alright. I will take care of you.”
Ella closed her eyes, feeling the tears pushing through as she tried to understand what she’d just heard. Mary squeezed Ella’s hand in hers.
