There were notes.

Death threats. Blackmail. Hate letters. So many notes. All addressed to her parents.

It hadn't been reported to the police. Her mother and father kept it to themselves, filing it all in a locked cupboard in their bedroom.

All of the letters seemed to be different. They had different handwritings, and different pens. So many people expressing their resent and anger at her parents.

So much anger.

For their was a reason that her parents hadn't reported the potential threats. It was because in each one, there was reference to something awful, something these people blamed her parents for.

Eddy wouldn't tell K what these things were. He said it was still being investigated if there was any truth in each claim.

All he would let on was that there might have been more to the Keller's fortune than had previously been foreseen.

The only think K new was that there were piles upon piles of letters and notes, each one representing an individual person, directing loathing at her parents.

So much hatred had consequences.

Someone had deliberately set up an explosive at the New Years party, knowing that the Kellers, and most important business executives, would be there.

Someone purposely killed her parents. All of the deaths that hang over K have a fault. A killer.

The attack was deliberate. It was no longer just a tragedy. It was mass homicide.

That wasn't what angered K, though.

No, what enraged her only was that it wasn't just the killer at fault. It was her parents, too. Her parents had been hiding something. They had done something awful to cause all these people's hatred.

And K wanted to know what it was, even if the police wouldn't tell her.

So she searched.

After Eddy had told her all there was that she was allowed to know, and after Pete had drove her home, she shut herself in the office on the Mac.

Pete finished baking his bread while she did so. As she scrolled through site upon site of news articles and blog threads about her parents, she could smell the yeast and flour warming and cooking. It was a comforting smell. A smell of family, and childhood, back when her dad used to have the time to cook meals each night.

It did little to ease her anxiety and fear.

None of the sites yielded any substantial results. The only articles of controversy around her parents were just simple questioning of business ethics, "Are the Keller's good economical and ethical people?"

In any sense, K wasn't really looking from claims from former employees that they weren't paid quite as much as they wanted to be.

That wasn't the kind of information or ethical issues that caused so much hatred, that led to blackmail and death threats.

As much as anything, she wanted to be able to talk to her parents. Ask them what they'd done, demand the truth, but she couldn't.

They were gone.

So she tried to find something, anything against them. But there was nothing. Nothing.

Frustrated, she slammed the mouse down and started to cry.

Someone had killed them. Someone was behind all of this pain. Someone was at fault here.

And she was angry. Because she didn't want to blame her parents. She didn't want to find something against them. She didn't want to find out what this god-awful secret was that made so many hate them. She didn't want to hate her parents.

Yet part of her already did. Part of her hated her mother for blaming her all these years. Part of her hated her father for never doing anything to stop it, never reaching out to his daughter. Part of her already felt that this was all their fault. That it was because of them she felt so alone, so encompassed by fear and loneliness.

She cried. And Pete must have heard, because within a matter of moments, he was there, slowly peeling her away from the computer and wrapping her in his warm embrace.

"Shhh..." He whispered, soothingly, while she sobbed. "Let it out, K. It'll be alright."

So she sobbed. Then, once the sobs slowed, she stayed in his arms, wondering why she was like this. Why her life was so messed up. Was it her fault? Had she done something wrong? Was she being punished?

Or was it just some sick target placed on her back, that the world seemed to want to mess with her.

She didn't know. She felt like she didn't know anything.

But Pete held her. He wrapped her in his arms and told her everything would be okay. She didn't know if she believed him.

She wanted to. She wanted to believe him. She wanted to know that this was all going to be over, and one day, the world might have stopped messing her up. She just didn't.

"Hey." Pete said, softly, after a few minutes, his voice a quiet whisper. "How about we go to the beach, like you said you wanted to earlier? It's not too late, there is still plenty of light. How about that?"

She stepped away for a moment, taking a deep breath. Then, she looked at the window. It was still raining outside, but not so much. After a moment, she silently nodded, and looked back to Pete. "But what about your bread?"

Pete shrugged. She wasn't sure what this meant. She didn't bother to ask.

"Just go grab a coat, and put something on your feet. I'll wait by the elevator for you." He said, with a smile.

She did as told and headed to her room, and to her walk in wardrobe. She hesitated for a moment staring at the row of winter coats hanging at the back of the closet. It wasn't a decision that really mattered, but she was stuck. Which one should she wear?

In the end, she just grabbed a black hoodie, ignoring the coats, and slipped on some blue Vans.

Not feeling overly warm in the hoodie, but not exactly wanting to confront the coats again, she left the wardrobe and ambled out the door. On her way out, she grabbed a small jewellery box from her dresser. As promised, Pete was already waiting at the elevator, keys in hand.

"Did you lock the door behind you?" He asked, raising an eyebrow, sounding like K's father. She nodded mutely, just as the elevator let out a ding and the silver doors slid open. A silence fell over them.

On the way down to the floor, K once again found herself staring out the glass at the rain outside.

Then, when the elevator hit the ground, she stared out at the stone, then the carpark below, paved with smooth concrete.

The silence wasn't lifted until they were sitting in the car, and Pete was driving out of the grey prison like basement. Even then, it was just something small and quiet from him.

"The roads across city are a mess because of the weather." He said. "We'll get there, but we might have to be a bit patient."

He was right. Because of the rain, everyone was driving slow and cautiously, and traffic was heavy.

They got caught at every light, and it seemed that they had slowed to a mere crawl as they went over the bridge, but K didn't complain. She didn't speak. It was as though a heavy feeling had sunk into her chest, over her throat, stopping her from making a single sound.

Finally, they came over the hill, to look down at the ocean, shrouded in grey mist and rain, looking more dark and gloomy than K had ever seen it.

The waves were huge, beating against the shore relentlessly, crashing almost all the way up to the storefronts and the park above the beach, drenching the boulevard.

"Did you want to go to the next beach over? The cliffs?" Pete asked.

K nodded numbly, so he turned off the main road and headed across to the point.

The rain seemed to be heavier here, so close to the ocean. Once Pete parked in a side street by the cliffs, he got out and grabbed the umbrella he had in the back, telling K to wait a moment. It didn't matter though. He couldn't even get the umbrella open, the wind was too strong.

"It's fine." K said, over the roar of the rain thundering down around them, breaking her silence. "I'll just let myself get wet. You can wait in the car, and turn the heat on. There's a spare towel in the back, anyway."

Pete looked uncertain, but nodded, and climbed back into the driver seat. "Be safe, buttercup. I'll be waiting right here for you."

She nodded, then climbed out of the passenger seat and into the raging storm outside. The moment she was outside, the rain started to seem through her.

She just took a deep breath, shut the car door, and sprinted towards the entrance to the top of the boulevard, and the lookout at the top of the cliffs.

Once she'd stepped foot on the pavement, though, she slowed, realising the futility of running. She would be soaked through no matter fast she ran. So she slowed, and took a deep breath. She caught sight of the metal railing that is the barrier between the boulevard and the cliff, and felt to the inside of her hoodie pocket, where the small jewellery box rested.

She slowly drew it from the saturated black fabric as she reached the edge of the cliff, and wrapped her other hand around the wet metal. With the one hand, she opened the little jewellery box to reveal its contents.

Seeing the necklace inside, she wanted to scream. She began to cry. Not that it mattered, the rain was falling so hard anyway. No one that looked at her would have even noticed her tears.

It was a silver chain, pure silver, and held the most elaborate charm K had ever been given, a 24 karat diamond the size of her thumb, embedded in an ugly contortion of silver.

It had been a gift from her mother, given to her on her twelfth birthday. Her very first birthday after James' death.

Her mother had gotten her a necklace. An expensive, ugly, and absolutely unnecessary necklace. It was the first gift that K had ever been given that she absolutely hated. Rather than caring for her daughter, and being genuinely there for her on the hardest birthday Brooke had ever had, Samantha Keller simply gave the twelve year old an ornate diamond necklace.

K had kept it all these years, never once wearing it, or even drawing it out of the tiny box.

But that moment, standing over the cliff, unseen tears falling down her face, K could feel the rage, and confusion, and frustration, that had been building up within her, all those years ago, overtaking her.

The rain thundering down around her, K shut the little box with a thump, raised it over her head, let out a sob, before throwing the necklace out at the roaring waves and the rocks below.

She watched it fly into the water, and disappear, and she could eel all the emotion rushing from her, forcing itself to the surface, crashing through her like the waves that crashed below, thundering down on her like the rain.

She felt the waves wash over her, the water on her skin. She could hear screaming, her own perhaps.

Or that of a memory.

She didn't know. She didn't know anything but the waves, crashing over and over again on top of her, keeping her under. The panic, rising in her lungs.

She was drowning.

No, she thought, suddenly. She wasn't drowning. Someone else was.

A little boy with bright blue eyes. 

Authors Note

Oh no! I'm a day late!!! What will my readers think?

Oh wait. 

Nothing. Because they don't exist (single tear)

Thats okay though. I'll put on a brave face. I don't write because I want people to read. I write because I have to. Because it I don't, I would die. If I just wrote because I wanted to then I'd never write. 

Keep that in mind, Amelia. Keep that in mind. Even though this is the one thing you have put all of your effort to in years and no one really cares, keep going. 

Just keep swimming. 

(sorry i'm weirdly self depreciating right now)

- Amelia