more. That’s when I decided that walking away didn’t mean I was giving up; to get what I really wanted, I had to be strong enough to know when to let go.
My life was rocking along great. I’d graduated college and had gotten a great job in pharmaceutical sales. I’d moved into an amazing apartment overlooking the city and felt like everything was going my way. I couldn’t have been happier, but it didn’t last. All it took was one phone call, one traumatic moment, and my world as I knew it shattered down around me.
Three months earlier…
“Hello?” I answered as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. I sat up in the bed and quickly glanced over to the clock sitting on my bedside table, noticing that it was three o’clock in the morning.
“Olivia? This is Linda Moore.” Her breath caught, signaling me that she was trying to keep herself from crying. Linda lived next door to my parents. She and my mother were best friends, and I knew she wouldn’t be calling me at this time of night unless something was wrong. The minute she breathed her name, panic washed over me.
I stood up with my heart racing as I asked, “Linda? What’s wrong?”
“Oh, sweet girl…” she cried. “I think you need to come over to your parents’ house.”
“Why? What’s going on?” I pushed.
“It’s your parents… someone broke in.” She hesitated. “Bless their hearts. Someone shot them both, Olivia. Oh, darlin’… your parents were murdered,” she sobbed.
After that, all I could hear was static. My heart pounded against my chest as horrifying thoughts took over my mind. My momma… my sweet, precious momma. My dad, my invincible dad, gone. No! No! No! My body turned ice-cold. I couldn’t breathe. My skin hurt, my knees buckled, and I fell to the floor. I gripped the phone in my hand, held it to my ear, but I couldn’t speak. Thoughts of our house flashed through my mind—the large two-story brick home that I’d grown up in, the very one in which I felt so loved, so safe. When I closed my eyes, I could see my mother standing at the stove talking incessantly about her day while my father sat back in his recliner and pretended to listen to every word. I could even see her big white Boxer peering in through the front door window, pleading for someone to let her in. I could smell the flowers she’d have sitting on the kitchen table, and I just couldn’t fathom anything bad ever happening to her. Then the next instant, unwanted images bombarded my thoughts … the sounds of gunshots exploding through the house, small clouds of smoke drifting down the long hallway to my parents’ bedroom, my mother and father lying in their beds in blood-soaked pajamas. Endless horrific visions kept pounding through my mind. Eventually, my thoughts drifted back to that long hallway, and my breath caught when I remembered my brother and sister’s rooms were just a few feet away from my parents’ room.
I raised myself off the floor and asked, “Linda! What about Charlie and Hadley? Are they okay?”
“I don’t know, dear. The police have been looking for them for over an hour, but there’s no sign of them.”
“Oh my god. I’m coming. I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I told her as I tried to fight the overwhelming, strangling fear that filled my soul. All I knew or instinctively felt was that I had to find my brother and sister—and I had to find them now. My head was pounding. I couldn’t think clearly as my mind raced with so many unimaginable thoughts, but somehow I knew I had to get my clothes on and go.
In a matter of minutes, I was in a pair of sweats and a t-shirt racing my car towards my parent’s house. I could barely see through my tears as I drove, but I didn’t slow down. I had to get to Hadley and Charlie. They were all I had left. Mom had me when she was still very young. She’d barely finished high school when I came along, and after realizing how difficult it would be to start a family so young, she decided that they should wait before they had any other children. It was almost eleven years later before she got pregnant with Charlie, and Hadley came along two years after him. Even though there was a