Angie's father crept through the hall, hearing noise in his bedroom.Sounds of stumbling across wooden, creaky floors. Footsteps scrambling around the room. A sweat started down his forehead, and reached his nose before it dried.  He stooped, listening closely. There wasn’t any talking. Soft sobs, soft enough to be a whisper rang from his room. He didn’t understand. His only child, a girl of 14, was out in the kitchen, and she was getting just as anxious as him. He had told her to stay where she was. Something was wrong. He could now feel it pumping in his chest, feel it throughout his body. His wife was in there, and she was in there sobbing, stumbling around the room. * CRACK*  His thought process was cut off by the unnerving sound. The sound of material snapping. He raced into the room at this sound, but seconds to late. In front of him hung his wife, tied to the tall ceiling fans by a scarf, her neck snapped, and her last breathe escaping her mouth. All he could manage to understand was that this was suicide, and he sobbed as he peeled a note from her cold, dead fingers.

“ Mom? Angie’s voice echoed off of the halls narrow walls. No response. Her father had told her to stay where she was, in the kitchen, and wait for him. It had been too long. Angie had heard cries as well, and she wasn’t sure if they were her mothers or fathers. She walked down the hallway towards her parents room, reaching her hands out to both sides of the wall. She felt the waxy paper of her walls beneath her fingertips, and she could hear on own heart. A thump to the ground startled her, and she walked faster. At her parents door, she reached for the bronze door knob, feeling the unpleasant coldness from it. Before she turned it, the hinges started opening from the other side of the door. She slid behind the door as it opening, peeking through the crack where the hinges held. Her father. His back was too her, no sound came from his lips, his feet only shuffled down the hall, his right hand in his pocket, crumbling something. Once he was far down the hallway, Angie moved the door as carefully as possible, trying to make sure it wouldn't creak. Her breathing grew louder. She crept around the front of the door, and looked into her parents' room. 

She had to grasp her mouth from screaming. In the middle of the room, hanging from the ceiling fan by a scarf, was her mother. Her neck was stretched out and broken, her eyes and lips grey and lifeless, her long hair clinging to the side of her face. Angie stumbled across the room, gaping for words, trying to peel her eyes away from the scene. She clumsily picked up the house phone on the other side of the room, thoughts running through her mind. Her mother. Her mother COULDN’T have committed suicide. Her weak fingers dialed 911 as a responder picked up. The voice of a female rang through the phone. “911, What's your emergency?” Angie was lost for words. She tried to speak, but her throat was dry and cracked. Tears spilled down her face. The responder repeated it, growing concerned. “ 911?” Angie thought she was going to black out, when her father stepped into the room. She saw his hands reach for the phone which was barley being held by her own. He answered in a dry voice, which Angie would take to be cruel, “ We have a suicide.” 

The police came into the house, busting through the doors in their tight blue uniforms. Each held a gun on their belt, but their hands never touched them. Angie watched them shuffle into her parents' room, but their eyes glazed over when they saw her mother's body. No face grimaced. 

Angie and her father were sitting in a room. Its walls were grey, and it smelled musty. The red cushioned seat beneath her was strangely uncomfortable. An officer walked in, putting on his most emphatic face. His eyebrows were forced down, and his lips were straight. He spoke their last names, trying to sound sorry, “ Mr. and Ms. Lyn I am so sorry,” he was cut off by a loud sigh from her father's mouth. His face seemed rather unresponsive considering the situation.  Angie thought it was strange. She thought that it was strange that her father would interrupt the policeman, and what she found the most strange was that she never saw him cry. The policeman spoke again. “ The i nvestigators deemed her death a suicide. “ Angie still found it incredibly hard to believe that her mom commited suicide, but she kept her thoughts to herself. Her thoughts seemed to be bouncing off the sides of her head. She hadn’t yet said a word, but it was already apparent that she was upset, and there was no need to speak. She was growing suspicious, suspicious of the situation. Suspicious of why her father walked out of the room that her mother hung in, why she couldn't hear him cry, and why he hadn’t cried yet. 

The thought never would have occurred to her unless the policeman had said it, unless the policeman had pointed it out. “ Ms. Angie, you look… troubled. Did you witness something, is there something we need to know? “ As he said this, Angie’s eyes opened wide. She did witness something. She witnessed her father WALK out of the room that her mother died in. Her mother, who seemed to be the happiest person in the world. Her mother, in which Angie was baffled at the idea that she would commit suicide. Angie glanced at her father, and there was no other explanation  in Angies mind except for that he killed her. Nevertheless, she answered the policeman's question. She answered it with a simple no. 

There were several reasons why Angie answered no to the policeman's question. She was raging, and if her father was going to go down it would be by her. He wasn’t going to get it easy. Jail was too easy. Rotting away as a prisoner was too easy. She would make sure that now, because he took everything away from her, that she would take everything away from him. First though, she needed to hear it. She needed to hear why he did it, and why he killed her mother. 

While her father slept that night, Angie sketched. She sketched a scene that was painful to sketch. She sketch a scene that she witnessed, that she was there for, hiding in the back watching in horror. It was her, behind the door of her parents' room, and her fathers back to her. The room in which her mother died was to the side of her, where her body hung. She dusted the eraser marks off of it, and would use this to show her father what she saw. What he thought she hadn’t witnessed, but she had. 

Angie's father's eyes peeled painfully open to the morning bright light. Red bags hung underneath his eyes, and he looked like he had been from the dead. Which, he wished he had. As his eyes adjusted to the light of the morning, he saw a figure standing above his bed. Holding something in front of his face. He squinted at the paper in his daughter's hands, and reached for the paper in his own pocket. The last reminding thing of his wife. He had planned to show it to his daughter, he just hadn’t known when. He wanted to look controlled for her, he wanted to be strong for her. It obviously sprung some ideas in his daughter's head. The paper that was in his daughter's hand was a drawing. He knew exactly what it was. He didn’t need to look at it any harder. It just pained him more. He sighed. “ I told you that you shouldn’t have gone back there. I told you to stay where you were. “ Her voice responded roughly, meanily. “Why'd you do it?! Why’d you kill my mother!?”  He sat upright, eyes confused at what came out of his daughters mouth. He reached for the note in his pocket as his voice spoke dry words. “ I didn’t- I didn't kill your mother? I didn’t kill my wife!?” He unfolded his paper, the suicide note that his wife wrote to them, and held it up to Angie the same way she held the drawing up to him. 

    Angie grasped the paper violently, and lowered her head as she read it. Her eyes grew understandably, but still sad. She understood now. She understood why her father walked away so sluggishly from the room, and why she never saw him cry. His back was too her, and tears streamed gently down his face as he evacuated the scene. He had put his hand in his pocket and crumbled the paper that must of been the one she was holding now. He had tried to act strong. He had tried to be calm. He couldn’t handle it though, so it only grew suspicion. Angie didn’t need to ask her father anymore questions to understand. She was 15, there was sure to be things she didn't know about her mother. She knew, just by looking into her father's eyes that this hadn’t been a random suicide. He still spoke though, he told how her mother had been depressed for years, how that instead of her mother going every Friday to play a game of cards with her adult friends, she was really going to see a therapist. Her mother must have been trying to stay alive for her daughter and for her husband that she loved, but could only hold on for so long. She understood. She looked into her father's face that she hadn't seen as it walked away from the room that her mother died in. She saw his face now though, and it was crying.