Summer Bellwood

[Summer Bellwood]

Prompt List

• Summer
• Window
• Drive
• Valentine's Day
• Influence
• Swim
• Cold
• Lost
• Sunset
• Tradition

[Summer Bellwood]

L O S T

Her entire week had been a blur. From identifying bodies to helping funeral arrangements, Summer had to set aside all of her emotion in order to help her brother try and not completely fuck this up. They were fortunate enough to afford it - more than enough, since their father had been a successful lawyer who turned a good career into politics (which also had been a good career), but that did little to take the edge off. Summer had talked to Tristan about it the night before the funeral, in fact - that affording it didn't make it "any better". He reminded her that not being able to afford it would have made it a lot worse, and that had prompted Summer's announcement at the funeral that a large donation had been made to a charity that helped cover funeral expenses for less than fortunate families.

It had also helped for the cameras. Of course there were cameras - so fucking many. They had, with their father's staff, arranged to make the actual funeral public, having kept the viewing the evening before closed to family and friends. Seth was having absolutely fucking none of it, naturally. He didn't say or do anything that could be seen as disruptive, but behind closed doors, he'd definitely brought it up. He felt she was being too automatic, while she felt he was avoiding it all. It was a mess.

"You're a fucking child, Summer. You can't possibly expect to go up there and eulogize our parents in front of the local news. We're going to end up on the internet," he said. They were arguing over a dinner made of dishes that had been dropped off by concerned friends of their parents. They would smile and humbly thank them, assure them they were doing well, but the truth was they were not. "You're on the phone non-stop with dad's people, talking to mom's publicist," he listed, as though to demean her.

"We're BOTH children, Seth," she fired back. "The difference is I'm actually trying. You just - you just left. You left me there." She took a shaky breath. "What was I supposed to do?" And he had. She had been the one to go in and give the ID, while he stood outside the morgue doors. They both had, but the freeze between them had been a second too long, and Summer just needed to get it over with.

"I don't know, okay? Just... not this," he said, voice defeated. He dropped his fork against the table, the gesture clearly to indicate that he didn't even know why he was pretending to be hungry. "I didn't mean to leave you, Summer," he said softly after a long silence between them. "I just couldn't deal." He pushed his chair back and stood up, walking around the table to pull the chair out next to her and sit down. "I'm sorry."

"What was I supposed to do?" she repeated, her voice barely a whisper. "We're not adults, Seth," she said, a tinge of fear in her voice. She spoke as though if she said it too loud, they'd be found out and reported to some authority."

"I don't know," he said honestly. 

  After the funeral had ended, and the statements had been made and the cameras had left, Summer sat down on the front steps of the church, eyes burning in the crisp winter air. She had been commended so many times on how 'well' she was handling everything. The truth was, she felt completely lost. She had no idea what she was doing, and Seth had to cope in his own way, so they had very little common ground in terms of ways to deal with what had happened, and what was to come.

Seth eventually came to sit beside her, and the two remained in total silence for a while before Summer broke the quiet.

"What now?" she asked him. Her head was abuzz with tasks - Summer had already deferred that fall for college, preferring to relax for a while and travel before she began, but now that spring semester didn't feel like it was going happen. A year off wasn't so bad, right?

"I don't know," he said honestly. "Maybe tomorrow we can sit down and do what mom used to do - take the whiteboard out of the study and just make a huge list of stuff to get done. Then, do it, I guess," he said with a shrug. "Work knows not to expect me."

"Yeah, tomorrow," she agreed. "I don't want to think about it right now. I don't want to anything right now," she admitted.