“He smiled but it didn’t seem to touch his eyes...”

"He smiled but it didn't seem to touch his eyes..."

“Cressida –” began Edwin Ronells, moving to take a seat next to the young and sparky Cressida Orovie.

“It never does,” cut in Cressida, crisply, staring straight ahead of her, at the painting of a winter sunrise in the Ronells’s living room, the painting she had seen dozens of times and smiled at each time. But not today.

She turned to face Edwin and saw the worried look on the concerned father’s face. “He smiles at me,” she continued, “and it’s blank. He’s empty. At least where I’m concerned. I can’t keep ignoring it, Mr Ronells. I’m not going to fight a battle that isn’t mine to fight, not at this stage of my life.”

“Cressida, if you only knew -”

Cressida stood up abruptly. “Yeah, pain, I know. But Mr Ronells, your son’s not the only one who lost something, who lost someone. And if he won’t try to fight for me, I need to stop fighting for him.”

Edwin stood up. “I think you should talk to him again,” reasoned Edwin. “I think the two of you just need to talk this through, properly, without any extraneous factors.”

Cressida pointed at her D-SLR on the coffee table. “This… isn’t extraneous,” she said, her tone hard. “It’s extremely relevant.”

Before Edwin could respond, Cressida swung her jacket on and grabbed the camera off the table. She rotated the power switch on the camera, turning it off and exiting the evidence of Rai’s actions.

She looked up at Edwin. “I’m sorry Mr Ronells,” she said. “I just came here to pick up my camera. I forgot I’d said you could look up the pictures of the dinner. You’re really nice but… I guess this is how things are. You can tell Rai that from me.”

Cressida tucked her hair behind an ear; the action reminded her of how she always smiled whenever Rai did it for her. “With much love,” she murmured.

She made her way to the door and walked out, leaving her past and the future she had wanted behind.