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If there’s one thing that Laura knows with certainty it’s that she hates James Sunderland. It’s a fact of life, as indisputable as the sky is blue, grass is green, and she wants to knock some of his teeth out.
Like most things in Laura’s short life, it starts in the hospital, because that’s the first place she can really remember. Her life before being admitted is something she should know about at least in theory. She’s been told bits and pieces and filled in some of the gaps with mementos of her previous life herself, but it feels all too surreal and dreamlike—the cold, white walls that smell too strongly of bleach and chemical disinfectant are all she knows.
When she reads the newspapers about the fatal car accident that left a young girl orphaned and in critical condition in a local hospital, she doesn’t feel as much as she should. (Distantly, she wonders if it makes her a bad daughter that she can barely remember what mother and father looked like.) And the nurses cry for her, they worry and fret about “that poor little girl, left all alone” when they think she can’t hear them from outside her hospital room. She doesn't know who they’re talking about. Certainly not her, afterall, she doesn’t need parents. She’s fine all on her own.
Headstrong and determined to show that she’s not something deserving of pity, she tears up the flowerbeds in the hospital courtyard looking for bugs as soon as she’s able to leave her room. That’s when she meets Mary. She’s standing on the opposite side of the courtyard with her hands neatly folded in front of her, she doesn’t chastise Laura for playing in the dirt and getting muck under her nails or for ruining the flowers, she just smiles and asks her what she’s doing.
Laura smiles, all too toothy and eager to impress her potential new friend as she holds up her clenched fists, a few worms wriggling in between her fingers. Mary doesn’t scream and run away like her nurse Rachel did when she tried to sneak some bugs into the pockets of her scrubs as a gift. That’s the moment that Laura decides that Mary is going to be her new best friend.
She visits her everyday—the walk from her room at the opposite end of the wing to Mary’s room is so thoroughly etched into her muscle memory that she’s confident she could make her way to it blind. She demands that Mary tie ribbons in her hair and do riddles with her and go hunting for toads after it rains. And Mary will write letters back and forth with her even though their rooms are less than a minute’s walk away because she wants Laura to practice her reading and writing every day. She’ll always order apple juice with her bland hospital tray lunch so that she can give it to Laura when they eat together.
Mary is how Laura first hears of James. Mary tells her of how they met at a house party and how she thought he was the coolest man in the world. He’s surly on the outside and seems a bit cold and standoffish at first glance, she says, but he’s the sweetest man once you get to know him. She sees James sometimes as he visits Mary often in the beginning when they still had hope for a recovery. She’s never been one to be shy but she hangs back whenever he comes to visit. The only glimpses that she catches of him are his forest green windbreaker as he turns to leave. He always keeps his head down and never talks to anyone on his way out.
But… the visits become less and less frequent over time. She no longer hears Mary laughing whenever he comes to visit her. She doesn’t smile as much either after he leaves like she used to. Her condition is only getting worse and worse by the day, but James keeps his distance like he’s afraid he might catch whatever she has. Laura doesn’t understand and that makes her burn with an ugly feeling.
It’s when James visits next, carrying a vase of beautiful roses that’s the last straw. Even from down the hall, Laura hears the glass shatter and Mary screaming at him that she doesn’t deserve flowers. She breaks her self-imposed rule of not getting involved and rushes to her side with James already long gone. Rachel is in the room, sweeping up the remains of the shattered vase and ruined flowers. She tells Laura that she shouldn’t be in there and to go back to her room because she doesn’t need to see this.
Laura, in typical-Laura fashion, doesn’t listen. She climbs in Mary’s bed by her side and hugs her as she sobs into her hands. She hates James, she decides right then and there with such burning conviction like she’s never felt before, as she listens to Mary’s heartache.
The next day, Laura spends the entire morning plucking dandelions from the yard until she has enough for her own bouquet to bring to Mary. She rarely leaves her bed anymore, but Laura doesn’t mind bringing them to her room herself. Mary takes one look at the shoddy little bouquet of weeds that are still a bit muddy at the stems from where she uprooted them and pulls Laura in for a tight hug. And when Laura accidentally calls her mom, the floodgates burst all at once. Mary cries and for the first time since she’s been stuck in this stupid, stuffy hospital, Laura does too.
She doesn’t need a mom or a dad, Laura still thinks, she’s perfectly fine on her own. It’s just her against the world, but… she wouldn’t mind if Mary was her mom.
-
Laura wakes up one day to find Rachel wheeling Mary out of her room and another nurse carrying boxes of her stuff behind her. She runs up to them, grabbing the edges of Rachel’s scrubs and telling her to stop.
“Laura,” Rachel chides her, gently prying her hands from her clothing.
“You’re not leaving me, are you?” Laura ignores Rachel and instead clings onto the armrest of the wheelchair.
Mary just smiles at her and ruffles Laura’s hair with her hand. “I’ll be back, dear, I promise. I’m just visiting home for a while.”
“You better come back!” Laura says and she hates how weak her voice sounds, “Pinky swear that you’ll come back!”
“I pinky swear.” She holds out her pinky finger and Laura seals the promise.
The hospital is lonely without Mary and it feels like the entire world has been flipped on its head with a violent upheaval. Rachel slips another cup of apple juice on Laura’s tray like how Mary always did but it isn’t the same. The hospital is too quiet, the pungent stench of chemicals that burns her nose seems so much stronger now. The entire world feels cast in a harsher light, like her rose colored glasses have been shattered.
-
A few days into this slump, Laura decides she’s going to break into Rachel's work locker to look for clues as to when Mary is coming back. Because she’s bratty and stubborn and not like the perfect little girl that Mary always said she was and more than anything she wants the only person who really cared for her out of genuine love and not out of obligation to come back. She finds two letters addressed to herself and she only gets through one of them before she stuffs the envelopes into her jumper and runs to the tiny secret corner of the courtyard where no one would come looking for her and no one would ask why she was so upset.
“I'm far away now. In a quiet, beautiful place,” Mary had said and there was only one place that could mean. Silent Hill. The resort town that she and James had stayed at for their honeymoon. Mary always spoke so highly of that sleepy little town. She described it like it was the most magical place in the world.
She remembers the small break in the fence in between the cardiology unit building and the trauma unit that she discovered while chasing butterflies. With a heart full of determined hope, she slips through the fence and decides that if Mary won’t come back then she’ll go find her herself.
It’s a bad idea in hindsight, she realizes about two hours into her journey when her legs ache so much they feel like they’ve been stuffed with lead. Each step feels like it takes monumental effort and she eventually collapses by the side of a road that seems to stretch on forever. She has no idea where she’s going or how far away Silent Hill is but she can’t turn back now. She doesn’t know if she could even find her way back to the hospital if she tried to turn back.
She doesn’t know for how long she sits by the side of the road until a van stops beside her. The man doesn’t get out, but he rolls down his window and leans out.
“Hey, uh, kid? Are you lost?”
“No,” she says haughtily. It’s a lie, of course, she has absolutely no clue where she is, but he doesn’t need to know that.
“Where are your parents?”
“Don’t have any,” she crosses her arms and turns her head to the side, “Don’t need ‘em either.”
“Right… Say, kid, what’s your name?”
“Nunya!”
There’s a quiet nervous laugh from the van. “Well, mine’s Eddie. Uh, where are you heading towards? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Silent Hill. You know where that is?”
“Huh? I’m actually heading there myself. You want a ride?”
Laura stands and brushes the dirt off of her jumper before hopping into the van. “Do you even know where you’re going?”
“‘Course I do. I got this map.” Eddie pulls a map from his pants pocket and tosses it into her lap.
It feels like progress, a small step forward to seeing Mary again.
-
She ditches Eddie as soon as the Welcome to Silent Hill sign comes into her vision and his van conveniently runs out of gas. The town seems weirdly abandoned but she’s not going to let that stop her from finding Mary.
It feels good when she sees James in the empty apartment complex and she gets to stomp on his hand and kick the key beyond his reach. It feels deserved after all of the tears that Mary cried waiting for him to come visit her again. Even more so when she sees him again and locks him inside of one of the rooms in Brookhaven Hospital. She imagines the busted vase, the shards of glass strewn all over the tile and the flowers withering on the floor and feels vindicated.
The feeling, however, is exceptionally fleeting. When she sees him again in the hotel restaurant, she slams her hands down on random keys, creating a harsh, grating noise that makes James nearly jump out of his skin, but it doesn’t have the same bite to it. Instead of feeling like she’s returning the favor for all of the suffering he caused Mary, the sunken-eyed, tired look he gives her only makes her stomach flip inside out. Guilt isn’t something she’s used to feeling.
“You’re here to find Mary, aren’t you, James? Well… have you?” She says, swinging her feet over the piano bench that’s too tall for her tiny body and it feels almost like extending an olive branch. They’re both working towards the same thing, afterall.
And then James has to ruin it. With just two words, “Mary’s gone”, Laura's world feels like it’s ending. Something cold and dreadful squeezes her heart and her legs feel weaker than they did on the long walk here.
She’s never seen someone look so defeated and empty before. He has no right. Mary was always waiting for him and he… he doesn’t deserve to look that heartbroken.
-
(“Go away! I hate you! I hate you…” she screams at him when he comes looking for her after everything is said and done. She wipes hastily at her tears and glares up at him from where she’s half-hidden underneath the piano—the farthest she could get before falling to her knees in her grief.
“Laura…” he takes a deep breath and crouches to her eye level, “You don’t have any family to go back to, do you? In… Mary’s letter, she said she wanted to adopt you… so.”
“I don’t need one!”
“...I’m sure you don’t,” he says gently, all too carefully, “But, you can’t stay here. It’s dangerous here, Laura.”
“Like I would ever go with you! You… you murderer!”
“I… I understand, but there’s… not really anything we can do about that now.” It’s not an excuse or even an apology, just a statement of the way things have to be. Mary is gone. She’s never coming back. That only leaves them to pick up the broken pieces left behind by her death. “Let’s go somewhere safer, okay?”
Laura just sniffles and buries her head further into her arms, hoping to disappear in on herself. “I’m not forgiving you. Not ever.”
“I know. I wouldn’t ever ask you to.” There’s a sad sort of smile playing on his lips.)
The car ride out of town is uncomfortably silent. The air between them feels stagnant and heavy with all of the things left unsaid. She wants to ask questions, to shake James and demand to know why he did what he did, but it feels like she’s swallowed barbed wire everytime she gets close to breaking the silence. So instead, she sits as still as a ghost looking out the window as the trees fly by in a blur.
James stops at a gas station about an hour into their drive and leaves with the direction “to stay here, I’ll be right back.”
A few minutes later when she’s starting to get restless and fidgety, he returns with an armful of snacks. He hands her a bottle of soda and a bag of pretzels.
“I didn’t really know what you like so, uh I got a few things for you. Sorry, I know it’s not ideal,” he offers sheepishly when he sees the unimpressed look she gives him, “We’ll get some actual food when we get back. Promise.”
Laura merely crosses her arms and the uneaten snacks sit in her lap until the growling in her stomach becomes too much to ignore and her small act of defiance is swiftly forgotten about.
“Where are we going anyways?” she asks in between handfuls of the gross gas station pretzels.
“Right now, I’m gonna stop by my old place and pick up some things. And then… I think I have a place we can go for a while.”
“Why can’t we just stay at your house?”
James grimaces, an action that doesn’t go unnoticed the way he hopes it does. “Too many unpleasant memories in that place.”
“That’s a stupid reason.”
There’s a nervous laugh that’s too clipped to be genuine and then a small shrug. “You’re not wrong. But, my father owns a lot of properties so he can probably find us a place to stay. He bought up a few places to renovate and sell again, but never really had the time to get around to it. Not really looking forward to seeing him again, but… What else is there to do?”
(Laura waits in the driveway of the Sunderland home as James retreats inside. There's a brief flicker of hope as she stands in front of where Mary had lived for so long before the hospital that maybe she’ll still be inside. Maybe she’ll come out and hold her tight and not let go until this entire week feels like nothing more than a bad dream. Her hopes are snuffed out like a candle when it’s only James that exits again with a suitcase and a duffel bag at his side.)
-
True to his word, James takes Laura out to a small, cozy looking diner in the new town they’re staying at. It’s a quiet coastal town all too reminiscent of Silent Hill. She’s sure the resemblance doesn’t go unnoticed by James either given the way his vacant stare when they finally step out of the car after driving for hours.
The food is much better than the junk they fed her in the hospital, though that’s not saying too much she supposes. She can’t remember the last time she ate a full meal that wasn’t served to her on a plastic tray. And so she stuffs the forkfuls of french toast into her mouth like it might be her last meal on Earth.
“Aren’t you gonna eat anything?” Laura asks, looking over the table at the half empty mug of coffee he ordered.
“Don’t think I could keep anything solid down at the moment,” he takes another sip of his coffee before offering a halfhearted smile, “Don’t worry. I’ll be alright.”
“Who said I was worried?” she shoots back, but there’s nothing behind it, no weight.
“You got me there.”
“Hey, James?” She kicks her feets anxiously under the table, accidentally landing a kick right into James’ shin which he graciously pretends not to notice.
“Yes?”
“Have you ever had kids of your own?” Do you have any idea what you’re even doing? being the unasked question there.
The question seems to catch him off guard as he hides his expression behind a long sip of his coffee. “No, I don’t. I would have liked to, someday. Mary and I talked about it, but it was never really in the cards for us. With her illness and all, I mean…”
“She would have been a good mom,” Laura says, more confident in this than anything else.
James stares anywhere other than at Laura, pretending to be extremely invested in the potted plant in the corner. “Yeah, she would have been. Listen, I know I’ll never be Mary-”
“Well, duh, ‘course you’re not. Mary’s way cooler.”
“And I’m not trying to replace her, but she said in her letter that she wanted to adopt you had things turned out… differently. She cared a great deal about you, so I’d like to honor her wishes. There’s a nice looking elementary school we passed on the way here. You could go to school there and live with me and …”
“It’s not like I’m gonna forgive you for what you did to Mary, but… Okay.” It feels like the closest thing to acceptance that they’ll ever reach.
-
The house that James’ father begrudgingly allowed them to stay at is old and empty. There’s a thick layer of dust that hangs in the air like snow when they first enter it and it has that distinct old house smell. She’s amazed that anything still works in the house when James flips the light switch and the lights whine and groan but eventually turn on even though they still flicker. The wooden floorboards under her feet have never felt less like home, but it’s a place that she can stay the night at least.
He enrolls her in public school shortly after they get settled into their new house. It’s close enough to walk to it alone, but that doesn’t stop him from walking by her side every day before work and seeing her off at the front gate.
(“Will you be alright?” he asks, sounding so sickenly sincere it makes her teeth ache, “First days are scary.”
“I’ll be fine! You worry too much.”
“Alright, alright, I believe you. Have fun, okay? I’ll pick you up after school.”
He waves her off, the first genuine smile on his face that she’s seen since she’s met him.)
And he takes her for celebratory ice cream when her first day of third grade is finished. In hindsight, saying “pick whatever you like” to a mischievous 8 year old was probably a bad idea for his wallet. One triple scoop in a sprinkle cone later only proves his theory correct.
“You’re not tryna bribe me, are you?” she asks, eyeing him suspiciously over her ice cream cone that’s bigger than her hand.
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” And for once, his laugh doesn’t sound so canned.
-
People calling James her dad is something that she’ll never quite get used to. Despite the resemblance that everyone seems so eager to bring up, he’s not her dad, he’s just… James. The man that she spent so long quietly hating before she had ever even seen his face, the man that came into her life like an uninvited house guest and became a permanent staple in it just as quickly.
Her classmates seem too shocked by this fact, asking in a hushed tone as if she had just slapped someone “you call your dad by his name?”
“He’s not my dad,” is always the response she shoots back with, not offering any more explanation on the matter.
Because no matter how much he cares—and he certainly does care in his own clumsy sense of the word, he’s not her dad, not in any meaningful way anyway. Laura might not know much when it comes to having a family, but she knows that much at least.
(Although, sometimes the way that he looks at her with such pride in his eyes the first time she hands him her report card because she figures that’s what she’s supposed to do or the way that he pins her haphazardly drawn pieces of art to the fridge proudly makes her reconsider whether what they have—as messy and abnormal as it is—counts as a family or not.)
Slowly, the house fills with mementos, little pieces of happiness, and proof that something other than dust and cobwebs is living there. Pictures of James and Mary from their wedding day that he went all the way back to his old home to retrieve, a picture of Laura’s junior league softball team when they won their first game, scattered toys in the middle of the walkway, some scribbles on the wall in sharpie that James keeps saying he needs to paint over some day, but never actually will because the smile on his face whenever he walks by it is all too transparent. Bit by bit, it starts to feel more like a home rather than just a place to spend the night.
-
The first winter comes a few months after they move in and it freezes over the lake in the middle of town as fractals of white drift from the sky above. After a day of non stop begging, James finally gives in and takes Laura to go see the frozen lake. In her excitement, she nearly forgets her winter coat and runs outside into the biting cold with only a t-shirt and jeans on before James reminds her.
“Be careful, okay? The ice might not be that thick,” James warns from the water’s edge as Laura slides around on the ice.
“Mary told me that you guys went ice skating once,” Laura says, ignoring his warning in favor of running and seeing how far she can slide before friction stops her.
“She did?” He runs a hand through his hair with a sheepish smile and the sound of the frosted grass crunching beneath his feet feels all too loud.
“She said you kept falling!” she says with a bark of laughter right before she loses her balance, one foot flies up from under her, and she’s sent falling backwards. “Ow!”
James is at her side almost before she hits the ground, ignoring his own warning about the ice being dangerous. “Laura, are you alright?”
“‘M fine! ‘M fine!” she says, batting away his hands as he tries to help her to her feet. “I’d like to actually go ice skating someday, but this is fun too.”
That manages to drag a smile out of his permanently sulky-looking face. “Good to know.”
(And later that month on Christmas, Laura wakes to find a beautiful pair of ice skates waiting for her. She stares at them with an open mouth for a month, admiring the sleek blades and the icy blue stripes that wrap around the heel. It’s the first time she can remember anyone giving her anything and one of the first things that Laura can really say is her own.)
-
It’s a full year later, when Laura is nine years old, that she dreams of Silent Hill—that abandoned town full of fog where she had lost everything that she had hoped to find there and found someone else that she hadn’t been looking for. The deserted alleyways and streets of the eerie little town seem all too real. She dreams of James and the awful, sunken-eyed expression he wore in that stuffy hotel room when he confessed to her that he had killed Mary.
She dreams of Toluca Lake and sees James walking into it. He doesn’t resurface, disappearing into the murky depths, swallowed by the fog.
She wakes up with an unbidden scream on her lips and hot tears streaming down her face. Her pillow is sticky with cold sweat and the blankets have nearly been kicked off the bed entirely. She breathes hard, never quite able to catch her breath amidst her panic.
James appears in the doorway, looking very much half asleep. Guilt stabs through her for a moment. He never did get enough sleep, always having bags under his eyes so big that you might be able to carry luggage in them.
“Are you alright?” he asks, blinking the traces of sleep from his eyes, “I heard you scream.”
Laura swallows hard, wiping beads of sweat from her forehead. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just a nightmare.”
He gives a sympathetic nod before sitting at the edge of her bed and reaching over to turn on the bedside lamp. “Do you… wanna talk about it?”
She shakes her head fiercely. If there’s one thing she’s learned, it’s to not bring up Silent Hill. It’s been an unspoken agreement between the two ever since she first came to live with him, a necessary compromise to avoid undue heartache. “It was dumb anyways. Didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“It’s alright. I was already awake.”
He’s such a bad liar, but she can’t help but appreciate the gesture as transparent as it is.
“I think I have some hot cocoa in the pantry. Wanna have some with me?” He holds out his hand which she hesitantly takes as he leads her to the kitchen table.
She sits restlessly as he heats up the milk for the hot chocolate, trying to compose herself before he’s done. Really, it wasn’t anything too bad, but she can’t shake the image of James disappearing beneath the water’s edge. She can’t quite place what about it has her so rattled.
You better not leave me like that, she thinks vehemently.
After a few minutes, James places two steaming mugs of hot cocoa onto the table for them. He doesn’t ask her to tell him what the nightmare was about—not that she would tell him anyway—instead he just sits, waiting for her to speak about it if she wants to.
“You’d be a good dad,” she settles on saying as a compromise, “if you ever wanted to have kids someday…”
James nearly chokes on his hot chocolate at that and the sight lifts a weight off of Laura’s shoulders.
-
One day before school, Laura splays out her entire collection of colorful hair pins, barrettes, and butterfly clips in her palms. “Do my hair for me, James!”
She’s sitting down on the couch, staring at him expectantly before he can even get a word in edgewise. Her mind is set on this evidently.
“You sure you want me to do it?” he asks, something close to disbelief in his voice. “I’m not sure I’d be very good at it…”
“You have to at least try!”
He looks defeated as he takes the seat on the couch next to her and starts sorting through the various pins and hair ties she’s brought out for him. “Okay, I’ll do my best, but I can’t promise anything amazing.”
When he’s down adorning her hair with glittery butterfly clips, she stands up, her feet sinking into the couch cushions and starts doing the same to him before he can protest.
“Laura- I have to go to work today-“
“And you’ll look beautiful while you’re there,” she giggles. “I’m an expert at this! Maybe I should be charging you.”
James doesn’t say anything but the amused snort he gives earns him a smack to the back of the head. “Ow.”
-
He takes her bowling for her tenth birthday. “You know, Mary and I went bowling on our honeymoon a few times.”
There will never be a time when that name doesn’t carry a tremendous unspoken weight for them, but James doesn’t blanch at the mere mention of her anymore which is progress all things considered. It doesn’t feel like an open wound that’s gently bleeding all the time. It’s scabbed over now, but still all too raw and rough around the edges.
“Who won?”
“Oh, Mary every time. She wouldn’t let me live it down for months after.”
“I’m gonna win too! For her honor!”
She’s pretty sure that James let her win on purpose as she caught him throwing his ball directly into the gutter when he thought she wasn’t looking but she brags about winning all the same when it’s over. He just smiles and congratulates her.
-
When winter falls the next year, Laura catches something dreadful. She feels unbearably hot and cold at the same time, her entire body feverish and uncomfortable. The pounding wind and snow outside doesn’t help her feel less under the weather and there’s a sinking feeling in her gut that it’s only going to get worse. James stays by side, waiting for her fever to break. He even moved the living room tv into her room so that they could watch old cartoon reruns while she’s recovering.
“I’m fine,” she reassures him numerous times, but she knows the real reason why he’s so nervous to leave her side.
On the third day, she realizes maybe she isn’t fine. The wind rattles against her window, the snow falling heavily underfoot and despite that she feels like she’s on fire as she keeps dipping in and out of consciousness.
She opens her eyes again one time to see a dark blue sky above her with a harsh storm of white dancing in the air and swirling around her. Then she notices James, realizes that she’s staring up at him from his arms. Despite the blizzard, she doesn’t feel cold with James’ worn old jacket draped around her.
“Dad?” she asks blearily, still half asleep.
“It’s James, Laura.”
“...Where are we?”
“I’m taking you to the hospital. Don’t worry. You’ll be okay.”
-
“You’re insane, you know that?” she tells him when she wakes up at the local hospital, “Walking to the hospital in the middle of a frickin’ blizzard… Do you have a death wish or something!? ‘Cause you’re not allowed to die on me, okay?”
“It would have taken forever to get the car unstuck,” he says with a shrug as if it’s a completely normal thing to risk your life over.
There’s something nostalgic about being in a hospital room again after so long. For years, these cold, unfeeling rooms were all she knew. But now that she’s known what home feels like, she can’t wait to leave the smell of disinfectant and the too-bright lights behind again.