The phone rang sharply in the dim light of the early evening, a high, slicing sound that cut through the quiet of Lily's small apartment. She didn't move at first. She sat on the couch, legs curled beneath her, a book open but forgotten in her lap. It was the kind of stillness that wasn't calm it was heavy, tense, as if her body already knew something her mind didn't.
Another ring.
And another.
She finally reached for it with a shaky hand, pressing the phone to her ear without checking the caller ID. Her voice, when it came, was small.
"Hello?"
There was a long pause on the other end. The kind of pause that wakes something terrible inside you. Then a man's voice, low and careful came through from the other line
"Is this Lily Morgan?"
"Yes," she said, frowning. She sat up straighter. "Who is this?"
"This is Officer Michelle with the Crechwood Police Department," he said gently. "I'm calling about your parents, Margaret and Thomas Morgan."
Her heart stuttered.
"What about them?" she asked quickly, her fingers tightening around the phone.
The officer's voice cracked slightly, despite his best efforts to keep it steady.
"There was a car accident this evening," he said. "I'm so sorry to have to tell you this... but they didn't make it."
The words didn't sink in at first.
They just hovered there, like smoke, like something unreal.
Didn't make it?
What did that even mean? They were supposed to call her tonight after dinner, supposed to tell her about their trip to the coast they had been planning for months.
Her mouth opened, but no words came. She shook her head even though no one could see her.
"No," she said. "No, there must be a mistake. They... they were just..." She clutched at her chest, trying to catch her breath. "Are you sure? Are you sure?"
There was a long, terrible silence.
"I'm so sorry," Officer Daniels said again, his voice low, weighed down with sorrow. "We have their IDs. We're... very certain."
Lily felt the world spinning around her.
"Is there someone with you?" the officer asked, his voice far away, floating in the background of the roaring in her ears.
She shook her head mutely, tears springing to her eyes, before realizing he couldn't see her.
"No," she whispered. "I'm... I'm alone."
"I recommend you call someone," he said softly. "A friend, family?"
But she wasn't listening anymore.
Her parents, her parents who had loved her fiercely, who had stood by her through every mistake, every heartbreak, every failure, were gone.
Gone.
Just like that.
She hung up without even saying goodbye.
The phone slipped from her fingers and clattered to the hardwood floor. She sat frozen on the couch, staring at nothing. Her body felt numb, hollowed out, like someone had reached inside her chest and scooped everything out, leaving her empty and cold.
And then, the grief hit.
It came crashing down in a brutal, unstoppable wave.
A broken sob tore from her throat, raw and ugly, and she slid off the couch onto the floor, her knees buckling under the weight of it. She collapsed there, crumpled and trembling, clutching her arms around herself.
"I have no one," she whispered through gasping, shaking breaths. "I have no one."
She said it again, and again, words of devastation, a cruel truth she couldn't unhear.
Her whole body shook as the sobs wracked through her, not delicate tears, but violent, gut-wrenching cries that left her hoarse.
Her forehead pressed to the floor, the wood was cool against her burning skin. She couldn't remember how to breathe, every inhale felt like knives in her chest.
It had always just been the three of them, her parents and her. No siblings, no aunts or uncles, no grandparents, just the three of them.
They were it.
Her world.
Her home.
And now they were gone.
She tried to picture their faces, her mother's kind smile, her father's loud, booming laugh.
Gone.
She screamed into the empty room, a sound so broken, so heart-wrenching that it didn't even sound human.
Neighbors would hear, she realized distantly. But she didn't care.
Let them hear.
Let the whole world hear the sound of her shattering.
Minutes, maybe hours, passed. Time no longer meant anything.
She rocked back and forth, her arms tight around her knees, her breath hitching and gasping in small, painful hiccups. Her body felt too heavy to move, too small to contain all the pain tearing through it.
"I have no one," she whispered again, her voice a broken thing.
Her mind raced wildly, grasping at anything to make it not true.
Maybe it was a mistake.
Maybe it was someone else.
Maybe they were wrong.
But she knew.
Deep down, she knew it was true. She could feel it in her bones.
Her hands trembled as she reached blindly for the phone again. It had landed face-down on the floor, the screen cracked. She didn't even know who she would call. There was no one who would understand. No one who would make it better.
She thought of friends, acquaintances, who would try to patch over the grief with mere words.
The thought made her stomach churn.
There was no fixing this.
There was no moving on.
There was just surviving.
And right now, she didn't even know how to do that.
Her mind flitted to memories, desperately trying to hold onto them as they slipped away — Christmas mornings with laughter and pancakes, lazy Sunday afternoons curled up on the couch, the way her mother's perfume smelled like home, the scratchy sound of her father's records playing through the house.
Would those memories fade too?
Would she forget the sound of their voices?
The way their eyes crinkled when they smiled?
The thought was too much.
She doubled over again, fresh sobs ripping through her.
The room was dark now, only the faint glow of the streetlights outside filtering in. She didn't move to turn on a lamp. She didn't move at all.
The world outside kept spinning, oblivious.
Cars drove by.
Someone laughed down the hallway.
The city breathed and pulsed like nothing had changed.
But for Lily, everything had.
Somewhere, deep down, a tiny flicker of something stirred — not hope, not yet. Just the smallest instinct to survive, to endure. Her parents would have wanted that. They had fought for her her whole life. Loved her through every darkness. They would want her to keep going.
But she wasn't ready for that yet.
Not tonight.
Tonight, she would break.
Tonight, she would grieve.
She lay down fully on the floor, curling into a ball, the phone clutched tightly to her chest like a lifeline. The hard wood pressed into her cheek. She stared blankly at the shadowed wall in front of her, tears still silently sliding down her face.
"I have no one," she whispered one final time before exhaustion pulled her under, into a restless, broken sleep filled with dreams of laughter she would never hear again.