The Stolen Light
by Daliyah Sharp
I tear through the tall grass behind our house, the sun shining warm on my face. The ground is uneven, and I can feel my lungs burn with every stride. Chasing me, my sister squeals with laughter. She is carrying the threat of a worm. The green and gold of the field blur into ribbons as I feel something catch my foot. Before I know it, I am on the ground with my sister tumbling after me. We glance at each other and immediately burst into laughter. The kind of laughter that makes you hold your stomach because it hurts so much. Our mother’s sing-songy voice in the distance breaks through our cackles. It's time for dinner. Father is finally home from work.
As we approach the three-storey red brick house, I see smoke coming from the chimney mixing with the pinks and oranges of the evening sky. On the back porch, Mother is waving a white tea towel in the breeze. Her voice is distant, then high-pitched, then piercing. My body tenses and I blink.
The sound is blaring now, sharp and unpleasant. I blink again. 5:27 glows in red. I look around the room. Muted unfamiliar colours surround me. It’s time to wake up.
I hold my breath until the number turns. 5:28 arrives without a catastrophe. I exhale slowly, meeting a slight wave of dizziness. I shuffle down the edge of the mattress, placing my feet exactly where the floorboard doesn't squeak. First heel, then toes. I’m up. I make the bed. The sheet must be smoothed twice on the left and once on the right. The blanket, reverse. Once on the left, twice on the right. The whisper of cotton sounds like the hush over a family dinner table before they say grace. The dark is heavy and nauseating; my stomach reels the way it did when my dad would book 3:00 AM flights for our family vacations.
Before, when my family would still take vacations.
I tip toe through my bedroom, careful not to wake my mother and sister who are sleeping so peacefully to the ticking of the radiator. I envy how they can sleep through the night. I haven't in two years.
By the time sunlight has crept across the carpet, I’ve already scrubbed the kitchen counter and boiled the kettle twice, hoping that today will be the day Mom comes out of her den of gloom. My family's apartment is small, two bedrooms, one bathroom, and a living room that always smells faintly of burnt toast. It’s in the part of town where people would say “you better not walk around at night” after you tell them your address. I, myself, am still adjusting to the area.
Sofia, my little sister, comes stumbling out of her bedroom, dragging her blanket and yawning so wide, I can see every one of the bright pink coloured bands on her braces.
“You're already awake?” she asks.
“Couldn’t sleep,” I say.
Without a question, she drops into one of the old, second-hand living room chairs Mom got after everything was taken. I wouldn't dare to sit there, the thought of not knowing who or what has been there would consume me. Also, it reminds me of Dad.
I pour her cereal. I watch as the milk swirls around the loops. If I pour too quickly, the sound will be uneven, so I tilt the carton in one smooth line.
Mom appears eventually, wearing her old fraying robe. It’s blue with faded white dots. I've thought about surprising her with a new one, but I don't have a job and neither does she. Her hair is tied up, but loosely, strands falling out as if gravity has given up on her.
“Morning,” she says, rubbing her temples.
“Morning” I say.
She opens the fridge, stares into it for a long moment, then closes it without taking anything out.
“Theres no food” she murmurs.
“Mom, can I make you something?”
She doesn't respond.
That’s how it is most days. She drifts around the apartment like a ghost, surviving on tea and cigarettes. Smoking is a new hobby of hers. Surprisingly, she actually used to look down on smokers, but you’d never know that today. She used to hum when she cooked, used to make the air smell like rosemary and butter. Now, she barely speaks, barely eats, barely notices the mess piling up on the counter. So I clean it for her. I keep everything straight and organized. Someone has to.
At school, I keep my head down. The hallways buzz with fluorescent lights and whispers. The whispers are the worst. I try not to let them get to me, but they do. It started when everything came out in the news, when “Flesher” stopped being just my last name and became a headline. My father, the “unlicensed investor”, the “fraud”, the man who “stole millions through deceitful trading”. It doesn't matter what any news channel or whisper says. He is still my dad.
When I reach my locker, I can already hear them, two girls from my class whispering behind me.
“Her dad’s that guy, right? The scammer?”
“Yeah, my mom said he ruined a bunch of people. I can't believe she still shows her face at school.”
“She probably knew about all of it. I bet she was even in on it.”
Their words are like stones. I try to focus on my combination lock, 22-14-8. Turn left. Turn right. Shit, I messed up. Again. Shit! Can’t they just shut up already?
“Hey, Flesher”, one of them calls. “Bet your dad is still trading…in hell.”
I can feel the anger bubbling inside me. I slam my locker shut, the metal echoing through the hall.
“Shut up”, I snap before I can stop myself.
They laugh, the sound high and sharp. “Touchy.”
I walk away fast, keeping my eyes on the floor. My heart beats in my throat, and for a second, I think I might cry. Instead, I hide in the bathroom. I turn on the tap. Left hand for touching, right hand for turning. I scrub until my skin burns. The water runs red where my knuckles have split. I tell myself it’s fine. Pain is the only thing I can control right now.
When I get home that afternoon, the air feels off. The apartment is dim, curtains drawn. Mom is in her usual spot on the couch. I swear you could see an indent from where she has spent her life the last few months. The TV is flickering across her face as if she should be watching something, but her eyes are looking right through it.
“Hey, Mom” I say. But she doesn't respond.
“Have you eaten anything today?” Still no answer.
I set my bag down and go to tidy the counter, something to fill the silence. That’s when I notice it, the empty spot on the shelf. My heart stops. The photo of Dad, the one from our trip to Italy; it’s gone. It always sat between the clock and the vase of dead flowers that Mom never replaced partly because we couldn't afford new ones and partly because Mom never even noticed.
“Where’s the picture?”
She barely glances over. “Which one?”
“The one of Dad.” I point at the gap on the shelf. “It was right there.”
“Oh.” She presses her fingers to her temple. “I put it away.”
“You…put it away?”
She nods faintly, eyes still on the screen. “In the drawer.”
“Why—how could you?”
“I couldn’t stand looking at him anymore.”
Something inside me twists. “What?”
She continues staring at the TV, her face lit by cold blue light “Because every time I see his face, I want to break something.”
I just blink, not knowing what to say.
“I hate him,” she says simply. Her voice is quiet, but there’s steel under it, which makes everything she says worse. “I hate that man for what he did to us. For what he did to me.”
She turns her head slightly, just enough for me to see her eyes, flat, sharp, alive in a way that scares me to death.
“You were and still are too young to understand, but I saw everything. The lies. The money that wasn’t ours. The midnight phone calls. I knew something was wrong. I just didn't want to believe I’d married a criminal.”
My chest tightens. “He wasn’t a criminal. He just…just made mistakes.”
“Is that what you call it?” she says, her tone dry. “He stole from people. Friends. Families. He smiled in their faces and took everything they had. He built that big red brick house with their money, with their trust.”
She shakes her head. “He destroyed them. And when it all came out, he took us down with him.”
I step back. “Stop!”
She keeps going, calmly, almost too calmly.
“Do you even know what it’s like to have reporters camping outside your house? To hear whispers that you're feeding your children with dirty money? To see your husband’s name printed under the word “fraud” in every newspaper? I do. And I get to live with that every single day.”
My throat burns. “You think I don’t?”
She looks at me, really looks at me. “No. I think you still love him.”
“I do,” I say, my voice breaking. “Because he is still my dad.”
She exhales through her nose, tired and angry all at once. “Then you're lucky. I can't love someone I’m disgusted by.”
The silence that follows is suffocating. I can hear the hum of the refrigerator and the faint ticking of the broken wall clock. I open the drawer and pull out the photo. “He’s not a monster.”
“Maybe not,” she says. “But he made one out of me.
“I can’t look at him anymore,” she murmurs. “You want the picture? Keep it. I'm done pretending he was anything but what he was.”
I stand there, the photo shaking in my hand. His smile looks the same as it did before the police, before the headlines, before everything fell apart. A frozen lie.
That night, the apartment feels too quiet. The radiator ticks like a heartbeat. My mother’s door stays closed. I sit on the floor, the photo in my lap, my fingers tracing the edge of the frame. I try to remember his laugh, the way he’d toss Sofia in the air and catch her, the smell of his cologne, the sound of gravel under the tires in our long driveway. But every memory feels thinner now, like paper reused too many times.
I look around our tiny apartment, the cracked ceiling, the peeling paint, the half-empty ashtray on the table, and realize how much he took from us. Not just the money, but the light. He took the one thing that he'd said is irreplaceable, family, and traded us for his own profit.
I think of Mom, asleep, or pretending to be, her body curled like something trying to disappear. I think of Sofia, too young to remember the red brick house, too young to know what it’s like to lose faith in someone who made your world.
And me, still here, still counting, still trying to clean a life that can't be scrubbed back to new.
My bedroom is dark, muted, with the curtains still drawn. I turn my alarm clock around and set the photo next to it.
For the first time, the picture doesn't comfort me. It just hurts. But at least I can sleep.