I sat holding my tablet, reading all these messages while Felix lay across my lap, acting like a dog waiting for his master’s approval.
“Felicity, you already accepted me, right? You’ve fallen for me at least a little over the years, haven’t you? I know I’ve made mistakes. Please forgive me. I’ve avenged you and your grandmother. Let’s make things right from now on. Will you stay with me forever? I love you, Felicity. I love you so much…”
I smiled, and he mirrored my expression, clearly relieved. But the next moment, my words threw him back into a pit of despair.
“What made you think you’re innocent? You’re just like them.”
Although my parents‘ deaths had been accidental, he was responsible for my grandmother’s death. All I had left for him was hatred.
A broken sunflower could never bloom again, and the relationship we once had could never go back to what it was.
Back then, Felix wasn’t even called Felix. He was called Jabez Bour- a name that meant sorrow or pain–living next door with his alcoholic mother.
I could hear him being beaten every day, but he never cried.
Although he was a year older than me, he was small and thin, even shorter than me, and was often kicked out to sit on the stairs, starving.
I had taken him in and given him food in exchange for posing as my art model.
Later, he stayed with my family for years, and my room was filled with his portraits.
At first, his eyes were empty, but in the later drawings, he was smiling, his face as bright as a sunflower. I was proud of what I had accomplished.
He was like the sunflower my father had planted on the balcony, growing little by little, and always turning to the sun, smiling brightly.
At ten years old, his father finally showed up.
He changed his last name to Palmer and chose the name Felix because it “sounded like Felicity“.
I was happy for him, that he had finally reached the day when he could bloom toward the sun. But before his father could bring them home, the Palmers‘ enemies found us first.
They couldn’t find anyone at Felix’s house, but they heard he was always eating at my house.
They were ruthless men, not after money, but murder.
