“Yeah, and stop looking there.” Best thing about Lucinda was I could say what I wanted without worrying about it sounding rude. We’d always had that open line of communication where all dirty laundry was aired out without a care.

“Daniel sure got busy fast,” she chuckled, looking back down at her newspaper.

“It was from Jaxon, actually,” I admitted, holding my breath in case her reaction was ugly. Yeah, dirty laundry could be aired, but that didn’t mean every single thing was alright.

Her eyes returned to mine, and for a while she was motionless. Her mouth was hanging open, but no words were coming out.

“Okay then,” she finally said, taking a sip of her coffee. “Jaxon sure got busy fast.” Then she smiled to herself and continued reading the newspaper. What? Was that all she was going to say?

“You’re not upset?”

Without looking up, she asked, “Why would I be upset?”

“Nothing might come of it – whatever happened between him and me the other night, I mean.”

“I’m sure you’ll both figure that out.”

“I hurt him badly, Lucinda. He told me last night what he’s been through.”

This had her looking up, and a shift in her demeanour turned the atmosphere into a serious one. “He told you? Everything?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“And what did you say?”

“I’m still a little speechless. I wish I’d… I’d called you. I sent my friend to call you all those years ago, and you told her he was working away and that he was happy. I couldn’t face you myself after I treated him so badly.” My stomach was in knots while I explained this to her. “I’m sorry. I should have called you myself and then I would have known where he was and I would have been there for him.”

“Oh, fuck.” She put a hand over her face and shook her head. “I was telling everyone that because he didn’t want people knowing where he was. If I’d known it was you...”

“It was my fault. Everything always is.”

“Would you stop this pity party?” she snapped, sighing in irritation. “Fuck’s sake, Sara, you’re playing the damsel in distress and it’s pissing me off.”

I gulped in surprise.

“What happened to that boisterous, strong girl I helped raise? The one that opened her mouth to anybody speaking to her badly? You’ve gotten all soft, darlin’. The years haven’t been kind on your self-esteem. You need more Lucinda in your life and I’ve got my work cut out for me.”

“I’m not who I was before. Everything about that person was wrong–”

“You were young,” she interrupted, looking me dead in the eye. “You were still learning, and there may have been elements about yourself that you didn’t like, but that didn’t mean you were bad as a whole. You were a terrific girl. Smart, happy, outgoing and Jaxon made you fierce and defensive to anyone that got in your way. That’s the Sara I know. You’ve back peddled. Whether you admit it or not, you need us. I can certainly speak for Jaxon when I say he needs you too. We all need each other.” She leaned over and wiped a fallen tear on my cheek.

“I shouldn’t have said some things to you,” she said quietly, endearment and regret in her tired face. “When Jaxon told me of your sudden change, I pieced it together myself. It was after that final Christmas we’d spent together, when I told you to look after yourself in case you got hurt. I was wrong to say those things to you. I was just scared because I didn’t realize the depth of Jaxon’s affections, Sara, and I’m so sorry to have done that to you.” Her voice broke at the end.

I was fully crying now, and so was she. “I took it too seriously,” I sputtered out. “I was already traumatised by what I grew up around. My father and my mother and how dependent she was of him, and how he’d up and leave her and she’d be destroyed by it. Then you told me about what happened to you, and how Jaxon’s father left you broken hearted, and I got so scared that it would happen to me too because everyone that was meant to be my parent figure had been dependent on men who fucked them over.”

“I know, I know, but Sara, Jaxon wasn’t like that, and you knew that, but I filled your head with the wrong thoughts. I can’t help but wonder what life would have been like if I’d just shut my mouth.”

“The way I was to him, it would have come out eventually with or without your talk. None of it was your fault, Lucinda. I had a lot of growing up to do.”

“I hate that I missed out on five years of this.” She wrapped her arms around me and brought me into a tight embrace. “Whatever happens, you need to know I’ll support you no matter what. Jaxon’s angry, and he’s different, but I believe the old him is still living somewhere inside. He loves you. I know he does.”

I didn’t know whether that was true anymore, but I liked hearing it. We held each other for good while, and when she dropped me off at the house, I walked in there feeling like a load was off my shoulders. I never thought she’d forgive me for the things I did to her son, and for blocking her all this time. It was like breaking out of my chains having a piece of happiness restored in me.

I made my way up the stairs, to the final dreaded task. I walked into what used to be my bedroom and stared at the four large stacked boxes against the wall. I slowly made my way over and eyed the tape that had secured every box was shut tightly over the flaps. Well, can’t open the boxes since I didn’t bring any scissors along. Might as well just do it tomorrow.

I sat down on the ground beside the stack and stared vacantly ahead. Then I pulled out my phone and decided to harass Lexi knowing she was on her way to work. She was happy to hear from me, but I dodged every personal question she asked, skilfully steering every topic away so that we were talking mainly about her. She got the gist that I wasn’t going to be open about what was happening just yet, and though she was pissy about it, my Lexi wasn’t a pusher… that much.

She was in the middle of work and told me she’d ring me later. When I got off the phone with her, I went through my limited contacts list, of other friends I’d gone out with every now and then. There was no one I wanted to talk to, though.

Well, there was Daniel. I hesitated over the call button when I pressed his name, but after many minutes of goading myself, I clicked it and set the phone to my ear.

He picked up barely a ring later. “Hey, you. I tried calling you last night on my way back.”

“I know. I sort of avoided you.”

“I figured.”

Silence.

“What are you up to?” he asked.

“At the house. The furniture will be gone today, hopefully. Then I’ll get the boxes out of the way. Then I’ll be done.”

“Does that mean I’ll be seeing you tomorrow?”

Silence.

“Sara?”

“There are things I still need to figure out. I want to visit my mom’s grave. I want to meet the woman she was close to, and you know I haven’t spent a lot of quality time with Lucinda yet.” These were all just excuses, and I had to remind myself again that Daniel was no fool.

“Take as long you want, babe,” he said, soothingly. That response caught me off guard.

Ugh. I couldn’t do this anymore.

“I’m not going to string you along,” I found myself saying without thought. “I don’t know if I can give you more, Daniel.”

More silence.

“Daniel?”

I heard him sigh on the other end, and it hurt knowing I was causing him pain. Story of my life. I mentally kicked myself, repeating Lucinda’s words. I needed to stop the pity party crap.

“If you change your mind,” he finally spoke, whispering into the phone. “I’m here for you. You’ve got a place in my heart, Sara.”

I’d cried enough lately to fill a lifetime quota of tears spilled, but this tear was inescapable. It rolled down my cheek slowly, feeling cool against the air. It felt like I was letting go of something that could have been great all in the hopes of reaching out to something greater that might not have me. The gamble had to be made, and right here and now, this was the right choice to make.

“Thank you for everything, Daniel. I’ll keep in touch and let you know when I’ll be coming back to work.”

“Bye, Sara.”

“Bye.”

I hung up and practically dropped the phone on the carpeted floor. I was weak all over. Pushing through this sadness I was getting pretty fucking well acquainted with, I looked over at a box and hastily grabbed it. Using only my hands, I pulled on a flap until the tape loosened, and then I grabbed the tape and tore it off.

I won’t be scared and weak anymore, I told myself as I continued to tear the lines of tape off. I won’t run away. I won’t be a coward because it’s the easier way out. The easier way out is the wrong way out.

My breath caught in my throat as I looked inside. Reaching in, I pulled out a big and thick black cover photo album. There were more photo albums beneath it too. In fact, I counted six. Looking down at this cover as I sat back in a cross legged posture, I wiped away a thick cover of dust and opened it.

Being hit with photos of me as a baby felt like a ton of cement had been poured over my head. It glued me down in place until I was fighting a foreign kind of pain: a pain of losing her. Oh, God, there were so many photos. I flipped through them, astounded and breathless, taking in picture after picture of her and me as a baby. My father wasn’t anywhere in sight, but there was an older man posing next to her and me, and judging by the similar features between him and Mom, it was obvious he must be my grandfather.

I couldn’t get over how young she was, how gorgeously shaped her body was, how soft and happy her face looked. The first album was my first year, and I was dressed in all kinds of cute baby outfits, some in a crib at a house I don’t remember ever being in. Steadily, through every photo album, I was growing more and more. Pictures of me making a mess in my baby seat; eating ice cream beside a pool; petting a dog four times my size; going down a slide with the goofiest smile on my face; on a swing with a massive straw hat over my head; on a tricycle that was red and brand new; at a beach filling a box with sand; in bed in Mom’s arms as she looked fondly down at me; asleep beside my grandfather who looked proudly at the camera… I was completely flooded with the early years I’d been brought into the world.

My curiosity peaked when I saw a few photos of a dark shaggy haired boy with almond shaped brown eyes posing next to two year old self. He must have been at least ten years old. Was he a relative? A neighbourhood boy? The son of one of Mom’s friends? I wish I knew. It would have been nice gathering that kind of info about Mom back when she was… normal.

By the time I hit around four years old, the photos died off and that was the end of that.

Sadly, I didn’t remember any of those years. Even if I had, I’d long buried every bit of my childhood away, associating it with pain. I pondered for a long while what might have happened after that, but it didn’t take a brainiac to piece the most logical explanation: he must have walked back into her life somehow, and ruined it, bringing me along for the ride. Such a shame if that was true because it appeared like life was going well for her at the start with the support of her father, in a house that looked homely and family oriented. These were just assumptions I had no real answer to, but that I suddenly had a deep yearning to get to the bottom of.

I sorted the albums aside and moved onto the next box. Inside were random belongings, like souvenirs of some kind: a snow globe and a trinket with an Egyptian mummy imprinted on it and weird shit like that. This box was her little treasure trove. I was impressed at the amount of tickets to concerts she’d stacked aside. My mother was an avid concert goer, and that made me smile.

There were photos too. I gasped at what she looked like. This is what I was curious about the most. She was beautiful in recent years. All cleaned up. The alcohol and cigarettes had aged her, but she was head and shoulders different than the woman I left. She was also standing beside a young dark haired woman that appeared somewhere around my age. She was beautiful, tall and slim with bronze skin and mocha brown eyes. This must have been Rita.

I spent a couple hours getting to know my mom little by little. Her harboured treasures spoke volumes of the kind of woman she became before her death. I also admired the tidbits from my childhood. There were baby outfits I’d seen pictures of me wearing as a baby all bundled up in another box– outfits of me she’d put aside for keepsake. There were drawings I’d made when I was in kindergarten of boxy stick figures with a corner sun and a garden of what I assumed was flowers.

I was overwhelmed when I finished. I neatly stacked everything back inside, and by then I received a call from Frank keeping to his promise that he was on his way. I waited by the front door until he showed up, two moving trucks following his black Mustang Fastback. He climbed out of his car looking cryptically stern like before and made his way over. He greeted me with a nod and a curt hello and entered the house. He was overall impressed with the condition of the furniture and four burly large men emptied the house within the hour.

On his way out, he handed me an envelope. “What’s this?” I asked.

“You didn’t really think I’d take all of your mother’s possessions without a price, did you?” he replied. “There’s a few grand in there.”

“I don’t want your money.”

His safe softened for the first time. “It’s not up for negotiation, Miss Nolan. Have a good afternoon.”