“I told you not to fall in love with me,” I cried.
His tears mingled with mine. “By then it was too late.”Chapter OneNine Years Later
“Goldie Hawn, now that it’s November and officially cold, what outfit should I wear today? Mustard sweater with a hole in the pit, or gray sweatshirt with a gravy stain?” I asked my goldfish while I stretched my arm, trying to reach for the warmer clothes on the top shelf of my closet.
Goldie stopped mid turn in her bowl and flashed me a look that said no grown woman of thirty-five should be asking that question. It was probably a fair assumption, but I ignored her and kept blindly reaching for the clothes. With one more good stretch, I yanked on what I thought was the sweatshirt. Unfortunately, that tipped an old shoebox over and a shower of odds and ends rained down on me.
“Crap!” I tried to cover my head as best I could.
I swore I heard Goldie laugh.
“Keep it up and you’ll be taking a joy ride down the toilet,” I threw out an empty threat. Goldie knew she was safe. Who else would I discuss my myriad of issues with? She was the cheapest therapist around. Which was probably why I was still dressing like a hobo. You get what you pay for.
Ugh. I bent down to clean up the mess before getting dressed for the day. I grabbed the tattered old shoebox and began gathering my old trinkets—tubes of Lip Smackers lip gloss that were probably dried up and notes folded to look like triangles from high school friends. There were even some old photos. One photo in particular. A photo I wasn’t sure why I kept.
I leaned against the wall and stared at the faded polaroid I had salvaged when I was a little girl from a pile of junk my mom was going to throw away. If she had known I saved the photo or even that I knew it existed, she would have been furious. But I had wanted to know what he looked like.
I brushed my finger over the picture of Roger Stanton, the man whose blue eyes and last name I shared. He was standing next to my mom in front of the Camp Alpine sign where they had met as camp counselors several years prior. In the white space under the photo in faded pen it read, Roger and me, with a tiny heart next to the script.
I wasn’t sure what killed me more, the inscription or my mom’s permed blonde hair and shoulder pads. Who needed shoulder pads in a t-shirt? It wasn’t as bad as Roger’s feathered-back auburn hair and his ridiculously short athletic shorts. I knew it had been the style in the early eighties, but it seemed wrong in any era for men to wear such tight, high shorts. I could see Roger’s charm though. He had an athletic build and a handsome, angular face.
When I was growing up, I would secretly hold the picture against my chest whenever I got scared and wish with all I had that Roger would come and rescue me from the madness Mom was subjecting me to. Even now, as I touched the old photo of Roger holding my mom’s hand while she smiled up at him as if she could see forever in him, I wondered what had happened. Why had Roger disappeared?
Mom rarely talked about him and when she did it was only after she’d had a few too many drinks. Most of the time it was to warn me to never open the letter from Roger that arrived every Christmas Eve without fail, even if it was on the weekend. A special courier always delivered it.
I’d kept my word and always returned it to sender, though I was more than curious what was in the letter-sized envelope from Dr. R. Stanton. The envelope never had more than his name on it, which spoke volumes to me. He didn’t want me to know where he lived. I think that more than anything kept me from opening it. To spite him, somehow.
However, I did once try to search for him when I was twenty-seven. When I googled his name, 7.8 million search results popped up. I went through at least a hundred pages searching for the man who looked like the picture I held. I even tried narrowing it down to Chicago, the only place I’d known he had lived, but all it ever came up with was a bunch of old men who couldn’t possibly be him. I gave up after that. He wasn’t worth the effort. After all, I could blame him for a lot of the reasons I was seeking therapy from my goldfish.
It was odd, though, how he knew where to find me no matter where we lived. I say odd, but it was unsettling. And sad. If he cared enough to know where I was, why didn’t he come himself? My mom wouldn’t tell me, so I dreamt up my own reasons. For a long time, I imagined he was a CIA agent and he stayed away to protect me. But when I was around twelve, I figured out that was ridiculous since he was only twenty-one when he met my mom. Too young to be in the CIA, unless he lied about his age.