I promised him we’d go on a walk when I got back. I didn’t sleep the best last night, and I’m in desperate need of an afternoon nap, but maybe some fresh air and movement might be what I need to snap out of this funk. I’ll drive myself crazy sitting up in my room, alone with my thoughts.
I place my yogurts and LaCroix in the fridge and find a place for my bananas and mac and cheese in Odette’s immaculate walk-in pantry, and then I make my way to the study.
“What’s all this?” I ask when I find my father surrounded by various papers and opened storage boxes.
“I was cleaning out some storage space in the hall closet and I came across this box of things I always meant to give you,” he says.
I curl up on the floor, next to one of the boxes, and he hands me a thin yearbook with a green velvet dust jacket.
“These were all of your mother’s personal effects,” he says. “Yearbooks, photo albums, mementos. I was going to share them with you when you were a teenager, but I never could find the right time. You were so busy. And I was always working. And Odette … well, you know how jealous she gets any time we’d so much as mention your mother’s name.”
Over the years, I’ve accumulated a few of my mother’s belongings—a varsity sweater, a gold locket, a small photo album, and a few other trinkets that wouldn’t mean much to anyone else. But this is new.
I turn the yearbook over, flipping to the index and scanning the words for my mother’s maiden name—Jolene Jolivet.
Page 16, 25, 48, 49, 50, and 62.
“She was very involved, your mother,” he says as I locate her senior photo first. In an instant, I’m met with a soft, sweet smile and my same hazel eyes staring back at me.
I wish I could remember her better, but I was so young when she passed. My memories come in flashes and flickers, like someone fanning through a stack of old photographs.
“She was always singing,” I say. “Or dancing.”
He chuckles. “Always.”
I flip through the yearbook and find her in the thespian club, a production of The Sound of Music (she played Liesl—my personal favorite), as well as dance and art club.
“You have no idea how much you remind me of her, Blaire,” my father says, his eyes growing damp. “She’d be so proud of you today.”
I trace my fingertips over an image of her commanding her school’s stage in a World War II-era dress, clearly mid-song.
In a way, moving to New York to pursue the stage was a nod to my roots … to her. And while I’ve never told a soul this, I’ve always imagined her watching me at each of my performances, beaming proudly, clapping from the wings.
“Should we take our walk?” I fold the book. I could sit here all afternoon and go through her things, but I’m here for the next two weeks. I’d rather take my time. In some ways, she’s still a stranger to me, and Lord knows you can’t learn everything about anyone in a day. It takes a lifetime, and even still, can you ever really know everything there is to know about someone?
“I’ll grab my tennis shoes and meet you at the front door,” he says, cleaning up the artifacts and placing them back in the box. “Why don’t you take this up to your room? Maybe you’d like to go through it in private?”
I nod, scooping the box into my arms. “Good call.”
We meet a minute later at the front door, and Daddy calls out to Odette that we’ll be back in half an hour.
“Where is Odette anyway? I haven’t seen her all day,” I say as we trot down the front steps and head to the sidewalk. “Hope she’s not making herself scarce because of me.”
“Psh. Odette? Make herself scarce in her own home?” He chuffs. “You know her better than that.”
“She just seems … more distant than usual.” Then again, she’s the one who invited me out here, so maybe I’m thinking about this all wrong. “Is she okay?”
My father grimaces, his hands lifting in the air. “She’s been going through the change, I think.”
“The change? Oh. The change.” Sometimes I forget how much younger she is than him—fifteen years to be exact. And with her yoga-runner body and routine Botox, she looks even younger. Kudos to her for uncovering the fountain of youth, but it goes to show that nothing can stop the clock. Birthdays keep coming year after year. Time marches on whether we want it to or not.
“She’ll be fine. It just makes her a little testy some days,” he adds. “We’ve come to an agreement that when she gets that way, she’ll go to a separate part of the house and do her own thing and I’ll stay the heck out of her way.”