I hesitated. Reminiscing always made me morose. Teary, even. So, as a rule, I made a point of never looking back. But my mom needed help, so I put my coffee cup down and opened the photo album. Immediately, my eyes met those of my nine-year-old self staring out from an over-exposed photo. I was standing with my brother Bolt who was holding a kitten toward the camera. A sudden jab of sadness hit me in the heart and I quickly turned the page. More photos of Bolt and me followed. Fourth of July firework celebrations. Thanksgiving. Christmas. Us sitting at the base of the ginormous Christmas tree my mom spent almost an entire day putting together and decorating, surrounded by discarded wrapping paper. Bolt and me eating the Christmas cookies my mom always made, our mouths full of the crumbly goodness I hadn’t tasted in almost two decades. I bit my lip. I could almost taste the cinnamon sugar.
The last photo was of the four of us. A family photo. Probably the last one taken before things fell apart.
I closed the book and mindlessly reached for another. This one was circa my mid-teens and was full of photos of me and the other MC kids. Abby. Isaac. Cade, and his brothers. His sister Chastity. It was funny, when I recalled my teenage years, I recalled the heartache and the anger toward my father. But in the photographs, I was always smiling. Always laughing or looking happy. Especially when I was with Cade.
I looked at a photo of the two of us. It had been taken at a club barbecue when we were about seventeen. Cade had his arm slung around my shoulder, and my arms were wrapped around his waist. I was smiling up at him with the dreamy look of a teenage girl in love. He was looking down at me, his dimples deep in his cheeks, and his beautiful eyes focused on me like I was the only woman in the whole world. You could see how in love we were. You could see how happy we were together.
Pain trickled into my chest and I turned the page before my mind went there and asked the question I had asked myself a billion times over the past twelve years. How did we not work out?
“Here we go,” my mom said, removing a photo of my father from the sticky, plastic page. She handed it to me. My father was smiling, which was a rarity in itself, and he actually looked happy. I flipped it over to see if there was a description on the back. Jack Parrish, 1999. Veterans memorial run. Destiny to Biloxi. I handed it back to my mom.
“That’s a good one,” I said. “He looks happy.”
My mom smiled, but when her eyes fell to the photograph they turned misty. She absentmindedly played with the crown pendant around her neck. “I know you won’t believe me, but your father was a happy guy when I met him. Carefree. Charming. A bit of a good old boy, but a gentleman just the same. We were happy for a real long time, Indy. He was just heartbroken at the end.”
Without thinking, I took her hand and gave it a squeeze.
“I like to think he wasn’t always like that,” I said. “Broken and angry.”
A monster.
“He was a strong, proud man. Formidable but fair. Then he got sick.” She looked at the picture. “He sure did love you kids. I hope you know that.”
I looked away. My had father lost interest in me a long time ago.
“No point in getting all misty-eyed now. Think I’ll go get ready for the day.” Mom sighed and stood up. “Before I forget, Sheriff Buckman dropped off your rental earlier.” She nodded to a set of keys sitting on the coffee table.
When my mom left to get dressed, I looked down at the photo album in my lap. I flipped through the pages, skimming over the photos of a life I could barely remember.
The last photo in the album was taken at a New Year’s Eve celebration at the clubhouse. I touched the photo with perfectly manicured fingertips. An eighteen-year-old version of me smiled brightly back at the camera as if someone had just said something hilariously funny to her. Her long blonde hair swirled around her face and her eyes sparkled with youth and happiness. Her arms were wrapped around a very young Abby, who looked like Suzi Quatro, circa her Devil’s Gate Drive days. We looked happy. So carefree.
So cool.
I looked down at my sensible black pants and polyester blouse. Somewhere in the past twelve years I had swapped cool for conservative. And instead of feeling relieved at the change, I felt a weird loss of identity.
I miss you.
I frowned and quickly closed the book.