Chapter Twenty-Eight
Alicia
The home of Josephine Bradley rattled that evening, rocked with anger and a storm amongst other things. The wild of winds and rain slammed upon the house after such a perfect day and kept me up, kept me in my head more than I liked. Eventually, I fell back asleep, but came out of it with a dream that had me circulating the house.
As well as ripping up boxes.
I went in search of something I saw as clear as day, needing something, anything of truth. I’d had so many people lie to me, Ava, Jolene…
Even Gray.
He had in a way by omission no matter how unintended. I couldn’t trust people like I thought I’d been able to. I questioned everything. If I had rushed into the decision of staying here and if I had should I move forward with the plans to stay. Everything in my head was a screwed-up mess of doubt and confusion, but one thing made sense, the dream I had.
Where is it? I know it’s here.
The fifth box I found in my aunt’s basement left me empty, the visions in my head I knew had to be true. I hadn’t just dreamt them. They happened and I had to find the evidence of it, a photograph.
On the sixth box, I found my proof. It’d actually been right underneath a photo my aunt had of herself and her sister, my mom, when they’d been in their youth. I had no idea the time period of the photograph, but my mom’s face resembled that of my own young memories.
She looked just like me in her twenties, the same wide eyes and soft features. My mom was beautiful and I was glad I had so many photos such as this at my own home.
Home…
I had no idea where that was for me at the present, but I hoped finding this evidence was the key. Placing the photo of my mom and aunt to the side, I picked up the one underneath.
It was the two of us, my aunt Josephine and myself. I sat back in my nightgown, my bottom touching down in the hallway I’d been ripping boxes I drug up from the basement in. Crossing my legs, I waved my hand over the photograph I remembered being in when it was taken, the memories so fuzzy.
My mom had taken this. I remembered that.
I remembered my mom telling me to smile into the camera, but I hadn’t had to. I had my aunt Jo’s arms around me, her warm loving embrace. I remembered never wanting to leave it.
She always gave the best hugs.
My head hurting, I pulled for more memories of the woman in the photo, a woman who looked so much like my mom, me. Even a decade over my mom they could have been twins and very similar to myself today in her features, her natural set of wild curls around her head the only difference between us.
I smoothed my hand over the older photograph. This was when people actually took and developed pictures instead of snapping a photo with their camera phones. It was a different time, a great time.
My eyes itching, I realized I had tears in them when they slid a heated trail down my cheek. I rubbed them away with my sleeve, the soft material I’d found in her closet. My aunt’s old nightgowns smelled like amber and honeysuckle. They smelled like her and I loved them.
I smiled at her in the photo.
What should I do?
I called out to her with my mind like she could answer back and the thrashing of the winds on my door almost kept me from hearing the lightest knock ever imaginable. Sitting in the hallway, I had been able to hear it but definitely didn’t understand it. It was late, too late for visitors.
In the back of my mind as I got up, I figured it might be Gray for some reason, wanting to fix whatever happened today with a few words and his presence. I wasn’t sure it’d be that easy though.
I just didn’t know who to trust anymore.
No large frame silhouetted outside the opaque glass so I knew it wasn’t him and the figure had been much shorter at my door.
Laura jumped into my arms the moment the door opened.
Alarmed, the little thing pressed her face into my stomach, nearly shivering and covered in rain and the storm’s elements.
“Alicia…”
Her trembled cry into my waist had me holding her, my hands folded behind her. She basically shook like a leaf on my stoop and my thoughts immediately traveled toward the depths.
And the fact that her father wasn’t with her today.
Squatting, I got to her level, pressing my hand to her face. The questions would have ensued if not for her frantic cries.
“Please don’t leave. Please don’t be mad at my dad.”
Her arms pushed around my neck, the strength of this little girl almost made me fall back. Gripping the porch with one hand and her with the other, I cupped the back of her head.
“Laura, what’s going on? What are you—”
She peeled away with tears in her eyes, her face flushed and strands of her dark hair sticking to her round cheeks. She was covered in rain, her hair messed about and the fact she’d truly had somehow made her way over here rang clear before me.
“Dad said I had to let you go, but please don’t go. Please don’t be mad at him.”
“Laura—”
“Please, Alicia. Whatever he did I’m sure he’s sorry.”
“Honey, your daddy didn’t do anything.” I shook my head, confused. She was speaking a mile a minute and I didn’t understand.
The storm gaining behind her, I rose, taking her by the shoulder and guiding her into the house. A child, she went on about her dad and me being mad and I caught up with her as I took her saturated raincoat, then laid her damp boots out to dry. Her clothing had miraculously managed to remain unscathed in all this, but I still got a towel to dry her hair.
“But, but, but why did you leave church then?” she breathed, finally taking a moment to while I squeezed out her pigtails on the couch. None of the curls I put in them remained from earlier that day. After getting them as dry as I could I looked at her.
“I left because I had some things to figure out,” I told her, telling her the truth. I put my hands on my lap. “Did you walk all the way over here?”
Her furious nod followed a rub of her eyes. She was still crying and coming down from whatever this was. I decided to take her into the kitchen and get her a cup of cocoa to warm her up. We got her a blanket along the way and I grabbed my cellphone as well, thinking I needed to call her dad.
“Your dad must be in a frenzy,” I said, knowing that was putting things lightly. He lived on the other side of town and for her to walk all the way here without him and in a storm at that?
I dialed, her resistance moving toward me when she grabbed my arm.
“Please don’t call him. He’ll be mad.”
Damn right he would, but he needed to know.
I put my hand on her head. “He needs to know you came over here and you shouldn’t have, not by yourself anyway.”
“He doesn’t know I left,” she said, peeking up at me with the blanket over her shoulders. “He was sleeping when I left. Please, Alicia. It took him all night to finally go to sleep.”
The reality of that had my eyes closing and, eventually, I did hang up the phone.
“He gets a call in a little bit then. You’re off the hook.”
After acknowledging what I said with a nod, she stood back, a sniffle in her red-tipped nose. I got her cocoa heated up quickly and we took it into the living room, both of us coming down from the excitement of both the evening and the day.
Laura took her cocoa on the couch, the blanket around her shoulders while she lay under my arm.
“You shouldn’t have come over here, honey,” I told her, shaking my head. “Your dad’s going to have a fit.”
She said nothing to my words, simply sipped her cocoa and sniffed again.
“Why did you leave?” she edged out, her lashes flickering as she stared at my lap and I sighed, crossing my legs in her direction.
Pushing my hand down her hair, I guided her to look up at me, those cheeks still rosy and sweet.
I smiled at them. “Sometimes grownups need time to work things out.”
Her brown eyes traveled around the room.
“That’s what Daddy said,” she concluded, taking another sip of her chocolate and the words had me laughing a little.
Her daddy was a very intelligent man, and even though I knew that, this all was so much more complicated.
The soft rumble of the storm whooshed around us and Laura sipped her cocoa, no other words about her father said. Nestling herself up on me, she stared at my lap and suddenly tiny fingers slid into the pocket of my bathrobe.
My aunt’s photo peeked out the top and I grabbed it for her, smiling when I took her cup and exchanged it for the photograph. Weathered, the two people inside were a little hard to make out, but clearly she knew the older woman was my aunt.
I’d never seen her around my aunt Jo obviously, but she knew her, her small fingers running over the photograph.
“That’s me,” I told her, watching her. “My aunt Jo and me when I was a kid.”
I couldn’t have been much older than her. In fact, I knew I couldn’t have been, only a few summers spent at this place.
Laura’s small fingers travelled down the photograph and when her hand stopped on my aunt, curling on the worn paper, I questioned whether or not I should continue to let her study the photo. Laura had a lot of pain, only a snapshot of which I’d gathered from her dad. He said she’d taken my aunt’s death very hard, closed off into herself worse than she’d been.
“Laura?”
She didn’t look up at me and the silence sent a tremor into my heart.
My hand smoothing down her shoulder, she leaned into me, her face buried into my side.
“Why did she leave?” came suddenly, her eyes closing and I cupped her cheek, a few tears falling down my fingertips. I didn’t know what to say to her, not good at these things.
I’d never been… good with children. I hadn’t been until her.
“She really didn’t,” I told her, hoping, praying for the right words. Her tear-stained eyes looked up at me and I smiled at her, that salty trail underneath the pad of my fingers.
“She’s with you, Laura. In your heart. She never left.”
She’d heard about the afterlife in church and I knew she was aware of the concepts, but still, she was so very young.
Her tiny throat jumped before her words.
“But I miss her,” she cried a little, blinking down tears. “I miss her so much.”
“And she misses you, but she sees you. I know she sees you every day.”
She hugged me after that. She hugged me so hard and I didn’t want to let go of her either. My aunt was with her.
She was with both of us.
I told her as such and she nodded, her tears eventually falling away. Her arms moving around my waist, she breathed into me, closing her eyes.
“She sent me you,” she said before she fell asleep, and this time, it was my turn to cry. I knew she meant what she said, and in my heart, I think I knew she was right.
I let her sleep as long as I felt she should before daring to move. I needed to call her dad. She’d been there too long with me.
Easing from underneath her, I replaced myself with a pillow, covering her with a blanket before heading into the kitchen. After getting my phone my first thought was to call Gray, but the amount of missed calls on my cell struck an alarm through me. They weren’t from Gray.
But from Bastian.