TWELVE

 

 

It had been three long days since Avery last spoke to Catherine and almost four days since she’d seen or spoken to Reese. Four days of silence on his part, and four days of her wanting to call him or drive over to his ranch to see him. She even rode over there on her favorite horse a couple of times, but he’d never been around.

In the meantime she, Chuck, and his lawyer had come up with a compromise of sorts with the Cooper land that gave Reese more say with his ranch, and kept the Cooper brand. It probably still wasn’t exactly what Reese wanted, but she hoped he would accept it anyway. Chuck’s legal team had delivered the new agreement that afternoon, and Avery was just going in to get it from Chuck’s desk in his office. She wanted to double-check the changes before she officially contacted Reese.

She hoped he would be more amenable, and maybe there could be an actual dialogue between Reese and Chuck this time. But that was probably wishful thinking on her part.

It was still relatively early, about six-thirty in the evening, and a storm was brewing outside. The entire day had been cold and damp and Avery, wearing white cotton pajamas under a white bulky robe that she’d found hanging in her bedroom closet, stepped into Chuck’s office and turned on a light.

Her hair had been clipped up, her face was completely divested of all makeup, and floppy big pink slippers were on her feet. She planned on picking up the docs, then swinging by the kitchen to make a cup of hot herbal tea, and grab a light dinner out of the fridge, spend the rest of the night in her room, and hopefully fall asleep before the impending storm rattled the heavens.

She hoped to run into Chuck, thinking because of the rain he might have come home early and could be in his office sipping on a brandy, something she’d seen him do on rainy days. Unfortunately, he wasn’t there.

She went around the desk, picked up the new agreement, and turned to leave when she spotted something on the floor poking out from under the small rug next to file drawers along the wall. Her initial instinct was to let it be, but then she thought that maybe it was something important and Chuck may have been looking for whatever was hidden under the rug.

As soon as she plucked it from the floor and turned it over, she realized it was a black and white headshot of a very distraught looking woman. Avery went to place the disturbing photo on Chuck’s desk, but something made her take a second look.

It took her a moment before she realized the distraught woman in the picture was her mother. Her breath immediately caught in her throat and confused emotion clouded her eyes. Why was there a picture of her mom in Chuck’s office? Where did it come from? And why did her mom look so miserable?

She looked as though she’d been crying, and her normally neat hair hung in fuzzy tufts about her head and down the sides of her face, as if she’d been pulling at the ponytail that fell lopsided on the top of her head. Dark makeup smudged her eyes, making it appear as though she’d been punched, and she wore no lipstick . . . which was very unusual. Avery couldn’t remember a time when her mom went without lipstick. It was the first thing she’d put on in the morning and the last thing she removed at night.

What was most disturbing about the picture was the vapid look on her mom’s face, as if a light had gone out inside of her. If there hadn’t been a window behind her, Avery would have thought it was a picture of her mom’s corpse.

Avery kept the picture along with the new agreement and walked out of the office, turning out the light before she left.

She headed straight for the kitchen, hoping that Kaya hadn’t left for the day, which she hadn’t. Maybe Kaya could shed some light on how the picture got under the rug in Chuck’s office. Avery’s mind spun with scenarios . . . none of them good.

“Miss Avery, can I make you a tray?” Kaya asked as soon as she spotted Avery from across the room.

“Yes, please, maybe a cup of herbal tea and something light. Nothing fancy.”

“I’ve got some cold fried chicken and I made a pasta salad. I’ll fix you a plate before I go.”

“That would be perfect,” Avery said as she walked over to show Kaya the picture.

At first, Kaya told her she didn’t recall ever seeing the woman.

“She was my mom,” Avery had told her.

“She looks very sad,” Kaya said. “As if she lost something of great value. This is not a picture you should dwell on. You should only dwell on the happy pictures of your mother. This picture should be kept hidden or better still, thrown away. It is not a picture for a daughter.”

Avery wanted to tell her where she’d found it, but she didn’t want to put Kaya in an awkward situation.

“Aside from one other picture of my mom and dad, this is all that I have of her. I couldn’t possibly toss it. My father never liked to talk about my mom. He got rid of all her things, along with all of her pictures. I haven’t seen them since soon after she died. If he kept any pictures, I’ve never been able to find them. Not that I’ve looked very much. But now that I’m back on this ranch, all I seem to think about are those missing pictures.”

Not only had her dad removed all the pictures of her mom, but he’d removed all the memories from their house, including any and all of her things. Even some of her mom’s favorite belongings had slowly disappeared, like her favorite dishes, mugs, figurines, and of course, every stitch of her clothing. Avery had managed to hide her mom’s favorite figurine, a small pink cat with black polka-dots playing with a pink ball of yarn, and a picture of all three of them standing in front of Chuck’s ranch house when he’d first moved in. But up until this moment, that was all she’d managed to save.

Avery cherished those two things and had kept them hidden under her bed in a box of old toys until she’d finally gotten a place of her own. Once there, she’d bought a pretty frame and kept the picture on her nightstand with the cat right next to it.

“Not a problem. There’s a box of pictures up in the attic. And if I’m not mistaken, they’re of your mother. I always wondered about the lady in the pictures. If I had known she was your mom, I would have mentioned them sooner. Why didn’t you ask Mr. Starr about them? I’m sure he would have given them to you.”

Avery’s heart raced. “There are pictures of my mom in the attic? But that can’t be. You must be mistaken.”

Kaya glanced at the picture in Avery’s hand once again. Really staring at it this time. “That’s her. And look here. There’s a date on this picture, but I can’t make it out without my glasses. Maybe you can see it.”

The date, if it was a date, was on the side of the picture, but it looked more like a smudge than numbers. “I don’t think that’s a date,” Avery said, dismissing the notion.

“May I?” Kaya said, reaching for the photo. Avery gave it to her. “They used to print the date on pictures like these all the time.” Kaya turned on the overhead lights above the stove, slipped on her glasses that she kept in a case on the counter and studied the picture for a moment. “It looks like it says nineteen ninety-eight or nineteen ninety-nine. I can’t be sure. It’s so tiny.”

“That can’t be,” Avery said. “My mom died in nineteen ninety-seven.”

Kaya looked at the picture again. “Well, if this is your mom, that can’t be right. You must have the wrong date. You were young.”

Kaya handed Avery the picture and Avery studied it under the light. And sure enough, the date read nineteen ninety-nine. Two full years after her mom died.

“Believe me, I know when my mom died. There must be some mistake. This date can’t be right. It just can’t be.”

Nausea suddenly overtook Avery and she felt as if she might pass out.

“You should sit down, sweetie. You don’t look so good.”

Avery agreed and sat down hard on one of the bar stools as she stared down at a picture of her mom taken two full years after her dad had said she’d died . . . after that first summer on Chuck’s ranch. Two full years after her mom had abandoned her inside the Olympic Theater.

“What the hell?”

Avery gazed down at the picture one more time, trying to make sense of all of this.

Kaya busied herself putting together the tray for Avery. When it was ready, and the hot water was poured into the white ceramic teapot, and the light supper had been assembled on the tray, she said, “Do you want the box of pictures now? I know right where they are in the attic. Maybe they’ll help you to sort this out.”

“Yes, thank you,” Avery managed to tell her.

“Not a problem. The elders in my tribe told me this would happen, that I would help you to understand your childhood. I didn’t understand what they meant. Now I understand and I am glad this is our path,” Kaya told her, then she disappeared into the next room leaving Avery alone with her thoughts.

Avery didn’t move off the stool for a long time, her thoughts spinning with wild assumptions. She needed something stronger than tea, and went looking for that bottle of brandy Chuck kept in his office. When she found it, she poured a couple shots into a glass, drank down what she could, and then added the bottle and glass to her dinner tray.

She picked up the tray and headed to her room, wanting to bury the thoughts swirling in her mind, maybe drink some more brandy and then sleep it off . . . and really feeling like she wanted to call her dad or Chuck, or Reese.

There had to be a logical explanation, because if there wasn’t, then that would mean her mom didn’t die that summer.

But why would her dad have lied to her? And if her mom hadn’t died then, did she die two years later?

“What the hell is going on?” Avery said out loud.

As she approached her bedroom, she noticed a medium-sized cardboard banker’s box right outside her door with a note attached that read: Had to leave, but here’s the box from the attic . . . Kaya

The box looked as if it had been around for a while, a very long while, and had gotten beat up over the years.

Avery couldn’t move for a moment, as she stared at the ominous box, wondering who had stored it in Chuck’s attic. Her dad? Chuck? Why?

She couldn’t explain it, but at once apprehension tightened her throat, and her resolve had turned to complete mush. Her eyes welled with tears. She’d wanted pictures of her mom her entire life, but her dad had kept them from her. And now there they were . . . in a battered banker’s box . . . sitting in front of her, provided by Chuck’s house manager.

She hesitated, staring at the ominous box, thinking she’d seen it before . . . at her old house . . . in her dad’s arms. She recognized the logo on the side. It was from his old law firm: Taylor, Brook, and Watkins.

A shiver ran through her so intense she thought she would drop the tray she was still holding. She immediately stepped into her room, and slid the tray onto the bed, then went back out to retrieve the box.

She pulled the cover off and gazed inside. She took a deep breath as tears filled her eyes. The box was filled with pictures of her mom. At once Avery wanted to tell Kaya to take it back. She didn’t know if her heart could take seeing all the memories. Maybe her dad had been right in hiding all of this. Looking at them now would only cause Avery to grieve for all the lost moments, all the unmade memories, all those years of missing her mom’s embrace.

She forced herself to pick up the box and carry it inside her room, closing the door behind her. Outside the storm pelted the windows with hard rain as lightning and thunder tore open the skies and as the memories tore open her heart.

Once safely tucked inside her room, she placed the box on her bed, slipped out of her robe, added some mood music from her phone to try to drown out the storm, hit the switch for the gas fireplace, took another sip of brandy, and proceeded to carefully dump the contents of the box onto her bed.

At once vivid memories of her mom flooded her senses, causing her skin to prickle, and her stomach to ache. There was so much she’d forgotten, so many glances and nuances that had vanished from her memory that hot tears stung her eyes and blurred her vision. She threw back another swallow of the brandy, but it didn’t help ease the hurt. All those years her dad had kept her mom from her, had allowed her memory to fade, her light to go out, were years that Avery wished she could get back.

“How could you do that?” she said aloud, as if her dad could hear her, as if he was in the room with her.

She felt cheated out of getting to know her mom, what her mom had liked and didn’t like. Her hobbies or her lack of them. Her best times. Her worst times. But most of all, what she had been like when Avery was an infant, a toddler, a young child going off to school. She couldn’t imagine why her dad had kept all this from her. Why he’d cheated her out of knowing the one woman in the entire world who had given Avery unconditional love and whom Avery had loved in return with more affection than she’d thought possible. A love she’d never felt or given since.

On the very bottom of the box were two things that stopped Avery cold: the small beaded evening bag that she’d given her mom for her last Mother’s Day, and a pink baby book: “Pamela’s Precious Baby: Avery Miller Templeton.”

The storm outside raged, accentuating Avery’s dark mood, the rain cascading off the roof and sounding like water pouring into a bucket when it hit the ground.

Picking up the beaded bag brought back the memory of buying it with her dad at a shop that her mom loved in Tempe, an enclave on the outskirts of Phoenix. It had been hot and sunny that day, and the air conditioner in her dad’s car wouldn’t work. He’d been aggravated about it, but Avery remembered how the hot breeze felt on her face as they drove over to the shop. And how she wished the air-conditioner would stay broken because she loved the hot wind coming in through the open window much better than the cold air from the dashboard.

She had picked out the purse as soon as she’d seen it, blush pink made out of tiny beads, and a pink floral hankie to go inside . . . she had remembered how much her mom loved pretty hankies. Now, when she opened the beaded purse to check for the hankie, her mother’s perfume instantly swaddled her. The purse contained a lipstick tube, a small change purse with some cash, a comb, a compact and, of all things, her mom’s engagement ring, a round-cut, deep blue sapphire surrounded by tiny diamonds. A ring her mom never took off. Ever. How and why it was loose inside the purse puzzled Avery, but then this box of pictures stored up in Chuck’s attic puzzled her even more.

The floral hankie sat neatly folded at the very bottom of the small handbag where her mom had left it, and it still held her mom’s distinctive scent from the perfume she loved: Yves Saint Laurent’s Opium. Her mom never went anywhere without a splash on her wrists and behind her ears. When Avery plucked out the hankie, a ticket stub fell into her lap. A stub for a movie they’d seen together on June 15 at the Olympic Theater in town.

For a brief instant, Avery felt as though her mom had cradled her in her arms, and when she closed her eyes, she envisioned her mom’s beautiful face, smiling as she pulled Avery in closer.

“Oh, Mama, I miss you so much.”

Lightning lit up the windows that surrounded her room on two sides, and thunder rolled across the sky, pulsating through her bed. She knew her mom had answered with the same amount of longing.

Avery’s chest tightened as tears poured freely from her eyes. She reached for the brandy on her nightstand, emptied the glass and poured another shot while she steadied her raw emotions.

She wiped her tears away with her hands, put everything back in the small purse, including her mom’s engagement ring, and snapped it shut. Then she carefully opened the baby book. A plethora of photos she’d never seen before shocked her back into the present. Each picture told a story of a young mother and her sweet baby girl. As Avery studied the photos, along with her mother’s handwritten descriptions on the side of the page, another wave of emotion overtook her and soon she couldn’t help but weep for her mom and for the little girl who still resided inside of Avery, a girl who never had the opportunity to really mourn the loss of her mother.

It was as if her mom had only recently passed instead of almost two decades before. She suddenly felt vulnerable, as vulnerable as the ten-year-old child who had never been allowed to talk about her own mother.

And what of that picture with the misleading date? Was that true? What did it mean?

For the first time since she’d met Reese, she could truly identify with what he’d been going through with the loss of his beloved dad. She could finally appreciate genuine grief.

 

 

REESE HAD READ over the partnership agreement that Avery had dropped off with his mom so many times that he had parts of it memorized. His only real drawback to signing the damn thing was the inclusion of the Cooper Ranch. That stuck in his craw, and gave him a chronic bellyache. He just couldn’t do it, and had to tell Chuck in person.

He knew it was getting late, going on ten at night, and the storm that filled the skies wasn’t going to make his trek easy, but he couldn’t wait any longer. Plus, Avery had told him that Chuck usually stayed up well past midnight and got up at the crack of dawn, so ten o’clock was relatively early in Chuck’s night. Reese’s dad had been the same way, only getting about five to six hours of sleep per night. It seemed that most older men Reese knew only needed a few hours . . . probably due to the naps they took during the day, but that was beside the point.

Plus, he’d had a few bad dreams about Avery last night. In them, she couldn’t stop crying over something that tore her apart, and she refused to tell him what was making her so upset. He’d awoken that morning with a strong desire to see her, but he’d forced himself to stay home and read the partnership agreement instead. Now, all he wanted to do was talk to Chuck. That had to take top priority.

Problem was, as soon as he drove over to the Circle Starr ranch and saw the light on in Avery’s bedroom, all his willpower slipped away like a dry creek in this rainstorm.

He knew he should ignore the strong urge to see her and instead head straight for the front door of the ranch house, but as soon as he killed the engine, secured his hat on his head and stepped out of his truck, his feet headed straight for Avery’s private entrance.

He ran over the stone driveway, up the three steps to the covered porch and hesitated. He hadn’t spoken to or seen Avery in days. He hadn’t tried to contact her, nor had she contacted him. It seemed that neither of them had been prepared for what happened in her bedroom. And when she had stopped by his ranch, she never looked for him after she’d spoken to his mom, nor was he able to get her attention when he called out to her when he’d spotted her on the front porch.

They’d both been avoiding each other, or so he thought, and he could only speculate on her reasons. Hell, he barely knew his own reasons.

He tentatively knocked on her door, but the more he thought about it, the more he felt certain she never wanted to see him again, and especially at this time of night, during what had to be one of the worst storms in a long time.

The rain came down in sheets, pushing against him even though he stood under the roof, soaking his clothes and his face even though he bent his head down to shield himself with his hat. When she didn’t answer, he turned to head around the porch to call on Chuck, like he’d originally planned. With a great gust of wind, Avery’s bedroom door swung wide open, hitting the wall in its wake.

She stood there staring at him for a moment while the rain pelted her through the open doorway. Neither of them spoke, and he didn’t know if she was going to tell him to leave or pull him inside. When she looked at him straight on, he realized it wasn’t the rain he saw on her face, but tears.

“Can I come in?” he asked in a whisper.

“Where have you been?” she replied, her voice shaky and fragile as the hard rain beat down on them both now, the wind pushing at his back, and causing her beautiful hair to billow around her face. The rain had already soaked through her white pajamas to reveal all the round curves of her body. She may as well have been naked standing in that doorway, now completely drenched by rainwater.

“Home. Reading. Thinking of you. Of us. I came here tonight to talk to Chuck, but I ended up on your doorstep.”

Lightning cracked through the sky, and soon after it a clap of thunder that caused Reese to flinch.

“Oh, Reese, I’m so sorry.”

He stepped inside, pulled her into his arms, and covered her mouth with his, parting her lips and pressing his tongue against hers. Realizing then how much he’d missed her, how much he wanted her.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” he said after reluctantly ending the kiss, holding her tight in his arms. “It was all me. I’m the one who’s sorry. I’ve been an arrogant idiot. I’m sorry I made love to you like an angry bull. Sorry if I hurt you in any way, and sorry I didn’t tell you all of this sooner.”

He reached back and slammed the door shut against the pouring rain, then cradled her once again in his arms.

“You don’t understand,” she said in between kisses. “I’m sorry for not being more understanding of your loss. Of your grief. I never understood grief . . . not really. My dad sheltered me from all of that. But now I know what it feels like to lose someone you truly love.”

Reese noticed the open box on her bed and the assortment of pictures spread out over the blankets, along with the open bottle of brandy on the nightstand.

“Why don’t we get out of these wet clothes so you can tell me what this is all about?”

“Okay,” she said, then unbuttoned her top revealing her soft, luscious breasts. He could hardly steel himself from reaching out to cup her perfect breasts in his hands.

“Unless you want me to make love to you right here on the floor, you’ll change somewhere else.”

“Why? Don’t you want to make love to me?”

“More than you can imagine, but I don’t think it would be a wise choice for either of us. Not before we’ve talked over what’s going on between us.”

She took a step back and stared at him for a moment, tilting her head to the side like the family dogs did when they were trying to understand a command. He couldn’t help but smile.

“What about you? You’re soaked as well.”

He spotted a large white terry robe on a chair. “I’ll take the robe.”

She nodded, walked away from him, dropping her pj’s as she went, then grabbing dry clothes from a drawer she slid open. He turned away, trying not to focus on the vision of her . . . naked . . . as she headed for the bathroom, his arousal for her pressing up against his jeans, intensifying his desire. It would be so easy . . .

“You’re absolutely right,” she told him and slipped a leopard print nightgown over her head. Then she disappeared inside the bathroom, giving him enough time to relax and toss on the robe. Then he draped their wet clothes over the black metal screen in front of the large hearth. Once he finished that task, he went over and sat cross-legged on the bed, staring down at childhood photos of Avery and what had to be her beautiful mom . . . a mom who looked very much like Avery now . . . a woman he felt certain he’d met.

 

 

IT WAS PROBABLY a good thing Reese had taken the high road . . . although part of her wished he’d taken the low road . . . the really low road and they’d made love right there in the open doorway with the rain pelting their naked bodies.

The vision gave Avery a quiver as she washed her face with cold water, trying to clean up. She glanced in the mirror and cringed. Her eyes were puffy and her nose was bright red from crying. Her wet hair stuck to her head, and the nightgown she’d pulled from the drawer was about as flattering as a rice sack. Fine for when she slept alone, but not so fine when she was entertaining the one man she truly cared about, Reese Cooper.

She ran a comb through her hair, then pulled out a hair dryer. A few minutes later her hair was decent enough to pull back with a clip, and her face had started to return to normal, at least somewhat normal. Her eyes were still puffy.

Nevertheless, when she finally left the bathroom, she had recovered, slightly . . . still light-headed and unsteady on her feet, but she’d regrouped.

“Is this better?” Avery asked as she joined Reese on the bed, spreading out across from him, her head resting on her hand. He looked a little silly sitting there in her white terry robe, that fine chest peeking out between the front fold, the belt cinched tight around his waist in some vain attempt at some kind of misplaced modesty. She wanted to tear it off of him but instead she would have to pretend that it didn’t matter they were lying on her bed, essentially naked.

“Much,” he told her, grinning. She liked when he smiled. His entire face lit up. “Where did you get all this? Did you bring these from home?”

“No. Kaya gave them to me. They were stored in Chuck’s attic.”

“What? How did Chuck get all these pictures of your mom?”

“I don’t really know, but it gets worse. I found this on the floor inside Chuck’s office.” She handed him the picture. “It’s my mom, but it doesn’t make any sense or maybe I just don’t want it to. The date stamped on the side of the picture is two years after she died. There has to be some kind of mistake. It can’t be right . . . can it?”

Reese’s face went serious. “This looks like a picture taken for an institution of some kind. Not a prison, exactly, but maybe a detention center or a specialized hospital. Your mom looks as if she’s experiencing some deep shit in this picture.” He studied the date printed on the side. “This looks real. Did you ask Chuck about it?”

Avery still wasn’t ready to confront Chuck. Maybe she wasn’t ready to hear his answer. “Not yet. He doesn’t know I have it.”

She could feel her throat tighten at the thought of her sweet mom in any kind of institution. Reese had to be wrong. He just had to be.

“Why not? You should have confronted him immediately.”

“I . . . I don’t think I’m ready to hear what he has to say about it.”

Reese gazed down at the picture again. “But this picture changes everything. The date, the way your mom looks, something’s wrong. They told you one thing and this picture is saying something completely different. Do you remember your mom ever looking like this?”

“Never. Mom was always meticulous about her appearance. For one thing, I don’t remember ever seeing my mom’s hair up in a ponytail. Everything about that picture is wrong. It’s not the mom I knew.”

“And the rest of these pictures? Anything off or strange with any of them?”

Avery leaned back on the headboard, and stretched her legs out in front of Reese, crossing them at her ankles. The bright pink nail polish she’d applied last week was already chipping on some of her toes. She suddenly remembered that her mom had liked to polish her own toenails that exact same shade of pink. Was that why Avery had been so attracted to the color? The thought intrigued her.

“I don’t think so. They all seem fine.”

“And Kaya gave them to you.”

She thought back to their conversation earlier in the kitchen. “I know, none of it makes any sense. My dad boxed these up. I remember him filling this exact box. So how did Chuck end up with it?”

“Maybe your dad gave the box to Chuck for safekeeping?” Reese gazed down at the pictures, shuffling through them, stopping occasionally when one of them caught his eye.

“And neither of them ever told me? All these years . . . I assumed they’d been destroyed. Why do you think they kept these from me? It seems cruel and heartless.”

The thought that Chuck knew all these pictures were in a box in his attic and he never bothered to tell her, broke her heart. Not only had her dad kept the pictures from her, but Chuck had as well. She didn’t want to accept it. Couldn’t accept it or she’d have to believe Chuck was as ruthless as Reese made him out to be.

That didn’t seem possible. It was not the Chuck Starr she knew and loved.

But the more she stared at her mom’s pictures, the more she wondered just what the hell was going on.

“You’re asking me about family secrets? Me, the guy who just learned his bio dad is Chuck Starr?”

He had a point. “Do you think it’s all somehow related?”

His forehead furrowed. “Don’t use that word around me.”

“What word?”

“Related.”

She thought of all the possibilities, cringed and agreed never to use it again. “Forget I mentioned it.”

“It’s forgotten.” He held up a picture of her mom on horseback looking fabulous in her western wear and hat. “I think I met your mom. She looks very familiar to me.”

His words seared through her. Even Reese remembered her mom . . . but how could that be?

She slid off the bed and grabbed a bottle of water from the stash she kept on the writing desk in the corner. She uncapped it and drank down half the bottle, handing the remainder to Reese. He downed the rest as she said, “That seems very unlikely. She only visited for a few weeks the summer I turned ten, the summer she died.”

Reese continued to pour through the photos. “Do you have a picture of her from that summer?”

Avery sat up, trying her best to sober up, but not really wanting to. Wanting instead to pour another brandy, and after that another until she once again obliterated her mother’s memory.

Tears flooded her eyes.

“What’s wrong?” Reese asked, reaching out to her, running his hand down her leg.

“I don’t want to talk about my mother anymore.”

“Okay,” he said. “Whatever you want is fine.”

She reached over and gathered all the pictures into a pile, then began tossing them back into the box until she spotted one she couldn’t pass over. Her dad had taken the picture in front of the Olympic Theater right before she and her mom went inside. She remembered. Her mom wore a beautiful dark blue dress with tiny embroidered light blue roses encircling the hem, matching heels, and she carried the handbag Avery had given her, the handbag she’d found inside the box.

The sapphire engagement ring prominent on her mom’s finger.

Avery wore a mauve-colored dress with a full mesh skirt with a few sparkly beads that caught the light. It was Avery’s favorite dress, a dress she only wore for special occasions, like her birthday.

“This is a picture of my mom from that last summer.” Avery handed Reese the picture as memories rushed past her like a speeding train, stopping only long enough to get a glimpse of that day, those last moments.

If she had only known what that summer would bring, she would have done everything differently. She would have said more, hugged her mom more, and told her how much she loved her.

Instead, she didn’t even remember holding her mom’s hand like in the picture.

“She’d taken me to the theater for my birthday,” Avery began as memories flooded her thoughts with images she hadn’t wanted to dwell on ever since that day. “Just the two of us. We were going to see one of the Star Wars movies. I forget which one, but right after we found our seats, she left me to go back out for popcorn. We always shared a great big tubful. But . . . she never came back. I remember not watching the movie, but instead I kept looking around for my mom, thinking she’d forgotten where we were sitting. She would do that sometimes, but not this time. She never came back.”

“I don’t understand? What happen to her? Was there an accident? Had she been ill? Why didn’t she return?”

“That’s the thing about that day. I remember I was so scared that I didn’t know what to do. Sometime near the end of the movie, I had to pee so badly that I thought I might wet myself. I didn’t want to leave my seat because I thought if I did, and she came back looking for me, she wouldn’t be able to find me and she’d be mad that I went to the bathroom without her. She always had to know exactly where I was going.”

“Where did she go?”

She could hear the genuine concern in Reese’s voice, which only added to her own anxiety over the vivid memory.

“I don’t know. When the movie was over, I stayed right in my seat until my dad came and found me. By then I hadn’t been able to hold my pee anymore and I went all over myself. I was so embarrassed I couldn’t stop crying. My dad comforted me, and I remember that he spoke to someone who worked at the theater about it, but my pretty dress was ruined.”

The humiliation still stung as Avery recounted the story. It felt as though it had happened only last week, instead of almost two decades ago.

“Did you ever find out exactly what happened to your mom?”

Avery shook her head unable to speak any longer. She didn’t understand why she’d never asked any questions. Why she never perused the details of her mom’s death. What kind of a daughter didn’t ask questions? Now, as she trembled with despair, she realized she’d been pushing her curiosity aside for most of her life.

Then she flashed on her client’s husband . . . the man who had duped her with his charm and managed to compromise the case and put her very career in jeopardy. The realization struck her in a cruel blow, how she’d been taught early on not to delve too deep.

Not to question.

Not to doubt.

Her dad, and even Chuck, had taught her well.

What a fool she’d been, and how naïve and childlike she’d remained.

Emotion gripped her throat as deep sobs racked her body. A heavy sorrow consumed her as Reese drew her into his strong arms, holding her tight against his body.

At once she felt loved, an emotion she hadn’t truly felt since that day at the theater. Before her mom had left her there, she’d told Avery how much she’d loved her . . . to the moon and back . . . then she’d pulled her in close enough so that Avery caught the scent of her perfume on her mother’s warm skin.

“Don’t go, Mama.” Avery had begged her. “Don’t leave me here. Let me come with you.”

“I’ll only be a minute, my darling. You stay here and save our seats.”

Avery recalled how she’d pleaded with her mom once more to not to leave her, but her mom had insisted that Avery stay behind, something that Avery had learned not to do. Her mom tended to get lost easily, and Avery had to show her the way back on more than one occasion. Still, her mom refused to consider Avery’s pleas and instead she kissed the top of Avery’s head and walked off to buy popcorn and drinks.

That was the last time Avery ever saw her mom.