My eyes wandered to the wall next to the kitchen table. It was covered in photos of the Perkins family. The two boys opening up Christmas presents. My aunt and uncle on their wedding day, smiling and happy. There was even a picture of me when I was just a baby, sitting in front of a coloring book.
There were no pictures of my dad, though.
“Why don’t you have any pictures of my dad up?” I asked.
My aunt froze mid-sip for a split second, but continued to drink from her mug. I shifted in my seat, suddenly uncomfortable. Though we had talked about my mother’s death, Aunt Caroline and I almost never spoke about my dad’s suicide.
She was quietly staring into her cup so I didn’t say anything. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought it up.
“No reason, really,” she said. “We took the pictures down when we were redoing the kitchen and I guess I must’ve forgotten to put those back up.”
It seemed like a strange reason, but I didn’t want to keep talking about it. What would my dad have thought? Would he be sad that we had forgotten him? Even though I knew it was stupid, I was a little worried that I might forget what his face looked like. My dream had scared me, however silly that seemed.
“Can I see them?”
She frowned for a split second before answering. “Of course. They’re all in that room at back of the basement with the rest of your father’s stuff.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I think I’ll go find them.”
I got up from the table. Aunt Caroline looked thoughtful, but just nodded.
I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, and maybe it was a bad idea to open old wounds, but then again, didn’t I tell Hunter that we couldn’t keep running from our problems? Now was as good of a time to face the past as any.
Chapter Six
MEMORIES
I walked downstairs, flicked on the lights, and surveyed my surroundings. My aunt and uncle treated the basement mostly as a place for storage, and it showed. Cardboard boxes lined much of the space against the walls, and my cousins toys were scattered everywhere. Keeping my eyes on the ground, I weaved my way around Hot Wheels and Legos to the back room. I wanted to see my dad’s face again.
I walked through the room’s door and flicked on the lights. It was even more crowded than the rest of the basement. The room was small and contained nothing but boxes of my dad’s things. An L-shaped path to the back right corner from where the door was hugging the left wall was the only thing that made the room somewhat navigable.
I took a deep breath and pulled the lid off the box closest to my feet.
Sitting on top of some binders were several drawings I had made as a child. I put the lid down, picked up the delicate stack of yellowing paper and began flipping through.
Each of them was a colored pencil drawing of three people—a mommy, a daddy, and a little girl—in various settings. Several were in front of a house, one was in a park, another was on a beach. One of them even had a dog, which was a wish I’d had as a kid that had never been fulfilled. They were all drawn by a happy little girl from a happy family.
As I stood there, flipping through some of my earliest art work, I began to shake. That little girl was gone. I was never going to feel the things I had felt when I was making those drawings ever again. The security and innocence I had felt in those days had been taken from me.
Tears formed in my eyes and beaded down my cheeks. I wiped them away with my sleeve and put the drawings back into their box so I could keep looking for pictures of my dad.
After sifting through several boxes I finally came to one with pictures in the back corner of the room. I shakily picked up a thick stack and began to flip through them.
The first few were pictures of my aunt and uncle, but then I saw it. My eyes fell on an image of a college-aged man wearing a mustard-colored button down shirt and tan chinos. His dark, curly hair sat on his head youthfully, and he was clean-shaven. It was my father smiling happily for the camera, though I could barely recognize his boyish face. The picture had been taken well before I was born.
My lips turned briefly up then down, and I looked around the room, waiting for tears to come. To my surprise, they didn’t. It was just like when I read his suicide letter. I felt like I should cry because that’s what people did, but when it came to my dad I just couldn’t.
After a while, I returned to the picture. There he was, just as alive as I was now. Just as young. Now he was gone, and worse, he had taken his own life. I thought of his letter again.
I just can’t, Lorrie.
I bit my lip hard, but still no tears came.
With a deep breath, I flipped to the next picture and felt a wave of nausea. It was a picture of my family not very different from the colored pencil drawings I had seen earlier. My parents had taken me to Lincoln Park in Chicago. Lake Michigan was in the background, and standing in front of it was my dad, a little older now and with shorter hair, his arm around my mom. Then there was me—standing not even up to my dad’s waist—with a giant stick of pink cotton candy and a toothy smile.
We all looked happy, but my parents would get divorced ten years later, and then everything else would happen.
Why? Why had Marco killed my mom? Why did all of this have to happen?
Tears finally came. First some large beads in my eyes, then one quiet sob followed another as I stood there feeling stupid for coming down to the basement and doing this to myself.
I wiped my eyes with my sleeve and looked at the picture again. My mom—her chestnut hair in a perfect nineties perm—looked a lot like I did now. Minus the perm, of course. I tried to imagine having a child in the next few years and couldn’t do it.
It was hard to picture my future at all.
A noise came from outside the room, and then I heard footsteps. I quickly rubbed my eyes, hoping to get rid of as much evidence of crying as possible, and held my breath.
It was Hunter. He stopped in the doorway and seemed to evaluate what was going on. We locked eyes. “There you are,” he said. “I looked all over the house.”
My vision began blurring again with fresh tears and he made his way through the room’s path until he was next to me. I held the photographs to my chest and buried my face in his hoodie. He put his arms around me and held me close.
We stood embraced together in silence. Being close to his warmth felt reassuring and I was glad that he was here with me.
After I’d finally composed myself, I pulled away and faced him. He waited patiently for me to speak.
I took a deep breath and wiped my eyes once more. “I came down here to look for pictures of my dad,” I said, my voice mostly steady.