“I am.” She motioned him over, making room
on the seat beside her. “This one seems to be mostly of Mom during
her freshmen year of high school. Look at her crazy hair.”
Hale sat beside her and peered down at the
book. He smiled. “That is pretty wild.”
She flipped through some more pages with him
sitting quietly beside her. When he’d finished his coffee, he
pulled her to his side, tucking her against him. “She looks a lot
like you there,” he said, pointing to a picture. “You have her
smile. Your real smile, not the fake one.”
Kyra smiled up at him then, knowing that she
loved him.
“Yeah, that’s the one,” he said, pressing a
soft kiss to the corner of her mouth.
They spent the entire morning upstairs
flipping through the photo albums. After weeks of living in the
house, Kyra finally looked through all the pictures of her mom.
They ended somewhere in the middle of Lila’s junior year of high
school. She had avoided the moment when she would turn the last
page of the last book, thinking she’d feel empty with nothing else
to look at, but she didn’t. Actually, she felt pretty good.
“Maybe we could carry these downstairs and
put them on the bookshelf in the living room,” Kyra said, clutching
an album to her chest.
“If it means I don’t have to move it again,
I think it’s a great idea.” Hale stood and picked up a stack of
books.
“Oh, please. It hasn’t been that bad.”
“Baby, I love you, but you’re as indecisive
as a border collie chasing a rabbit on a rabbit farm.”
Kyra stilled, frozen in place by his words.
He noticed her expression and comprehension dawned on him. Horror
filled his eyes, and his face went extremely pale.
“Hey, now. I mean…”
An envelope slipped loose from the stack of
books he held. Kyra tore her eyes away from him to watch as it
fluttered to the floor. With his words rattling around in her
skull, she bent to pick it up.
“What’s this?”
“Um…” Hale shifted, clearly still
uncomfortable with what he’d accidently said.
She flipped the letter over. In slightly
slanting, curving script was her name. She didn’t recognize the
handwriting. Actually, she’d never seen it before in her life. And
that fact alone told her who it was.
“It’s from Mom,” she whispered.
Everything seemed to fade away in that
moment. The pain that had welled at Hale’s obvious regretful choice
of words died down. She forgot about his admission completely.
Everything melted away except for the letter in her hand—at least
she hoped it was a letter. She closed her eyes and prayed it was a
letter.
This could make everything okay, she
thought.
“I’m going to go downstairs and let you read
it in private.” Hale touched her cheek, meeting her eyes. “I’m
sorry about that, Kyra. We can talk about it later. This is more
important.”
He took their coffee cups and left. When the
door shut softly behind him, she sank to the floor. She held the
letter in her arms like it was a newborn baby.
Before she could talk herself out of it, she
opened the letter. The sealant was long gone, so she could pull out
the folded paper without damaging the envelope. Opening the page,
it smelled like time long past and mildew, but Kyra caught the
softest strains of perfume wafting from it.
Lila had been the last person to ever hold
this letter, Kyra thought. This was the closest she’d ever come to
her mother in her adult life. She took a deep breath and began to
read.
Sweet Kyra,
Happy Birthday, baby girl! You’re turning
one year old today, and, for me, it’s been a blessed year knowing
you’re in the same world I live in.
I can’t give you a present this year, so I
wrote you a fairy tale. I hope your aunt and uncle will read this
to you as a bedtime story. And one day, I hope you will read it for
yourself. When you do, I pray you’ll understand why I have to leave
you. I also pray that you know how happy you made me the day you
were born.
So here goes…
Once upon a time, there was a young
princess. She had a good life, a fortunate life, high up in her
castle. The king and queen gave the princess everything she ever
wanted. She had ponies, dolls, and all the friends a girl could ask
for.
But the kingdom was cursed. There was a
darkness in the lands that only certain people saw, including the
princess. Some nights it would slip in her window and stifle her
cries. Sometimes she would see it when she was playing with her
friends or taking a nap. Its inky depths terrified her; its
shadowed tendrils chased her. She thought if she looked too long at
it that it would suck her in and she would never see the king and
queen ever again.
Years passed and the young princess grew up,
but she kept seeing the darkness more and more. And then one day, a
handsome prince came to the kingdom, and he told the princess that
he could see the shadows too. She cried with relief because someone
finally understood her pain.
The prince rescued her because he had ways
to make the shadows go away. He had magic that made the kingdom
pure and light and bright for a while. But it was only a short
while. And when the blackness came back, it would always come back
worse than before.
Soon the princess realized she had her own
little princess baby growing inside of her. It was the most
exciting day of her life. She raced across the kingdom to tell the
king and queen, but they were not happy. They sensed the prince’s
magic on her, and they banished her from the kingdom. Magic was not
allowed, but it was a rule the princess had been sheltered from.
She’d never known hate, and she never knew love could be
broken.
Sad and destroyed, the princess went back to
her prince. He fed her more and more magic to keep the darkness
away. All the while, the baby grew inside the princess. She would
hold her stomach and feel the little baby saying hello, and she
knew that some love was strong enough to never break.
But the magic started to not keep the
blackness away completely. The princess couldn’t run away anymore,
and men came and took her away from the prince and locked her in a
forgotten, dark tower far away from anywhere she’d ever known. The
magic was gone, and all she had was the baby inside her for
comfort.
And when the baby was born, the princess was
the happiest she’d ever been. Her baby was better than any of the
rich, lavish presents the king and queen had ever given her. It was
the best day of the princess’s life. But then the men from the
tower took her baby away, and the princess was alone once
again.
She had no protection from the darkness now.
She had no one to comfort her. The prince was far away and never
came to see her. All the happiness the princess had felt when she
held her baby princess was long gone.
So she dreamed of a sleep, a sleep so deep
that the darkness could never find the princess ever again. The
sleep would take the princess to a kingdom so perfect it would
never be tarnished by shadows. It would have jeweled castles and
white horses and knights in shining armor. The princess would be
loved and cherished and protected forever. There, in that perfect
kingdom, the princess would wait for her happiness again. One day,
she would find her little baby princess. It would be perfect.
So the princess went to sleep. She went to
that perfect place to free herself from the binds of the darkness.
Her knights in shining armor would protect her. She would ride
around on fancy white horses. But all the while, she would wait for
her baby to come to her. And when they were together again, they
would live happily ever after.
The end.
I love you baby girl,
Lila
Kyra’s grip on the letter wrinkled the
pages. She wasn’t breathing. Tears fell in torrents down her face.
She swayed in her seat, feeling dizzy and overcome with emotion.
Setting the letter aside to keep it from getting wet, Kyra bowed
her head and sobbed.
Her mom had written her a fairy tale for her
first birthday. Kyra could have grown up falling asleep to the
words of her mother. She would have cherished this letter, this
story. It could have been the bridge over the dark hole inside of
her.
Her mother had felt the same darkness Kyra
did. She wouldn’t have felt so alone. She wouldn’t have wondered
what was wrong with her.
Maybe she could have fallen asleep with
dreams of princesses and kingdoms instead of crying into her pillow
because she was a little girl who missed her mommy.
When the tears stopped and Kyra was just
hiccupping into her hands, she stood on shaky legs. She didn’t know
if she was going to vomit or pass out. Her eyes drifted back to the
letter.
She didn’t understand why she’d never gotten
it if her mother had intended for her to have it. Instead, it was
here, lost amongst forgotten pictures. Like the photo albums, the
letter had been left behind like trash left for the next person to
clean out, which meant there was only one person who knew the
albums and letter had been left behind.
Florence had done this. Florence had ruined
Kyra’s life like she’d ruined her daughter’s life. That selfish,
evil bitch had driven her daughter to suicide and left a Kyra with
no memories of her mother.
A strangled sound ripped from Kyra’s throat.
After snatching up the letter, she launched herself at the door.
She would settle this. She would end this today.
She rocketed down the stairs, her feet
barely touching the treads. She hit the door at full speed, banging
it open on the hinges. It crashed against the wall, rattling the
windows.
“Kyra?” Hale called from somewhere inside
the house. She leapt from the porch, her knees buckling when she
hit the ground. “Kyra!” he shouted again, and from a corner of her
mind, she heard the fear in his voice.
The rain came down harder now, but she
didn’t go to her Jeep. She raced out to the road and took off for
Florence’s house. It wasn’t far away, but she couldn’t think about
any of that rationally. She would have run to the next state if she
needed to.
She was soaked in less than a minute. The
wind made her stumble as it blustered about. The trees whipped
above her, and all the houses were closed up and prepared for war.
No one walked the streets and no cars passed her. It was a ghost
town; Kyra was the only one crazy enough to venture out into the
weather.
She wasn’t even breathing hard when she
leapt over the front gate of the large, white house two streets
over from her own. She jumped up the steps and pounded on the front
door. When it opened and Florence stared down at her with wide,
shocked eyes, Kyra reared back and slapped her grandmother as hard
as she could.
thirty
F
lorence
screamed.
Kyra screamed louder.
“How could you?” She waved the soaked,
sloppy mess of a letter in front of her grandmother’s face. “How
could you do this to me?”
“Florence?” Garlan came from the kitchen
holding a newspaper in his hands. He looked between Florence and
Kyra, understanding instantly.
“Get her out of here! Call the police!”
Florence shrieked, stumbling back as Kyra advanced farther into the
house.
Kyra threw the letter at Florence, who
ducked in time. The paper sailed straight past her like a lumpy
ball. “You kept her letter from me! It was the only thing I had,
and you didn’t give it to me!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking
about!”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about,”
Kyra stalked closer. Garlan bent to pick up the letter from the
floor. He didn’t look like he was calling the cops anytime soon.
“But how could you do that to your daughter? To your
granddaughter?”
“You are
not
my granddaughter. She is
not
my daughter.”
“Yes, we are!” Kyra screamed inches from
Florence’s face. “No matter how many times you say it or how cruel
and vicious you are, it doesn’t change the fact that we are your
family. And you killed us. You destroyed us. You tore everything we
had from us.”
“She deserved to have nothing!” Spit flew
from Florence’s mouth. “You weren’t wanted, just like she wasn’t
wanted.”
“How can you say that? She was your
child!”
“Florence,” Garlan started, but she shouted
above him.
“She was dead to me the day she walked out
of my house. I mourned my baby then, long before she hanged herself
in that disgusting prison.”
Kyra recoiled, vomit rising in her throat.
She’d never known how her mother had killed herself, but hearing it
now only fueled her trembling rage. “You should have loved her
through it. You should have done something to help her! She just
needed help!”
Her words were jagged, guttural shrieks. She
could barely understand herself. Garlan came farther into the room,
his eyes dancing between the two women.
“Nothing could save her. She was on her own.
That’s the way she wanted it, so I gave it to her.” Florence
sniffed, tilting her chin as if she’d only deigned to give Lila her
greatest wish.
Kyra wanted to hit her grandmother so hard
that she lost any memory of her daughter, which, sadly, was
probably exactly what Florence wanted too.
She leapt forward and grabbed the material
of Florence’s linen shirt. The woman screeched and flailed, but
Kyra held on. The sound of material ripping filled the house. “You
could’ve saved her! She needed her mom, and you just kicked her
down further! What kind of person are you? You’re horrible and ugly
and filthy and…” she petered out, her words turning into a garbled
mess. She began to shiver, began to see shadows building in the
corner of her vision. Her hold on Florence slackened.
Florence’s face looked stricken; she
stumbled away from Kyra’s grip and began to cry. “You’re crazy.
You’re crazy
. Get out of my house. Garlan, help me!”