computer, singing along softly to the song on the radio—an oldie, one that Dad would approve of, one that I had heard through the speakers of the truck long before I was the one driving it. If my memory served correctly, I’d even heard it while sitting between two people—a man who was just as tall as he needed to be and a red-headed beauty with legs that were too long to be useful.
They’d made an odd couple. I pulled a heavy cardboard box out from under my bed to confirm this, pulling out frame after frame of old photos. My mother was a full head taller than Dad, regal, angelic even. She looked like a dancer even in jeans and work boots and a plaid shirt, hoisting me up above her in the middle of the cornfield. I was giggling, her little twin, and it was Dad who was behind the lens of the camera, probably awestruck that this was his wife and child and life and farm and could someone please pinch him and wake him up.
And yet when he did wake up, was it a relief? Was it almost a good thing to finally have his exotic woman fly off and leave him and his daughter in peace? She never belonged here. She let Dad slip his arm around her narrow waist and smiled for the camera in another portrait someone else had shot, but was she really happy?
She couldn’t have been. She’d left her family to try and make herself happy. Was she happy now?
Once my email was up and running, I hesitated, my fingers hovering above the keyboard. Was this really what I should do? I didn’t want to disappoint Dad, but he’d been the one who gave me the contact information. Maybe he wanted me to contact her. But what would I even say? What did I want to say?
Almost of their own accord, my fingers started typing.
“This is your daughter, Rachel Dare,” the email began, “because I’m not sure if you still remember me. It’s been ten years, and I still remember you. Dad still remembers you, still loves you, but I’m not sure about me. You left us, and it really destroyed him. I'm not sure why he still loves you. Did you find what you were looking for in Las Vegas? Did chasing your dream make your happy? Did you catch it? I don’t know why I’m writing this, what I hope to get out of it, but I want you to remember us like we remember you. Maybe I even want to hurt you.”
I pushed my face into the palms of my hands and suddenly, savagely hit the send button. There. It was done. That message would float around in cyberspace until it found a home in the inbox of this email address. Maybe it wouldn’t even belong to my mother anymore. Maybe she’d shut it down years and years ago. There was no way of knowing without waiting for an answer.
I thought I’d feel lighter after sending the email, but the dread weighed me down even more. I put that heavy piece of paper away in the cardboard box along with all of those heavy, heavy frames, eager to just forget about all of it beneath my bed, forget that I had a mother, even, if that was possible. Yes, that would be preferable, to believe that it was just Dad and me.
Dad and me and the redheaded ghost that plagued us both with existential hauntings.
At least Dad was spared from the worry of Sebastian Clementine. That was my own private worry, my painful secret. What had gotten into me with Sebastian? My heart pounded thinking about him even now, considering his hands on me, his mouth on mine.
What would I have to do to exorcise that ghost?
Forgetting him was impossible, I found, over the next few days, working on the farm, making deliveries, cooking and cleaning the house, doing laundry. He was at my elbow the entire time, and my mother was at my other shoulder, hovering there, weightless and heavy all the same. It was even worse that my inbox remained empty, but I tried not to think about it too much.
It was a Friday, and I was just pulling into the driveway, excited that it was still early in the afternoon to enjoy the rest of the day without being on the road, when everything came to an
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Unknown