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Star

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Bailey and Reed were just as saddened by the fact that my father continued to blow off and ignore my mother. If he hadn\'t abandoned her, she might not have fallen into Uncle Howard\'s trap. It was definitely a horrible situation that had unfolded.

I both wanted to and didn\'t want to continue searching the box. I wanted to know what else my mother had to both tell and show me from the past and beyond the grave. That thought also led me to wonder just where my mother had been buried. I never did know anything about that.

I pushed that thought aside though as I reached into the box again. There were other letters, older ones that I could read later. There were pictures of many different people. some that looked much older than just when I was a baby. I saw a little girl and a boy that was maybe one or two years older than her. They definitely looked like siblings. They had similar hair and eye colors. They looked happy, and close.

Was that my mother as a child? Was that her brother? Did I have an uncle that wasn\'t part of this pack? So many thoughts went through my mind. I saw more photos of my mother, as she got older and time progressed.

There was an awkward photo that looked like she was maybe thirteen or so. There was a beautiful picture of her when she was maybe sixteen. A picture of her standing in front of a university sign which made her close to my age. There were pictures with people that were clearly her friends.

I could tell that my mother had had fun as a young woman. She was free and open and looked like she enjoyed life. I was happy that she had been able to do so much.

After those photos, there were several of her with a man. Always the same man. He had green hair that he probably told people that was dyed that color but I could tell that his eyebrows and even his eyelashes were green as well. Those were things that you just couldn\'t fake in my opinion.

He was a handsome man. He looked like he was in his mid twenties and loved to party. He dressed fun and casual but with a bit of a flair to it as well. There were some pictures where I noticed a greenish color tinting his skin, like his illusion magic was slipping just a little. Was he really green and hiding it or was it like a blush that came and went.

From what I saw it looked like that man loved the woman dearly. He seemed devoted and caring in all the pictures that they had taken together. So I had to wonder, what happened to cause him to tell her that he didn\'t love her? What had happened between them?

At least there was one thing I could appreciate already. I had learned what my father\'s name was and what he and my mother looked like. There would be no more blurry images in my dreams. I had seen pictures to fill in the blanks of my childish memories.

I was happy about that part at the very least. There was so much that I still wanted and needed to know but I was making progress.

I hadn\'t noticed the point when my cousins and Grandpa left the room. I was still lost in thought as I looked at everything that was in this treasure box for me to discover. I also hadn\'t noticed that someone had come in to bring us dinner.

I was only brought back to reality when Artem tapped my shoulder and whispered into my ear.

"Perhaps we should take a break and have some dinner together, my love." He was always using sweet words like that and it always made me feel so special and loved.

"OK." I didn\'t know what else to say so I was just preparing to get off of his lap and walk to the table.

Artem had other plans though. He lifted me into his arms and carried me to the table. Once he had sat me in my chair he sat next to me and uncovered the plates of food, sitting the silver dome like covers aside.

Tonight\'s dinner was a favorite among the ones I had tried. Honey garlic pork chops with a sweet sauce glazed over them. They had been paired with baby carrots and crispy pierogies. Those pierogies were amazing when dipped in the same sauce that was on the pork chops, perhaps that\'s why the person who brought the food had included a bowl of it. They had clearly learned what it was I liked.

While we ate I noticed that Artem seemed to want to say something but didn\'t know if he should. Was he worried that I wouldn\'t be able to handle it? Was he worried about me because I had cried so much earlier?

"Artem?" I called out to him.

"Yes honey?" He was doing it again but I didn\'t mind.

"I know you want to say something. You don\'t have to worry about me. I will be fine so please just say it." I saw the conflict that had been dancing in his eyes disappear at once.

"I can\'t hide anything from you anymore can I?" He was smiling at me. "It\'s nothing bad. It\'s just, I saw you looking at the photos of your mother and father and I thought you would want to see the pictures I had found in Howard the Coward\'s room."

"You like calling him that, don\'t you?" I giggled despite myself.

"It\'s still demeaning to him even if he is dead. I won\'t let his spirit rest for a second, if I have to reference that piece of shit I will demean him and hope that it makes him cry in hell. It will be the only form of water he gets while he\'s there." I laughed harder, he had put some thought into that one, hadn\'t he.

I thought about what he had said. Not about Uncle Howard, but about my mother and the pictures. I was working my way through the stack of photos I had very slowly, but I didn indeed want to look at the other ones. For the time being though, I wanted to enjoy my meal with my mate so it could wait until after.

When I got back to looking at the pictures I saw a change in them. My mother looked noticeably worried and nervous when with the man. And the man himself looked like he didn\'t want to be in the pictures anymore. Was this after he had changed his mind about my mother?

After the pictures with my father in them came pictures of my mother with me or just pictures of me. I knew they were of me because the first one had my mother holding me in her arms on the day I was born.

My mother looked so happy when she was looking into my newborn face. The look on her face was almost enough to make me cry.

There were only a few pictures in my mother\'s collection after my father was out of the picture so to speak. There was a progression of me over the course of a year or so but then they just stopped.

Some of the ones that Artem handed me looked like they had been removed from the collection that my mother had of me. The others looked like they were taken from someone that was watching my mother and me. They were far away and not always clear. It definitely didn\'t look like my mother knew that these photos were being taken of her.

Following the pictures of my mother and I together as a baby, Uncle Howard\'s collection included the yearly pictures he took of me as I grew up. I vaguely remember him coming to see me in the cellar when I was little and he would make me stand against the wall before he took pictures of me from several different angles. I had always hated it. Those annual pictures had continued until I got older. When I was around thirteen he would make me strip to take those pictures. I covered myself as best as I could in them but that didn\'t make me feel less gross.

I was just glad that Uncle Howard was dead and gone now. I never wanted to see him ever again in my entire life.

After looking at the contents of the box as thoroughly as I could, I was down to one last thing. My mother\'s journal. It was the little book that had been laying in the bottom of the box. I would want to read that for sure. I wanted to know what it was she had been thinking and feeling back then. But I was tired and it was late so I was leaving that part of discovery for tomorrow.

I laid in the bed with Artem after changing into a loose pair of pajamas. I snuggled with him close to me, his arms wrapped around my back and my face pressed against his chest while I drifted off to sleep. There was no place on earth I would ever feel safer than in Artem\'s arms.