It's been a while. I may have posted this before, but I'm really grasping with this one-post-a-day-thing. :-)
~ ~ ~
If Annaliese were alive, she’d be Mom’s age now. Maybe she’d still be living here, sleeping in that canopy bed.
Maybe she and her grandmother would plant flowers together. Play checkers. Laugh at TV shows. Count fireflies on a summer night. All the things Nana and I used to do.
I hear them now: Annaliese, saying, “Grandma, I love you the best.”
Mrs. Gibbons: “No, you don’t. You love your mother the best.”
Annaliese: “If my mother loved me she wouldn’t have sent me away.”
Mrs. Gibbons: “She only wants to keep you safe.”
Annaliese: “I don’t care. I love you best, more than anyone else.”
Mrs. Gibbons: “I think she might be sad if she knew you felt that way.”
Annaliese, slyly: “Then we’d better not tell her, right?”
But maybe Annaliese’s love for her grandmother won’t be enough. She’ll come home one day, call for her grandmother, and no one will answer. She’ll wander from room to room, searching, confused. She’ll reach the attic stairs and walk up them, one by one, still calling for the person she loves more than her own mother—
—only to discover a tipped chair.
A discarded slipper.
No comments:
Post a Comment