Page 114 of Bombshells
“One second.” I slide out of his embrace and cross my bedroom—it’s only two steps—to take the shoebox of keepsakes out of the top drawer of my dresser. The only times I’ve opened it in Brooklyn have been to drop hairpins in there. I don’t look at the photos, because thinking about my mother still hurts.
But now I hop back in bed, and then grab my phone to use as a flashlight. I lift the lid and find a ticket to my first college hockey game. Mom was seated in the front row. And here’s the jeweled hairpin she left me on the windowsill just after she died. The others are in here, too.
Come to think of it, she hasn’t sent me one of those in a while. Maybe she thinks I’ve gone off course. Or maybe not. It’s possible she decided to let me handle things from here on out. I don’t know if that’s a good thing, or sad.
Best not to think about it right now.
I move the ticket aside. And—bam—right there on the top is a photo of my mother and me when I was seven years old, all dressed up to see the Nutcracker at Les Grands Ballets Canadiens in Montreal.
Tears burn my eyes immediately at the sight of her smile.
Anton makes a soft sound and takes the photo so he can see it more clearly. “You two. What a pair. So lovely.”
I swipe tears away from my eyes. “Sorry.”
“No, baby. I’m sorry. Should we do this another time?” He wraps an arm around me.
But there won’t be an easier moment for it. Grief takes its bite out of you on its own time. “No, it’s okay. There’s a funny picture of me in high school, too. You don’t want to miss it.” I hand him several photos, including one where I have a really odd asymmetrical haircut.
He lets out a quiet chuckle. “Well, it’s good to know that you’re capable of bad decisions like the rest of us. But it would take more than a weird haircut to dull your shine.”
Did I mention how much I like this man?
“Here she is frosting my birthday cake.” I hand him another photo. “And here she is making my Halloween costume. She said I’d regret this costume idea. And it was one of her easier premonitions.” I pass him the photo of Maman stitching me into a bulky green dinosaur costume.
“Who would have guessed that would be uncomfortable?” He kisses me on the temple. “What were her other predictions?”
Just as he asks the question, I flip to the next photograph. And it’s Maman, me, and Bryce all in a row in our Sunday best.
“Ah,” he says quietly. “I see.”
“Nobody’s predictions are right all the time,” I say quickly.
“Well, good,” he whispers. “Because I love you, Sylvie. You’re it for me. And I wouldn’t let a little thing like fate stand in the way.”
My heart beats faster. “You say the nicest things.”
“Nah, I’m really not that nice.” He kisses the side of my face, and then my neck.
“You liar.”
He chuckles, and then eases himself down under the covers. “Get some rest, sweetheart. You have to get better so I can ravish you again.”
That’s very motivational, and I decide that he has a point. But as Anton closes his eyes, dozing against the pillows, I look at each photo one more time as I gather them in a pile.
Before I put them back in the box, I pluck the letter out of the bottom and turn the envelope over in my hands. Maman had written it on her fine French stationery, before tucking it into a heavy envelope with a rounded flap.
And I can’t resist—I open it, just to see her script on the page. It still floors me that she took the time to write this letter some time during the last couple years of her life. How did she know? It will forever be a mystery to me.
I examine the pages, skimming the letter again. I’d only read it once before. But my memory of what’s there is fairly good. And I remind myself that I need to copy down her recipe for madeleines—on page three—someday soon, and make a batch myself.
I’d thought there were ten pages to this letter, but now I realize there were eight. I guess my memory isn’t perfect. And it’s on page eight that Maman had predicted my marriage. There’s no point in rereading that part now. But as I fold the pages in half to put them away, my eye snags on a word that I hadn’t seen before, and it makes me go completely still.
Caribbean.
Wait, what? I back up to the beginning of the paragraph and try to make sense of it.
There are times when I am not sure whether I have seen a thing in the haze of the future, or whether I have seen only what I hope to see. But there are a few things I am absolutely sure of: You will have a long and happy life, mon ange. You will know true love, as I have also known it. And you will spend your life with the lovely man with blue eyes like the Caribbean Sea.
