Page 103 of Our Hearts Knew Better

“I don’t need help with this one,” I breathe out, almost mesmerized, shaking my head at the bottle as I take a sniff.

Am I imagining it? This smell? Perfumes aren’t supposed to last this long.

But no…my mom’s smell is inside my nose, and my eyes sting over seeing her in my mind, a hazy flash of her picking me up and swinging me in her arms, then running around the yard with me. . .

“She wore that as long as I knew her. Wouldn’t touch anything else.”

I close my eyes at the love in my father’s voice, then blink them open with a big breath as I sit the bottle on the table. “That was her signature.”

He gives me another smile and I release one corner of my mouth as it lifts, with still some pinch.

We continue through the box, him letting me pull things out, then telling me stories behind the ones I question. There arelotions. Her hairbrush. More figurines. So many recipes. I voice my plans to bind them all into a book, and I agree to make him a copy when he asks.

There are ticket stubs. Napkins and coasters from different places. Her timestamps. Dates with Dad.

More pictures and paintings. Smaller ones than those still on the walls. Dad tells me how they looked in Mom’s eyes, what she said they meant to her. And my heart swells at the same time it yearns for her. It’s like she’s really here. Like I’m getting to talk to her again, to finally hear the stories I never got to.

There are clothes, some of her sundresses that look like they’d fit me now.

“You could try them on,” Dad suggests, reading my thoughts in my again mesmerized stare and trailing fingers along their fabrics.

Another gasp parts my trembling lips when I reach the bottom and pull out a baby name book.

“Ah, I got that for her but she didn’t need it. She said she’d look into your eyes when you were born and she’d know.”

I swallow hard at the returning sting to my lids, almost asking why she kept the book then, but this box is proof she kept everything she could.

“Summer,” my dad muses, gripping and shifting his hand on the glass I’d taken a break to refill for him, his stare on the box, glazed to a memory. “She said your eyes were so bright and alive. You were warm. Delicate.” His voice cracks off, and when I blink, a tear rolls down as I listen to him inhale deep to collect himself. “Full of light. She said she’d make sure you were never put out.”

He looks back up at me now with regret and apologies swirling in his welling stare. My throat squeezes at any words I’d be able to find and I just nod my head.

He swallows his emotions with a drink, then releases a laugh to continue. “She knew you’d be outgoing. And upbeat. A go-getter.”

I smile and wipe the residue of that rogue tear off my cheek, thinking how I have carried those traits inside me.

“Summer’s also humid and dry,” I note for what I carry inside me now.

The glass scrapes against the table as Dad grips it again. “I turned you into winter.”

I laugh with no humor at the familiar comment.

Summer with a winter soul,Clarissa teased me once.

“You didn’t do that,” I say low, my emphasis small, my sight blurred on my hand where it rests on one of my mom’s dresses.

“That boy—”

“Stop,” I say again, shutting down the defensive edge in his tone, that’s not edging toward thegood man, but we’re not talking about either. My father’s one to talk, so he can’t talk about this.

And now we’re back to what hetriedto turn me into, his hollow place in my heart he’s slowly been filling while I’ve been sitting here reopening.

“You hurt me,” I tell him, my voice stronger than I would’ve thought it’d be. “Parts of me never felt safe with you.” My hands slide into my lap in a kind of helpless way. “And I don’t know if I’m able to try to feel safe with you now.”

I don’t know if it’s just the mental state I’m in right now—no, Summer. Give this man his brownie points.

“I know,” he says, nodding, accepting them, his soft tone tightening me at the same time I lean into it. “I know what I’ve done and who I’ve been, and I’m sorry I ever made you feel that way. I’m your dad. You should always feel nothing but safe with me.”

Those words are staggered air into my lungs, and I don’t move back when he leans more toward me too.

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