Rescued

I walked downstairs, flicked on the lights, and surveyed my surroundings. My aunt and uncle treated the basement mostly as a place for storage, and it showed. Cardboard boxes lined much of the space against the walls, and my cousins toys were scattered everywhere. Keeping my eyes on the ground, I weaved my way around Hot Wheels and Legos to the back room. I wanted to see my dad’s face again.

I walked through the room’s door and flicked on the lights. It was even more crowded than the rest of the basement. The room was small and contained nothing but boxes of my dad’s things. An L-shaped path to the back right corner from where the door was hugging the left wall was the only thing that made the room somewhat navigable.

I took a deep breath and pulled the lid off the box closest to my feet.

Sitting on top of some binders were several drawings I had made as a child. I put the lid down, picked up the delicate stack of yellowing paper and began flipping through.

Each of them was a colored pencil drawing of three people—a mommy, a daddy, and a little girl—in various settings. Several were in front of a house, one was in a park, another was on a beach. One of them even had a dog, which was a wish I’d had as a kid that had never been fulfilled. They were all drawn by a happy little girl from a happy family.

As I stood there, flipping through some of my earliest art work, I began to shake. That little girl was gone. I was never going to feel the things I had felt when I was making those drawings ever again. The security and innocence I had felt in those days had been taken from me.

Tears formed in my eyes and beaded down my cheeks. I wiped them away with my sleeve and put the drawings back into their box so I could keep looking for pictures of my dad.

After sifting through several boxes I finally came to one with pictures in the back corner of the room. I shakily picked up a thick stack and began to flip through them.

The first few were pictures of my aunt and uncle, but then I saw it. My eyes fell on an image of a college-aged man wearing a mustard-colored button down shirt and tan chinos. His dark, curly hair sat on his head youthfully, and he was clean-shaven. It was my father smiling happily for the camera, though I could barely recognize his boyish face. The picture had been taken well before I was born.

My lips turned briefly up then down, and I looked around the room, waiting for tears to come. To my surprise, they didn’t. It was just like when I read his suicide letter. I felt like I should cry because that’s what people did, but when it came to my dad I just couldn’t.

After a while, I returned to the picture. There he was, just as alive as I was now. Just as young. Now he was gone, and worse, he had taken his own life. I thought of his letter again.

I just can’t, Lorrie.

I bit my lip hard, but still no tears came.

With a deep breath, I flipped to the next picture and felt a wave of nausea. It was a picture of my family not very different from the colored pencil drawings I had seen earlier. My parents had taken me to Lincoln Park in Chicago. Lake Michigan was in the background, and standing in front of it was my dad, a little older now and with shorter hair, his arm around my mom. Then there was me—standing not even up to my dad’s waist—with a giant stick of pink cotton candy and a toothy smile.

We all looked happy, but my parents would get divorced ten years later, and then everything else would happen.

Why? Why had Marco killed my mom? Why did all of this have to happen?

Tears finally came. First some large beads in my eyes, then one quiet sob followed another as I stood there feeling stupid for coming down to the basement and doing this to myself.

I wiped my eyes with my sleeve and looked at the picture again. My mom—her chestnut hair in a perfect nineties perm—looked a lot like I did now. Minus the perm, of course. I tried to imagine having a child in the next few years and couldn’t do it.

It was hard to picture my future at all.

A noise came from outside the room, and then I heard footsteps. I quickly rubbed my eyes, hoping to get rid of as much evidence of crying as possible, and held my breath.

It was Hunter. He stopped in the doorway and seemed to evaluate what was going on. We locked eyes. “There you are,” he said. “I looked all over the house.”

My vision began blurring again with fresh tears and he made his way through the room’s path until he was next to me. I held the photographs to my chest and buried my face in his hoodie. He put his arms around me and held me close.

We stood embraced together in silence. Being close to his warmth felt reassuring and I was glad that he was here with me.

After I’d finally composed myself, I pulled away and faced him. He waited patiently for me to speak.

I took a deep breath and wiped my eyes once more. “I came down here to look for pictures of my dad,” I said, my voice mostly steady.

Hunter motioned toward the pictures in my hand. “Did you find any?”

As I began to answer a sob seized my chest and choked the words away from my throat. My vision went blurry again. I held the picture of my family in the park for him to see.

He put a hand on my shoulder and I leaned into him, trying to stop my tears. Just when I thought I was calming down, a fresh wave of emotion overtook me. I tried hard to steady myself.

Hunter pulled me closer into his chest and held the hand containing my family picture up for a better view. “Wow,” he said. “Is that you?”

I nodded. “And my parents,” I added weakly. “Back when they were together. They got married young, then got divorced when I was a freshman in high school.”

Then they were taken from me for no reason at all. I whimpered softly and I buried my face into Hunter again.

He ran his hand through my hair and held me, saying nothing. After a few seconds I calmed down.

“Do you remember when this was taken?” he asked.

“I think so, but I’m not sure if I really remember it or just remember remembering it. We were at a park in Chicago, where I grew up. I guess it’s been so long that it seems like a story now.”

He squeezed my shoulder. “I think that makes sense.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Everything just feels not real right now. With all the stuff that’s happened the last couple weeks, I mean.”

“Yeah. Lorrie, I can’t tell you how sorry I am about the way—”

“It’s not that!” I interrupted, more loudly than I had meant to.

Hunter stopped cold as though I had hit him, but said nothing. I took a deep breath and gathered myself. The frustration that had been simmering since I got Marco’s letter was getting the better of me.

“I’m sorry. I just meant that it’s not just the stuff that’s happened between us that makes everything feel strange right now.”

He stayed silent and looked at me expectantly. My stomach churned as I thought about the letter Marco sent me. Having to talk about it made me so angry.

“I mean, the reason I left really wasn’t you,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady this time. “Something else happened.”

I looked at the picture of my parents while Hunter stayed quiet.

“I got a letter from my stepfather,” I said firmly. My heart thumped rapidly in my ears.

Hunter took a minute to process what I’d just said, then his eyes widened. “Wait, you mean . . .”

I nodded and then broke down, hugging his torso with both arms until I left another wet spot on his sweatshirt wet with my tears.