Year Three - The Reed Land, North Carolina
Now playing: Waiting Room - Phoebe Bridgers
I hadn’t opened the box in three years.
I sat on the floor of my childhood bedroom, the dust of the old farmhouse settling around me in the golden afternoon light. Downstairs, the faint hum of the television drifted, my grandfather watching a western, oblivious to the fact that I was unearthing the dead.
Inside the shoebox were the artifacts of a life that felt like a hallucination. The plastic room key from Miami. A set of wrist tape, stiff with age. A receipt for two coffees in Seattle.
And the Polaroids.
I shuffled through them, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. There were dozens of them. Us in rental cars. Us in airports. Us pretending not to be us.
Then, I found the one.
Edinburgh.
The white border was slightly yellowed now. But the image… the image was as sharp as the moment the shutter clicked.
Cal was propped up on one elbow, the heavy white hotel duvet tangled dangerously low around his waist. His hair was a mess, sticking up in every direction. The silver Scottish light was washing over him, turning his skin to marble.
But it was his face that ripped me open.
He wasn’t looking at the camera. He was looking at me.
His hazel eyes were soft, heavy with sleep and adoration. He had that small, secret smile playing on his lips, the one he never gave to the cameras. The one he saved for me.
I traced the edge of the photo with a trembling thumb. His voice echoed in the room, bouncing off the peeling wallpaper.
“We’d have a big porch, too. One we could sit out on every morning so I could kiss you on it. Our own little piece of heaven.”
I looked up from the photo, my eyes burning. I looked out the window.
Below, the massive wrap around porch of the farmhouse sat empty. The paint was chipping. The wood was graying. I was living in the house we built in our heads, taking care of the grandfather who tried his best, surrounded by the silence I thought I wanted.
But without him, it wasn’t peace. It was just a tomb.
“Do you think you want kids?” I had asked him that morning.
“I think so,” he had said. “I think I’d be a good dad.”
A sob threatened to tear out of my throat, but I swallowed it down, tasting bile. I looked back at the photo. At the boy who wanted to retire to the trees with me.
I had saved him. That’s what I told myself every single day. I had saved him from the ruin of my family name. I had saved him from the politics that would have buried him.
But looking at the photo, I didn’t feel like a savior. I felt like a thief.
I stared at it for a long time, memorizing the curve of his shoulder, the light in his eyes. Then, I placed it at the very bottom of the box, face down.
I put the lid back on and shoved it into the darkest corner of the closet, behind a stack of my grandfather’s old flannel shirts.
Stay dead, I told the memories, wiping my face with the back of my hand. Please, just stay dead.