CHAPTER 35– KATE
I remember that night – the night Frankie spent the night at Cassie’s house, the decision that is now one of my greatest regrets.
I continue to have the same recurring dream with the soft, but determined voice in my ear, beside my bed, telling me that she is sorry. In fact, it haunts me in my dreams regularly, as well as in my waking moments. I wonder what it means.
It reminds me that I need to go and check on Frankie. Looking over at the clock on the fireplace, I realize that I have overslept again. It is already after eleven in the morning. I’m surprised that Frankie hasn’t come in to wake me up yet. She is a late sleeper as well as I am, but even for her, eleven is a bit later than she normally sleeps in on the weekends.
I’m humming to myself as I walk down the hallway to her room. I’ve been humming to myself a lot lately. I had never realized this until a co-worker had mentioned this to me while I stepped out of the bathroom. I thought it was a strange observation on her part, but it also brought to my attention that I do hum quite often. I wonder what this means.
“Good morning Angel, it is time to wake up.” I said, pushing her door open, but not before lightly tapping on the door. I knew this annoyed her, knocking on the door without waiting for a response, she often said what was the point if you weren’t going to wait to be welcomed in.
I was smiling, but it quickly changed. “Frankie?” I called out into the empty room. Her room smelled of roses with a hint of a musty odor, probably because the bedroom window was wide open, with the Santa Ana winds blowing into her room the remains of what used to be our backyard lawn. Realizing that somewhere along the way I had neglected our yard and the once lavishly green lawn was now sparse with patches of brown and green grass cascaded throughout the dirt landscape.
The white sheer drapes violently whipped around her bed frame, as the warm breeze passionately violated the space. Confusion became a remembrance as I looked around the room. The scent of rose petals came from the dying red roses in the stagnant, pungent water that was almost completely void of any moisture left in the blue crystal vase that sat on the nightstand next to her bed.
I watched in horror as the thin, barely transparent pages of the Bible flipped from page to page, remaining open and then flipping the page over to the next and then back again, as it lay on her bed, untouched.
Taking in the peacefulness of the lavender color walls, that we had chosen together. The once yellow and white bedroom had become a teenager’s greatest distaste in design, creating a rift between mother and daughter, until I had agreed to compromise on her wish of painting the walls neon green, to the gentler color we had chosen and picked out together called Mystical Mauve. We painted the room together one weekend, creating a mural of new memories between us, making my heart swell.
