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CHAPTER 33
Cheyenne
Icouldn’t stop looking at the picture Colleen emailed me. It was taken on a beach. My mom and the man who might be my father were standing beside a house on a beach with water in the background. His arms were wrapped around her waist and it looked like he was whispering something in her ear and she was laughing at whatever he’d said.
I’d been staring at the photo for the past couple of hours and I didn’t know who I’d studied more, the man who might be my father or my mother. It might be my mom. I knew that we looked alike, everyone told me and I saw the resemblance in pictures. But this was the first picture that I would have actually mistaken for me.
If someone had just shown it to me, I would have tried to remember when I’d been to the beach and who the man was in it and when I’d owned a red bikini.
“Are you okay?” Cash squeezed my knee. He’d had his hand there in silent support the entire drive from Firefly.
“Yeah, I just…I really do look like her.”
“You really do,” Cash agreed.
“Do you remember her?” I’d never asked Cash that before. The subject of my mom had been a strange one for me. It seemed like everyone knew Sabrina Comfort and yet no one actually did.
At times it felt like the more people told me about her, the less I knew her. A lot of people in town told me the same things, she was wild, a free spirit, full of life, a hippie.
Hank probably knew her the best, but he barely spoke to me. Billy and I were close, but whenever I brought her up he seemed sad, so I tried not to ask too many questions. I was grateful for the pictures that Cash’s mom gave me, but the two times I asked about her, she’d gotten teary-eyed so I dropped it.
“A little bit. I remember her singing in the kitchen, and sitting on the porch with Hank. I remember that she loved the beach. She loved being barefoot.”
“She loved being barefoot?” That was the first I’d heard of that.
“And she always smelled like flowers.”
Maybe that was why I loved flowers so much. Because subconsciously they reminded me of her.
Through my study of psychology, I’d learned that losing my mom and then having to go live with complete strangers had most likely caused my memory loss. But I’d also learned that those memories weren’t gone forever and they could be unlocked. I’d hoped after living in Firefly for close to a year that I would have unlocked more than I had, but I guess I couldn’t rush things.
“People were drawn to her. I remember that. When she walked into a room, everyone noticed. My mom always said that she was sprinkled with fairy dust. That she was magic. I think she might’ve been and that’s where you got it from.” The truck slowed and we pulled to a stop. “We’re here,” Cash announced.
I looked up and saw that we were parked in front of a small beachfront bungalow. It looked just like the house in the picture. It was white with blue shutters and had steps leading up to a front porch with a swing. It looked small but well maintained.
This was the third house that I’d driven up to and wondered if my father was inside and this time it felt different. This time it felt real.
There was movement inside and I saw the outline of a person.
“Do you know what you’re going to say to him?”
“No. I don’t.”
I’d had a plan of what I was going to say to Wayne, but with Oscar, I had no idea.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Cash asked.
I nodded and bent down to get my purse. By the time I straightened Cash was out of the car and coming around to let me out.
The salty ocean breeze filled my nostrils as I took a deep breath and walked up the front porch steps. When we got to the front door I heard a dog bark inside. It was muffled because I could barely hear anything over the pounding of my heart.
“Mona, hush.” A man’s voice came from inside.
I lifted my arm and knocked. I had no clue if it was a loud knock or a quiet one because all I could hear was the whooshing sounds of my heart beating.
“Mona, stay.” The man instructed before opening the door.
He definitely resembled the man in the photo, he just looked a little thinner and bald.
