Five Years Gone, She Walked Back In, So I Walked Out novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: What Was Behind the Frame

Lorna walks into Stevie's bedroom with a tray, the photo album falls, and an old engagement photo slides out from behind Stevie's wedding picture; Poppy hands Lorna a drawing and Lorna says her middle name.

Sawyer's side of the bed was cold when I woke up.

It was cold downstairs too. His truck was gone from the drive, and the coffee maker was empty.

He had left for the boatyard before six without waking me.

I stood in the kitchen and told myself that was a normal thing for a man to do.

Then I took Poppy back upstairs to get her dressed for school.

I was braiding her hair when somebody knocked on our bedroom door.

"Stevie? It's Lorna. Can I come in? I brought coffee."

Poppy looked at me in the mirror.

I could have said no. I almost did.

But I had been raised not to be rude in a doorway.

My mother had been dead nine years, and I still heard her.

"Come in," I said.

Lorna came in with a tray.

She had done her hair and put on a plain blue sweater.

She carried two mugs and a small plate of toast cut into triangles.

"I didn't know how you take it," she said. "So I put the milk on the side."

"Thank you."

"And I cut Poppy's toast the way kids like it. I hope that's all right."

She said it with such care that I felt ashamed of the banner.

Then my mother-in-law walked in behind her without knocking.

She carried a battered shoebox against her chest.

"I thought Lorna might like to see the old family photographs," she said. "She's missed so much."

"It's seven-thirty," I said. "I have to take Poppy to school."

"It won't take a minute."

She crossed the room to the nightstand and looked at the empty spot where our wedding picture used to stand.

"Where is it?"

"Put away."

"Hm." She pulled open the bottom drawer, and I stepped forward too late.

She took out the frame, face down, from under my sweaters.

"You hid your own wedding picture?" she said. "That's a strange thing to do."

"Give it back."

"Let me just look."

She turned it over, and the cardboard back came loose in her hand.

Something small slid out from behind the glass and dropped onto the floor.

It was a photograph.

It had been cut down to fit the frame exactly.

Somebody had pressed it flat behind my wedding picture, where I would never see it.

It showed a younger Sawyer with his arm around a laughing dark-haired woman.

She held up her left hand for the camera, and a ring shone on it.

The shoebox hit the floor.

Photographs went everywhere, across the rug and under the bed and in a fan against Poppy's sneakers.

For one second nobody moved.

"Oh," Lorna said.

She knelt and picked up the engagement picture with two fingers.

"He kept this," she said. "All this time."

I looked at the small square of paper in her hands.

I had dusted that frame every Saturday for almost five years.

Behind my smile, behind my husband's hand on my back, he had been keeping her.

"Sawyer put it there," I said. It was not a question.

"I'm sure he forgot," Lorna said gently. "Men do that. I'm sure it means nothing."

She turned to my mother-in-law as she said it.

My mother-in-law looked at me with a face that was almost kind.

"It means he never let go of what mattered," she said. "Some things do come back, Stevie."

My throat was tight.

I could not tell her to leave my room, because I could not make my mouth work.

Poppy, who had been quiet through all of it, climbed down from the bed.

She had been drawing at the little table by the window.

She picked up her paper and carried it across the rug.

"Look," she said to Lorna. "I made it at school."

It was a lake with a yellow boat on it, and three stick people holding hands.

Lorna took the drawing, and the whole of her face went soft.

"That's beautiful, Poppy Jane," she said.

I did not move.

Nobody outside our family knew her middle name.

It was not on her school forms, and it was not in the town newspaper's birth notice.

We had only used it at home, at bedtime, in a whisper.

"Who told you that?" I asked.

Lorna lifted her head.

"Told me what?"

"Her middle name."

For a heartbeat her green eyes went wide and bright.

Then she smiled and said, "Sawyer mentioned it last night, I think. Is it a secret?"

I looked at the floor, where a hundred photographs of the Rutledge family lay face up.

I could not remember Sawyer ever saying it aloud to anyone but me.

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend