It’s an absolute pleasure to fulfill a prompt for someone who is incredibly generous, makes me laugh until I cry, and listens when you need her. You are an amazing person, a wonderful mother, and a creative force. I’m so grateful to call you friend.
Jamie signed the last report with a flourish, and checked his watch.
“Shit!” He threw his pen off to the side and gathered up his papers, shoving them in a dossier.
He continued to swear long and loud in the confines of his office. Detective Chief Inspector was a lovely title but it came with a ton of paperwork. Paperwork that he got so deep into sometimes that he lost track of the hours.
He was supposed to meet Claire at the hospital thirty minutes ago. He stood up from his desk while tossing the folder into a drawer and slamming it shut. He frantically searched for his keys to lock his desk.
Her room was small and the bed was covered in a faded quilt. A quilt that Mam had made. I put cut flowers in a vase on the small bedside table. Claire didn’t snore. Bran slept next to her.
In the morning her window panes would be fogged with moisture that condensed and slid down to the sill. It was there her shells sat, lined up in a row, beautiful and foreign.
“Where are you going?” asked Willie one morning as Claire left the house, bonnet in hand.
“Flower-picking. I’ll find some color. Find some fresh, sweet smelling flowers and I’ll hang them from the rafters to dry. Once they’re dry we’ll have flowers all winter long,” she told him.
Winter. I heard it too. Claire had said “Winter” but I didn’t dare to hope.
And we picked the flowers together. The wild roses that Mam had tended close to the house would bloom in early summer. I told Claire as much and watched her face when I said it. Summer. That could be when Da and Claire’s wedding would be.
“In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of a defeat; but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress towards victory.”
– Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (via philosophybits)
Tori