“Selena, is that really you?” I rush out to catch his frail body. He’s aged twenty years though it has only been nine. “I can’t believe it’s you. I thought you were—” He brings a trembling hand to my face, the unspoken word hanging heavy between us.
“It’s me.” I tighten my grip, still trying to wrap my head around the fact that he’s alive. “I missed you so much. I thought I’d lost you forever,” my voice cracks, revealing only a fraction of the emotions running through me, and I hold him for several long moments before Justin places a hand at the small of my back.
Releasing Teddy, I take a step back but continue to hold his hand.
“Teddy, I want you to meet my, this is my…”
“Boyfriend, Justin Cunningham.”
My heart surges with a mix of pride and adoration.
“Nice to meet you,” Teddy says, shuffling toward the door. “Please, come inside.”
With my hand still in his, he leads us inside where he replaces the shotgun with a cane resting near the corner by the front door. Stepping over the threshold is like taking a step back in time. Everything is exactly how I remember it, except dustier and darker.
It’s as if time has stood still, waiting on me to return.
We follow Teddy into the kitchen, which is cluttered with empty food boxes and is in need of a deep cleaning. “You’ll have to excuse the mess. It’s hard to get around much less keep things tidy. I used to have someone come by and clean once a month but my medication went up and I couldn’t afford it anymore.”
Looking around at the mess that was once our home, a knot forms in the pit of my stomach. “You stay here all alone?”
He nods. “It hasn’t been easy but I get by.”
My heart breaks as he takes a seat at the table. His sunglasses shield his face but I can see scars beyond the lenses and my throat grows tight, too tight to speak. Sitting across from him, I rest my palm on top of his trembling hand. “Did they—did they do that to you?”
Slowly, Teddy removes the glasses, and I gasp when I see his eyes are missing completely, deep, cavernous scars now occupy the spaces where they once were. “Nothing hurt worse than losing both of you. Not even when they took my eyes.”
I try to keep my emotions at bay, swallowing hard around the thickness forming in my throat. “I’m so sorry, Teddy.”
“Don’t you dare be sorry. You have nothing to be sorry for. How did you escape him?”
Exhaling a long sigh, I glance up at Justin standing next to me. His hand moves to my shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze. The courage and strength he offers, even in silence, is empowering.
“It’s a long story,” I finally say.
“Well, I have nothing but time, darling.” He moves to stand up. “I’ll put on a pot of coffee.”
“No, let me. Please.”
He takes his seat once more while I get up and move around the island to put on a pot. “I don’t remember anything from that night. I just remember waking up in a hospital, blind, and the nurse telling me that you were gone and my wife was dead. I’ve never been in so much pain. Even to this day, it still hurts the same as the day I found out. I loved her so much,” he says, voice heavy with longing and pain.
Tears build in my eyes, threatening to fall. “I know you did.”
Teddy loved my mother very much. You could see it in the way he looked at her, cared for her, cared for me. He spoke the words and gave action to them, something so rare in this life and even someone as young as I am can appreciate a love like that.
“I kept all of her things, hoping someday you would come back.” Standing up, he uses his cane to feel around as he walks from the kitchen to the living room. Justin follows and a few moments later comes back holding a box, Teddy coming in right behind him.
Justin sets the box on the table and Teddy reaches out his hand. “Come, Selena.”
Walking over, I look inside, recognizing the notebooks right away. My heart floods with pain at seeing them, knowing they contain my mother’s words. “She would want you to have them.”
Tears fill my eyes as I pick one up. They are all different. Some more worn and tattered. Some plain, some with flowers or designs on them. I never thought I would hear my mother’s voice again but her words are written among these precious pages, the scrapings of her soul, and even though I won’t be able to talk back, I’ll still be able to hear her, to know her, to spend time with her once more.
“Thank you so much for keeping these.”
“I wish…I wish I had my sight. I would have read through them by now. God, how I long to hear her voice. To hold her just one more time.”
Dropping the notebook back in the box, I wrap my arms around his neck, pulling him in for a hug. “She loved you very much, Teddy.”
