The room seemed eerily quiet as Holly held the bracelet in her open palm and the morning light, leaking through the windows, illuminated the dust particles around the charms, giving them a slight luminescence.
‘Oh my goodness,’ she exclaimed to Carole, ‘a charm bracelet.’
‘It’s just like yours.’
Holly inspected the piece of jewellery, running her gaze over the individual charms. She noted a horseshoe, a baby carriage, a heart-shaped key, a building of some kind, a carousel … there were so many. Yes, it was indeed just like her own bracelet, but with many more charms.
‘So many of them,’ she whispered almost to herself. Then she looked at Carole. ‘Obviously it was left in the jacket by accident. Someone is missing it.’
Carole turned back to the boxes. ‘Well, I’m sure we can send it back. Where’s the docket?’ She duly picked up the UPS delivery documentation and read through it. ‘No name or address that I can see, just the UPS branch it was shipped from. I’m sure they’ll have some record of it.’ She frowned. ‘And according to this it’s a straight donation – no commission required.’
Which meant that the sender of these clothes intended that their percentage of the proceeds earned on any sales should go directly to charity. While this wasn’t unusual in the business, it was becoming rarer and rarer due to the downturn in the economy.
Holly nodded absently, her eyes not leaving the bracelet. ‘But why on earth would you put a bracelet in that little pocket in the first place? You’d think the owner would have missed it and remembered that they’d put it there. I know I rarely leave the house without mine.’
As she took in the variety of charms, she knew that this bracelet had to be of great value and importance – to the owner, or indeed to anyone who had chosen the charms and perhaps given them as a gift, helping the owner build up so many significant memories. It was so full that Holly could tell that whoever owned this bracelet had reallylived. Her spine tingled with anticipation as she started imagining the stories that accompanied each trinket.
She instinctively glanced at her own bracelet, sitting prettily on her wrist, and ran her fingers over the individual charms. It was her talisman and each charm was a special reminder of the most important times in her life. She’d had it for what … goodness, it was going on eighteen years now. Where did the time go?
Holly gazed down at the charms. There might be many now, yet once upon a time there had been only one …
3
Queens, NY, 1994
Holly lookeddown at the frumpy black dress her mom had bought her for the funeral.
She felt tears well up and she pulled the skirt of the dress to her face, hastily wiping it. She was broken-hearted, miserable, and she didn’t care if her appearance justified it. Besides, the service was over, they’d returned from the cemetery ages ago and no one had to see her. She just had to try and get through the endless stream of people that flowed in and out of her house, commiserating with her and her mother over her father.
Dad … She would never see her beloved dad’s face again. It was like a nightmare, a terrible dream Holly wished she could wake up from. She curled up in the foetal position on her bed, and lay there for a very long time, feeling terribly alone. Why did it have to be him who’d died? Why couldn’t it have been - ? The thought came unbidden, and Holly immediately felt guilty. They might be fighting a lot lately, but of course she wouldn’t wish her mother, Eileen, dead. She just wished this horrible day, this horribletime, could be over.
Wiping her tearstained face on the pillow, she focused her gaze on the window in front of her. Sunlight streamed into her bedroom, and she watched beams of light dance across the ceiling above her bed. She felt angry that the sun chose to show its face on such a day. It should be overcast, rainy, gloomy. It would be more appropriate if the weather matched her mood, appreciated what was happening in her life.
Holly sat up at last and swung her feet over the side of her bed, finding her footing and walking to the window. She cast her eyes across the rear lawn of her family’s home. The tiny patch of grass was packed with mourners, and in the midst of all of it, she spotted her mother. Her heart softened a little as she saw the misery that was etched in every line of her mother’s face. There was no denying that this was hard on Eileen too. Even when they had realised it might be a possibility for some time. With the cancer and all.
She knew that she should probably go down there and support her mom. If anything, she should go and give a hand to Sarah, a neighbour who had volunteered to help out in the kitchen today, and organize the crazy amount of food that people had brought. Casseroles and vegetable plates and baked goods … Holly had never understood why people thought that funerals or memorials were a time to eat; she had never been less hungry in her whole life.
She was about to step away from the window and retreat back to her bed when her mother looked up towards her bedroom. Their eyes locked and a weak smile touched the corners of Eileen’s lips and she raised her hand slightly, as if encouraging Holly to come down and join the living. Holly didn’t understand how that one simple gesture allowed for so much pressure to build in her chest. She felt as if a vice grip had tightened around her heart. She knew she would have to face all those people, but she really didn’t want to. This sadness, this funeral, was bad enough, not to mention having to wonder about the private thoughts of the people around her.
Eventually, Holly left her room and walked down the hallway that led to the stairs descending into the entry hall of their tiny house. She was well aware that her footsteps echoed on the bare wooden floors, and that it would be easy for anyone to tell that she was up and about. There would probably be people down there waiting for her, all wanting to talk and hug her and tell her how much Seamus had loved her.
Seamus her dad. A man too young, too lively, and too full of energy and ability to be lying in a coffin under six feet of earth. But it was true. She reached up and pinched the bridge of her nose as if this effort would push the tears to the back of her eyes, but it didn’t. Two large drops of water spilled forth. She wiped them on her sleeve just as Sarah walked into the room.
‘Oh Holly, I thought I heard you coming down.’
Sarah spotted the teardrops on Holly’s face and her heart melted at the sight of such suffering.
‘Oh honey, come here, come here,’ she cooed as she encircled Holly in her arms. ‘There, there, don’t cry. I know it hurts, I know it hurts terribly. We are all going to miss him.’
Holly nodded sorrowfully as she rested her head on Sarah’s shoulder. ‘Come on now. Let’s go and get something to eat. You must be hungry.’Food. Sarah’s answer to everything. Holly smiled in spite of herself and shook her head. ‘I’m not really hungry.’
‘Of course you are,’ Sarah insisted. ‘I haven’t seen you eat all day. Oh, and I almost forgot, there is a package for you on the counter.’
Holly looked up. ‘A package?’
She had been getting the mail ahead of her mother, so as to weed through the condolence cards. It was fascinating to Holly the types of cards that came in.Wishing You Well, Sending Prayers …they were so stupid, and she could see why they upset her mother, but they just made Holly angry. She wanted to get a card that told the truth:Life Sucks, It's Not Fair, or I Have No Idea What You Are Going Through But I Am Glad I'm Not You.
Sarah shrugged and led the way through the hallway to the kitchen that ran parallel to the backyard. ‘Yes. It was delivered just a little while ago.’
