She never said a word. Never confronted me. Just...documented.
My fingers tremble slightly as I turn to the next section. After I left for college when I was eighteen and he was twenty. After I stopped meetin’ him at the silo.
Four years of silence between us while I played the part of perfect college equestrian at Emory & Henry—good lighting, good posture, just enough ribbons to keep my mother’s social timeline humming along.
Four years.
Four missing years where I had no contact with him at all. It nearly killed me, but were in our we-can’t-do-this-anymore era and I was determined to…
To what, Savannah? Prove that you could live without him?
What a waste of time.
Anyway, it was during these missing years that the photos changed from candid shots to composed, intentional, and intimate portraits.
Intimate. I hate that word.
Legion is now in Mother's Drybone studio. Professional lighting catching the planes of his face and the stretch of his shoulders. The ink that started appearing when he was sixteen grows as I turn pages. The battle on his chest, the conquering of demons on his back go from being an image to being a composition.
Each photo reveals more than the last.
Shirt discarded in this one. Jeans riding low in the next. In some, there's nothing but shadow preserving his dignity.
She never photographed his dick, but she got his ass. Many times. All the photos are black and white. Artistic and beautiful.
And in every single one, his eyes hold the same hollow sadness.
Did she pay him? Is that why he did this? Was it money?
I've studied these pages for years and still don't know.
When I reach the last photo, I hold my breath. I always do.
None of the photos are dated, but this oneis. It's not her handwriting, either. It's his.
Six months before Eleanor died, she and Legion were in an Ashby truck together. They were on a road, it's summer. Not sure which highway, though I've searched them all over the past seven years, trying to figure it out.
The windows are down. Hair blowin’ all over the place. They're taking a couple's selfie as Legion drives across the sun-drenched badlands.
They are both smilin’. Mother looks... happy. Forty-eight years old and radiant beside him.
I pause.
I reflect.
I accept.
And then I close the book, resting my palm on its cover.
This book isn't motherly.
It isn't innocent.
It isn't okay.
It was never shared. Never monetized. Never digitized.
The one secret Eleanor Ashby never spun into gold was Legion Kane.
