Stolen Secrets

Stolen Secrets- Chapter 19

~Jeff~

“Are you just going to stare at me?” Natalie asked looking up from her laptop. She pulled one of the earbuds from her ear and smirked at me. It was hard not to stare at her. Not only was I worried about her, but she was still wearing my sweatshirt. Still. It had been a couple of days since I had given it to her as a blanket. That had been Sunday, it was Thursday now.

“Just making sure you are okay,” I told her honestly.  She had had tears running down her cheeks for a while now, but I hadn’t said anything because she had been smiling slightly as well.

Natalie tilted her head as she considered telling me or not. “It’s just this song,” she admitted. “It was my mom’s favourite.”

“Which song?” I didn’t mean to pry, but I was curious.

“Here,” Natalie said surprising me by unplugging the earbuds from the laptop and then hitting the button to turn up the button.

Song 2, by Blue started playing from the small speakers of the laptop. I smiled at the song. Natalie closed her eyes and leaned her back onto the pillow.

“She used to play this song really loud and dance around to it as she cleaned or backed,” Natalie told me. “I always thought it was silly, but she loved it.”

Natalie’s hand crept up to her throat and then she lowered it again quickly.

“What’s that?” I asked her. “That thing you just did with your hand. You do it sometimes when you’re crying,” I told her.

Natalie opened her eyes and sat up a little. Her eyes narrowed as she processed my words.

“There was a ring, it had been my moms. I took it from the old house when she died and hung it on a chain around my neck. I lost it sometime when I was with Scary Man,” Natalie said her eyes focused downwards. Her fingers traced a small circle at the neck of the t-shirt where I assumed the ring would have been if she still had it.

“He took so much from you,” I commented rubbing Natalie’s knee with my thumb. Since Tuesday when Natalie had given me permission to help her, I had used all the opportunities I had to touch her because I knew that she would flinch away from me.

Natalie nodded, tears were still running down her cheeks. I reached brushed away the tears with my thumb and trailed it along to her ear so that I was cupping the side of her face with my hand.

Natalie opened her eyes and they met mine. Her soft brown eyes were shot with red.

“Every year during spring break, Mom would take a couple days off and we would go to Metrotown for a day and spend all our money, and then we would go and see a movie another day, and another day we would just sit at home and make cookies. Mom had always made time for me, but…I don’t know…spring break was our time. We had done it every year since I was like six.”

I didn’t say anything, I knew why this was bothering her. Tomorrow was our last day before the spring break. One more day and then two blissful weeks off, or at least that’s how I always thought of it.

“Dad would also take a couple of days off and he would always let me choose whatever it is I wanted. Most times I asked him to bring me out here with him and have him show me around. It was either that, or we would go visit my grandmother and cousins on Dad’s side in the Charlotte’s.

“I thought that even though Mom is gone, that we would still go to the Charlottes.” Natalie looked down at the bed. “But they’re both gone now.”

“We will find your dad Angel, just like I found you,” I promised her.

I took my hand from her cheek and shifted so I was sitting cross legged next to Natalie instead of at the opposite side of the bed.