Goodbye for now || n.h

Chapter 29

"I don't understand."

Jamie pulled off the headphones and I saw a frown on his face.

"I'll show you the song again when you're older. Then you'll understand everything." I assured him.

He was quiet for a while, just looking around the room. Then he turned back to me.

"Do you miss her?"

"All the time."

"I miss her too." He admitted. "I miss the voices she did when she read me bedtime stories. And I miss her chocolate chip cookies."

It was weird hearing Jamie talk about her mother, because I wasn't sure he remembered. I mean he was only five when she died. After a while kids forget, so I was actually surprised by his words.

"Do you think Taylor remembers mommy?" I asked him, and my heart broke a little when he shook his head.

"The picture of you and mommy we have by the TV... she says she doesn't know who that is." Jamie said. "She thinks grandma is her mommy because you always call her mum."

Oh my god

Dakota's biggest fear was that the kids would forget about her. Her only daughter doesn't know who the woman in the picture is. Maybe she's still too young to understand. Imagine being two years old and suddenly the woman who took care of you is gone. For Taylor, Dakota was only a temporary figure in her life. Someone she saw every day for two years but then that someone went away.

Jamie crawled down from the bed to have a look around in the room. I followed him closely behind to explain who all the people in the photos were. Mostly they were old pictures of her growing up, or pictures from school.

It stung in my heart when I saw the picture of us from our senior prom. She had her arms wrapped around my neck and I held onto her waist. We were kissing in the photo.

"That's mommy's friend."

I blinked away the tears I had in my eyes and looked at where he was pointing. On her desk there were a photo frame, with a picture of Dakota and Bella. The picture was pretty old, because Dakota had braces but was smiling anyway. It was in the middle of summer. The sun were shining on them and her hair was sun-bleached and her freckles more visible.

Then there was a knock on the door. I looked over my shoulder and saw Veronica peeking in.

"Santa is leaving if you want to say goodbye." She said with a smile, looking at Jamie.

Within seconds he was running down the stairs.

"It's weird being in here, isn't it?" She sighed and crossed her arms. "Sometimes I come inside, just to remember what it was having her home."

"Brings back a lot of memories." I mumbled and once again looked at the prom photo.

"She printed out all these pictures the summer after graduation." Veronica said and walked up to me. "She used to say she'd glue them to the wall one day."

"You don't happen to have a copy of this?" I dared to ask, and showed her the picture of Dakota and I from prom.

She shook her head.

"But you can have the original one."

***

It's been five years.

Taylor just turned seven and Jamie turns ten in a few months. Both Jamie and I try to remind Taylor about their mum, and she admitted she has a faint memory of her. But after all, she was only two and a half years old when Dakota passed away.