Page 134 of Secondhand Smoke
She blinked, and her parents suddenly looked different. Not a pair of controlling figures trying to hide her away and keep her a secret; they were her mother and father who loved her, and were starting to see her and what she really needed, not what they thought she did.
A heavy stone of emotion settled into her throat, and she cleared it down and blinked rapidly.
“Thank you. I love it.”
From then on, nothing they gave her was what she thought it would be: new bed set to replace the one she’d spent days wasting away in, an offer to pay for new wallpaper to replace the pink one she chose when she was fourteen and no longer fit her, a new denim jacket to replace the old one her mother had always said looked “too out of place” on her.
Every single thing was Nell. Not the Nell they had been clinging to, but the Nell she was now. Down to the new Walkman and AC/DC cassettes they got because they had found a single cassette she had borrowed from Barrett and thought she liked the band.
They were trying.
She felt like she had her parents back, and she was starting to get herself back too.
“There’s one more,” her dad said. He shot her mom a look, but she smiled and nodded.
Nell raised a brow. “There is?”
Whatever it was, it wasn’t under the tree.
Her dad got up and walked out of the room as her mom reached over and grasped her hand. “We weren’t sure if we should give it to you today and . . . Well, you’ll see.” She squeezed Nell’s hand.
Her dad walked in, and Nell’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open.
Unlike the other gifts, it hadn’t been wrapped up aside from a large green bow wrapped at the top.
Her heart started to pound in her chest, a fluttering starting in her stomach.
She recognized it: a beautiful wooden acoustic guitar, the same one she looked at every time she went to the music shop since the first time she went in there.
Nell opened her mouth, reaching out for it as her dad handed it over, a soft smile on his face at her reaction. Her words came out breathless. “How did you . . .”
It fit perfectly on her lap, her fingers running up and down the length of the strings to make a familiar but more resonant ring than Sandra had.
“It showed up on the porch this morning,” her dad said.
Nell paused, looking up at them in surprise. She almost asked what they meant, but they were way ahead of her.
“There’s a note at the top there.”
Nell looked closer at the large bow, only to see a small folded note hanging by a string hidden by the fabric. She opened it, reading over the short message.
To: Nell
Play whenever you can’t handle anything else. Trust me, it helps.
Merry Christmas.
No “from” listed because he knew she would know exactly who it came from.
Nell choked again on the unbearable emotions she’d had since she opened that journal.
She really thought she would never hear from him again, that he hated her for lying and betraying him.
It may not be a conversation or a lesson, or sleeping next to him, but it was enough.
Tears fell from her cheeks onto the body of the guitar.
Her mom was next to her, wrapping her arms around her from the side and pulling Nell into her body.
