Page 6 of Presley's Christmas Catch
“It’s not that, Shan,” I say out loud. My voice cracks. I swipea tissue from the nightstand next to my bed. “Once I open this, that’s it. There’s nothing more.” And she’s gone. Forever. As long as the stuff in this box stays there, I still have things about Aunt Shannon to discover. Once I open it, they’re just memories, like everything else I have left of her.
I stare down at the box, telling myself I’m gonna do it. I’m going to open the box.
Aunt Shannon had ALS, and it took her from us when she was only forty-eight. When I was younger, she always felt so much older than me, but now that I’m almost thirty, forty-eight feels a lot younger, just around the corner. The day after she got the diagnosis, she started putting stuff together in these little storage containers for everyone close to her: Mom, Dad, me, and her boyfriend, Thomas. Mom had snort-laughed when she opened hers the day after the funeral and found a pile of sticky notes with furniture and clothing items listed that Aunt Shannon wanted her to have but was still using. When I couldn’t look in mine right away, I told Mom to open it so she could gather up the stuff Aunt Shannon wanted me to have: the LA Rays hoodie I’d given her for Christmas the year I got the training job with the Rays and a few items of jewelry. The hoodie is in my closet. I shoved the jewelry into the box and closed the lid back up. Thomas asked Mom to do it for him too. He couldn’t bear to go through her stuff, to see any of it. It was hard to lose Aunt Shannon so quickly. It was also hard to see how much her death shattered the man who loved her.
Now I put my hand on the lid and rest it there. Then I laugh. “I’m acting like your ashes are in here.” I lift the lid without further ado. Like I’m pulling off Kinesio tape quickly from an athlete because it’s funny to see those big guys flinch at such a little thing.
I set aside the tangled jewelry I put in there a year ago and sift through the box. There’s a small notebook with a floral cover, full of Aunt Shannon’s handwriting—they look like quotes. I flip absently through the pages, knowing if I stop onany one that I won’t make it through looking at anything else in this box. There’s a thick envelope with my name on the outside. The flap isn’t sealed shut, and inside is a stack of folded papers.
The first one is labeled,Open on your 30thbirthday. The others are similar:When you meet “The One,” When you get married, When you have your first baby, On your fortieth birthday, and one that nearly undoes me,When your mom dies.
I shuffleWhen you meet “The One”to the front of the pile, indulging in the warmth swirling in my chest in hope that maybe it’s happened. Brock and I are just texting. I have a crush, yes, one that’s growing day by day as we text. Maybe it could turn into something?
I stuff them all back in their envelope and set them aside. There are a few trinkets she collected from trips with me. One is a keychain with “Pumas” written in vintage script from when she came to Houston to see the Rays play them at Christmas a couple years ago. She crashed at my hotel with me, and it’s a memory I still treasure since she died a year later. There’s a picture in a frame of us at Disney World right after I graduated from high school. Aunt Shannon took me to celebrate my last moments of freedom, she called them, before I went to college and started the grueling undergrad program for my path to PT school.
My phone dings, and I welcome the interruption. Opening the box is as heavy as I suspected it would be, even if the memories all warm me. Even if I’m grateful that Aunt Shannon took the time to put all this together to help me remember her. To help me remember the good life we had together, as short as it was.
Brock:I’m seeing Lyra’s first betrayal with new eyes. Hear me out. What if the big reveal in the last book is her identity …
Brock:The Obsidian Queen
I snort. Lyra would never. I return the items I’ve left out onthe bed to the box and put the lid back on to sort through more later. For now I need a break.
Presley:No other reason a woman would have that much power except to take over the world.
Brock:No, no, no.
Brock:#girlpower and all that.
Brock:Just saying it would be the biggest twist.
Presley:Pretty much everyone agrees that Seren Moonvale is the Obsidian Queen.
Brock:Too easy.
Presley:Simplest answer is usually the right one.
Brock:She’s literally cursed from the dark magic of the Obsidian Kingdom.
Presley:Or so she says…
Brock:
Presley:Lyra has had to do some bad things, yes. But she would never, EVER kill Kael’s brother. That’s unforgiveable. Kael and Lyra 4evah.
Brock responds with a GIF of a woman snort laughing and almost spitting out her drink, and I grin at the thought that I might have made him react like that.
Brock:Maybe The Obsidian Queen is misunderstood. Maybe there’s something else going on here.
Presley:If only there was a sixteenth book.
He sends a link to a new article I haven’t seen yet. An anonymous source is claiming that they have a friend who was an editor on the rumored sixteenth book who can’t talk about it, but the book is definitely coming out this year.
Presley:Seems sketchy. Friend of a friend?
Brock:Playing the heartstrings of poor, devoted fans. If it’s legit, the leak was planned. I guarantee it.
Presley:
