Page 47 of Fraud
I’d had big plans today.
Well, they were plans at least.
But, instead, thanks to my brother and his ever-faithful reminder of today, I was sitting in my empty motel room, drowning in memories.
“Why do you buy flowers for Mom all the time?” I asked as I paced next to my father with my hands firmly shoved deep in my pockets.
We’d been standing in this florist shop for what felt like an eternity.
He shrugged, his big shoulders rising higher than the top of my head. “I always have.”
“Yeah, but don’t you think she’s tired of it now? I mean, you’ve been doing it for, like, a million years. It’s not like it’s a surprise.”
He looked down at me with an amused expression.
Ever since I was little, I’d sworn, one day, I’d grow tall enough that I’d finally look my father in the eye. So far, in my sixteen years of life, it hadn’t happened. I was starting to believe it never would.
“How long have we been going to that ice cream shop? The one down the street?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. “Probably since I was little. Maybe even before Liam was born.”
He nodded. “Since you were two. Every Sunday since you were two. Are you tired of it? ’Cause we can stop.”
The chip I’d had on my shoulder since about the age of thirteen wanted to say yes. But I knew better.
That hole-in-the-wall ice cream shop was a tradition. It was the only time of the week when the four of us—my parents, my little brother, and me—would all get together and spend a few minutes as a family.
“Get her the yellow ones,” I finally said.
He simply nodded, a knowing smile appearing on his proud face. “Good boy.”
My father had brought her flowers every week until he finally succumbed to the disease that stole his memories and had to move into a nursing home for his own safety. Sometimes, I wondered how he could possibly remember those damn flowers week after week when there were days when he couldn’t find his way home or even tie his own shoes.
But he had.
Even after she’d been gone for twelve years, he always managed to find her.
My parents’ close friends had always looked up to them and the marriage they held so dear. Long after my mother had died of breast cancer, he never stopped loving her. He never moved on. They were meant to be—or at least, that was what everyone had said.
Everyone but me.
Because no one else had been around to see my father’s health slowly decline. No one else had heard him crying out for her when he woke up and realized, every night, that she was gone. There was only Liam and me to help pay the bills when he couldn’t because he’d spent their life savings on hospital bills and funeral processions.
Love had destroyed him.
It’d destroyed them both.
And, after picking up the pieces of my father’s shattered heart, I’d vowed that I’d never make the same mistake.
I’d never fall in love.
It was exactly the reminder I needed.
I’d been staring at the same blank screen for hours when a quiet knock jolted me out of my comatose state.
Wondering whom it could possibly be, I stomped toward the door, ready to ream the intruder. I’d purposely put the Do Not Disturb sign up, forgoing maid service today, so I could be alone in my silence.
“Did you not read the sign?” I yelled a split second before I saw her.
