I scanned every single picture like a drowning man looking for the shore.
Some desperate, stupid part of me thought maybe I’d just missed it. Maybe I was in the back of one of the group shots. Maybe somebody would be holding out a hand toward an empty spot where I was supposed to be standing.
But I wasn’t anywhere. I wasn’t a shadow. I wasn’t a blur at the edge of a frame.
I had not been invited. I had not been thought of. I had been erased.
I looked up. Aunt Marbel wasn’t looking at me. She was staring out the window at the marsh like she couldn’t stand to watch what this was doing to me.
“They sent you the wrong date on purpose,” she said, barely above a whisper. “I told them it was cruel. I told your mother it wasn’t right. I told Griffin he’d regret it one day.”
My throat was so tight I could barely swallow.
“You went,” I said. It wasn’t a question.
Her face crumbled. “I did. God forgive me, Blaze. I did.”
I didn’t yell. I didn’t throw the album across the room. I just turned to the very last page.
It was a photo of the whole family standing on the front steps of the beach cottage on Isle of Palms. Sun-kissed. Relaxed. Smiling like nothing in the world was missing.
I knew every board on those steps. I had paid to replace half of them.
“I just wanted to be there,” I said. My voice sounded like it belonged to somebody else. “I didn’t want anything from them. I just wanted to be there.”
“I know, honey,” she said, and her eyes were wet. “I know you did.”
I closed the album. I pushed it gently back across the table. I stood up and straightened my jacket.
“I need to hear it from them.”
“Blaze, please.” She reached for my arm. “Let it go. Don’t give them the chance to break you all over again.”
I pulled my arm back, as softly as I could.
“They already did.”
I walked out without the album. I didn’t need it. Every one of those pictures was already burned into the back of my eyes.
My name is Blaze. I was 30 years old that night. And as I backed out of my aunt’s driveway, with the sky going the color of ash over the marsh, I still had no idea that the beach cottage in that last photo was about to become the most important piece of paper in my life.
Sophia Rivers is an experienced News Content Editor with a sharp eye for detail and a passion for delivering accurate and engaging news stories. At TheArchivists, she specializes in curating, editing, and presenting news content that informs and resonates with a global audience.
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