by Matt Tims
Claire had remarried two years ago, but a single day had yet to pass where she didn’t think of Mike. Whether it be a slight smile when she remembered the way he would imitate the news anchors’ voices on the TV, or a painful cry alone in the bathroom when she thought about the afternoons in bed they’d spent cuddled together—talking for hours on end. Her new husband was a good man. He was great with Elizabeth and he treated her the right way, but he wasn’t Mike. There was only one Mike and he was gone. She’d lost him forever and despite her best efforts, she would never be able to move on from him.
“Sit,” Claire instructed her daughter.
Elizabeth took a seat at the kitchen table—dressed in her soccer uniform—before watching her mother leave the room. Her stepdad always gave them space on their birthdays. Sure, they would go out to dinner later, but he wouldn’t be around until the girls were ready to leave. He knew how special Mike still was to the both of them, and he didn’t want to take away from their tradition.
The teen moved her forearm under her nose and wiped away the snot that was dripping from her nostrils. She was badly losing the battle to control her emotions; and when she saw her mother re-emerge into the kitchen with a manila envelope in hand, Elizabeth lost control of herself.
“I-I-I can’t do it!” she barely managed to get out.
Claire slid a chair next to her daughter and took a seat, her puffy and red eyes a clear giveaway of what she’d just been up to. Despite her now calm demeanor, she’d lost control of her emotions the moment she’d retrieved the envelope. Her last letter was opened two months ago on her birthday. It was five pages of memories, moments she barely remembered and some she could still vividly see in her mind, and paragraph after paragraph explaining how special she was to him.
Claire read that letter every single week. Mike spent an entire page going into detail about all the things he recalled from high school. The clothes she wear to class, how shocked he was when she showed up in eleventh grade with black hair, and the regret he had from not asking her out when they were fifteen: it was all there. He was still kicking himself for not making a move on her all that time ago! They could’ve spent a lifetime together instead of only nine years, but those nine years felt like an eternity. She’d made each and every day an adventure in his eyes. No words would ever be able to describe how much he loved her.
She handed her daughter the envelope. Elizabeth reached out with a shaky hand and took her dad’s final writings. After a deep breath, she tore open the seal and pulled out a small bundle of notebook paper.
“No! No! No! No! Mom!!!”
Claire began to panic as well. The first page was blank. When Elizabeth tossed it aside to reveal the second page, it was also empty. Pages three and four followed suit as well. Finally, when they came across page five, something was different.
Elizabeth’s face lit up. “Oh my God!”
Claire shook her head with a smile. “Your father always had a flair for the dramatic.”
Taped to the fifth piece of paper was a USB flash drive. Elizabeth sprinted upstairs and quickly returned with her laptop in hand. She set it down on the kitchen table and hurriedly pushed the drive into the USB port before seeing a ‘removable disc’ menu pop up on the screen. The teen double clicked on ‘files’ and immediately turned to her mother.
“Mom! Mom!!!”
A tear slowly trickled down Claire’s cheek. There was an unnamed folder on top, and a video file titled ‘Happy 18th Birthday!’ below it. Elizabeth rushed to double clicked on the video.
Suddenly, they were taken back a decade. It was like the last ten years had never taken place. Mike sat alone on the sofa, staring into his phone.
Mike rolled his eyes with a smirk. “Isn’t it funny how your mother never wants to be in pictures because she doesn’t think she looks good enough; yet here I am, recording myself?”
Claire could immediately tell that this was filmed during the late stages of his treatments. He’d fallen and badly bruised the left side of his face near the end, and the marks were clearly visible in the video. This was probably two weeks before he passed away. He was bald, sickly-looking, and clearly hurting, and she loved this version of him more than any other man on the planet.
Elizabeth was crying with her watery blue eyes glued to the screen.
“Happy eighteenth birthday, Babygirl!”
The teen lost it. She hadn’t been called ‘Babygirl’ in ten years. Just hearing him say that sent a cavalcade of emotions pouring through her.
“Ten years…” Mike pondered to himself while glancing off to the side. “Hopefully you guys just got back from an awesome birthday dinner in your flying car.”
Claire let out a laugh.
He turned his focus back at the screen. “Lizzy…”
The teen melted down again. Every nickname that came out of her dad’s mouth was overwhelming. She just wanted to see him again!
“I hope your life is going great.” He opened his mouth to continue but quickly cut himself off. Something had obviously distracted him. “Hey, Claire! You wanna know what our daughter wrote for me yesterday?” he asked as he held up a piece of notebook paper for the camera before turning it over to show both sides covered in handwriting. “Lizzy wrote a story with a nonlinear narrative. A nonlinear narrative, Claire! She’s eight!”
The two girls both smiled at the computer screen.
“I swear, I’ve never met a more talented person in my life,” he went on. “Listen, I know I’m biased; but Lizzy, you’re so unbelievably special. Most kids can’t grow up to be anything they want, but you can, sweetheart. And you won’t realize this until you’re older, but you’re so lucky to have your mother. I really, really, really hope you two are still close. That you guys are always there to strengthen each other.”
Mike turned to the side and let out a deep, disturbing cough.
“Well, I’m pretty sure you could pin me now, Lizzy.”
Elizabeth struggled to smile as she thought back to those Saturday mornings she’d spent wrestling Dad on the family room floor while Mom refereed. “No, I couldn’t,” she tearfully disagreed.
“I know we sometimes didn’t see eye to eye on things,” he spoke.
The young girl shook her head back and forth while sniffling.
“I know how much you hate soccer,” he went on. “How it’s boring, and the field’s too big, and there isn’t enough scoring; but, Babygirl, low scoring is what makes it great. Just likes hockey…”
“Every goal matters,” Elizabeth finished her dad’s sentence along with him, smiling the entire time.
“And I know sometimes you just wanted to watch TV, or a movie, or whatever, but I would make you sit down and write before you could,” he said while glancing down at the paper in his hand once again. “Sometimes you would yell at me, and tell me how unfair it was, and how your friends got to watch as much television as they wanted, but your creativity is too special to waste. I’ve seen the way your mind works. When you were six, you wrote me a story three days before Easter about a vengeful bunny rabbit who attempts to put an end to the tradition of giving candy.”
Elizabeth curiously gazed at the screen with no recollection of this moment.
“‘Mr. Rabbit,’ as you called him,” Mike said with a smile. “Now, Mr. Rabbit went around town the night before Easter and stole all the Easter baskets from every house. He took them back to his burrow and decided the only real way to punish everyone, was to eat all the chocolate himself. That way it could never be recovered. But chocolate releases chemicals in the brain that make you happy, and after that first bar of chocolate, Mr. Rabbit was a changed bunny. He was suddenly cheerful and merry, and returned all the candy to the little boys and girls. Babygirl, you were six!!!”
Mike addressed his wife, “Claire, I know I don’t need to tell you this, but our girl is special. And if she ever doubts herself even for a second, you need to remind her of it.”
Claire wrapped her arms around Elizabe
th, her daughter’s tears pouring through her cotton shirt.
“I know you guys have lots of recordings and pictures that I took over the years, but I wanted to save some stuff,” he told them. “I don’t want to drag my memory out or make every year some somber experience. You girls need to move on with your lives in a positive way; but at the same time, I want you to remember the great times we had together, and to celebrate the life we lived. I know both of your lives are great and are going to get even better, so I completely understand if you don’t want to reflect on the past.”
“No, Daddy!” Elizabeth shouted as she sprang from her mom’s grasp and moved closer to the screen.
“The other folder on this flash drive is full of videos I took,” he revealed. “Every day I recorded something. Sometimes I recorded multiple things. It may have been just Lizzy, other times it was only Claire, and sometimes it was all three of us. There are over three thousand videos in that folder. Some of them are long and some are just a minute, but the first eight years of our lives together are documented. Lizzy, if you want, you can see what I saw. I got to watch you grow from an adorable six and a half pound baby, into this two-year-old who seemingly always had a chip on her shoulder, to a playful and fun five-year-old little angel, and finally into the amazingly creative and artistic eight-year-old I know today. You know, when I was in college, I decided I was going to be a bachelor for life. I was never getting married and there was absolutely no way I was having a kid. I can’t believe how much I changed. I literally can’t imagine not having both of you girls in my life. You two are the greatest things that ever happened to me.”
Elizabeth reached out and was now comforting her mother. Claire had tried to stay strong and be a rock for her daughter to lean on, but she couldn’t any longer. She was breaking down.
“Over the past month, I’ve scanned everything you’ve ever written and it’s all in that folder as well. You can look into the mind of a little genius,” he softly laughed. Mike looked down at his watch before his pale white face lit up with excitement. “One minute,” he stated before raising his index finger to the camera and setting his phone down, allowing it to record the white living room ceiling.
The girls separated from each other, staring at the screen curiously.
“Where he’d go?” Claire asked.
“Come back!” Elizabeth whined as she sniffled again.
Seconds later, they both heard footsteps. The screen flipped over and Mike carried his phone to the front door before walking outside, recording the concrete pathway as he went.
“What are you doing?” a voice off camera asked.
“No…” Claire smiled.
“I’m making a recording for a very special girl,” Mike answered.
“Who?” the voice chimed in again.
Elizabeth continued to gaze at the laptop screen, unsure of what she was listening to.
“Well, she just so happens to be the most talented, creative, special little girl I’ve ever met,” Mike answered.
The camera suddenly shifted to an eight-year-old Elizabeth, who was walking toward the front door with her backpack on.
Eighteen-year-old Elizabeth smiled.
“Hmm…” the young girl pretended to ponder the scenario as she made her way to the house, letting her father record her journey. “Is it…Mommy?”
“Nope, but good guess,” he answered. “Mommy definitely has all those qualities.”
Claire laughed as the tears began to flow again.
“Is it…Grandma?”
“Not Grandma,” he told his daughter. “Guess again.”
The young blonde turned to the camera with a smirk. “Is it…me?”
“It’s you, Babygirl!” Mike cheered.
The eight-year-old Elizabeth skipped into the house and tossed her schoolbag onto the couch.
“Are you going to write me a story today?” he asked.
The young girl huffed, “Do I have to?”
“Do it!” Elizabeth pleaded from the kitchen table while watching a decade old scene unfold.
“I’d like you to,” Mike told her. “Well, what do you want to do instead?”
“Paint your nails!” she excitedly replied.
“Paint my nails?” he questioned. “I don’t know, Babygirl, my nails are a little funky.” The chemotherapy not only affected his skin and hair, but his nails had turned a disgusting black and yellowish mix. It wasn’t something he particularly enjoyed seeing.
“I know!” the young girl reacted, still all smiles. “I’ll make ‘em pretty!”
Claire reached over and wrapped herself around her daughter’s right arm.
“I would love pretty nails,” he said. “How about this? You can paint my nails, but then you have to write me a story. Deal?”
“Deal!” she agreed with a big smile before scurrying upstairs to her room.
Mike turned the camera to his face as tears began to pour from his eyes. “I love the both of you, so, so, so much. You’ll never understand just how special the two of you are to me. Claire, you changed my life. Every inch of your body, every thought in that amazing mind, and every moment we shared together: it was all so perfect. Just…perfect. I’m so thankful I found you again.” He closed his eyes to regroup before looking back into the screen. “Babygirl, you have no idea how much of your mother I see in you, and that makes me so happy. Hey, thankfully, you didn’t get your dad’s ears,” he laughed before collecting himself again. “You’re smart, and talented, and beautiful, and truly unique. Your mother would always make fun of me for talking about her glow. Like, I was delusional or something. But I’m not! Mom has a glow. I could eat a bowl of pasta by myself, and then eat that same pasta later with her at the table, and it would taste ten times better with her there. And then you came along and it was the same way! Every meal I ate with the two of you tasted like chocolate ice cream! Just your presence makes everything better. I want you girls to remember how special you are. Neither of you deserve anything but the best. And one day…” he tried to compose himself while peering off to the side before turning back with a tearful smile. “One day…very, very, very far from now, we’re all going to be together again, and we’re going to sit down at a table—the three of us each with a bowl of pasta—and I’m going to soak in both of your glows. I love you two so much.”
The video ended.
“Noooooo! Daddy!!!” Elizabeth cried, reaching her hand out to touch the screen. It showed no time remaining in the recording. She turned to her mother who also had tears streaming down her face. “That’s it! He’s gone!”
Claire placed both her hands on the sides of Elizabeth’s face while gazing into her watery blue eyes. “I don’t know what the future holds for us. Maybe we’ll be neighbors or maybe you’ll end up on the other side of the world; but whatever happens, we’ll always have each other. Every day, every moment—I’m here for you. And someday when I get old and gray, I know you’ll be there for me too. And for the next eight years—every day—whether it be in person, on the phone, or over the internet; we’re going to watch a video Dad left for us together. Deal?”
Elizabeth nodded while wiping tears away with her fingers. She turned her attention to the folder on the screen and clicked the first video.
“Here we are…1…1:17 PM on a Monday. May 25th. D-Day plus two…”
Other Works & Contact Info:
amazon.com/author/matttims
https://twitter.com/TheMattTims
[email protected]
