I glance down to my white-knuckled grip on the delicate blossom. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize—I guess I just don’t want to lose it,” I admit honestly.
“Holding it like that, you’ll crush it. Then losing it wouldn’t really matter now, would it? Here—” She steps right up to me, wipes her hands on the dish towel draped over her shoulder, and takes the daisy from my hand. “Right here is just fine. Over your heart. Won’t lose it there,” Dawn asserts, slipping the stem of the daisy into the small pocket on my shirt and something passes right through me. Her wounded eyes connect with mine and a familiarity, a kinship of the most painful sorts is strung from her to me like a chain, bonding me to this woman. It leaves me bewildered and curious. It’s like I’ve looked in the mirror but the eyes gazing back are green, not brown but that’s an irrelevant detail. The dominant trait in her eyes is the same as mine.
Loss.
“How do you know so much?” I inadvertently blurt out in a soft voice.
Dawn smiles warmly and pats me gently on my shoulder then turns her attention back to our breakfast. “It isn’t that I know much at all, honey. It’s that I know you.”
Her easy explanation has me confused. How could she possibly know me? I’ve only been to this island once and I was a little girl.
“How is that poss—”
“I know you. I used to be you.” she interrupts from where she sits in the chair directly across from me.
I make no effort to hide my confusion. Either she’s prematurely senile or I’ve got amnesia. Both possibilities seem equally implausible.
Dawn reaches to the buffet against the wall and picks up a small picture frame and hands it to me. The photo has yellowed quite a bit and has faded marginally. There are two water spots in the bottom corner. Water spots that come from tears.
There’s a boy standing on the beach holding his hands out, cupping various small things in his palms. His blond hair is messy in that way that young boys always seem to look. He’s smiling big, exposing his braces-covered teeth for the camera.
“He’s handsome,” I mumble admiring the picture of someone that I fear is no longer alive.
“That’s my boy, Timothy. Course, we called him Timmy his whole life. I bet he’d be about your age now.” Her eyes search mine for a moment as I’m left speechless. Painful realization coats the space between us leaving me bereft of words. “If he were still alive he’d be twenty-eight this June.” Her lips tilt up in a sullen little smile.
“I’ll be twenty-seven in August,” I reply in a small voice. Dawn smiles ruefully, her eyes crinkling at the edges.
“Like I said, I know you. I used to be just like you. I spotted it the moment I saw you walk into my motel.” She purses her lips and shakes her head regrettably. “Having gone through loss like that, you can kind of spot one of your kind even in a crowd. I lost my son when he was only twelve years old. I know what it’s like walking around holding on so tight to those memories because you think you may lose them.”
Burgeoning tears sting my nose, but I don’t fight them back. Not in Dawn’s company. Somehow, I know that this is the place and the time. I feel safe. I let my emotion unravel like a tightly wound ball of twine.
She plucks two tissues from the box on the buffet behind her and hands them to me while she goes on with her story. “What you don’t realize is that when you walk around holding on so tightly, you squeeze all the goodness from ‘em. Understand what I mean, honey?”
I shake my head no because it’s all I can manage and it’s the truth. I haven’t a clue what she means.
“Well, it’s difficult to explain but it’s like this. You can hold onto those memories, honey, but don’t hold too tight. No need for that. You hold them too tight you’ll crush ‘em, and then they get to be something ugly. Somethin’ miserable. They become something that hurts you ‘stead of something that helps you. What you don’t realize is that whether you hold onto ‘em or not, they’re still there with you. Right there in your heart. They’re a part of you. With every breath you take, those memories are alive and well and no one ‘cept God in heaven can take that from you.”
“How?” I croak.
“That’s the difficult part. I think we all have our own way of getting to that point. I can only speak to my journey.”