Chapter Twenty-Nine
Mom is in the kitchen making tea, and I’m lying on the couch looking at the office through my tired, puffy eyes. A large, old painting of Jamaica’s Hope Gardens takes up much of the wall across from the couch. Folders and paperwork are scattered across the desk, and squeezed in among the envelopes and bills is a flag-set holding miniaturized versions of both the American and Jamaican flags.
The flag-set is a twenty-year-old flea market find my dad insisted on keeping long after the colors of both flags had faded. I lost count of the number of times I’d walked into the office and caught my father admiring it as though it was a family portrait. The memory of my Dad with the flags triggers another memory.
Mom, Dad, and I were in the kitchen at Cecelia’s. It was after Da
