ReWritten

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Cream carpet, dark and worn from 20 years of use, slowly came back into view. Reaching down timidly, Nev brushed her fingers back and forth against the trodden weave, speckled black from fiber and dirt. Her eyes became more focused as the fog rolled away leaving her with a clarity she did not want. Sitting on the floor with her head between her knees, she knew in her heart what she could not comprehend in her mind.

She would not let Ava be gone, blinked out of existence as if she never were. Lifting her head in trepidation, she rose to her feet. Nana sprung to her side, but Nevaeh pushed her away, heading for the stairwell past the kitchen. Pulling open the door, she stared down the stairs that would eventually lead to her death and wondered if she should fling herself down them now, to save Dave the time, energy, and life imprisonment.

She took the steps slowly, one by one, until she reached the bottom and rushed into her room. Pulling back the quilt from the closet entrance, Nevaeh knelt to reach for the small, fireproof lockbox she had stashed there years ago. At Ava’s birth she had made copies of her birth certificate, social security number, and her own will to keep hidden from Dave in case of emergency. Stretching far to the back of the closet, Nevaeh grasped at air. She crawled even further back into the closet, immersing herself in old shoes, becoming entangled in the tips of dresses and cuffs of sleeves, but she found nothing. It was not there. Clearing out the boxes of pictures, yearbooks, craft supplies and blankets, Nev scattered it about the floor in a panic, but as the floor of the closet cleared she came no closer to finding her emergency documents.

Something had to be here, a scrap of her memory floating about the house somewhere. She inched out of the closet and scavenged the room looking for anything that would prove her existence. She searched for hours after her parents left for work, scouring through their most private possessions. Methodically, she picked through the house, room by room, floor by floor, checking in every draw, cabinet and dresser she could find. She searched through the countless scrapbooks of her mother’s design and leafed through her own as well. There was nothing; not paintings hanging on the fridge, not pictures or love notes. No birthday cards or doodles laying about the house. In further search, Nevaeh couldn’t find journal entries about her birth or websites last logged onto for children’s games. The bedroom they had turned into her nursery was still as it was when her sister left for college and there was no clothing in the house smaller than Nana’s size. She was simply erased with the other nine years Nevaeh had lost in an instant.

Her search turned to days, looking in the same places hoping for something new. Finally, Nevaeh took to the streets, hoping to find her wandering about trying to find her way home. It was useless, really. Everything she saw pointed her to the truth that somehow it was truly 2001. Roads that had been paved as her hometown stretched it’s boundaries south were still gravel. The water park had returned to it’s municipal pool glory days and the land beyond the cemetery lay covered in golden wheat as it did in the days before the new housing development. The plastics giant had yet to move into town and the “Happy Chef” where Nev had been kicked out for life for dancing on the tables was still in business. It was all too real to be a dream and too drastic to be a joke.

By the end of the week, re-life reality had struck. Nev had missed finals week of her freshman year. Friends she hadn’t seen in years who had seen her only a week ago called, worried about her break-up with Alec, clueless to the true gaping hole in her heart. Messages from professors filled up her machine trying to reach her, wondering if she knew what she was doing to her academic future. She let them pile up until her inbox grew full of sympathetic morons who knew absolutely nothing of what really mattered in life. Boys and grades…compared to what now had never even been. One week turned to several as May slipped quietly into June. The time she had spent in that beautiful darkness with her father drifted away too. Every time it floated through her memory she brushed it away, ignoring the subtle pull back to it’s peace.

Nevaeh spent all of her time in the basement these days. Sometimes she lacked the strength to leave her room, other times, when the nightmares came, she never even crawled out of bed. Even the promise of fixing past regrets held no joy, for her new biggest regret was irrevocably irreversible and she had decided the day she awoke in this re-life that she would not enter it without Ava. There was nothing else to do. Surely, she thought, she could not go to the police to report her missing. She had no proof of her life and only a birthday that had yet to come to pass.

If only she had the courage and strength to leave. She had thought about it many times, traveling out to the town in which Ava was born, where she had spent her college years in innocent bliss blasted from her in one evening with Dave. She could go to the hospital and get her birth records. She could visit the daycare Ava attended. She could even stop halfway in between and drive past the old apartment in hopes that Dave was holding her for ransom. But then again, what if she came home and Nev’s parents did not recognize her? Would she dare to leave, even for a day, knowing that her daughter could come in her absence and be sent away by her very own grandparents?

The secret was, through all her mind games, Nev did not leave because every day she spent here was a day she grew closer to the realization that her hunt was futile. She was stuck in a time that she did not belong with a gift she no longer wanted.

***

Ava’s shining eye’s smiled up into her mother’s, a slow pout forming across her lips drawing her cheeks smooth against her jaw line. Her deep eyes and dark skin glowed in the sunlight as she squeezed out a solitary tear.

“Peas, Mommy, gan?” Her little fingers wrapped around the chain of the swing that lifted her modest body off the ground, bare toes dangling above the pebbled earth. Her yellow sundress hung loosely below the swing, swaying to and fro from the slow momentum of a play date coming to an end.

“One more push,” Nevaeh spoke sternly, more to herself than to her daughter. She knew they should waste no more time at the park but the fear of returning to their unhappy home kept her away longer than it should. She stepped behind the swing, letting her own bare feet sink into the gravel below and reached out for one final push. Placing her hands evenly between the swing and the small of Ava’s back she gave her a gentle shove.

The breeze blew, like a whisper against her baby soft skin sweeping her black locks away from her face, sending the curls dancing behind her. The slow, rhythmic squeak of the hinges sang to the sky as Ava’s giggles filled the air. “Higher,” she squealed, her legs swinging wildly back and forth as she tried to move herself towards the clouds.

Nev reached out again as another breeze blew through the park. Using the swing's own momentum, she gave one last soft nudge to lift her daughter a bit higher into the air. The wind picked up, turning it’s gentle breeze into a gust that drew Ava’s laughter away before it could reach her mother’s ears. Catching a glimpse of her daughter’s smile, she decided one more push wouldn’t hurt, so reached up, catching just the tip of the swing, marveling at how light it seemed.

The wind picked up again, a rushing bluster Nev had recognized before, somewhere in a distance dream. She hunkered down so that she would not be swept off her feet and then jumped upwards to stop the swing. Her hand missed it’s target but grasped for the toes below the swing. The wind blew, knocking her off her feet and even the little toes became out of reach. Landing on the flat of her back, Nevaeh lost her breath. She lay there pinned by the wind, unable to move, all sound, except the mighty roar of the air about her, disappearing and Ava began to fade.

If she had had the breath to scream, she would have, but every gasp seemed to be sucked out by the wind that was now whipping her hair up into her eyes, obscuring Ava from her sight. She could not see her curls, her smile. She could no longer hear her giggles or make out her feet dangling below the swing. As her hair whipped about, everything went dark. Nevaeh was everywhere and nowhere at once. Suddenly all was silent, and the silence was breathing. With every exhale, it blew out tiny bursts of starlight.

My Darling.

Nevaeh screamed, bolting off the couch, leaping to her feet in a startled run. The empty swing wafting lazily in the breeze crystallized in her mind’s eye. She had first had the dream the week she was supposed to be taking her finals, however it had reoccurred several nights now. Even now, six weeks later, she was up at least four nights a week changing sweaty sheets. It was almost July, and it seemed the more resolute she was in rotting away down in the basement, the more she was plagued by her nightmares. This was, however, the first time it came to her during the day, when she felt as if she had control of her daydreams and the directions they swayed.

She heard the frantic rush of footsteps above her, heading towards the heavy, white, wooden door. As it swung open she hollered above to save someone a trip downstairs. “I’m fine Nana!” But the steps continued down the short flight and her mother appeared, out of breath, at the bottom step, holding the phone in her hand, the receiver pressed against her collarbone.

“Everything ok down here?” Her tone seemed lighter than usual, the sound of false joys dripping from every syllable.

“Yes,” Nev knew how much she worried her. She thought often of how she must ache to see her daughter in such a deep depression. But Nana could never fully understand her grief. It was no fiancé, no broken engagement that apparently drove her crazy. It was the sweetest little angel that had been wiped from Nana’s very memory, a love she never even knew she missed, that was causing her own daughter to grieve.

Nevertheless, Nana smiled wearily. “Good, then you have a phone call.” She held the receiver out toward her.

“I’ve already told you, I’m not taking any calls,” Nev glared silently at her mother.

“There’s no dodging him now. He’s already heard that you’re fine,” she smiled again, slyly. She hushed her tone, gently covering the phone with her hand, “he only wants to help you, Nev. He’s been calling every week…two or three times.” She edged the phone closer to Nev, pleading with her to take it.

She had to admit “he” did perk her curiosity. Who was this silent knight that was secretly checking up on her? She cautiously lifted her fingers to the receiver, then grasping it fully, lifted it to her ear. “Hello?” It barely came out as a whisper.

“Nev?” His voice was nervous on the other end.

A tiny ray of sunlight burst through the clouds in her heart. It warmed her from a distance and reminded her of something she was promised what seemed like a lifetime ago: a second chance.

“Jay,” she smiled, answering him back.