Happy Mother's Day! - By Sharon Kendrick Page 0,145

no schedule mean but no more flights?

There was one email from Parisian Raoul with a subject title so risqué it made her laugh out loud. But it also made Rick’s accusation echo in her head. A guy in every port … Well, why the heck not? It made her romantic life innocuous and uncomplicated and that was just the way she liked it.

She made a move to open Raoul’s email when noises in the hallway drew Siena’s gaze to her closed bedroom door. Rick must have been putting the kids to bed. She looked to the clock at the side of her bed to find it was some time after eight.

Her fleeting glance slammed to a halt as she saw the white iceberg rose James had given her lying provocatively on the bedside table.

She reached out and took the rose in her hand, the sweet scent tickling at her nose. It only brought about a strange sense memory of diesel fuel, disinfectant and wood shavings. Who knew such a strange mix of scents could be so evocative?

Before she really knew what she was about to do, Siena ignored Raoul’s email and instead typed out a row of letters in the webpage line of her internet browser. She hesitated only a moment before pressing the Enter key.

Within seconds a simple black page loaded on to her screen. And as the word ‘DINAH’ caught her eye she slammed her laptop shut.

What was she doing? Spying on him? Well, of course she was. But what did it matter? Now she had her PDA back—the PDA which he himself had admitted to snooping through!—she was never going to see the guy again. So how could it hurt to read a very little more?

Slowly, slowly she lifted the screen. There were no photographs on the site. No links. No comment boxes. It was simply the emotional outpourings of an anonymous guy. Anonymous to anyone who might stumble upon it, but not to her.

Siena shuffled lower on her bed and picked out sporadic posts. She read about the home video collection James had edited together for Dinah’s funeral which he still let Kane watch in his bedroom on bad nights. She read about odd floating memories of his time with Dinah’s dysfunctional family, her alcoholic mother and deadbeat ex, and she understood a little why he saw himself as Kane’s only hope. He revealed moments when he had felt like giving up, and worse, the moments when he verbally slapped himself for even contemplating it.

A good hour later she dragged herself out of deep tunnel vision when she tasted her own tears on her lips. But she couldn’t bring herself to wipe them away.

In one post from a few months before, James had obviously not even taken the time to edit himself, or to spell check; he had merely poured his feelings out on to the page then hit send, forever capturing his raw emotions.

Saturday, 4:12pm

I went to a memorial today at the Coral Lane Centre for my neighbours husband. Carl passed away two years ago and Dorothy had organised a trip to his favourite pub for his closets friends.

Dorothy and Carl had been togherther for 58 years. Dinah and I’d had just on five.

Dorothy and I have been spending time chatting over the back shrub a couple of times a week since Dinah passed away. We talk of about current affairs, we talk of Kane and how he is coping, nothing deep or specific, skirting around the issue … But it has been helpful all the same.

Even so, I wasn’t sure if I would go to Carl’s memorial, but in the end Dorothy called on me for help. ‘James, dear,'she said. ‘If you could give me a lift there my sister could bring me home.'How could I refuse? Even when I knew she wanted me there more for my sake than hers.

In the end I found that I was not nearly as stressed as I expected t be. I was nhumb. I felt nothing. But why? Why, when I know what Dorothy is going through cuold I not feel more remorse for her? Is it beacuse the well is dry?

Will I never feel anything any deeper than this hum of ever diminishing fuzzy memory ever again?

Siena put the rose back on the bedside table as she reached for a tissue.

Dorothy. She remembered Dorothy. A nice old lady even back when she had been a pre-teen. She’d always had a stash of passionfruit yogurt in the