Bethan

I try not to relive that day but it's difficult not to when the anniversary of it comes around year after year. The loss comes rushing in like water through a weakened crack in a pipe. Most days, I manage to hold it back, although it's pressure is always there, pushing at me.

I can't commemorate the day of her death. I still don't know if she...died. So, I take the day when she went missing and allow the pain in. Ah, who am I kidding? The pain is always there. And I don't control it like I think I do. It's a force of nature, grief, like the tides of the sea. Sometimes it comes at you with the power of a hurricane behind it, assaulting you with its crashes, the danger of it taking you under, drowning you. And then there are days where it laps your shore, barely leaving a trace; like a crab's footprints: only the most observant could spot them.

But it's never not there. It just pushes and pulls, ebbs and flows.

Today is the day that I take the photo box out and I weep. I light a candle, close the curtains and seal off the sun. I look at happy days with smiling faces. I look at love that shines so strongly that I marvel at it. I look at you, Laney. I look at us.

I struggle to say her name any other day of the year. It's like a trigger, the first topple of the domino that can set everything else off. She was such a carefree girl, loved by everyone. She had that certain something that people were drawn to without being able to identify why. She was warm, like a sun spot in a darkened room.

I've never felt warmth like that since.

Where are you, Laney love? Give me a sign and I'll find you. I don't like the thought of you out there, somewhere, alone. Let Mummy help you.

*

The noise of something being pushed through the letter box jolts me awake from my grief-induced torpor.

On the mat, a plain brown envelope and inside a photo of three boys, running.

***

366 words

A continuation of the story of Laney, Luke, Matthew and Mark. I wonder how it will end?

Links to yesterday's tale below where you will also find the links to all those that have come before in this little mini series:

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267/366 - the first in the final 100!