We’d grab pizza after practices or celebrate wins together. He’d come over some weekends for movie night with me and Riggs. We’d all fallen into this routine of being around each other again. It was almost if we had never left one another.
However, the only thing I hated about being around Bishop was not being able to touch him. God, I wanted him so badly, sometimes it physically hurt me. I wanted his hands on me, wherever, whenever. I missed them.
But I knew sex would make things messy. It did the first time we did this. I wanted it to be different this time. So I refrained from touching him, and my fingers kept me company at night.
“Girls! I’m in the attic!” I hear my dad yell, which makes me place the photo back on the fridge where I found it.
Riggs is looking through the cabinets for food, which is no surprise. I was happy to see it though. She had lost some weight after her hospitalization and the nausea from the medicine had made her lose her appetite. About three months into her therapy and treatment, it had come back. She looked healthier than ever.
Mentally too. There were still bad days here and there, but she was handling them better. She wasn’t as secretive about them. She had gotten better at asking for help when she needed it.
To say I was proud was an understatement.
“Has your dad never watched a horror movie? Nothing good comes from being in the attic,” she mumbles with a mouth full of chips.
“Not everyone watches scary movies for fun, Riggs. Come on, he probably has a ton of shit up there, and we promised we would help him go through it.” I walk towards the hallway. The ladder is already pulled down for us.
My dad wants to clear out the house a little, the Fury Organization was having annual charity donations, so my dad being my dad wanted to take part. Once or twice a year the Fury would host a donation center for toys, clothes, really anything you could think of to give to children in foster care or the homeless. Once a Fury, always a Fury.
“I haven’t been up here since I was a kid. I don’t remember it being this dusty,” I say once I make it to the top. I was twenty-two and I hadn’t been up here since I was six or seven.
My dad is going through a shelf of old boxes, when he turns to face me. I’d just noticed how much my dad had aged over the years. I think we all see our parents as who they were when we were little. We become blind to their aging. His once brown hair is darker, with flicks of silver running through it. The same with his beard. The crow’s feet on the corner of his eyes seem more apparent, and the wrinkles on his face are more abundant.
“Hey, Pops,” I say softly as I wrap my arms around his waist, pulling him into a hug which he returns. The familiar smell of Old Spice invades my senses, and it makes me feel more at home.
“Hey Sully girl,” he says back and I smile.
I pull away from our hug. “Hello, my other child,” he says to Riggs as he watches her look around with a skeptical gaze.
“All I’m saying is if I find some murder tapes, or a Ouija board, I’m fucking out.”
My dad and I laugh at her, always the drama queen.
“Where is Bishop? I figured he’d be with you guys.”
I make my way towards one corner of the attic, wiping my finger across the dust that lays on one of the many boxes. This is going to take forever.
“It’s his high school hockey coach's birthday. He is celebrating with their family in Alton for the weekend,” I call over my shoulder, opening up the cardboard and searching through it.
“How do I know what to donate and what to throw away?” Riggs yells across from me.
“If it looks broken, or unusable, throw it away. If it’s something of Valor’s, pictures or something, keep it, otherwise donate it,” Dad says, and I nod, starting in my first box.
The boxes seem to unpack themselves as we all find a rhythm. I’ve mostly pulled out pictures of me as a baby, my old awards, report cards. It’s like this area in the attic is memory lane. Every once in a while I’ll show my dad one of the pictures and we will laugh.
I guess they mean it when they say you never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory. There were times when I would give anything to be a kid again. Despite everything, I had an amazing childhood. I got to travel all across the country with my dad, and there was never a moment I didn’t feel loved by him.
I was one of the lucky ones.
I’d even found a picture of Bishop with cake all over his face that I sent to him. His response was simple, “Share that with anyone and I’ll hurt you.”
This evening had slowly turned into an enjoyable one. Riggs was playing Don’t Stop Believing on her phone, and we had all joined into a harmonious singing group. My dad was playing the air guitar, while Riggs and I were on lead vocals.
The chorus was approaching and I was trying to keep from laughing at my dad long enough to try to hit this note. I looked down, noticing a medium sized rectangular box. I raise my eyebrow, wiping my hand across the top of it.
The dust reveals my name. Valor is written on the top with a black sharpie.
Now, I’m not sure what it was that told me this wasn’t just any box of pictures, but I knew. Chills ran up my arms and a shiver went down my spine. The music had fallen on deaf ears as I lifted the lid off.
I felt like I was looking into a pit of darkness. It’s where all the monsters hid, and I was staring at them. My fingers move shakily towards the contents, picking them up gently.
Open when you graduate.
Open when you fall in love.
Open when you need me.
Open when you want answers.
Open when you get your first period.
Open when…Open when…Open when…
“Valor! Where are you on the vocals?” my dad jokes.
A wave of nausea passes over me, and the emotions I have been burying for so long start to bubble up inside of me. Tears swell in my eyes, and I take my bottom lip between my teeth. The churn of my stomach makes me want to hurl.
I’m staring directly at my past, and it’s staring back at me.
Hundreds of letters fill this box. All of them with a different label, all in the same handwriting. I’d never seen these before. I don’t think I was meant to. My hands are shaking as I continue to look down at them.
She’s touched these. Her fingers have grazed each of these letters to put them inside this box. My fingers are touching something she has come in contact with. It’s the closest I have ever felt to my mom.
“Hey, Sully girl, what’s wrong?”
My dad is behind me now, and I know it’s only a moment before he realizes what I have found. I’ve never, not once been angry at my dad. I don’t think I’m angry right now either, but I’m shocked. I’m upset, I feel robbed of this.
“Val─”
“How long have you had these, Dad?” I cut him off, placing the letters in the box, putting the lid on the top and picking it up from the floor. I stand with it in my hands, turning to face him.
“How long?” I repeat, my throat starts to tighten, sending a radiating pain to my chest. Tears start to fall, and I try to catch them with my sleeve.
“She sent them when you were twelve,” he says with a heavy voice. The fun in his tone is gone now. In its place is a man who is trying to fight off his pain.
For years he has had these up here. Years. He knew all the pain I went through. All the questions I had and he had these letters from her for years and never told me.