Locket

Prologue ~ Mother

The doctor left the room. My father went to him and asked his questions. I heard everything. My mother was sick. She had Huntington's disease. She had had it for at least 10 years now and we didn't know. She hid it so we can be happy. She was strong and it didn't severely hurt her until now. I went to her.
I started talking, "Mother, why didn't you tell us?"
My mother replied, "Tell you what?"
"Tell us that you have Huntington's," I answered.
"I didn't want to worry you," Mother said, "You were only four years old and living without a mother would be hard."
She had it since I was four? That means she's had it for 11 years. Oh mother you must feel terrible.
I stood up and asked to go to my room. I left my mother's room. Father was still talking to the doctor. As soon as I passed by they stopped talking. They didn't know that I knew.
I'm fifteen and they still try to keep secrets from me. I can handle the news. My mother will be fine. If she was healthy for eleven years then she will be healthy now. She has to be.
I walked into my room and sat on my bed. I grabbed my diary and wrote about my mother. I wrote how kind and helpful she is. I wrote how she is caring and smart. I also wrote how selfish it was when she kept that secret. I wrote three and a half pages about mother.
The time was 6:45pm. There were still fifteen minutes until supper. I opened the drawer and took out my photo album. I haven't added pictures for years. Last time I used it I was eleven. It was dusty. I brushed the dust off of the cover. The cover had a picture of Dolly. Dolly was my sister. She was born when I was six. She died when I was eleven. That's when I made her picture the cover of my photo album. I haven't used it since. Father says it's because I'm too sad to think about other people's pictures, when this was the only picture I had of her.
I opened the album just as the doctor ran to my mother's room. I threw the album on my bed and ran after him to see what was happening.
My mother was shaking hard. She was sweating. I knew that she was having a seizure. I saw this happen before but I was little so I didn't understand. When I was little I thought she was shivering.
It stopped. My mother grabbed the locket hanging from her neck and gave it to me. The seizure started again. Then it stopped. The doctor checked her heart beat and pulse.
The doctor stood up and said, " I'm sorry,"
Then he left the room. My dad ran after him. I started crying. I held her hand. I cried more and more. My mother had died. I couldn't believe it. Then I remembered, the locket. My photo album doesn't have any recent pictures of mother or anyone really. Last time I edited the photo album I was eleven.
The locket she gave me could have a photo of her or anyone in my family.
I grabbed the locket. It didn't have a chain on it.
She ripped it of her neck. It must have ripped and fell on her neck.
I have a silver chain that would match it perfectly.
The locket had a blue pearl in the middle of it with framing around it. There was a dragon fly on the side of it. It was beautiful. I would love to wear it. I opened it to see what it looked like inside or if it had any photos in it. Just as I opened it—

                               I blacked out.