To Have & To Hold

Chapter 3: The Waiting Game

When Jaiden arrived back home the others hadn't yet returned. This was not unusual as it was only about two in the afternoon. Joseph would be the first to return and he wouldn't be due for another hour and a half.

This meant he had an hour and a half to study the contents of the box he had been given. Setting it down on the kitchen table he grabbed a sturdy knife from a kitchen drawer and carefully pried the lid off the top.

The small crate contained a sizable bag of flower, sugar, some rice, canned soup, soap, a few candles and matches, some kind of alcoholic beverage and some shiny Hub pamphlets. Turning them over he studied them, wondering if they actually believed the Colony people would buy in to their propaganda because they'd been given an extra bar of soap to use.

'Hub Living' was the title of the main brochure. It was exactly five pages long and bantered on and on about the many benefits of being 'selected', as they called it, to join the Hub citizenry in a life of luxury.

'Why, you'll find life in the Hub to be much more comfortable and twice as much fun!' it announced in a bold font across two pages strewn with obviously choreographed photo's. It reminded Jaiden of the old flyers he had found in a magazine one day that were supposed to entice people to join a specific religious cult.

Lots of bright colors and smiles all around surrounded by food and wonderful landscaping features. It made him sick just to look at it.

Tossing them aside he picked up a few items of food and wondered if he should put them away or wait until his father had seen them. Figuring the others would like to marvel at all the goodies they had received (and would receive again three years from now when it was Joseph's turn) he left the box with the stuff on the table and walked in to the living room.

Dropping himself on the main couch he stretched, yawned and looked about the room. He recalled the funny mood he'd been in earlier when he had felt this need to look at everything as though it were the last time. Maybe it was some kind of anxiety that had made him do it.

Perhaps his subconscious was worried that he'd be taken away immediately and that he wouldn't get another chance to look at it all. Whatever it was, it was gone now and Jaiden gave a single silent chuckle. Sometimes he did the silliest things.

It was a good thing none of the others had been here when he was wandering around picking everything up like it was of immense value somehow. Most of the stuff in here was old and broken. They couldn't sell it if they wanted to.

He knew it because they had tried that before.

Never having had a day off before he found himself wondering what he'd like to do next. The only hobby he had, if you could call it that, was nosing through the library. There were books here at home but he had seen them many times before; they had lost his interest a long time ago.

There was a photo album he hadn't seen in a while, though. It struck him as funny that he hadn't picked it up earlier when he was being all melancholic.

He stared at its spine as it stood on the book shelf. It was one of the few books here that had a genuine leather cover as those were expensive. It contained photo's of his parents' wedding, baby pictures of his sister and him, some toddler photo's and two photo's of when Joseph was a baby.

It ended with a newspaper clipping; his mother's obituary.

When Jaiden was old enough to understand that his mother wasn't coming back he had looked at the album many times. He wanted to force himself to remember moments of his mother and him together. Reading bed time stories, combing his hair, dropping him off at day care, anything.