Second Chances (Kathneil FF)

Second Chances - 17

Second Chances - 17

Unlike the giggly girl in her room last night, Anita now sat in forlorn silence in her mother's room.

Both her mother's and her bedrooms were dressed the same down-to-earth ways, with basic wooden furnitures of a single bed, a two-door wardrobe and a study table both women used as vanities.

But to Anita, her mummy's room always had the same warm motherly smell about it. Even after she has passed.

One may just laughed at her melancholy by saying that it was the lavender incense her mother used to favour.

However, Anita was more likely to feel otherwise, preferring to think that her mother's soul still lingered to watch over her

So, instead of being afraid of the unseeing spirit, Anita always felt warm and comforted being in the room; and out of habit, she lit one incense stick up that afternoon.

It was a day after her talk with Joanne.

She had gone home and straight into her mother's bedroom after the talk, and has not left it since.

She knew the sun set and rose upon her, but she neither ate nor slept since then.

She first lay fetus style on the bed for a long time before she got the courage to try to open the box Joanne gave her.

She fetched her mother's small jewellery box from the cupboard and took out a string of rosary beads that lay amongst her mother's other meagre trinkets.

A string of beads with an oddly placed little key tied at its head.

(Flashback)

"What's this mum?" she asked in amusement.

"The key to my heart," Muriel answered her.

Not understanding her mother's hidden meaning, Anita smiled at her mother's odd answer.

(End of flashback)

Then, with trembling hands, Anita unlocked the safe box, hoping it would hold the answers she was seeking.

The padlock gave way easily but she was sorely disappointed.

The container held two Philipino passports under the names Michelle and Inessa Sanchez; four bank account passbooks with so many zeros her head spinned; a will stating numerous properties in the Philippines and Hong Kong under the name Inessa Sanchez; and an external computer hard disk drive.

What? Not even a goodbye letter for me, Mummy? she thought sadly. Perhaps it is in the hard disk, Anita thought again, before she ran to get her laptop.

Again, there was no such letter. What the disk contained were many television and cinema productions with Inessa Sanchez as the star. From when she was a toddler till she was about 17 years old. Films, drama series to commercials and interviews.

They were all there. As well as folders after folders of photos.

Anita did not have to strength to watch through the videos, instead she chose to look through the pictures.

Again, they were all mainly of Inessa Sanchez, mostly professionally taken.

There were also some behind the scenes pictures, some of them amateurishly taken. She presumed they were by Inessa's mother or assistant, if she had any.

The later pictures had Kevin Rodrigues in them too.

Stills from interviews, promotional photo shoots and such.

And some of Mummy too, Anita said to herself, as she lovingly outlined some of her mother's pictures.

You were so young then, she thought, and sad.