Second Chance Romance (Southern Nights) Completed

Chapter 21, Part 2

“Second Chance Romance”

2012 Copyright All Rights Reserved

Chapter 21, Part 2

Standing in the living room, Austin was careful to maintain his distance while Jade took inventory of her surroundings.  The living room should have been familiar to her he thought to himself as he watched her pick up a ceramic bunny figurine, roll it around in her small hand and study it.  It should have been familiar to her because this was the house she grew up in and it looked exactly the same as it had for the last twenty years. 

Her father and former owner of the home, Jed Sampson, had been a creature of habit.  After his wife passed, he hadn’t bothered to change a single thing in the small country home.  The decorum in the cozy little living room they were standing in was the exact same as it was the first time that Austin walked into this very room a little over twelve years before.  The only difference being the smell of fresh paint and pine sol that filled the air.  Tim had mentioned that there had been some minimal damage from the twister and orchestrated the clean up of her house before their arrival today.

But as he watched Jade carefully set the ceramic bunny back on the shelf and pick up a silver frame that held a picture of her mother and father from their wedding, he could tell that she didn’t recognize anything.  Her face was bent over, her shoulders were thrown back and her back was ramrod straight.  He started to take a step in her direction when he caught the tremble of her hands only seconds before she dropped the picture frame to the floor.  When the glass shattered it sounded like a bomb exploding in the uncomfortable silence of the room.

Jade turned around and Austin stopped where he was.  The pain in her expression was going to be the death of him. She hurt so much and all he wanted to do was make all that pain go away. 

He wanted to go to her and help her but there was something in the way she stood that held him back.  “Jade?” he confronted her.

Her eyes filled with tears.  “I can’t do this,” she murmured in a strained whisper.  She held her hands out and glanced around the room, a strangled sob escaping her lips.  She brought her hand over her mouth and started to shake her head.  “It’s too much,” she told him sounding utterly defeated.  “It’s just too much for me to take in.” 

She whirled back around and picked up another frame and stared at it.  This one was of her when she was in elementary school, maybe third or fourth grade.  She had long, stick straight hair and a smile filled with uneven, gapped teeth.  Squeezing the frame between her hands, Jade closed her eyes and let out a scream absolving her of all her pent up emotions.

Nothing was familiar to her.  Not one damn thing.  She stared at all of the pictures from her past and nothing rang one iota of familiarity.  In Jade’s broken mind, her past was nothing but a blank slate of darkness and without a past she didn’t know how to go on with her future.

Angry and frustrated, she finally met her breaking point.  Drawing on all of her anger Jade hurled the frame against the wall and spun back around.  “Why?” she screamed, her eyes shining bright with unshed tears.  “Why me? Why did this have to happen to me?”  She balled her fist up and pressed them to her temples, closing her eyes.  “Why can’t I remember who I am?  Why can’t I even remember my own baby?”