Promises To Keep

Chapter 2, pt2: Memento Mori

Authors Note

Heya guys! I just wanted to thank everybody who's been reading so far! This story has been in my mind for a while and I'm so excited to share it! It's been nerve wracking posting it.

Because this is a first draft version that I post as I write it. Some parts I write and I instantly love, some parts I write and I stare at because somethings wrong but I don't know what. But I have to push forward because this is a foreword march to getting out a complete draft. Some sections will come out better than others, and I want to thank everyone who'll bear with that and keep reading.

This next section was a pain to write and I know it's a section that will undergo edits in the future. I hope y'all will stick with this story anyway though. I appreciate so much all of you who are reading, especially you guys who've left comments, it's filled my heart and made me so excited to write!

Okay, now that I've rambled at length—on to the story!

The attic was musty and small, but the large octagonal window let in enough light to keep it from being claustrophobic. Sitting among the boxes upon boxes of her parent's thing she felt unmoored. They'd been lost from her for so long, but the wound had never really scarred over properly.

She'd been so young when she'd gone into her Auntie's care. She hadn't understood any of it, why her parents wouldn't stop acting so strangely. Why they'd had to go away, why she couldn't stay with them. It had been so hard, and she'd screamed and cried and begged to be with them until the deputy looking after her had slammed the door and left to get a moment's peace and quiet. Thankfully it wasn't too long after she'd used up all of his patience with shrieking like the worlds loudest six-year-old banshee, when Dezzy finally arrived. Desirae Mae was a godsend, the minute she arrived Holly felt safe. She didn't remember much with clarity from that time, but she'd never forget how relieved she'd felt to leap into her Aunt's arms and know she was home again.

Dezzy had been so good about taking her to see her parents at the hospital every week, and she'd tried so hard to help Holly understand what had happened. As much as anyone was certain of at least, what with all the holes in the story.

It hurt not knowing fully what happened to them, why they would never be able to leave that hospital again. But an equilibrium was reached, a reluctant peace with the way life had turned out. Then she'd turned fourteen, and she lost them again. Aneurysms four hours apart from each other, time of death midnight and 4:00am respectively. She thought she'd never piece her heart back together after that.

She'd been told over and over again since she was six years old that they would never recover, but she'd never been able to completely get rid of the wild impossible hope that they somehow would. She'd learned to treasure the clearer moments, hold them close to her heart and cherish them. Then one day it was all gone. In the blink of an eye, a flicker of the candle, from one heartbeat to the next. Just like the first time. One minute everything was fine, the sea was calm. The next she was an abandoned child found wandering in the front lawn, she was an orphan at fourteen. There was a storm and the waves were taller than the sky was wide and she was drowning in the knowledge that there was no more secret hope that they'd get better, there would be no more clear moments where her mother held her hands and knew who she was, where her father smiled at her and told the nurses "We have a daughter!" like it was the best news he'd ever heard. They were gone.

She hadn't realized she was crying until she felt Maura's arms go around her. Holding her close and pressing her head into Maura's shoulder. She clung to her and let herself cry for a moment as Maura held her and whispered comforting nonsense into her hair. Once the terrible knot of loss had loosened a b it in her chest, she pulled back some to wipe at her face.

"Maybe it was a bad idea to dig into this today" Maura said softly.

"No," Holly said sniffling "It—it's not. I—I need to do this. I need to—I need to know."

"Are you sure." At the tearfully reproachful look Holly shot her, she said "Hey, hey, all I'm saying is we could do this tomorrow. Let you have some time to process. None of this is going anywhere."

"But the—the Tall Man might be! We—we don't know why—why he's here or—or how long he—"

"Okay. Okay. I get it. I do." Maura assured her softly, hugging her again "We got this. We'll figure it out."

The third box they opened had the journals in it. Her fathers spoke of his parents, how they'd moved to Egypt after he'd graduated. How happy his father had been to finally see the country his grandparents had told him about all throughout his childhood. His mother and how excited she was to find the tea shop her own mother had visited before moving to the united states. Her dad spoke of the holiday he and her mother spent with his parents in Egypt, the food, and the places they'd visited. He wrote about how he wanted to take his child to visit their grandparents here one day. He wrote about how much it hurt him that his parents died before Holly was even born. She had to take a break after that and trade Maura for her mother's journal.

It hurt in such a sharp and aching way to miss people she'd never met, but her father wrote about his family with such affection, she longed to know them. She wished she could have listened to her dad tell her about them himself. Drink hot chocolate and listen to him tell family stories. He'd talked with his hands, she remembered that. Even after the brain damage he gestured and moved his hands through the air like he was conducting the symphony of his thoughts.

Maura kept handing her tissues and reassuring her that they didn't need to go through it all today. She couldn't just stop though, as much as it hurt, it just fed the fire of her curiosity. She wanted to know more, more about the people her parents had been before. She wanted to know them. And she desperately wanted to find out how they'd known the person who'd taken them from her. If they'd really known him.

She was scrubbing away another wave of tears as she looked through the last of her mother's journals. It had taken a great deal of self-control not to start at the earliest one and read them all. But they had a specific purpose in this, she could go back and read all of them later. Her mom had been fiery and bright, and she wished desperately she'd been able to hear the wild stories of growing up on the Irish countryside from her mother. Reading them was wonderful and painful all at once and she longed to hear her mother's voice again. The way she wrote was clever and witty, and she wandered from writing about the day to silly stories she'd remembered, to things she wanted to do in the future. It was wonderfully wandering.

Her she found a section in the middle about her mom finding a scrapbook her own mother had left her. She wrote about the nostalgia of finding something her mother had written in, the way she wanted to hear the words in her mother's voice, how she missed her and her father since they'd passed.

Holly had to take another crying break there, it was like her mother was commiserating. Sharing in her own grief. The grief in the journal in her hands was mirrored in herself and it was unbearably bittersweet.

Maura was a shoulder to cry on with an infinite supply of tissue's literally tucked up her sleeves. Holly laughed through her tears as Maura pulled a clump of fresh tissues from her bulbous sleeves. "Ta da!" she sang awkwardly. A small triumphant smile quirked her lips at the laugh she'd provoked.

Once Holly managed to calm down enough to continue, she went back to reading the pages of her mother's journal. Only a few pages in, she gasped. Maura was back at her side instantly wary of another grief fueled meltdown. "Maura! Look—look!" Holly said jabbing at the page. "My grandma Aisling made like a genealogy scrapbook for the family! It—it's got like old newspaper clippings and—and everything."

Maura nodded slowly "That's amazing?" she asked still waiting for the meltdown.

Holly shook her head "Yeah! Yeah! Because—because it might have clippings or—or information or something from—from around when Henrik Bouchard died and—and maybe—maybe that's where a—a connection is that could—"

"Could lead us to the tall man!" Maura finished, catching on as her focus switched back to information gathering mode.