Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 154525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
“Officially a legal adult. Huge day.”
“So why were you just looking lost for a second there?”
“I figured out this morning, because I know what Daddy’s getting ready for me, that growing up also means letting go. I’m not sure that I’ve been very good at that, and it makes me think a lot about...whatever’s next.”
“I don’t know why you’re surprised that letting go scares you.”
Frankie frowned, stilling instead of taking her next bite. “Huh, why?”
Sissy made it a point to give the room and the things within it a look. “Contrary to how it may look or seem, you went without quite a lot, too. Important things. Things that, at a young age, you deeply understood that you were missing.”
Sissy didn’t specify what those things meant or were. She didn’t have to, either.
“And what ended up filling in those missing things for you, in one way or another, became engrained in a lot of who you are, sweetheart. It won’t be letting it all go to allow yourself space to learn what it means to be an adult, a woman, you, but you will say goodbye to parts of it. You have to, to get what you want when you figure out what that finally is. Everyone does. It just looks a little different from person to person.”
“He still hasn’t asked me, you know,” she pointed out.
Sissy’s gaze jumped between something outside and Frankie. “Asked what—who?”
“Daddy. About what comes after the gap year, if I want to take an offer somewhere to continue soccer while I do it. Anything about it. He hasn’t asked.”
“Maybe he’s scared of letting go, too.”
“You think?”
“What’s crazy is you thinking letting go stops becoming a thing once you get over it the first time. Life will teach you differently soon enough. People don’t grow through joy and happiness. We change and learn from pain and suffering. Sacrifice. We become better, stronger, and grateful. Imagine all the letting go that will entail. And we do it until we die, sweet girl. Call it loving, if you want. Call it being alive. Those two are usually a large cause of it.”
The realities of her father’s life, and the loss it contained quieted Frankie as her thoughts became consumed by the large list. Her mother, his wife. Grandparents on both sides. Parents she had never met, like the two uncles he rarely spoke about.
Sissy hummed under her breath, reaching over to tap Frankie’s fork gently and remind her to eat. She did, taking another bite and making herself chew as the woman said, “Okay, that’s enough sadness for a happy day. I don’t want to see a frown or tear unless they’re happy ones from here on out. Agreed?”
Frankie smiled around her bite, eventually swallowing it to say, “I’ll try.”
“That’s what counts. Trust me.” Once the food had mostly disappeared from the plate, Sissy reached for the hinged gift box with a pink bow on top. Suede, and matching in color to the topper, she held it out to Frankie in her palm after she had wiped her mouth and fingers. “Are you ready for your present?”
“You didn’t have to get me anything, Sissy.”
“I’m not getting you something, I’ve giving it to you.”
Frankie’s brow furrowed as Sissy handed the box over. Her fingers hesitated on opening the lid as she asked, “What does that mean?”
“Well, this belonged to my grandmother, and then my mother. Who gave it to my sister on her eighteenth birthday, and then later, my sister gave it to me so that I would always have something of hers.”
“You never talk about them. Your family, I mean. I don’t even know their names.”
Sissy kept those secrets of her life locked up tight. Frankie always thought it strange, but after years of it being a topic no one would discuss, she stopped asking.
“There’s nothing to talk about. They’re long gone, and I had to let them go before God ever found them. You’re my family now.”
“There’s more to it, isn’t there? You don’t want me to know whatever it is.”
Sissy, dark-eyed and pretty, even in her early forties, playfully rolled her eyes. “Today isn’t the day for this conversation.”
“What day is?”
Sissy patted her arm. “Not today. Please. Now, I have no one to pass this onto the way it was given to me. Except you. The closest thing to my own daughter that I’ll ever have. Who better to have it, right? And...I think it will go great with your prom dress.”
Frankie opened the lid at the same time Sissy mentioned prom.
“Oh, shit,” she whispered.
The ring, sitting on a beveled gold band, had a pink, oval cut diamond, a half a dozen carats in size, that sparkled under the chandelier and pot lighting in her bedroom. It rested atop white velvet, waiting to be plucked up and truly admired.