The next morning Jacob got up after a restless night. Dreams kept him up. Now the images were flitting away like the butterflies outside his window. He attempted to dig deep into his psyche hoping to gather the threads of the dreams that were just at the edge of his brain.
She was in those dreams, he was sure of that. Why did she seem so familiar, yet he could not place where he could possibly know her. Dragging himself from the bed, Jacob headed to the bathroom. Once in the shower, the image of the woman walking with books appeared. Did she go to school with him and he never noticed her?
Coffee and toast were his breakfast after a quick shower. This was going to bug him all day. As soon as he was finished eating, Jacob placed his coffee cup and plate in the dishwasher. So conditioned after all these years, to never leave anything out. Sometimes he wanted to leave a dish out just for the hell of it. There was no one here to harp on it and make him feel like a slob.
Where is the box with all of the yearbooks? He had packed them away many years ago. His ex, Minnie, didn’t like seeing pictures him with old girlfriends. He couldn’t make her understand they were ‘old’ girlfriends and he was married to her. He finally understood her insecurity. That had been a big part of their life together.
The third bedroom was more of a junk room than an office and definitely not a guest room. Boxes that hadn’t been opened in years stacked along the wall by the closet. Well, today was as good as any to start going through them. Especially since he didn’t know which box contained his old yearbooks.
Twenty boxes, he didn’t remember it had been that many boxes. Well, he hadn’t really checked in this room in years. Might as well start with the one on the top and work his way down was his thoughts. There were tax returns from more than twenty years ago. Oh, those can go in the pile to be shredded. One box down and too many more to go.
He found toys in the next box. His son and daughter were in their thirty’s, and neither of them had kids, and it didn’t look like they ever would. He had never considered if he wanted grandchildren. There wasn’t a legacy of himself to leave behind. The toys were placed back in the box with a post-it that said, Goodwill.
Ten boxes off the wall and down around him and he sat on the floor. Jacob still hadn’t found the yearbooks. Would be just my luck they would be in the last box. Or maybe just maybe Minnie had thrown them away for spite. The thought of that had the old feelings of anger and rage to rear its head. She was a lot of things but was she that spiteful. The answer was yes, and he knew.
Next, to the last box, he found photo albums. These were the chronicles of their life together. There were photos with faces cut out. He could only shake his head. There was nothing he could do with them at this point. Fragments of a life that was long ago. Maybe one day his kids would want some of these photos.
Finally, the last box and there weren’t any yearbooks. As far as Jacob knew these were the only boxes in the house. When he moved to the beach house, he had taken all of the boxes out of the old house before he put it on the market. That had been seven years ago. Perhaps one of his kids had taken a box when they were going through what they wanted.
A glance into the closet and there was one more box. Aha, there were all of Jacob’s yearbooks. The years of high school and college. He stacked them in his arms and headed out to the patio. It had begun to get dark. He had been in there all day looking for these yearbooks. He placed them on the table and headed back in for something to eat. Now that he had found them, Jacob would spend time going through hoping he would find a photo of the mystery woman he had seen on the beach.
© 2019 Ivy Jade