The antique fair was already packed with cars, and after finding a spot, we made our way to the gate, entering with the others filing into the large, open area packed with side-by-side booths, and hundreds of rows to wander down.
“Wow,” Haven said, her head swiveling. “This place is huge. Have you been here before?”
“A few times when I was younger, with my mom.” Whatever she’d heard in my voice made her eyes linger on me for a moment before she looked away, back to the miles of vendors, people chatting and laughing as they moved from booth to booth.
We began strolling, stopping here and there, Haven leaning closely toward this or that, moving past one thing and lingering at another. I stood back, fascinated as I watched her, realizing that it was possible to get to know someone better just by watching the things they were drawn to at an antique fair.
My mother had always headed straight for the Tiffany lamp or the Chippendale desk. Phoebe had never expressed any interest in antique fairs at all, preferring more modern décor over anything used. Preferring to spend money rather than save it.
Haven apparently, liked old photos.
I trailed behind her, observing her move from one table of photos to another, bypassing the knickknacks, the furniture, and even the jewelry.
“There are whole lives here,” she murmured, leaning forward. “Just left behind.” She turned to me suddenly. “Can you imagine that no one at all is left to care for”—she turned, picking up a photo of young girl—“her?”
“Care for?” I asked. It was a photograph.
She shrugged, turning away and putting the picture down. “Appreciate. Remember. Tell stories about.”
She turned back toward me as quickly as she’d turned away, holding up a different photo. “I’m going to buy this,” she declared. “What do you think?”
My gaze moved to the picture in her hand, an old black and white of an ancient-looking woman with dark hair and pale eyes. “I think it’s the thing horror movies are made of.”
She laughed. It was sweet. She was sweet. Her laugh dwindled. “And no one wants her,” she said softly.
“Because she might snatch their soul in the middle of the night.”
She laughed again. “Stop.” She held the photo up again, her eyes softening as she gazed at the old woman. “Left behind,” she murmured.
“Until now.”
“Until now,” she confirmed.
I raised my chin at the booth’s vendor who came over and accepted my dollar bill for the singular photo.
“Thank you,” Haven breathed, bringing the photo to her chest, grinning up at me, and officially making that dollar the best dollar I’d ever spent in my entire life, even surpassing the one I’d spent on Blueberry the dog.
We started strolling again, down the row of booths. “I’m going to put her up on my dresser and ask her advice,” she said, tilting her head as she studied the old woman.
“This gets creepier by the minute,” I said.
She laughed. “She’d give great advice though, don’t you think?”
“What would she tell you? About me, for instance?”
Haven glanced at me, her expression thoughtful. I realized I was holding my breath and let it out in a slow, quiet exhale. “She says you’re much more than adequate,” she said softly, her cheeks flushing lightly.
“I’ll take it,” I said, giving one nod to the picture. “Thank you, Grandma.” My brows rose in unison. “You do realize, you have me talking to plants and pictures of make-believe grandmas.”
“Promise me you’ll always do it, even when I’m gone. It will be my legacy.”
Even when I’m gone. Even when I’m gone. It echoed. I didn’t like it.
She walked over to a table of odds and ends, perusing them with some amount of disinterest. This booth didn’t offer old photos.
I watched her again, thinking about the night of the Buchanans’ fundraiser. I’d hemmed and hawed about getting her flowers for our “date,” ultimately deciding that cut flowers would wound her somehow. The thought had felt melodramatic at the time, but in that moment, I realized it was not. I’d been right to read her that way. Roots were very, very important to Haven Torres, coveted even. Because she didn’t have any of her own, and whether she realized it or not, she longed for them.
No wonder she loved planting things so much.
Needed it maybe.
Do you fear you’ll be nothing but a forgotten photo someday that everyone left behind? My chest ached, a need rising up to dispel that fear, to take it from her even if it meant suffering myself.
The noise faded, blood whooshing in my ears. She said something to the vendor and he laughed, pointing at various objects.
The world tilted and I reached my hand out blindly, grasping at nothing.
Time slowed, everything fading except for her. She turned her head very slightly and in my mind’s eye a dock that overlooked the water appeared beneath her feet, a house with a porch shining in the sunlight, rising above the trees behind her. I swallowed. It was so clear.