Coralyn opened the door and Giana followed. She was
being allowed into Coralyn’s personal space, into her home,
into her life. She wasn’t reading too much into the gesture. It
was real. She walked in and sat down on the faded floral
couch. The apartment was mostly empty, hardly any furniture.
The only art on the walls wasn’t art at all, but framed family
photos. The most precious things. Things that couldn’t be sold.
Giana punched in an email and Coralyn made her call. Such
simple things, yet they were reshaping their whole lives. Their
worlds were being remodelled, bent and reformed around
them. Coralyn started moving around the small kitchen after,
in view by a doorway from the living room. It was so intimate
that Giana’s lungs trapped all the stale air inside and refused to
let it out.
She finally stood up and leaned in the kitchen doorway.
Coralyn cracked eggs into a pan. She angled slightly and took
a chance on the questions in her gaze. “I had a lifetime before
my parents were taken away. Not long enough, but I had so
many good memories. Do you ever feel like that? About your
sister?”
The memories were often too painful, so Giana hadn’t
properly allowed herself access to them in a long time. “I do,”
she whispered, throat raw and tears in her eyes.
“Will you tell me about them?” Coralyn grabbed a spatula
from a ceramic cannister by the stove with a bunch of other
cooking utensils. The appliances were old and worn out, but
the stove worked by some miracle, and those eggs actually
smelled good. Giana’s sudden hunger was as surprising as her
desire to tell Coralyn the thousand thoughts that popped into
her mind, a tsunami of memory bursting through the careful