The Three Of Us

Chapter Twenty-Nine

                                                                                       Asher

  The world works in mysterious ways. Very mysterious ways. Ways that can make you abnormally confused. Ways that make you have to look twice, sometimes even three times.

  But sometimes these ways can be simply magical… make you feel as if you’re floating. They make you experience a feeling like no other. A feeling that makes you feel as if your world is complete.

  However, for some people, they never experience this wonderful feeling. They almost seem to run away from it. Whenever it gets close to them, them just step away a little farther. As if they’re afraid.

  I now find myself sitting inside Ronnie’s best friend, Ray Mallone’s, living room, sitting on the couch. Avery and I are sitting on the light blue couch, while Ray and Ronnie are each in a sitting chair, looking at the two of us intensely.

  “Alright, so what is this ‘forgiveness’ that you’re talking about?” Ronnie asked me, taking her eyes away from me and looking at the now somewhat flattened out paper resting on my lap. “Really, what are you talking about?”

  “Well, thing is, we went in Janet’s house,” Avery explained. “And once we were in the place, we saw how much of a wreck she really has been.”

   I held up my hand and looked at him. “She wasn’t a wreck,” I defended, my eyebrows knitting today for a moment. My face relaxed as I looked back at the girls. “But her place was a mess. It reeked of smoke, and there was a bunch of crumpled up pieces of paper on the ground.”

  “Why was there paper all over the ground?” Ray wondered.

  “That’s what we wondered,” I replied. “So I took this, so we could all get a little look-see.” I held up the piece of paper by the corner with my thumb and index finger.

  “We got quite a surprise,” Avery pointed out.

  “What do you mean?” Ronnie asked me, narrowing her eyes in confusion.

  “Janet regretted giving us away,” I summarized. As I said the word ‘us’, Ronnie’s expression hardened. She really wasn’t going to believe that we were all related. “That’s what she wrote in this letter.”

  “What does the letter say?” Ray questioned.

  I was about to hand it to her, but Avery leaned forward and grabbed my wrist, stopping me. I looked at me with a raised eyebrow, while he looked at me quite cautiously. “Read it out loud.” He gave a quick nod towards Ronnie. “So we know that everyone is paying attention, you know?”

  I nodded in response and then he let go of me and leaned back. I grabbed the piece of paper firmly and began to read:

  “October 5th, 2004.

  Dear Ronnie, Asher and Avery.

  It’s been almost four years now that I’ve been trying to write a letter to the three of you. A letter saying that I’m sorry for everything I have done. A letter saying that I miss you. A letter saying that I love and that I always will and that I think about you all every day. I want to write a letter that’s perfect, one that’ll make you be able to feel all the emotion that I’m putting into it. All my sadness, anger and of course, affection.

   I’ll start off by saying this: There isn’t a day where I don’t regret giving you up. I always imagine the three of my children running around in the house, with big smiles on my face. You see, when I was a young little girl and imagined myself having kids, this isn’t what I pictured at all. I thought I’d be able to love my children and still keep them at the same time.