Blooming in the Spring

Chapter 13

We don't talk much again about my contribution to Peeta's pages, though I feel that there's been a shift between us. Things are easier and more comfortable. Though I sense there is still a cloud of confusion hanging over our heads. I think we both feel it, the questions and longing and confusing feelings that neither of us quite knows what to do with after all this time. Still, Peeta doesn't press me on it and I tread carefully myself, not entirely sure how much he can handle yet. The last thing I want to do is set off another flashback. I hardly got him back after the first one. 

We devote the next several days to my family's pages in the book. My mother, who has popped in several times, sits with us as we do so. I haven't spoken to her much since confronting her after she first arrived, yet she still comes. We are uncomfortable and awkward around each other but we tolerate one another, at least. She silently tends to my injuries and I don't resist. As Peeta said, I suppose if she's here at all it must mean something. 

She doesn't say a whole lot while she's here, but will occasionally correct me if I've misremembered a detail about my father, or can't quite recall the earliest days of my childhood in the Seam. I know it pains her, but she tells stories of before Prim and I were born. How she and my father met, how they came to fall in love. The way he'd always bring her flowers from the woods and she would treat his burns from the mines with careful medics hands and the occasional kiss. 

She even speaks about an old holiday they used to celebrate, whose traditions were passed down through my father's ancestors. We never had a name for it and I'm not sure it came on the same day each year, but every February when my dad was alive, he'd choose a day to shower us girls in extra love and decorate our house in wildflowers. My mother was always sure to cook up a special meal for us too and we'd spend the whole day together as a family. These traditions stopped after he died but I still look back at those moments together fondly. I notice Peeta's smile as she speaks about her love for my dad. I wonder what he's thinking of. If he looks forward to sharing this kind of love with someone. For a split second, I allow myself to wonder if that someone could be me. 

Between my and my mother's descriptions, Peeta quickly finishes two whole pages dedicated to my parents and their love and their lives before everything turned so terribly. My mother's healing hands and gentle touch and determination to make a life for us. My father's extensive knowledge of the woods and devotion to his wife and daughters. He wanted nothing more than to protect us, to love us with what little we had. He will always be the best example of love in my eyes. 

With my parents' pages finished, a sort of heaviness washes over us. My mother quietly slips into the kitchen and I know her help with the book is over. Maybe it is all too recent, too painful yet but she refuses to talk about Prim and I have to force myself to try and swallow my anger. Why does she get to escape it? Why do the burdens of my little sister's death and her remembrance have to fall on me? Still, I've learned that fighting my mother on it is futile. And I refuse to hide from this the way she does. This book is the least I can do to honor my sister's memory. It's my mother's loss if she doesn't want to be a part of it. 

So, with Peeta's comfort, I answer questions about my sister and he paints and writes and does his best to preserve her memory. Of course, Peeta knew Prim too which makes things easier. He has his own memories of her. But he gently presses me with questions about the things he couldn't possibly know, like our childhood together and her favorite color and the things that made her giggle the way I remember she always used to. He even paints a portrait of the old goat Lady licking Prim's cheek the day we got her, a pink bow around her neck and all. 

I know that Peeta is treading carefully on the topic of Prim and I'm grateful for it. He knows exactly what to ask me, exactly what to say, that gets enough information to do her memory justice without sending me into a puddle of tears. He even coaxes a smile out of me at the mention of Buttercup, the stupid cat that still likes to pop in for an appearance, and table scraps once in a while. Most days, I'm not sure where he goes. Wandering around town, searching for wild mice and other entrails, I'm sure. But he somehow always finds his way back home and I don't resent his presence anymore. In fact, he's become a sort of welcome reminder of my sister. I know she'd be ecstatic that the ugly old thing was still alive at all, let alone apparently thriving being back in 12. How he made it back here, I'll never know.