"Katie? Wake up."
Someone shook my shoulder. I wasn't irritated, not like when Dad had to get me up to go to school sometimes. The need between my legs had been totally quenched and I was finally getting some good sleep. But I didn't exactly bound out of bed, either. I was all kinds of comfortable snuggled up around Caroline, savoring my worn out muscles and post-sex languor.
"Katie, wake up. You've got to see this." Another shoulder shake.
I blinked my eyes open and was surprised to see that it was Caroline who was shaking me. As I came more awake I saw that she was all dressed and standing next to my bed, and I was actually curled up around fuzzy Mr. Paddington. She must have gotten up, gotten dressed and put my stuffed bear in her place for me to cuddle. I was kind of touched by her thoughtfulness.
"What?" I said, disappointed that she was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. I sure as hell wouldn't have objected to some more fooling around. Maybe she'd put them on so that I could have fun taking them off, I thought hopefully.
"Come on, Katie-pie. I found something in Dad's study you've got to see." I yawned, which seemed to satisfy her that I wasn't going to fall back asleep. She turned and left the room and I watched her delicious bottom wiggle as she walked away.
"How rude!" I said to Mr. Paddington. He agreed that I deserved a kiss from Callie, or at least a mention of our lusty lovemaking. On top of being a good lover, Mr. Paddington had always been a good listener. I yawned again, stretched and got up to go take a shower.
Fifteen minutes later I had on some clothes and was standing in Dad's study. I felt kind of guilty being in there. It wasn't like we were exactly forbidden to be in his book-lined, cigar smelling manly lair or anything, but he definitely felt that there wasn't any good reason for us to go there and so we seldom did.
Caroline was seated in front of his desk going through an open cigar box in her lap. Dad had smoked the occasional cigar as long as I could remember. And I recognized the box because on the lid I could see the upside down drawing of a charging elephant.
"If you think I'm going to smoke a Thompson Tusker with you just because you're in the mood to try new stuff, you're mistaken."
Callie laughed. "Ewww! I would never. Anyway, I wasn't as tired as you were, so I didn't stay asleep for long. I didn't want to wake you, so I kinda wandered down here and I was looking around and I found this box full of mementos."
"You just found it?" I said skeptically. "Where?"
Caroline put the box on the desk, stood up and walked over to one of the bookshelves. Some of the books had been hiding a pile of cigar boxes, and she showed me where they were. "See? He had them hidden. I already looked through the boxes, and they were all empty except the one on the bottom." She pointed at the box on the desk.
"You went through Dad's stuff? He'll kill you. What'd you think you were going to find, anyhow?"
"I don't know." Caroline blushed. "Maybe an old love letter or something that I could keep in my room and pretend he'd written for me."
"Caroline, you're really starting to worry me."
"Yeah," she said quietly. "Sometimes I worry myself. But I am what I am," she said with a shrug. "I try not to let it bother me. Anyway, see what I got?"
Callie dug in the box and came up with a piece of paper which she handed to me. It was a little pink Valentine's Day Hallmark card, with a drawing of a piece of cake on it. Inside it said, 'Yummy!' under which Mom had signed her name, Penny. But what Caroline had obviously wanted me to see was the handwritten note in Mom's feminine hand.
Michael,
I feel like such a clichΓ©, but I wouldn't have traded it for anything. I guess it's a good thing you're so persistent! And it'll always be easy for us to remember the anniversary of my first time β a girl couldn't have a better Valentine's Day!
Love you forever,
Penny
"Whoa," I said.
"Yep," Caroline said. "Their first time was on Valentine's Day. Isn't it romantic? And that explains why Dad always makes such a fuss every year. It used to be his way of remembering the anniversary of the first time they did it, and now it's his way of treasuring his memories of Mom. He's such a teddy bear!" She took the card back and hugged it to her chest.
I giggled. "Well, I guess they both got lucky. As lucky as we were this morning."
Caroline slapped my arm. "Stop it," she said playfully. "Anyway, that's not all. Look at this."
Callie dug into the cigar box again and came out wiggling a CD suggestively.
"And what's on that?"
"I don't know. I tried to look at it while you were asleep, but when I put it in the computer nothing happened."
That's my Caroline. She spent her time working on her backhand and not on her books. I knew that around the school I'd been considered the brainy one, and Callie was known as the jock.
I took the disc from her and put it in Dad's computer, which was already up and running.
"You know we're not supposed to be on here, don't you?" I said. We each had our own computer, and Dad discouraged us from using his machine.
"Come on," she said. "We could take the disk up to your room to look at it, but if he comes home we might not have the chance to put it back. If we're in here we can throw it back in the box and be out of here in a second."
Apparently I didn't need to hear her arguments, because I was already looking at the screen showing the contents of the CD.
"See?" I said, pointing at the graph on the screen. "The files aren't showing, but the disk is almost full. That means the files are hidden."
"But you know what to do, right?"
"Maybe. If he didn't get too clever." I changed the viewing options to 'show hidden files' and a folder popped into view, which earned me a high-five.
I opened the folder and inside was a screenful of thumbnails; tiny preview images of the pictures burned on the disk. I selected 'all' from the file menu and told the computer to open the pictures as a slideshow, and they began flashing on the screen, each picture lasting for about three seconds.
They were almost all pictures of Mom. Old ones from before Caroline and I were born. Dad had pictures of her around the house, hung on the walls and in pretty frames on the furniture. Even a couple on his desk. But they were all family shots with me and him and Callie. These had all been taken before Caroline and I came along, and I hadn't seen any of them before.
In most of the pictures she couldn't have been much more than a teenager, looking innocent and pretty. It was hard to believe that our Mom had once been a flirtatious single girl, but the evidence was right in front of us in glorious Kodacolor. Mom smiling at the camera, leaning against a tree. In her bathing suit on the beach, looking like a schoolgirl. With her hand on Dad's chest, both of them smiling at the camera and dressed up for a party.
"Gosh," said Caroline. "She was so pretty. I mean, she was pretty right up until she died, but she was even prettier when she was younger."
But Caroline wasn't seeing the same thing I was. "Look," I said, pointing at a shot of Mom leaning on a fence, wearing a kind of funny blouse with puffy sleeves and looking very 80's. "Can't you see? Look at her face. Imagine her with a different haircut. She looks just like you."
After I said it, Callie saw it too. "But it isn't just me," she said, pointing to a shot of Mom and Dad laughing at the camera. "Right there she looks just like you."