Songs For Your Mother Gordon MacMillan (good books for 7th graders .txt) 📖

do this for me was also tough as she thinks this is a super dumb idea. She begged me to let her take Luke. As much as I love her, I want Luke to know his father and to be with him if at all possible. He’s part of you, after all.

I told Luke to be brave and that it’s a big adventure. I told him you lived far away. I don’t know how much he understands. He says he does, but he’s five, and he says a lot of stuff and makes me laugh all the time.

I’ve included a picture of Luke and me. It is maybe about a year old and taken before I got very sick again and when I still sort of looked okay. I thought you should have something of the two of us. I don’t know; I thought it might help.

Susan pauses and picks through the papers for the picture. She lifts it up and looks at it. She looks up and smiles sadly as she passes the picture to me. Lauren looks like she’s barely changed and, when I hold it, I am grief-stricken for the life I never had, and the worst part was that it was out there all of the time and happening without me. The girl that I lost and the small boy who by some miracle rose from the ashes of that night. If only I had been braver instead of the absolute coward I was who ended up throwing it all away.

Staring at the picture, holding it in both hands, I have tears running down my face. I haven’t cried for a long time, not since hospital and those early days after I got out, and now I can’t stop. I realise I am grieving and heartbroken as I will never get Lauren back.

Susan reaches out and gives my hand a squeeze.

‘I know you’re not, but are you okay?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ I say, and I wipe away the tears on my face with my sleeve.

The waitress brings Luke back over. She says he is such a lovely boy and we must bring him back to visit often. As the waitress moves off, Luke sees what Susan and I are looking at.

‘That’s Mommy and me,’ Luke says.

‘Yes, it is,’ I say, and it hits me how small the picture is and how it captures only Luke and Lauren and not much else. I imagine Lauren setting up the camera and putting Luke onto her lap. Her face is turned to his, and she has her arms around him. It is almost like there should be someone else there, that it should be more than the two of them. Would I, in that other life, have been there as well? It’s as if I am cropped out of view.

‘She’s stunning,’ Susan says.

I nod in agreement. Yeah, she is, I say to myself. Susan takes up the letter and begins to read it through to the end.

He has your picture too. It’s the one I took of you playing the guitar in my apartment. It took a long time and, eventually, after a year or so, when Luke was still very young, I printed a copy out and stuck it up. I wanted it to be around so that when Luke grew up and asked me about his biological father (as opposed to that other great guy who I was going to meet, who would play soccer with him and teach him to catch a baseball, and who I never met), I could tell him about you. I could explain how it happened. I could show him that picture, with you holding the guitar, and leave the rest up to him. I don’t know, maybe I thought that one day, a long time from now, he would track you down; maybe we both would when you had a house in the suburbs and a couple of kids and a dog. It’s funny the kind of fantasies you imagine, as that was all it was, and I find myself doing this instead.

I’ve written down everything I could. Call it a survival guide. They are notes that I hope will help you get through this. I wish more than anything I was there to help you, to tell you all the stuff that I learnt as I’ve learnt so much. I’m not, though, and I can’t be. I realise none of this is enough and that it might, in your eyes, all fall way short. I hope it doesn’t and I hope you can forgive me for this and understand why I did it.

Please don’t look for me. Don’t make it harder than it already is. I want Luke to have a new start. Luke is the one that counts most in all of this. I’m going to sign off here. Please keep him safe, look after him, and tell him every now and again that Mommy loves him very much. All my love, Lauren

When Susan has finished reading the letter, she puts it down on the table and looks up at me. She makes a little sniff, and she gives me a small smile. Susan starts to leaf through the other pages. There are more than thirty sheets with notes all written in the same handwriting.

‘I know I keep saying this, but, Johnny, what on earth are you going to do?’ Susan asks.

I shake my head. All that I know is that I wish people would stop asking me that. It doesn’t help, and I only have one response.

‘I’ve no idea,’ I say.

I can’t even begin to comprehend what I need to do or where to begin. All I can do is continue how I started this morning and put one foot in front of the other and somehow make this work. I have to do it for Luke, and I have to do it for Lauren. I look at Luke, and it is like I am seeing him for the