WHO: Amita Haham & NPC!Destiny Haham. WHEN: September 29, 2018, evening. WHERE: Her home in St. John's. SUMMARY: Halloween reminiscing. WARNINGS: Infidelity.
It was too early for jack-o-lanterns, and Amita didn't want them to all rot away before the end of the next month, but that didn't mean that it was too early for pumpkins or for the scarecrows she kept in a box in the garage for Autumn's beginning. Destiny played in the front yard as Amita struggled with the box out of the garage and begin her work on making certain the small front porch looked like a pinterest board.
Within the next two weeks she would put together things for Halloween and trick-or-treaters, but for now it was leaves and scarecrows and smaller pumpkins that would last well enough until they were carved into.
Sometimes she wondered if anyone of her generation - anyone old enough to remember that night, or old enough to remember Alice March - really enjoyed Halloween. It had been her favorite holiday once, even though that had been something of a secret she'd held to herself because her parents had not cared for it so much, but they'd allowed them to go to parties - until the one. And then afterwards there had been Lochan, and she'd been more likely to bow out and say 'I won't go' than to say she would.
Except for when she was at UW.
She straightened at Destiny's voice, and waved to her daughter nodding her head at the partially indecipherable sentence that Destiny had thrown back at her before heading back into the bush that she'd been turning into a fort for most of the summer.
Unbidden, memories of her Junior Year pulled back into place, and for a moment she could remember the way Adam's eyes had been an impossibly deep brown, nearly black, and that his jawline had been as chiseled as Clark Kent. He'd been a long way from the Good Indian Boy she'd been engaged too, but perhaps that had been part of the appeal from the very American name, to the way he'd pulled her out of her shell of pleasing people around her. He'd always asked her what she wanted, to a point that she'd been uncomfortable at first, but that Halloween he'd tempted them all, including his roommate and Amita's fiance, into going to the parties as DC characters, and she'd pulled off an amazing Wonder Woman if she did say so herself.
And that had been the night, he'd kissed her, underneath the stairs of a house she couldn't even really remember whose it had been. And it had been a week later, that she'd gone to see her fiance, and fallen into Adam's bed instead.
They weren't discovered that time. Nor the time after.
In those moments Amita had been another girl, someone who owned her life and her choices and didn't need to make anyone happy. Her mother would proclaim that making one's family happy was important, and so Amita had been ready to try, and would likely have found herself married to her perfect Fiance, and maybe even giving birth to perfect children, except for Adam. Except for the night the end of Junior year they were discovered.
Sometimes she felt that it was terrible of her, that when she thought back on it, she could not help but wonder what her life would have been with, if she had been able to stay with Adam. Would she be in Fall City? Probably not. Would she have her own business? Maybe. Maybe she would be a high powered executive - maybe she'd be childless. It was difficult to see her and Adam with children, really.
But the real shame came from the memory of her fiance's face as he told her that he wouldn't tell why he was breaking if off, in a sense taking the blame that should have been hers to carry. And how although she could see it with a memory that was nearly photographic in its detail, it was Adam's face she missed. One of the men had been decent, but it hadn't been the one she'd fallen in love with.
She stuck her hand in her pocket and pulled out the phone, sliding open the screen and opening her email again.
Mita,
Is this still your email? I'd love to catch up.
Adam
As it had every time that she had stared at it that day, her fingers hovered over the keyboard. She pulled in a breath, and before she could think about it again she quickly typed: Yes, it is. Are you in Seattle?
"Mama?"
She hit send, shoved the phone back in her pocket and looked up: "Yes, why don't you come in Destiny, we'll go check the curry."
Her daughter ran through the screen door Amita held open, and then she turned, taking a final glance at the porch decoration before slamming the screen door.
She had the life that she deserved. She had better than the life she deserved, truly. Halloween had not been ruined for Destiny, and so Amita would not be the one to ruin it. And she wouldn't think about what Adam wanted.
As the door closed, she could be heard saying: "And then we should talk about costumes."