Keelin Banks is looking for balance (beyondheryears) wrote in light_of_may, @ 2015-02-04 21:33:00 |
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No matter what she did, Keelin could not shake off the headache. The hot shower did nothing. The pain meds might as well have been a few Tic Tacs thrown into her mouth for all the good they did her. Nothing worked and she couldn’t figure out where the headache was coming from. It felt like her skull was shrinking and squeezing the contents of her mind. Still, she wasn’t the sort to miss work for something as trivial as a headache, and she moved the clothes around in her closet to pick out an outfit for school. She moved to the side and her foot brushed up against something smooth and cold. Keelin glanced down and saw a heavy looking wooden box. She knelt down and ran her hand over the top of the box. Something was inside, something that caused a knot of unease to tangle inside of her stomach. She very much did not want to know what was inside of the box.
But she opened it anyways.
Her headache seemed to worsen as she ran her hand over the aging silk of ivory dress inside the box. The material felt like ice and it jolted her, causing her to pull her hand back almost as if she had been bitten. She remembered wearing that dress. She remembered trying to burn it. Keelin’s breath was shaky at best and her hands began to tremble as she reached back into the box and found a single piece of cardstock with a silver filigree embossed around the edges. Her world was shattered by a piece of ruined silk and cardstock. Welcome to the wedding of Keelin Rae Banks and Brandon Michael King was inscribed in a curly font in the same silver color as the pretty border.
Reading those names, tracing her thumb across each little swirl, brought back a flood of memories that she had not realized she was missing. Brandon. She remembered him and how cruel he had been to leave her at the alter. Yet, that was not why her eyes were filling with tears. She could deal with the heartbreak he left because she had done it before, but now her heart was breaking for a different reason altogether. The reason she could not remember marrying Reggie or giving birth to Sarah or Bess was because those things never happened. She was not Reggie’s wife. She was not the mother to two wonderful little girls.
She sat in her bathrobe, in front of her closet with the mess of wedding paraphernalia surrounding her while tears steadily streamed down her cheeks. How could this even be true? Surely, there was something wrong with her and making her imagine all of this. Maybe her sister -- not cousin, how in the world could she think Kahlan was her cousin! -- would know what to do.
“Kahlan?” She called, hoping the tears were not too clear in her voice. “C-can you please come here?”