Free Confessions by Ryne Douglas Pearson Page B

but her. Ever.
    For the first time I break that inviolable rule, reaching to the simple knob and opening the door, revealing the dark space beyond. A rush of chemical smells wafts out, a vinegary strong mix of the remnants of washes and baths which turned negative to positive, making all that my mother saw through the camera lens finally real. As in the house I grew up in, this place of escape is adorned with framed images captured in and around the lake. Swimming, strolling, skipping stones. A barbecue out front. My father chopping wood out back. All realized in this makeshift darkroom that reeks of a wonderful once-upon-a-time.
    I close the door, the sign swinging slightly as the old slab of wood sets in the jamb. This minor exploration might bring me sadness, but it does not. My mother’s fascination with the seizing of moments for posterity leaves me thinking that, as her grasp of the now drains away, there is a chance she is simply retreating into an endless gallery of her yesterdays. Times she can revel in until the end, when she will be made whole again in new life.
    I return to the gathering room. For a few hours I sit before the fire, thinking on what I will do in the morning. A walk around the lake, likely. Which will lead to an afternoon of reading, settled into one of the two rough hewn Adirondack chairs on the porch. Then another night such as this, relaxing and reflective, before returning to my everyday life the following day. It will have been a good thing to journey here. The right thing.
    When I close my eyes near midnight in the room I shared with my sister through summer weeks and winter weekends, I drift into a dreamless sleep. A merciful plunge into a nothingness devoid of thought, or worry, or wonder. A fortuitous ignorance I savor.
    Until the wind blows.
    *  *  *
    I wake to the slamming near three in the morning, startled awake, a BANG BANG BANG seeming to shake the whole of the house, loudest toward the lake, the cacophony echoing down the hallway in percussive blasts.
    My feet slap the cold floor as I get quickly out of the smallish bed which has inhabited this room with its twin since I can remember. I do not search for slippers or robe, and the chill of the northern night swallows me as I hurry groggily from the room. By the time I reach the gathering room and see the moonlit silhouette of the storm door flapping against the house I am shivering. I open the inner door and the cold doubles on me, gusts flooding in, a tempest without form. The storm door beats in a spastic rhythm with each pulse of wind. In my state of contentment before retiring to bed I have forgotten to latch it. With some difficulty I time its swing and grab the inner handle, securing it before closing the inner door, the night left to rush by outside in a hushed, howling blow.
    I turn back to the room, the hearth glowing weakly in the corner, no flame left, just embers burning slowly down to ash. There is no warmth here to stave off the chill, and I make my way quickly back to the bedroom, moonlight slanting in the front bay window to skim the old wood floor a milky white. Almost ethereal it seems as I cross it, the few steps through the flat glow like walking on a gossamer cloud. So very delicate that falling through its imagined form would take no more than a stuttered step.
    A shadow leans forward of me as I pass through the ashen light, preceding me toward the hallway. The bedroom and downy covers and warmth just a few steps distant. But I do not reach the ready relief from the chill straight away.
    Something stops me.
    It is one of the many photos that adorn this gathering room wall, framed in simple stained wood, that catches my eye. Draws my attention. Gives me pause.
    Katie beams out at me from it, sitting on the rail that wraps the porch. A blanket of winter white rolls over the beach beyond her, dusting the frozen lake and weighing the stout pine branches with puddles of snow. She is a bright high school senior in