The Stars Will Shine by Eva Carrigan Read Free Book Online

door, he shouts, “See you later, Mom! I’m showing Delilah around.” I roll my eyes at his abysmal acting, and lead us through the doorway.
    “That better be the truth,” Aunt Miranda warns. Dylan hastily shuts the door behind us before she can say anything else.
    “God, that woman already knows,” he groans.
    “But you were so convincing.”
    Dylan ignores me. “C’mon, I’m catching a ride with my friend so you can take your car.”
    We don’t speak the rest of the way to my car. I drop him off down the road where he says his friend will pick him up, and I watch him in my rearview mirror as I drive away. Dylan glances down at his phone, shoves his hands into his pockets, and stares up at the sky through the canopy of trees. Shaking my head, I return my attention to the road, my fingers tighter around the wheel.
    I pull into a Catholic church parking lot a little while later. I have no intention of going inside; I’m not here to pray or reconnect with the faith of my youth. I just need a place to stop for a moment so I can use my cell phone to look up that record store Dylan mentioned—Miles of Vinyls, or some half-rhyme like that. Something you’d have trouble saying ten times fast. I punch it into Google Maps and wait for the possible routes.
    I’m only two minutes away.
    As I flip the car into reverse, the church doors swing open, and people, clad in semi-formal attire and huge smiles, stream out. They form two lines, one on each side of the double doors, stretching farther and farther out into the parking lot as more people join. All of their hands are full of something they hold with readiness.
    A bell tolls, a joyful sound. Everybody cheers, and the people closest to the door begin throwing their hands into the air, unleashing a delicate shower of white rose pedals. It continues down the line in a wave, and once the end is reached, a young man and woman emerge, their hands held high. She’s wearing a beaded lace wedding gown, and he, suspenders and a tie.
    I feel a pang in my heart as the scene shifts something in my head. Memories again. Memories I don’t want to think about. Memories so beautiful it is heart-wrenching such beauty was stripped away.
    I hold a photograph in my hands, careful not to touch its surface with my fingers because I don’t want to leave smudges all over the happiest day of my parents’ lives. There’s a loveliness to the photograph, in the way the sun rays cast down upon them and light the everlasting love in their eyes, in the way my father holds my mother, one hand at the small of her back while the other tenderly cradles her cheek.
    The man sweeps the woman into his arms and kisses her deeply. There’s more cheers from the family and friends. Then he carries his new bride to the car that has just pulled up and tenderly sets her inside. He pumps his fist twice to more cheers and runs around to the other side, ready to parade around town with his new wife and brandish their love.
    My parents were like that once, when my mother was still alive. Now all my dad has left of her is my brother Dave and me. I look a lot like her, and I think that makes it all the worse for my dad. Because my mom was a comforting fire in a winter storm; she was a breath of fresh spring air; she was the golden rain on a sunny day and a rainbow smile in the heavens. And me…Well, I’m everything opposite.
    I ease out of the parking lot.
    The female voice of the GPS, robotic and detached and so much like my own, instructs me to turn left, and I follow without question.
    I pull up to a small strip of shops and park in the nearly empty lot. Miles of Vinyls stands before me, its lettering above the entryway in a state of disarray, a couple of the letters hanging noticeably askew.
    A cluster of bells dangling from the door handle jingles on my way in. No one stands behind the checkout counter, which is stacked with disorganized piles of vinyls so that a much larger area of counter space is unusable