Louder Than Love by Jessica Topper

neared the front door. I was reminded of my mother. From the time I was old enough to have an after-dark curfew, she would wait up for me. It used to drive me nuts, but now as a mom myself, I understood her logic. Attempting sleep was futile when your child was out at, as Adrian would probably say, “all bloody hours.”
    I glanced over at the slumbering stranger in my passenger seat and wondered what my parents would think of the present situation. No doubt it would warrant a lecture about “stranger danger” and include the latest sex-crime statistics. Lauder Lake hadn’t had a murder since 1973, but seeing as I had imported this unknown personality in from the boroughs, all bets were off.
    Adrian was snoring slightly, his lips pursed as if to blow out birthday candles. There was something angelic and forlorn about him that kept me from thinking he was plotting any dastardly deeds. “Hey.” I nudged him gently. “Adrian. We’re here.”
    “Wow. Those antihistamines are kicking my arse.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose and outward across his eyes, yawned, and proceeded to follow me in.
    “Careful, there are a lot of boxes.” Many of Pete’s and my marital belongings, too important for deep storage yet not important enough for daily access, lived in a few dozen cardboard banker’s boxes stashed in various corners of the house.
    “Did you recently move?”
    “No . . . just taking our time settling.” Abbey and I had learned to live around them or, in some cases, repurpose stacks of them as end tables and staging areas for various Barbie play scenes. Seeing the boxes through the eyes of an unfamiliar bystander gave me a queer feeling.
    “Whatever became of Abbey?” he thought to ask, gingerly setting his guitar case near the piano as I flicked on lights.
    “I called Marissa from the hospital. She’s keeping Abbey overnight.”
    Adrian was studying the pictures that spanned across the top of the piano, mostly Abbey in various stages of child-chub. There was one picture of Marissa, Leanna, and me taken at someone’s basement rec room Halloween party during high school. We were dressed as three blind mice, complete with ears, tails, whiskers, dark shades, and canes. “These are the ladies I met today,” he commented. “You’ve been friends a long time.”
    “Yeah, since forever. I never imagined we would all end up back here.”
    “Once I hit London, I vowed never to go back home,” Adrian murmured. “Onward and upward.” He was now standing in front of a trio of frames by the stairs. “Do you miss the city?”
    The words caught in my throat. “More than I know how to say.”
    It pained me to look at what I called the Carousel Prints. Yet not a day went by that I didn’t.
    I never did make it to B&H that day, as Pete had asked me to. As many times as I relived our final conversation because he never could, the task of picking up those photos never dawned on me. His last request unfulfilled. An entire year passed before Pete’s brother, Luke, showed up at my doorstep with them. As a professional photographer, he was a regular customer at the photo center, and a thoughtful employee took the time to make sure the neglected prints had ended up in the right hands.
    Luke had taken the negatives and made enlargements in black-and-white, giving them a timeless look. The trio of prints portrayed a sequence of events occurring mere minutes apart, but they spoke volumes on a lifetime of emotions: fear, trust, and joy.
    The first photo was all Abbey. Pete’s disembodied hands, his fingers looking huge as they spanned her rib cage, placed her on the wooden saddle molded to the body of the carousel horse. Her tiny head was bowed so she was all cheeks, lashes fanning across them and little mouth drawn up like a young rosebud.
What is this new creature?
Hands instinctively reaching for the pole jutting from the horse’s mane.
    The next photo is Abbey’s face in protest, and Pete’s bending close in