Revelations Read Online Free PDF Page A

scent died. Odd , she thought. The dominant aroma in her closet, home and car was American Spirit cigarettes. There were no fresh flowers in the house; no scented candles or soaps that could transmit such a fragrance that Jane associated with doddering, blue-haired ladies. Besides, her olfactory senses had been weakened by twenty-three years of hardcore chain-smoking. She’d heard that when you quit smoking, your sense of smell and taste returned with a vengeance. But it had only been less than four hours since taking her last hit of nicotine. Certainly those senses weren’t re-emerging this soon.
    She scanned the middle shelf of the closet. Suddenly, a distinct heaviness set in around her. It was the same weighty feeling that swelled around her chair when she was sitting in the doctor’s office. The air grew thicker, like sticky honey against a cold spoon. Her feet felt wedged into the carpet. An icy shiver cut through her body. Each breath seemed a bit more difficult to take. God, was this the cancer setting in? Was this some tentacle on a tumor that had reached a blood vessel and was strangling the life from it?
    Jane lifted her head to the top shelf and noticed a large boot box in the corner. Written in black marker across the front were the words: PHOTOS FROM HOUSE . Next to it was a smaller box with the words: KIT’S/MISC . in red marker. The scent of
gardenias swept through the closet again, this time lingering a little longer before disappearing. Yes, it has to be something in one of those boxes , she thought.
    Jane slid the box of photos off the shelf and lifted the lid. A jumble of black-and-white, and color photos were inside—all recovered from her father’s house two years ago when she cleaned it out. She’d never once looked inside the box, preferring to shove the images as far away as possible. Now she was staring into a muddle of memories; hundreds of eyes jockeying for her attention. A seeming innocuous photo on top showed her and Mike, her brother, competing in the annual ski race that Denver PD used to host in Breckenridge, Colorado. Fifteen-year-old Jane stood next to her puny, eleven-year-old brother on a pair of downhill skis that had seen better days. What the bright sun and reflections of the snow masked was the black-and-blue imprint of her father’s fingertips where he’d grabbed her neck the night before during a drunken rage. Jane turned the photo over and dug into the pile. She brought up a black-and-white photo dated 1969 of her father and mother standing in front of the famed Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs. In the photo, her father, Dale, draped his arm stiffly around her mother’s shoulder. Anne Perry had the same sullen, lifeless gaze on her face that Jane always remembered. It was a portrait of sustained suffering. Turning the photo over, Jane noted the words, Honeymoon. She shook her head in disgust. The marriage started well below the curb and descended from there.
    The scent of gardenias grew. Jane sunk her hand under the mass of photos and felt the edge of a folded document. She lifted it out of the box and discovered her parents’ marriage certificate. She opened it to watch a photo and yellowed newspaper clipping drop to the floor. Retrieving them, Jane was somewhat stunned to see a posed, black-and-white portrait of her mother, still serious in nature but minus the haggard eyes. A dewy glow emanated from her skin as her perfectly coiffed brown hair had nary a strand out of place. Looking at the clipping, there was
the same photo reprinted and a brief announcement that twenty-two-year-old Anne LeRoy of Willcut, Colorado, was to be married to Dale Perry of Denver, Colorado. LeRoy. Yes, right , Jane mused. Before Anne became cursed with the Perry name, she’d been a LeRoy. Just seeing the name of Anne LeRoy in print seemed to project an entirely new image of her mother. Anne was infused with a French lineage. Of peculiar interest, though, was that on the back of the