The Moment Keeper Read Online Free

spent so much time being angry that he doesn’t know how to be anything but. Don’t let anger consume you, Sarah. Anger destroys everything that’s good.”

Chapter 5
    Elizabeth gathers silky strands of hair into a cluster on top of Olivia’s head and clips it with a pink lacey bow. “Such a pretty girl.”
    “Da. Da. Da.”
    “Yes, Daddy is getting his picture taken, too.”
    Tom walks into the nursery, with a beautiful hand-painted mural depicting various nursery rhymes, and Olivia claps her pudgy hands. “Da. Da. Da.”
    He picks up Olivia and kisses her and then Elizabeth. “My girls look beautiful.”
    “Do you like our matching dresses?” Elizabeth asks.
    Tom smiles. “Gorgeous, as always.”
    The dresses are a pink floral print. Elizabeth’s is sleeveless and Olivia’s has capped sleeves and a big bow around the waist that ties in the back.
    “Found them online at a really neat boutique. Bought two others.”
    “Don’t tell me anymore,” Tom says. “I don’t want to know how much this new online boutique is costing me.”
    Elizabeth tilts her head and fakes a pout. “You always say your girls deserve the best.”
    “Yep,” Tom said. “Nothing but the best.”
    I remember the day I was cleaning out Grandma’s closet. It was right after she died and I was making good on my promise to donate all of her clothes to Goodwill. I found a big box of pictures stuffed in a dark corner underneath a stack of old wool blankets. I spent the entire afternoon looking through them. There were photos of Matt when he was little. It was hard to believe that the freckled-faced boy with the toothless grin in the red and blue Spider-Man pajamas had become one of the biggest drunks on this side of the Mason-Dixon Line.
    I found pictures of Matt’s dad, my grandfather, who died from a heart attack when Matt was in ninth grade. That’s when Matt met my mom. They sat beside one another in science class. Grandma told me the story. She said my mom grew up in foster homes and that my parents got married right out of high school. “Way too young,” she said. “But you couldn’t tell them any different.”
    I opened a small manila folder and found my parents’ wedding pictures. It didn’t look as if there were a lot of people at the wedding. Just Grandma and a couple of my parents’ friends. Maybe a half-dozen people. It looked as if it was held in the white gazebo at the park by the high school. I recognized the gazebo’s copper cupola with a finial on top and the brick walkway that circled the structure.
    My parents looked so young in the pictures, Mom in her white cotton dress and Matt in a pair of black dress pants, white shirt and tie. The flowers Mom held looked like one of thosecheap bouquets you can buy at the grocery store.
    There were lots of pictures of me, a few of me and Grandma and none, not one, of me and Matt.
    “I love this one,” Elizabeth says when the photographer displays the photos she has just taken on the computer screen.
    “Me, too,” Tom says.
    Olivia is sitting on a white rocker, holding a doll that’s wearing a pink floral dress just like hers.
    “You didn’t tell me you got the doll a matching dress,” Tom says.
    Elizabeth smiles. “I couldn’t resist. It was just too adorable.”
    They look at all of the pictures and purchase several poses of Olivia and several poses of all three of them.
    “Remember our wedding pictures?” Elizabeth says.
    “How could I forget? We had a best man, a maid of honor, six bridesmaids, six ushers, a flower girl and ring bearer and the photo session took forever.”
    “But we got great photos,” Elizabeth said.
    “Yeah, but I’m not sure our five hundred guests were happy that they had to wait so long.”
    “It wasn’t five hundred, it was four hundred. And besides, the strolling musician and hors d’oeuvres held them over.”
    I had a doll with a matching dress once. I named her Sue, after my mom. It was Twins’ Day in preschool and no