ARTIST MEMORIES

David Nwosu was frozen, the old photo was shaking a bit in his hands. His eyes followed Veronica's photographs, as if he had seen the spirit he had buried in the past.

Jyoti changed with his feet and looked at him carefully. She was hoping for curiosity, but perhaps surprising, his expression surprised her sadness. "Have you ever stopped thinking about them?" she repeated quietly.

David gestured in breath in the small seating area of the gallery. "Now, seat."

Jyoti followed him, her heartbeat as she sat on the other side of him. The gallery was calm and almost too quiet, as if time had slowed down.

He placed the picture on the table between them, and his fingers persecuted Veronica's face. "I've never seen this picture in years," he muttered. Then, after a break, he looked up at Jyoti. "You have her eyes."

Jyoti swallowed the lump in her neck. She had heard it before, but after hearing it from a man who once loved her mother, she felt it was wrong.

"I knew nothing about you," she admitted. "She never mentioned you. Not once. "

David smiled weakly, but it didn't reach his eyes at all. "It sounds like her."

Jyoti leaned forward. "Can you tell me about her? About... You and you? "

David hesitated, lost in my mind for a while. He then sighed.

"We met in secondary school," he began. "She was amazing, isn't she? She's always curious, always dreamed. She sat under this tree every afternoon, reading, losing in her world. I was a boy who had a sketchbook, but was shy and unable to speak first. "He laughed. "But one day, I finally did it."

Jyoti could almost imagine it – her mother, a young girl who smiled at the shadow of the tree without consciously stimulating her to inspire her.

"We can't separate," David continued. "She said everything to me – a dream of travel, becoming an author to see a place beyond this little world we lived in. And then I – he stopped and looked down. "I loved her. Deep. She asked.

David let out a breath and leaned against his chair. "Life," he said. "We were young, and life took us in many different directions. I got a scholarship to study the arts in England. She encouraged me to go, but... I think we both broke it.

"

"Have you seen her again?"

David nodded slowly. "A few years later. In college. I tried again, but... it wasn't the same. She had changed, and me too. There was love, but there was distance too. And... she met your father.

" Silence settled between them.

Jyoti looked down at the Journal in her lap. "She wrote about you," she said.

David's head snapped. "Did she do that?"

Jyoti flipped the side and stopped with the 1999 entry. She read out loud:

"I have a boy. He makes me laugh when I don't want to. He understands me in a way that I don't think is impossible. But love is complicated. Life is complicated. And I'm afraid."

David closed his eyes to absorb the weight of these words. I'm afraid to make the wrong choice. "

Jyoti's chest chokes. Has her mother ever really found the peace of the choice she met?

David sighed and rubbed the temple. "I didn't establish it after your marriage. I thought it was very easy. "

Jyoti studied him, as if his fingers still remained in the photographs. Even after years he still carried her into his heart.

Finally she spoke. "She's gone now."

David looked at her sharply as if reality had just hit him. His pine trees collided together. "How?"

"Cancer," whispering Jyoti. He leaned forward and placed his elbow on his knees. He didn't talk for a long time. His voice didn't whisper as he finally did it. "She deserves more time."

Jyoti nodded, turning her tears back. "She left me the list," she admitted. "The bucket list of places she wanted to visit, what she had to do. I try to complete it.

" David gave a small sad smile. "It sounds like her."

Jyoti hesitated, then took a deep breath. "Can you help me?"

David looked at her and looked for her face for a long time. He then nodded.

"Yes," he said. "I'll... do."

And just like that, Jyoti's journey took another unexpected turn.