Originally written for 2/12/2012 Bones Bird's Facebook Fanfiction Drabble Challenge.
Memories Remain
Of all the things I still remember
Summers never looked the same
Years go by and time just seems to fly
But the memories remain
- Daughtry, September
Long slender white wrinkled fingers, gripped the coffee cup as if it would, if need be, anchor her into the present instead of her tumbling into what if and should have been. The past several years had seen more than enough agony, tears, and injustices; they all had conquered if, if not for anything else, but the sake of the once five year old little boy, now twenty-one year old man, who had and to this day missed his Mama. As a child, Jack had found a surrogate mother within his aunt, within her; when he was a teenager, she had become his stepmother.
When the painful memories and cruel reality would become too much, for the sixty-one year old, Jessica Hotchner, she would venture into the basement to her Grandmother's old Cedar Chest that held her most precious tangible item. The item was an eight by ten, once pristine white, now yellowed with age, now crinkled letter that Haley, her deceased sister, had written moments before she and Jack had entered into protective custody of local law enforcement then unto the United States Marshall Service's Witness Protection.
Jessica would caress the worn, revered letter with her frail and arthritic fingers before bringing it to her chest as tears fell from her blue eyes. It had been sixteen years since the day of her sister's murder, yet the pain felt as if it had happened yesterday. She would clutch onto the letter, as it and her nephew were her only links to her baby sister. She did not need to read the letter to know what it said. She had memorized it from the first time she had read it, and over the years, she had slowly found comfort in those words, but now those words pierced her heart and made her weep.
She missed her sister.