AN: Thank you all for your kind reviews and the many follows and favourites. It is greatly appreciated. I am currently 17 chapters in so there are still plenty of updates to come. Sorry this is only a small chapter the but the next couple are much longer and much more intense. Enjoy!

Movies!

Movies! So anyone who knows me, knows how much I love movies. And where did that love of movies come from? From my parents, actually. I know I haven't painted a very rosy picture so far of my family life and there are more bad times than good, but that just makes the good all the more memorable!

So one of our regular outings (well semi regular depending on my mother's mood) was a trip to the movies. It was usually just my mother and myself, but when dad wasn't on one of his frequent business trips, he would join us too. It would always be a Saturday afternoon and we would go in to town to the local cinema but sometimes, usually when dad was with us we would head into Manhattan. We would drive in after lunch, see an afternoon session then walk around central park before heading off to have dinner at a fancy restaurant.

Those were the trips I loved the best. Mainly because it was all of us together, being (not just acting like) a normal loving family. We didn't do normal often, but the times we did were the memories I grasp tightly too. Those were the memories that allowed my father and I to maintain at least a tentative grasp on our relationship through all of our future ups and downs… and there were plenty of those. If I hadn't remembered the good times then I may very well have walked away from my father as a teen and never bothered to speak to him again. But those memories reminded me that there was a man in there somewhere who loved and cared about me.

I discovered a roll of film in an old box my father gave me when I was in my forties, and when I got it developed it had on it a photograph of my mother and I, on our very last movie outing to Manhattan. My father must have taken it because he wasn't in the shot but I remember he was with us. We saw The Little Prince that day and Dad leaned over and whispered to me that this movie could have been written about me. It was the only photo I had seen of my mother since shortly after she died and all her belongings were removed from the house.

I still have the photo on my mantle.