There�s a portrait shoved into the back of a room full of rummage in the school. I don�t know how it came to be there, alone, forgotten. I suppose someone wanted rid of it, so they donated it to the school. It�s a funny sort of a painting to donate to a school though.
Lt. Devereaux showed it to me. He was the one who found it. �Come with me,� he said one day after we had been practicing. It was unusual. I wasn�t sure what he wanted me to do. Then he took me to this creaky old room full of dust and darkness. Given, he is much more friendly to me since Christmas, but still, it was odd.
We wound through the piles of old desks and broken chairs until we came to a portrait in a pretty gold frame, propped against a stack of other paintings which were leaning against the wall. How he ever found it I still don�t know. Maybe he was trying to find a painting for his office. I guess it doesn�t matter. In any case, there it was, a bit dusty, but still filled with vibrant colors and soft, careful brush strokes. It was a painting of a young woman. She was my age and blonde and fair, like some heroin from the mind of a pre-Raphaelite master. Her gray-green eyes stared back at me, solemn but full of life and ideas and kindness. I knew those eyes right away, and I very nearly cried when I saw them. It was a portrait of my mother.
Oh, yes, I know I romanticize her unmercifully, but she was beautiful. I do remember that, and I have pictures of her, of course. But the woman in this picture, I did not know her at all. The woman in the painting wore the crisp blue uniform of an officer. I never knew my mother was an officer. I hadn�t the least idea. No one ever told me. But now I wonder, what else could there be that I don�t know about her? Maybe it�s just best to leave the past alone. Especially if it involves asking my poor father.
No, I guess I�ll just rely on my memory for now. The few memories I have. She died when I was very young, so there aren�t many. I don�t even know how she died. No one does, as far as I can tell. At least, not that I�ve ever heard. I do remember though that it was winter, because it had actually snowed quite a lot. There was a white blanket over everything. Some memories stay with you like that.
I used to think of her like Snow White, buried in a glass coffin and destined to someday wake to the kiss of a handsome prince. Hopefully my father. He would ride up on a huge, muscular white warhorse in a kilt and a flowing cape and he would sweep down and kiss her cold forehead and she would come back to us. Things never work that way though. She was the very image of a blonde Snow White, all peaceful and beautiful and very, very cold. There was no cape or warhorse for my father though. He was so very sad. He�s never seemed the same since then. Not even after he married my stepmother. I guess he�s seemed . . . Well, I hate to say weak, but so very tired and downtrodden. My mother, she never seemed like that. In my memories, she was always so . . . stable. I guess I shouldn�t be so surprised that she was an officer then. I wonder if that�s what she would want for me. For so long I avoided it. I wonder if I was wrong.