Chapter Text
The harsh night time winter wind came in through the bedroom window. It wrapped itself around me and I shivered, my joints aching as my arthritis flared up. I pulled the duvet more tightly around my body. My lungs rattled in my chest as I took another laboured breath. This was too much. How much longer could I go on like this?
I turned to my daughter, half asleep in the armchair beside my bed. "Moira," I said in a quiet tone, though still as loud as I could muster.
"Yes, mum?" She yawned as her eyes flittered open. Beautiful baby blue orbs, just like her father had had.
"I need you to get something for me."
"Anything." Moira stood up, her black hair flowing down her back in beautiful waves.
"I need my photo album. It's -"
"In the dresser, buried under the vinyl, wrapped in dad's shirt." Moira paused, "I know which one you mean." She left the room momentarily to retrieve it. I could hear her moving around downstairs, looking for the one thing which I had always held onto, no matter what. When Moira came back upstairs, the photo album was in her hands, her father's shirt still wrapped around it to protect it. She put it in my lap and helped me to sit up. I gave a small smile to thank her. "Do you want me to leave you alone for a little?" Moira asked, a hand on my back lovingly, "I can come back in about an hour?"
I nodded, "thank you, Moira." She nodded and left the room, closing the door behind her.
I unwrapped the album, placing the shirt beside me on the bed, remembering the day that I had gotten it. With a smile because of the memory, I gently opened the book to the first page. The pages were more yellow now than they had ever been. It had been years since I had last looked at this book, but as soon as I saw the first picture, memories came flooding back. It was the first time in years that I had allowed myself to remember those times. To remember them. To remember him.
The first picture was of four men; boys, really. Their ages ranged from twenty-three to twenty. Lovingly, I smiled at the photograph. They had been so young, then. We all had.
I turned the pages to the very last one. Four boys; men now. More hair on one of their heads than there'd been between all four of them in 1963. Absentmindedly, I stroked the photograph, ignoring my frail hands slipping through the page, disappearing into the greyscale photo.
I could almost hear their strong Liverpool accents as they laughed and joked with one another...
"You've been gone a long time, Luv." I turned to my side and saw him. My Ringo. I burst into tears and threw my arms around him. "Hey, hey!" He laughed, patting my back lovingly as he embraced me. "What's wrong with ye?" No mention of the daughter that I had retreated with - had he been frozen in time since that day almost sixty years ago? Or had time run its course? Did he even remember his firstborn daughter?
"Mama!" I turned and saw a little two-and-a-half year old running across the green grass towards us. Her parents. Linda was standing behind her, smiling, still pregnant.
I knelt down and hugged my daughter, once again a child.
I picked Moira up and moved closer to Ringo. He wrapped his arms around both of us. "I am, so, so sorry," I told him. "I should have fought for our marriage -"
"Hey, hey!" He exclaimed again, though now in a soft tone, no trace of laughter in it. "You're talking like you've been gone for decades. It's been ten minutes."
I just continued to cry, managing to stutter out a, "I missed you, Ringo!"
He laughed. "You're my silly birdie." He placed a soft kiss on my lips, "but next time you go for a walk 'round, don't come back crying." He paused, "I hate seeing you sad."
"I'm sorry," I told him honestly. "It's been so long, and I missed you, and I love you -"
With another swift kiss, Ringo got me to be quiet. "You're the best thing that ever happened to me." He told me with conviction. "And I love you so much more than you'll ever know... you and Moira and," he paused, "the little one."
He put a hand on my stomach. I looked down at his calloused, drummer's hand. "But how did you...?"
"I remember what you were like the first time," Ringo replied affectionately.
I smiled and leaned into him. Linda rushed in front of us and snapped a photograph. It was perfect. "I want a copy of that!" I told her.
"For that silly photo album of your's?" My husband teased.
"It was your album first, Richard Starkey." I paused, "and you may think it's silly, but one day when you're old and grey, photographs will be the only things that you have to look back on."