Fiction Friday- Snapshot

This week's challenge: what happens when a character, while cleaning out a house before moving out, finds a roll of film?

SNAPSHOT

She was alone when she packed up their belongings. He had been her only family for the last ten years. And now, no more.

She had always hated that house, so big, so full of clutter. Now that he was gone, the weight of everything left unsaid threatened to crush her. Living there had become so unbearable that she decided to move to an apartment and put the house on the market.

As she was emptying his sock drawer into a trash bag, she felt something rattling inside. A roll of film. Her heart raced. She could make a quick run to the nearest Walgreen's and get it developed in one hour. But would she be ready to face whatever was in it? Did she want to? Hadn't she suffered enough already?

Curiosity won over her trepidation. An hour and fiteen minutes later, she walked out of the neighborhood drugstore slowly, clutching the little carboard pouch. She sat in her car, took a deep breath and took the pictures out.

From the pictures she realized it was an old roll; no wonder they could only develop a handful of prints. An old roll from olden times. She stared at a younger version of herself, smiling, glowing, her belly massive, almost full term. She looked at him, his arm around her shoulders, protective, proud. It was possibly the last time she had smiled, the last time they were so close.

She had expected to see proof of his deceitful nature, of his cheating dog ways. Perhaps pictures of his divorced colleague, from one of the various business trips they took together. Possibly racy pictures of the young and sassy college interns he was so fond of mentoring, who kept calling the house weeks after he was gone. Maybe pictures of the woman he had secretly been seeing for the past year, and for whom he left her. She had been ready for anything, except that, the photos a reminder of all that they lost. How perverse of him to leave that behind.