The-Lucky-List-Rachael-Lippincott

7
Scrolling through Instagram at the kitchen table on Wednesday morning, I tap on Blake’s story for the
millionth time. It’s a boomerang from an hour ago at the less-than-sanitary Huckabee Pool, the caption
reading, “FIRST DAY OF WORK!”
We haven’t talked since Monday aernoon when she said she was hired, and aer today I’m sure I’ll
never hear from her again. It’ll be super awkward when my dad and Johnny inevitably try to force us to
hang out.
Sighing, I take another bite of my cereal and open my photo gallery. I scroll all the way back to the
first couple of photos on my phone, taken just before my mom died. I usually avoid them at all costs,
but today I’m looking for something.
A picture of my mom’s tattoo.
“Maybe try to figure out more of the backstory for some of them,” Blake had said on our phone call
a few days ago. “Maybe that’ll tell you where to start.”
at led me to the only direct link between the list and something I knew about. Something I saw
every day.
My mom’s tattoo.
I pause on a photo that my dad took of the two of us at the garden store over by the apple orchard.
She’s pushing a bright orange cart around the greenhouse, pretending to strule from the weight,
while I lounge dramatically on top of the cart, two bags of potting soil sitting underneath me.
I swipe right, moving farther and farther back in time. It’s strange to see my mom getting healthier
and healthier with each passing picture, when all I know is the opposite. I watch as the dark circles
around her eyes fade, her gaunt cheeks fill out slowly.
I pause on another photo, of my mom fast asleep on my dad’s shoulder aer a rough doctor’s
appointment, then a photo of her and Nina laughing at Kiera’s birthday party, followed by a photo of
the two of us aer a long day of gardening, lottery tickets from the small gas station by the highway
clutched in our hands, dirt stains on our jeans.
Finally, I find it.
A picture of my mom holding a sparkler on the Fourth of July, just before her brain cancer
diagnosis, her blue eyes shining, her forearm tattoo faint in the fizzing glow of light. Zooming in, the