Caroline Hughes

She says, ”Look, there’s us”, pointing at the small screen on her camcorder.
This was all in all the seventh time they’d met each other.
“Just try to ignore it”, she says and Colt slides back on the couch.
“So, school project?”, he asks.
In her bag is tape after tape of interviews of her family,
Brian’s quote unquote borrowed tapes and pictures of aunt Maggie.
“Yeah”, she says but this wasn’t a school project anymore.

Six months ago, as a late birthday present, she got her family tree from her cousin Sarah and after getting her drunk the nonlinear and unpolished history of her family started unfolding. While recording, Sarah pointed at the pencilled cross by her aunt.
“You should have been there. Bricks E-V-E-R-Y-W-H-E-R-E”.

Panning from the bottle of booze to Sarah, she asked her, “Did you call her Mom or Maggie like my mom does?”.

Colt says, “So this is mainly about mom right?“ and looks at his digital reflection on the camera,
“Not to be a bore but I don’t remember much”.
Putting in a new tape, branded “COLT” she says, “No really, that’s ok, you just have to tell me what you DO remember”. She could tell this wouldn’t get her any closer to a rough cut.
Switching the light adjustments to indoor-setting she remembers, “Hey, so how does it feel being an uncle?”.

Laine had given birth a couple days earlier and before she left for Colt’s she had scribbled the baby’s name and birthday on a post-it and scotch-taped it to the enhanced family tree on her bedroom wall, George B. Abrahamsen.

She says, “Nevermind”, as she plugs in the external microphone, “Let’s leave it to the interview”.

After Sarah’s drunken war-stories came her own mom’s sombre retelling of the facts with a lazy hand covering her face and after her came Bill. That was six months ago.
Now she was worried that her student funding would get pulled,
Now her bag was full of DV-tapes marked with names off the family tree.
Now it was Colt and after him Brian if she could get hold of him, which she doubted.

This could be it, the last version of why her gloomy family had curled up behind the walls after that renovation accident.
She takes a breath, now she would leave it to the camera.

“Hey Colt, after we’re done I could show you your sister really drunk”.
She presses the REC-button and then she asks him,
“So did you call her Mom or Maggie?”.