The End of the Day

  The End of the Day by Bill Clegg

Have you ever searched through your past, your family, your ancestors looking for something you didn't even know you were searching for?  Why do we do that, search for who and what?  I mean, everyone concerned is probably gone and has been for a long time.  What possible difference could a search make to your life today? Well, sometimes it does make a difference.
Three women,  Dana, Jackie and Lupita all, now forty-nine years after they last saw each other are once again reminded of their past when Dana shows up at Jackie's doorstep holding a briefcase. But Jackie won't open the door.
Dana's family owned an estate that Jackie lived her modest life next door to and Lupita's family were caretakers of.  With that knock on the door it all comes flooding back. Dana is the driving force behind the friendship with Jackie. She was the instigator, Jackie the follower. They are inseparable during the weekend visits Dana’s family makes to the estate. Lupita is, like any servant employee, quite invisible to Dana.
Hap, Hapworth Foster, saw his father maybe once a year. When he was young he understood it was because of his father’s job as a photographer who traveled the world. As he got older and his step father showed what it was to really be a father, Hap had more questions but not enough desire to really want answers. Hap arrives to meet his father after a long absence and arrives just as his father has fallen down stairs at his hotel and now Hap finds himself keeping a bedside vigil. Alice and Lee and Hap’s wife and brand new days old daughter are now a part of Hap’s life and enter into the equation. Hap SHOULD be home with his wife and new, yet to be named baby. But he can’t take himself away from finding the answers to questions he didn’t know he had.
Now is when the story connects these people. That briefcase Dana brings to Jackie’s doorstep holds answers, what’s inside takes Lupita, Dana and Jackie back to a time they thought was well over and done with. Try as you might, a secret doesn’t stay a secret if it’s written down.
When we go searching for answers we might sometimes find it better to not make that journey, especially if the people involved are still alive. As Hap looks at his life in that briefcase he realizes how ignorant he was of the lives of the people in his life. At the End of the Day, he must choose.