Page 71 of Someone Knows

“Sure.” He frowns, grabs his backpack from the floor, and unzips the front. Pulling out a folder, he holds it out to me. “You might as well have this.”

I take it. “What is it?”

“I did some more research on your missing friend, widened the search to the US. There’s a sheet there on every Jocelyn Burton that came up. Consider it a parting gift.”

CHAPTER

34

Igive the thick file a sideways glance as I stop for a light. Multiple sets of papers clipped together are visible from the side. Various Jocelyns, no doubt, scattered throughout the country, none of them knowing that someone with their same name went through what I did.

As soon as I get home, I head straight for the overflowing trash can in the kitchen. The smell of garbage permeates the whole room. It probably hasn’t been taken out since before Mom was hospitalized.

I open the trash can, hold the file above it. But something stops me from letting go.

Curiosity pings around in my brain. I’ll just take a quick look. I remember asking Mr. Sawyer why he chose that name for me,Jocelyn. He’d said it was his mother’s, and I always wondered who in their right mind would want to screw someone they’d named after their mother. Not that Mr. Sawyer was in his right mind, come to think of it.

At the table, along with an overly sweet bottle of moscato from Mom’s collection, I flip the file open. Jocelyns are in California. Montana. Kansas. But then I find one fromhere. Or rather, the next town over. The hair on the back of my neck rises with a tickle as I slide the pages out from the file folder andstart reading.

Born in the 1930s. Raised by her grandmother. That fact alone is a red flag. Where was her mother? Did she take off? Get arrested for abusing her? Die? There aren’t too many positive scenarios that end with your mother not in the picture.

I scroll the fact sheet, take a long pull of the wine.

The second page holds the answer. Multiple arrests. Child removed from her care. Another swallow.Child abuse.

I pause at that, wonder what she must have done in the 1960s, when Mr. Sawyer was born, that would have been considered child abuse. Mom used to brag about the punishments she got when she misbehaved, like it was a rite of passage or something—spankings with a wooden spoon, slaps across the face, sometimes she’d be locked in a closet for hours at a time. Things that today would never fly, but back then would have been fairly commonplace.

So I have to wonder what the real Jocelyn was doing to her child in the 1960s.

I turn more pages. Drink more wine. My head starts to go fuzzy, but then it comes back into sharp focus with an entry dated 12/25/68.Christmas.

Horror grows within me as I read.

The real Jocelyn beat Mr. Sawyer nearly to death, badly enough that he was hospitalized, placed in foster care. There’s a mug shot, black and white and shades of gray, so fuzzy I can barely make out her features. But somehow, the eyes stand out—Mr. Sawyer’s eyes,Noah’seyes.

On Jocelyn, they look cruel, hardened. Like she never knew a happy day in her life.

Mr. Sawyer’s looked hardened, too.

But Noah? His eyes have always been soft.

For a moment, I wonder if Mr. Sawyer dying was a blessing to him. He got to have maybe not anormalchildhood, but one free of abuse. If he’d been raised by Mr. Sawyer, I can’t imagine he’d have turned out the way he is now.

That’s when it hits me—why Mr. Sawyer wouldhave given me the name Jocelyn. In a way—a fucked-up way that wasn’t remotely fair to me—he was abusing his abuser.

A coldness settles in my belly.Not unlike what I did to Noah the other night.I gulp down more wine, hoping to numb it, hoping to numbeverything. But alcohol alone won’t do it. I stare down at the papers strewn over the table and decide they need to go. The garbage isn’t good enough, so I sweep together a pile, shove all the Jocelyns back into the folder, and march outside. At the back of the yard, near a fence that’s long fallen down, a rusted metal ring sits in the soil and scraggly grass. Beneath it, the earth is dark, the remnants of regular scorching.

I pause long enough to wonder what Mom burned often enough that the ground is still fallow. But I suppose it doesn’t matter now. Once upon a time, we burned garbage here—Mom and me—before there was organized trash pickup, and then for a while, even after there was. We couldn’t afford to pay someone to pick up ourtrash.

I return inside long enough to dig for a box of matches. Finding some, I use a bit of kindling from the waning wood supply stacked against the house. I start a fire, let the orange embers flicker, and think of my mother’s body at the crematorium. The funeral director told me I could pick up her ashes in a few days, suggested I purchase one of his overpriced urns for my mantel. But the idea of keeping a powdered version of Mom’s body in my house doesn’t sit right. I could dump them, but where? Most people do it somewhere meaningful, somewhere the person loved. The only things Mom loved were men, alcohol, and the church.

Nausea sweeps through me as the flames come back into focus. My mother—mymother, who sucked as a parent, but who some part of me still loved—is being turned into nothing but dust. Will she feel it? What if when we die—

I force myself to stop. Obsessing over the what-ifs never changes anything. Instead, I open the folder andstrip off one piece of paper, then another, slowly feeding them to the fire. It builds to a blaze, burning all remnants of Jocelyn, just as is being done to my mother. Both will be nothing more than a memory.

The fire eventually peters out, so I go back inside. Though too much adrenaline is pulsing through my veins to sit down and relax. I could drink more wine, but I don’t want to be here in this house right now. Instead, I grab my purse and my keys, stare out the window, and wonder,What now?

I could leave. Just go, and ask the church to deal with her stuff. They might. Or they might say it’s my responsibility, and I’d have to come back again.

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