Page 14 of The Witch's Orchard
“Guess I’d rather read books than be in them,” he says.
I smile at this kid who still so much—in spite of everything he’s been through—resembles the quiet, tender little boy he must have been. Would he have weathered the storm of his childhood more easily if he’d been rowdy, rough, and tough like Max in the book? Or would he have put his frustration, fear, and anger into something more destructive than a scrapbook and an ongoing fund to hire another PI? All of us must dosomethingwith the formative pain of our early years. And even the Max in the book—at the end of the night—returned to the loving order of his mother’s home, something the real-life Max lost years ago. I glance at him and realize this is something we have in common.
I put the book down and go back to the box. I pull out an old mug with pansies dancing around it and a glittery, plastic fairy wand with strips of gauze streaming from its tip. The last thing is a doll with lavender eyesand long shiny blond hair, a lavender dress. I run my fingers over the cheap satin, the rough lace, look into the doll’s eyes.
“It’s a Lovely Lady Lavender doll,” Max says, watching me. “They were made at the factory in town. All the girls in town had one.”
“There’s a factory in town?”
“Not anymore,” he says. “It closed down a long time ago.”
I look again at the doll, sweep her backward, let the eyes close automatically before putting it back in the box.
“You collected all this stuff?” I ask. “Your mom’s and sister’s things?”
He nods. “When my dad and my aunts started going through the house with boxes and trash bags and I realized what they were doing… I picked up the things I could find, the things that had been left in my room or the kitchen or wherever, and I put them into a box, just in case. They didn’t amount to much in the end. And, honestly, once it was over, I didn’t open the box more than once or twice.”
“It must’ve been hard, though,” I say. “To lose everything like that, all at once.”
“It was. But I guess I understand why my dad did it. After Molly was taken, my mother was the only one who ever went into her room. It became almost like a shrine. She would sit on Molly’s bed, take the clothes out of the closet, take the dresses off the hangers, wash them, rehang them. I think that’s the biggest reason my dad got rid of everything. I think he thought that obsessing over Molly’s memory is what drove my mom to do what she did. Like, the fact that she could come in here every day and pretend her daughter had never been taken kept her from being able to let go? I don’t know. Once she was gone, I think he was afraid that having my mom’s stuff around… Well, I think he didn’t really know how to cope.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
Max nods.
I step out of the room and back into the hallway. Max continues the tour past a bathroom and a storage closet full of old blankets and puzzles and board games and to the last room, once his parents’, now just hisdad’s. This one is the biggest and a queen-sized bed sits against the far wall. There’s a shoe rack, a chair beside it. There’s a dresser and a TV on top of it. A closet where a few men’s jackets and clothes hang.
“He doesn’t sleep here anymore,” Max says without any prompting. “When he’s home, he sleeps downstairs on the couch.”
I nod my understanding and say thanks as we make our way back downstairs.
“Anything you need,” Max says. “Just let me know. There’s a laundry room to the side of the house; that’s usually where I am if I’m not in the main house.”
“Laundry?”
“Yeah,” he says. And then, as if understanding that most people don’t do laundry all day every day and that’s why I’m confused, he says, “If I’m not working, I’m usually, um. Well, it’s a hobby, I guess. I do printing.”
“Like screen printing?”
He shakes his head.
“Woodblocks,” he says. “Sometimes linocuts but mostly woodblocks the last couple years. It’s just… something to do. I like it.”
“Okay,” I say. And I think about the letter from the liberal arts college sitting open and forgotten next to the door.
“Is that it?” he asks, clearly ready to be done with this invasion of his space.
“Sure.”
We walk back through the living room and onto the porch. I go back down the stepping-stone path toward the lane. Max waves goodbye to me as I slide behind Honey’s wheel and I watch as he disappears into the house.
“You know what, Honey?” I say as I rev up her engine. “That house was missing something. Besides the obvious, I mean. I couldn’t put my finger on it till I got back out here.”
I slip the gearshift into reverse, start pulling away, watch the path and the porch and the house recede from my view.
“Not a single family photo. Not one.”
FIVE
