Page 44 of Together We Rot

Merry Christmas, Minnie, the card on top reads. I thought you should have this after all this time. So that’s why he called.

“I thought he threw this out.” I’ve felt this only once before, this bizarre weightlessness, this hitch in my chest where the words won’t come out. The day Mom disappeared and Dad sobbed, his whole soul tearing through him, never to be seen again. I feel that way now. “It’s the key to Mom’s office.”

•••

The door creaks open like a crypt, rusted and nearly cemented with dust. It smells like one, too.

“We should seal off that damn room,” Dad said last time he stepped foot in here. “It’s infested with memories. Can’t get those out.”

He wasn’t wrong. You can call someone to get out bedbugs, but you can’t do anything about the past. You can fix the ceiling and clean the carpet, but you can’t fix your heart.

The light switch doesn’t work immediately; it flickers like it’s forgotten how. The room is a mess after my mother’s heart: shelves cemented with candle wax, battered books and a bed half-made, curtains to block out the strain of the sun.

Mom spent more time here than anywhere else. Her journalism days were never far behind her. She might’ve switched career paths when I was born, but that intrinsic “Why?” was always with her. Each person was a mystery, their life stories a knot of yarn to unravel. And like any good journalist, she wouldn’t rest until she solved the case.

“Didn’t you go to my mother for counseling?”

“Yes.” I can hear him swallow from across the room. “For a while. She pulled me in when my grades slipped.”

“That was so shocking to me,” I confess. “You always got straight As.”

He takes a hesitant seat on the floor by me and tucks his knees close to his chest.

He holds himself like he’s a mess of limbs, puzzle pieces that don’t fit. “I’d always known I wouldn’t go to college. It was so easy to ignore until junior year. Everything changed. People were getting cards in the mail, talking about life plans and where they’d like to go. For the first time, I couldn’t push it away.”

There’s a stretch of silence that hangs over us then and his eyes dart toward me. They hold firm as I take a seat beside him. “And then you told me how you wanted to leave too. You had all these big dreams of the world and you wanted me to come with you and... and for once I couldn’t escape it all. I started wondering what I was even doing. Why bother?”

I tip my head upward and stare at the ceiling as his words soak through me. Unlike my room, there are no stars. Nothing to splay your fingers out toward and dream for more. I never imagined what it would be like to look up and see an empty void. Nothing beyond your life here. “It started over grades, but our talks didn’t end there,” Elwood continues. “I didn’t have a lot of people to confide in. Not my parents or God or the church. I had so much bottled inside, so much I couldn’t share even with you, and your mom—she understood without pushing me.”

I bite my lip. “Mom was always good at that.”

“You’re upset, Minnie,” I still hear her voice like honey. That soft way of speaking without any edges. Whispery and delicate. I hadn’t been moping. I was laughing and she cut me off mid-joke.

Dad was oblivious at the table. I remember him gawking at me, straining to see what she saw but failing. “She doesn’t seem upset.”

“She’s hiding it,” Mom countered. “You should know by now, hon. Minnie’s always laughing. Even when things hurt.”

Mom saw to the heart of it all. I could have a padlock for a soul, and she’d still read me like an open book. No surprise she saw through Elwood, too.

“She really helped me.” His smile scrapes clean off his face. “But then she called my parents in.”

“I take it that it didn’t go well.”

I don’t miss the wince as he remembers it. “Understatement. She told my dad that he was dictating my life and ruining my opportunity to decide my own future. Had this whole spiel about my grades slipping and how I could be applying myself so much more if they only gave me the chance. How I was bending to their rules at the expense of my own dreams.”

“That’s Mom for you.”

His eyes lock on a cobwebbed corner of the room. “I don’t think he’s ever had someone stand up to him like that. He... didn’t handle it well. There’s only so much pretending he can do before his patience wears thin.” His voice lowers in imitation. “I will raise my son however I see fit. He’s being raised as the Lord dictates. Focus on your own wild daughter, Mrs.Greene.”

I see my mother staring Ezekiel down, his steepled hands a barrier between his world and hers. Elwood returns his gaze to his feet. “It ended with her saying, ‘The Lord isn’t dictating his life. You are,’ and that’s what it took for him to finally storm out. He forbade me from seeing either of you. I couldn’t quit on you, but your mom? She never quit on me. She knew something was wrong. Deep down, she knew. And she never stopped trying to help.”

I stare at the floor. Is that why she became obsessed with him? Her need to save anyone and everyone. It’s not like the lines in the wood will magically spell out an answer. But then I see it.

There might not be an answer down there, but there is a chip. A slight indent in the floor, barely noticeable with a passing glance. I crouch down to dig my fingers into the opening. The board raises, popping up like a hidden vault. I wince against the plume of dust, setting the loose board on the floor beside me. Inside, there’s a small gloomy hollow.

A crumpled box sits in the center, containing a single VHS tape and a handful of yellowed pages strung together. I hoist it out of its hiding place.

Moving back to Pine Point was supposed to be a fresh start. The choice I made after I got pregnant with Wilhelmina. I couldn’t raise her while I got so wrapped up in every case, losing myself to the search every time. At least, that was the plan.

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