“I’m not looking for anything scandalous. I’m not trying to crack their safe and steal priceless heirlooms,” he said to her. “I just want answers.”
Tilly tended to her lambs. She wasn’t getting involved.
* * *
The house wasempty and still, but Nathan made sure to be quiet nevertheless. He figured the basement stairs would be creaky. Weren’t they all? He took them one at a time, resting each foot softly on each step.
The basement was even worse than Franny had described. Stacks of worn, sinking in boxes stood against every available wall. Each stack looked about to collapse, the cardboard fighting from giving in to time and gravity. Around the boxes were shoeboxes, plastic bags, and old dusty suitcases filled with more of Mariel’s stuff. Nathan figured the basement was like this when she was alive, a dirty hoarding secret she hid from the world.
Nathan didn’t know where to start. None of the boxes were labeled.
“Jump in anywhere,” he muttered to himself.
He opened the box closest to him. Inside were old clothes of hers, black choker necklaces from the ‘90s and black cardigans. Mum was a total goth chick, he thought. That probably did not go over well with Pastor Fry. He found one of those tiny knapsacks girls carried instead of purses back then. Inside was an old student ID and an empty bag of tobacco. They could’ve rolled cigarettes together. Nathan realized he hadn’t smoked since lambing season started. Sheer exhaustion and rowdy sex had supplanted his vices apparently.
The boxes weren’t organized. Nathan was like an archaeologist peeling back layers of the earth to reveal different historical eras. Underneath the goth outfits were old photos of mum in high school. Nathan pulled out a pocket bible. Inside, she wrote her name in curly cursive. Under the stamp with the church’s logo, Mariel doodled a penis. Nathan laughed to himself.
“Nice one, Mum.”
His eyes lit up at the next artifact he found. A diary. Nay, journal. His mum seemed like the kind of gal who preferred to call it a journal. Nathan felt the weight of her most private words in his hands. The spine cracked when he lifted open the cover.
Mark wants to see Jurassic Park AGAIN. The dinosaurs are awesome, but they’re still fake, so I don’t see the big deal. It’s nothing like actors performing live on stage. That’s thrilling.
Nathan smiled to himself reading the old entry. Judging by the date, she was about seventeen. He wondered if she kept a journal while she was in London and after.
He searched through the box for more journals, but he stopped when he felt a sick feeling creeping down his throat, the kind of feeling that comes when he knew he was being watched.
Walt stared at him from the bottom of the stairs.
“Nathan, what are you doing?”
Chapter 22
Nathan
Nathan froze at the voice. He looked up slowly, calculating excuses in his head. “Hiya Walt.”
Confusion creased his little forehead, as if he woke up and bumped into Santa on Christmas Eve.
“I was just looking for something,” Nathan said.
“What?”
“An extra blanket.”Good save.Nathan considered this the improv exercise of his life. “I’ve been a little chilly at night, and I thought there might be an extra blanket down here.”
“Doesn’t Uncle Liam have extra blankets at his house?”
“He does not, if you can believe it.”
Walt nodded, and Nathan thought he was safe, until:
“Why were you looking through my mum’s old stuff? Extra blankets are in the linen closet upstairs.”
“Oh, they are?” Nathan glanced at the boxes of his mother’s stuff, like he had no idea he was in the lair of a hoarder. “Thank you, Walt.”
Walt kept a watchful eye on him. He was ten. He wasn’t a guileless child.
“What were you reading?” he asked.
