I understand Tanya not telling us about everyone in her family. There’s so many to mention and she hadn’t been home in quite some time, but a twin brother? Seems worth mentioning.
“She—she had a twin brother.” My voice is shaky, unrecognizable to my own ears. Why was Tanya tested time and time again?
Auntie Joyce lets out a deep exhale. “She did. He died when they were twenty-three. Fishing accident. I lost them both then.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, hanging on to her every word by a thread.
“After Andrew died, Tanya couldn’t bear to be here anymore. Too much loss. She and George packed up and moved to Richmond, to his hometown, and from then on her visits were few and far between. Then they stopped completely.”
“She always called, though,” John interjects. “She called after each one of the kids was born. Sent gifts for holidays and birthdays.”
“Not the same as holding her, though.” Auntie Joyce’s words are laced with so much hurt. The pain of missing out on so much of Tanya’s life must have created a void in her soul not easily healed by phone calls and gifts.
John releases a somber laugh. “When she came to visit all those months ago, the town damn near threw a parade for her. I thought maybe she was gonna start coming around again, but then we heard she was gone.”
Tanya must have known that visit would be her last. She wanted to see the family she left behind one more time before she shared her fate with Auntie Joyce.
I still can’t believe we didn’t know she had a twin brother. So much loss. The death of any sibling would be like losing a limb, but losing a twin has to be like walking around with a heart that doesn’t fully beat.
I know it hurt Auntie Joyce and the rest of the family, but I can’t blame Tanya for putting this place in her rearview. Everyone who lived in this house with her growing up was gone. Every memory tainted by the stench of death.
I probably would’ve done the same. Maybe that’s why Tanya is making us do this. She doesn’t want us to make the same decisions she did.
With three kids, all the bedrooms in John’s home are occupied, but he kept all the things Tanya left at the house in a shed out back, so he takes us there to look through them with toddler Ava on his hip.
Micah and John bond when John realizes we have Tanya’s Continental. He always thought she was the coolest person in the world for having that car. While their conversation slowly turns into gibberish for me the more they talk about cars, Auntie Joyce and I focus on sorting through the lost artifacts. It hits me that I’m going through Tanya’s things with someone who knew her longer than me. I have this image in my head of what Tanya was like as a kid. Before my grandmom passed away, she loved to tell me funny stories from my mom’s childhood and I loved hearing them. And now, I’m in a town full of people who could do the samewith Tanya. My eyes start to feel misty, so I look to the sky to keep it from getting worse.
“It’s odd,” Auntie Joyce notes, her gaze planted firmly on me.
“What’s odd?”
“You sort of look like her.” She tilts her head to the side, taking me in from every angle. “Very strange. Maybe it’s because I see so much of her in you.”
That’s the best compliment I could hope to receive.
A book falls out of the box I just grabbed, a cloud of dust escaping its edges.
When the World Gets to Be Too Loud
That’s the title stitched onto the cover of the book. When I open it, it’s a collection of poems. Some by well-known authors, some by authors I’ve never heard of, and some appear to be handwritten. The words have faded on the pages over time, but they’re still legible. The initialsA.G.are stamped in the corner of each one.
“Are these …”
Auntie Joyce answers my question before I can voice it. “Andrew’s book of poems. He was so embarrassed for anyone to read his work, but Tanya was his biggest fan.”
There’s a small warp on one of the pages, right in the middle of the poem. It looks as if the paper got wet a long time ago. My finger traces the ripple, wondering if it was Tanya’s tears that struck this page or someone else’s.
“Auntie Joyce, do you mind if I keep this?”
“You don’t need to ask me.” She winks as she slides her hand over another one of Tanya’s boxes, takes a dozing Ava from John’s arms, and slips out of the shed.
“She never comes back here. It was probably a lot for her,” John clarifies.
“I understand.” All too well.
I place the book of poems to the side, my hands itching to read every page, but that will have to wait until later.
“Hey, Storm, look,” Micah calls out. When I turn, he’s holding up an old music box. “The gift of music?” he questions.
