She waits for five minutes, ten, fifteen, but her mother doesn’t come back up the path. There are shouts from the construction site, the sounds of saws and stump grinders working away at the woods. Blair waits another five minutes before she tiptoes her way back up the path to her car. On the way home she wonders if she should call her father, call Aunt Margot, call someone who can help her understand, or even just marvel at, the insanity she’s just seen. Her mother saving a bunch of rocks from demolition? It doesn’t make any sense.
At the carnivalIris looks tidy as ever. Not even a crumb of dirt on her pink sweater. A bright smile for each person she sells a ticket to. The other mothers on the PTA compliment her on a job well done.
“How’d it go with the balloons?” Blair asks her.
“Oh, easy with the helium tank.”
Blair stares at her, in wonder and awe. How easy it is for Iris to lie to her. As the carnival winds down, Iris tells Blair to order takeout at home—she’ll have to stay here and help clean up, but Blair should go enjoy her Saturday with her friends. Normally Blair would relish the time alone, but she’s uneasy. She doesn’t leave until she watches Iris absorbed in the task of collecting paper plates, boxing up extra food which she’ll donate to the homeless shelter.
Instead of heading home, Blair drives back to the construction site. It’s dark now and she only has her phone as a flashlight, but she makes her way down the path, this time descending all the way to the creek, to where the stone wall bisects the woods.
She pushes the pine bough aside to see the place where her mother had been hidden from her earlier that day. She stands before the two tidy piles of rocks, nearly identical in size, the largest ones arranged at the base, the smaller ones piled on top.
Cairns, she remembers, a word from her history class. Monuments. Memorials. Used across cultures, an ancient practice. Herteacher, Mr. Corrigan, sweeping his arms to indicate the vastness of distance and time.
In front of the cairns there’s a patch of dirt that’s rougher than the rest, as though it had been dug up. Her mother had a trowel with her. Had she buried something here? Blair hasn’t brought any tools, so she breaks a branch from a nearby tree and begins to scrape at the earth. She digs until she’s sweating and her fingers ache. The night has gotten cold and it creeps into her lungs. But she keeps working until she hits something hard, then finds a rock to scrape through the rest of the way.
With numb, swollen fingers she gets her phone from her pocket and shines the flashlight on what looks to be the top of a small metal box. Blair digs some more until finally she can pry the box loose with her fingers. She stares at it for a moment before she springs the latch, her fingers and nails caked in filth and throbbing with the strain.
Inside is an envelope. Blair handles it tenderly and still muddies it with her fingerprints.
Unlike the note in the duffel bag, she recognizes the handwriting as Iris’s immediately.
She sits and reads in the light of her phone flashlight. When she is finished she feels dizzy, out of breath.
The wind picks up and rattles the orange tape marking the perimeter of the construction zone. She places the message back in the box and with shaking hands buries it best she can as the cold of the descending night seeps through her sweatshirt, sinks into her skin.
ANNABELLE
Miss Hamilton drives a blue Toyota. When she guides it down the long, dirt driveway you hear your father’s voice in your head.Damn imports ruining the economy. My great-grandaddy’s business run into the ground because no one is putting America first. The other morning you woke to the sound of him retching in the bathroom. You hadn’t seen him in a month, other than his boots in a heap by the door, had started to think he might have evaporated right out of them, like some kind of fairytale.
You’re standing at the front window, tucked behind the curtain, trying to imagine the house and the yard as a stranger might see them. Yesterday you had done your best to cover some of the metal scrap with a mildew-flecked tarp you found in the shed, pulled the weeds that had burst up around the front walkway, but there is no covering up the essential mess of the house.
Sabrina comes behind you while you are watching, her necklaces jangling, her perfume heady. A chemical-laced vanilla, which always gives you a headache.
“Who’s that?”
“Miss Hamilton.” Your stomach is doing flips. Nerves, you tell yourself. All week the bubbling sensation you had felt before has become stronger, more insistent and demanding. When the test is over it will go away, you think. You just have to get through this day. You pluck at the waistband of your sweatpants. The only pair that still fits and still the elastic leaves angry red marks in your skin.
“What is she doing here? You one of her pity cases now?”
“She’s just giving me a ride.”
“Where?”
“To the SATs.” A jolt from below your belly button makes you move your hand to your shirt.
Sabrina purses her lips. “Something is going on with you.”
“Nothing. I just have to take this test. It’s really important. If you score well enough you are eligible for more scholarships, even at private schools.”
Sabrina is ruffled by the mention of college and scholarships. You can tell by the way her shoulders rise toward her ears. For a moment you feel powerful, in control. But still, she won’t let you go so easily. “Where have you been getting tampons? You haven’t used any of the ones in the upstairs bathroom. That box has lasted since the summer.”
You thought about it. Taking a few tampons out by the fistful, throwing them away in a trashcan at school. You and Sabrina have complained before, about how tampons and pads are the most expensive things on your grocery list. So you didn’t. At the time, you wished she would ask. Now, you’re sorry you didn’t cover your tracks.
You stare past her, watch Miss Hamilton get out of her car and tiptoe her way across the cracked paving stones that lead to the porch. Even though you are terrified, a part of you is treasuring this moment. It is the most interest Sabrina has taken in you in months. You open your mouth to say—what?—but as soon as you do the doorbell sounds throughout the house, a tinny three-note chime.
“I have to go. The test.”
