I was standing in a pawnshop in Cape Girardeau, arguing with myself over whether a twelve-dollar toaster was worth buying, when I saw the locket. I stopped so abruptly that the woman behind me nearly walked into my shoulder.
It sat beneath the glass among old watches, mismatched earrings, and a row of rings with faded price stickers. The silver had darkened with age. One side was scratched. The hinge was bent slightly inward, giving the little heart a crooked appearance that should have made it ordinary.
Instead, my hands went cold.
I knew that dent.
I knew the tiny scrape along the bottom edge.
And when the clerk lifted it from the tray at my request, I saw the initials inside.
M.L. + R.T.
For a moment, the shop disappeared. I was seventeen again, standing beside the Mississippi with wet grass beneath my shoes and tears running down my face. I could hear my mother's voice as clearly as if she were standing beside me.
“He doesn't want you, Mary Lou.”
I had believed her.
I had believed everything she told me that summer.
The locket had been a gift from Russell Tate when we were sixteen. He had scratched our initials inside with a pocketknife, ruining the smooth silver surface because, in his words, nobody was going to mistake whose heart it was.
I had laughed at him then.
At seventeen, I threw it into the river.
I watched the silver flash once in the afternoon light before the current swallowed it.
I had never seen it again.
Until that morning.
“Where did you get this?” I asked the clerk.
He was a young man with dark hair and a name tag that said Evan. He glanced from the locket to me.
“Someone brought it in today.”
“Today?”
“Yeah.”
My voice sounded strange in my own ears. “Are you sure?”
He gave me a puzzled look. “Pretty sure. Why?”
I didn't answer immediately. I was afraid that if I spoke too quickly, something inside me would break loose.
I pointed at the initials.
“I put those there with someone.”
Evan looked again.
“You mean you owned this?”
“I did.”
He leaned against the counter. “Then I guess you've had quite a day.”
“You have no idea.”
He turned the locket over in his fingers.
“It's not really worth much.”
“I'll buy it.”
“It's marked forty.”
“I'll pay forty.”
He smiled faintly. “You really want it.”
“Yes.”
He reached for the display tray.
Then he stopped.
“Actually, the guy who brought it in said something.”
I looked up.
“What?”
Evan's expression changed. The casual curiosity disappeared.
“He said you wouldn't want the truth anyway.”
The words seemed to strike somewhere behind my ribs.
“What did you say?”
“I didn't say anything. I thought it was an odd thing to say.”
“Who brought it?”
“An older man.”
“What's his name?”
“I don't know.”
“What did he look like?”
Evan scratched his jaw.
“Gray beard. Thin. Used a cane. Blue jacket.”
My fingers tightened around the edge of the counter.
“Did he have a red baseball cap?”
Evan's eyes narrowed.
“Yeah.”
I stopped breathing.
Russell had always worn red.
Red Cardinals caps. Red flannel shirts. Even the battered pickup he'd borrowed from his uncle when we were seventeen had been red.
There were reasonable explanations. Thousands of them.
A man could own a red cap.
A man could have a gray beard.
A man could walk with a cane.
That didn't make him Russell.
Russell had been gone for forty-three years.
At least, that's what I had believed.
Evan placed the locket on the counter.
“He asked me something else.”
“What?”
“He asked if I knew a Mary Louise Turner.”
I stared at him.
That was my maiden name.
My married name was Mary Louise Bennett. Almost nobody called me Turner anymore. My mother was dead. My father had been gone for more than a decade. The people who had known me as Mary Louise Turner when I was young were almost all gone.
“Did you tell him?”
“I said I didn't know anybody by that name.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn't.”
I closed my eyes.
“Did he say anything else?”
Evan hesitated.
That hesitation frightened me more than the question.
“He asked if I knew anyone who had lived on Sycamore Street in 1981.”
I opened my eyes.
Sycamore Street.
The old house at 417.
The house where I had grown up.
The house where Russell had lived three doors away.
The house where he had once climbed through my bedroom window because my mother had locked the front door before nine and he wanted to see me.
The same boy who had kissed me on that bedroom floor and then looked terrified that I'd slap him.
The same boy my father had found sitting with me on the front porch at midnight.
The same boy I was told had abandoned me.
“Did he tell you why he was asking?”
“No.”
“What exactly did he say?”
Evan looked uncomfortable.
“He said you deserved to know before he died.”
I felt a tremor pass through my hands.
“Did he have a scar?”
“Where?”
“Above his left eyebrow.”
Evan studied me.
Then he nodded slowly.
“Yeah.”
The room seemed to tilt.
Russell had gotten that scar when he was thirteen after falling from his bicycle. It was barely noticeable unless you knew to look for it.
I knew.
I had kissed it once when he was sixteen and told him it made him look dangerous.
He had said, “Good. Maybe your father will finally leave us alone.”
I swallowed.
“Was it him?”
“I can't tell you that.”
“You saw him.”
“People change.”
“Was it Russell Tate?”
Evan shook his head.
“I don't know.”
I looked down at the locket.
Then I noticed something inside it that had not been there when I threw it away.
There was a tiny folded strip of paper tucked behind the photograph compartment.
“What is that?”
Evan leaned closer.
“I didn't see that.”
My fingers shook as I opened it.
It wasn't paper.
It was a hospital wristband.
The plastic was yellowed and brittle.
RUSSELL TATE.
ST. ANNE'S.
08/19/81.
The date was the day after Russell supposedly left me.
I stared at the name until the letters blurred.
He had not run away with another girl.
He had been in a hospital.
For the first time in forty-three years, the story I had lived with began to crack.
I paid for the locket without asking the price.
Evan gave it to me in a small paper envelope.
As I turned toward the door, he called after me.
“Mrs. Bennett?”
I looked back.
“There was one more thing.”
“What?”
“The man left a message.”
I waited.
“He said, ‘Tell her the river didn't take everything.’”
My throat tightened.
“What else?”
“He left a receipt.”
“For what?”
“An old storage unit.”
“Where?”
“Cape Girardeau.”
“Do you have the address?”
He nodded.
Then he hesitated again.
“He told me not to give it to you unless you came back for the locket.”
I stared at him.
“Why?”
“I don't know.”
“What did he say?”
Evan lowered his voice.
“He said, ‘If she comes back, she's finally ready.’”
I couldn't move.
The man had expected me to recognize the locket.
He had expected me to ask questions.
He had expected me to come back.
And suddenly the most frightening possibility wasn't that Russell might still be alive.
It was that someone had been waiting forty-three years for me to remember.
