We went to the river just after sunrise.<\/p>\n
Rebecca drove.<\/p>\n
I carried the map inside a plastic folder because the paper was so brittle that one careless fold might destroy it.<\/p>\n
The location marked by my mother was farther downstream than the place where I remembered throwing the locket.<\/p>\n
There was almost nothing there now.<\/p>\n
A narrow trail.<\/p>\n
A broken wooden post.<\/p>\n
Trees leaning toward the water.<\/p>\n
And beyond them, the Mississippi moving with the same indifferent patience it had possessed when I was seventeen.<\/p>\n
Rebecca looked at the map.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is it?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think so.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow would Grandma have known about this place?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don't know.\u201d<\/p>\n
We followed the trail.<\/p>\n
The mud was soft from recent rain.<\/p>\n
Birds moved through the branches overhead.<\/p>\n
Every few yards, Rebecca checked the map.<\/p>\n
Finally she stopped.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is where the circle is.\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked around.<\/p>\n
There was an old concrete foundation half-hidden beneath weeds.<\/p>\n
I remembered it.<\/p>\n
Not clearly.<\/p>\n
But enough.<\/p>\n
\u201cMom?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI've been here before.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c1981.\u201d<\/p>\n
The memory came in pieces.<\/p>\n
My mother had brought me here once.<\/p>\n
She had told me we were taking a shortcut.<\/p>\n
I had been angry with her because I wanted to meet Russell.<\/p>\n
She had insisted he was not coming.<\/p>\n
I remembered a shed.<\/p>\n
A metal door.<\/p>\n
A man standing beside a car.<\/p>\n
Then nothing.<\/p>\n
I pressed my fingers to my forehead.<\/p>\n
Rebecca waited.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you okay?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, you're remembering something.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I am.\u201d<\/p>\n
I walked toward the foundation.<\/p>\n
There was a rusted metal box buried beneath a collapsed section of concrete.<\/p>\n
Rebecca saw it at the same time.<\/p>\n
\u201cMom.\u201d<\/p>\n
We dug with our hands.<\/p>\n
The box was heavy.<\/p>\n
The lid had nearly fused shut with rust.<\/p>\n
When it finally opened, we found papers wrapped in oilcloth.<\/p>\n
There were receipts.<\/p>\n
A key.<\/p>\n
And a photograph.<\/p>\n
I lifted the photograph.<\/p>\n
My mother stood beside my father.<\/p>\n
Between them was Walter Tate.<\/p>\n
Behind them was the same shed I had just remembered.<\/p>\n
Rebecca leaned closer.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat were they doing here?\u201d<\/p>\n
I turned the photograph over.<\/p>\n
There was writing on the back.<\/p>\n
August 19.<\/p>\n
After the boy is gone.<\/p>\n
My stomach dropped.<\/p>\n
Rebecca read it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat does that mean?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don't know.\u201d<\/p>\n
We searched the papers.<\/p>\n
One was a letter from Walter Tate.<\/p>\n
He demanded repayment of the debt.<\/p>\n
Another was from my father.<\/p>\n
He wrote that he could not sell the house.<\/p>\n
A third was handwritten by my mother.<\/p>\n
It contained only one sentence.<\/p>\n
\u201cMary Lou must never know what happened here.\u201d<\/p>\n
I sat on the ground.<\/p>\n
The river moved behind us.<\/p>\n
For forty-three years, I had believed the worst night of my life had happened at home.<\/p>\n
Now I understood that my mother had brought me somewhere else.<\/p>\n
She had planned something.<\/p>\n
And I had forgotten.<\/p>\n
Rebecca put the papers back into the box.<\/p>\n
\u201cMom, we need to know what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow?\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked at the old key.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere might be another lock.\u201d<\/p>\n
We returned home and searched the boxes.<\/p>\n
Nothing.<\/p>\n
Then Rebecca noticed something about the key.<\/p>\n
A small number had been scratched into the metal.<\/p>\n
214.<\/p>\n
Unit 214.<\/p>\n
My hands went cold.<\/p>\n
The key had been with the river documents all along.<\/p>\n
Russell had given me the storage unit.<\/p>\n
But he had not known this key existed.<\/p>\n
We drove back.<\/p>\n
The storage facility was nearly empty that afternoon.<\/p>\n
Unit 214 stood open.<\/p>\n
We searched every corner.<\/p>\n
Finally, Rebecca found a small wooden cabinet beneath a stack of old boxes.<\/p>\n
The key fit.<\/p>\n
Inside was a notebook.<\/p>\n
Russell's notebook.<\/p>\n
I opened it.<\/p>\n
The first pages were dated 1981.<\/p>\n
He had written about the hospital.<\/p>\n
About being unable to reach me.<\/p>\n
About trying to contact my family.<\/p>\n
Then, three pages in, the handwriting changed.<\/p>\n
He wrote that he had overheard two nurses talking about a man who had visited him.<\/p>\n
The man had asked whether Russell remembered a young woman.<\/p>\n
Russell wrote that he thought the visitor was my father.<\/p>\n
But he wasn't sure.<\/p>\n
Then came another entry.<\/p>\n
August 23.<\/p>\n
I heard Mary Lou's mother telling someone that the locket is gone.<\/p>\n
I stopped.<\/p>\n
Rebecca read over my shoulder.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe locket was gone before you threw it.\u201d<\/p>\n
I shook my head.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut that's what it says.\u201d<\/p>\n
I kept reading.<\/p>\n
Russell wrote that he had tried to leave the hospital.<\/p>\n
He wanted to find me.<\/p>\n
But his injuries made it impossible.<\/p>\n
He had sent a message through a nurse.<\/p>\n
It never reached me.<\/p>\n
Then, months later, he received word that I had moved away.<\/p>\n
He believed it.<\/p>\n
The notebook contained years of scattered entries.<\/p>\n
Not daily.<\/p>\n
Not even monthly.<\/p>\n
Just moments when the memory became too strong to ignore.<\/p>\n
Then I reached 1987.<\/p>\n
Russell had written about finding the locket.<\/p>\n
He described the riverbank.<\/p>\n
He described the mud.<\/p>\n
He described the moment he opened it.<\/p>\n
But one sentence stopped me.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe photograph was missing.\u201d<\/p>\n
I read it twice.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat photograph?\u201d Rebecca asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe one of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the photograph was inside when he gave you the locket.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen why was it missing?\u201d<\/p>\n
I turned the page.<\/p>\n
Russell had written:<\/p>\n
I think someone removed it before the river took the locket.<\/p>\n
My heart began beating faster.<\/p>\n
He had never seen the photograph again.<\/p>\n
Until the storage unit.<\/p>\n
But I remembered seeing it in the locket.<\/p>\n
How?<\/p>\n
I closed my eyes.<\/p>\n
Then another memory came.<\/p>\n
My mother standing beside my bed.<\/p>\n
Holding the locket.<\/p>\n
Opening it.<\/p>\n
Taking something out.<\/p>\n
I had been seventeen.<\/p>\n
She had told me not to touch it.<\/p>\n
I had forgotten.<\/p>\n
Or perhaps I had forced myself to forget.<\/p>\n
Rebecca was watching me.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou remembered something.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mother opened the locket before I threw it away.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don't know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDid she take the photograph?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think so.\u201d<\/p>\n
The realization was devastating.<\/p>\n
The photograph Russell thought had disappeared had not disappeared.<\/p>\n
My mother had kept it.<\/p>\n
And if she had kept the photograph, there was a chance she had kept other things.<\/p>\n
We returned to my house.<\/p>\n
My mother's old belongings were stored in the attic.<\/p>\n
I had not opened those boxes in years.<\/p>\n
Rebecca climbed the ladder first.<\/p>\n
The attic smelled of dust and cedar.<\/p>\n
We searched until the afternoon light disappeared.<\/p>\n
Then Rebecca found a wooden jewelry box.<\/p>\n
It was my mother's.<\/p>\n
Inside were earrings.<\/p>\n
A broken watch.<\/p>\n
A wedding ring.<\/p>\n
And beneath them, folded inside a handkerchief, was a photograph.<\/p>\n
I knew it before I turned it over.<\/p>\n
Russell and me.<\/p>\n
Seventeen.<\/p>\n
Beside the river.<\/p>\n
On the back was something neither of us had ever seen.<\/p>\n
A date.<\/p>\n
August 18, 1981.<\/p>\n
And beneath it, in my mother's handwriting:<\/p>\n
They still believe they can leave together.<\/p>\n
I stared at the words.<\/p>\n
Rebecca whispered, \u201cMom.\u201d<\/p>\n
I could barely hear her.<\/p>\n
There was one more thing beneath the photograph.<\/p>\n
A small envelope.<\/p>\n
Inside was a train ticket.<\/p>\n
Two seats.<\/p>\n
One destination.<\/p>\n
Chicago.<\/p>\n
August 19, 1981.<\/p>\n
I looked at Rebecca.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were going to leave.\u201d<\/p>\n
She nodded.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we never did.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSomeone stopped us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rebecca looked toward the attic door.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho?\u201d<\/p>\n
I held the photograph in my hand.<\/p>\n
For the first time, I knew what question I had to answer.<\/p>\n
Not why Russell disappeared.<\/p>\n
Not why my mother lied.<\/p>\n
But what happened between the river and the train station on August 19.<\/p>\n
We went to the river just after sunrise. Rebecca drove. I carried the map inside a plastic folder because the paper was so brittle that one careless fold might destroy … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7965,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7971"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7991,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7971\/revisions\/7991"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}