My mother takes organic to the extreme, and started to grow almost all of her own food after my father disappeared. She’s a big believer in foraging, and would often disappear into the woods, always knowing exactly where to find edible mushrooms, berries, seeds, and nettles for us to eat. She also makes honey.
I watch as she shuffles her way to the far corner of the garden, before lifting the lid off the old beehive. She doesn’t wear a mask or gloves, never has done, instead she just reaches inside with her bare hand. It used to scare me as a child, but then she taught me that if you trust the bees, they will trust you back. I don’t know whether that’s true, but she never got stung. She looks up at me looking down at her and waves. She seems okay to me. Maybe she doesn’t need whatever pills some doctor has prescribed and my ex-husband has encouraged her to take. Maybe the pills are the problem.
She disappears back inside the house, and I return my attention to my old room. Not all of the memories it reawakens are welcome. I’m drawn to the wooden jewelry box that was a gift from my father, the last one he ever gave me. It is engraved with my name on top and was a souvenir from one of his many work trips.
I feel the four symmetrical letters spelling out the name he gave me, and push down hard on the wooden shapes, until they leave an imprint on my fingertips. Then, when some form of morbid curiosity prevents me from resisting any longer, I open the box. There is a single red-and-white friendship bracelet inside, along with a picture of five fifteen-year-old girls, one of whom used to be me. I put the photo in my pocket and the bracelet on my wrist, then leave everything else exactly as it was.
A thought occurs to me then which stings, so much so I wish I could unthink it: Mum always kept my room nice like this in case I might come home. She’s still waiting, and it breaks my heart a little to know how much my distance must have hurt her.
Something about the old Victorian fireplace catches my eye. Our house was always so cold growing up—my mother refused to turn on the central heating unless the temperature was below freezing—so open fires were often the only way to keep warm. I remember the last time I used mine, but it wasn’t for heat. I burned a letter that nobody should ever read.
The bedroom door bursts open, making me jump, and my mother appears, wearing her warmest smile and carrying two cups of honeyed tea. Her face changes as soon as she sees me, and she drops them both, pieces of china and a pool of steaming liquid forming a murky puddle on the wooden floor. She stares at the fireplace, then at the friendship bracelet on my wrist, then she takes a step back and looks genuinely afraid. I barely hear the words she whispers.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“Nothing, Mum. I was just looking at my old room, like you said I should—”
“I’m not your mum! Who are you?”
I take a step forward, but she takes another step back.
“It’s me, Mum. It’s Anna. We were just talking downstairs, do you remember?”
Her fear morphs into anger.
“Don’t be bloody daft! Anna is fifteen years old! How dare you set foot in my home pretending to be her! Who are you?”
This is the sort of behavior Jack had described but I didn’t believe it. Her face is twisted into fear and hate and a mother I no longer recognize.
“Mum, it’s me, Anna. Everything is okay—”
I reach for her hand, but she pulls it away and lifts it above her head, as though preparing to strike me.
“Don’t you touch me! Get out of my house right now or I’ll call the police! Don’t think that I won’t.”
I’m crying. I can’t help it. This version of the woman I used to know is destroying my memories of the real her.
“Mum, please.”
“Get out of my house!”
She screams the words over and over.
“Get out, get out, get out!”
Him
Tuesday 10:35
I get in my car and wait, unsure exactly what for, already knowing it won’t be good. I have mixed memories of my former mother-in-law’s home, and being here always makes me feel bad. Anna never liked to visit. I used to wonder if it had something to do with her father. Losing a parent leaves a huge hole in a person’s life, but losing a child leaves an even bigger one. This house was the last place where we saw our little girl alive. Not that we could have known that at the time; dropping a child off to spend a night with their grandmother should have been a safe thing to do.
I think you reach an age—and it is different for everyone—where you finally realize that all the things you thought mattered, don’t. It often happens when you lose the one thing that really did, but by then it’s too late. Our little girl was only three months and three days old when she died. I sometimes think she was just too precious and perfect to exist in such an imperfect world.