months I’d been here, I hadn’t been able to find anyone who knew my parents or my aunt. I had scoured the cemeteries. No luck. None of the seniors in my afternoon scrapbooking class remembered the names Allen and Sandra Simson. I’d also worked my way through the newspaper archives at the public library so many times that the reference librarian was getting sick of seeing me come in. Yet I had found zilch. Google searches continued to yield nothing.
And now this! My first real clue in seven months and you’d think I’d be cheering and jumping up and down, yet here I was, my hand to my mouth to keep from throwing up.
Maybe there was a part of me that was afraid of what I would find. Or what I wouldn’t find. Maybe, after all, there was nothing to find.
TWO
After the last satisfied customer had left, I armed my store’s security system and we went upstairs to my apartment, where Johanna brewed a big pot of chamomile tea.
Somewhere during the course of the evening it had started to rain. An appropriately cold rain which matched my mood slashed at the windows like knives.
I’d managed to muddle through the class with Johanna helping. I also apologized for running off like that, but offered no explanation. No one pressed for a reason. Johanna helped me lay out their initial efforts on tables in my back room. Everyone chatted while they gathered up their coats and purses. Next week at this same time they would be back to work on them. The class was a success. Everyone was happy. I was a mess.
The framed photo that I had talked to all these years was between us on the kitchen table. Johanna carefully removed the photo from the frame. “There might be something here,” she said. “Maybe on the back.”
“There’s nothing,” I told her. “Nothing on the back. Nowhere.” And I should know. I’d scrutinized this picture many, many times for clues, a name of a photographer.
She said, “Why don’t you get all the pictures of your parents together and then you can show them to all the people who come into the shop. You could even tack them up on some of the bulletin boards around town. There are so many things you could be doing, Marylee, if you want to find out who you’re related to out here.”
“All the pictures? This is the only picture I have.” I was aware then that she was my friend, yet I had shared with her only carefully selected pieces of my life.
Her eyes went wide. “Really? Well, then, this one then, you show everyone this picture. You make copies. I could help you. We could put it in the paper, even.”
“I can’t. I can’t explain it, I just can’t do that.” I didn’t know if I could explain it properly to my friend, this reticence I felt. I didn’t know if I could explain it properly to myself. It was all bound up in my aunt and her fears. When I was little, she hadn’t even wanted me showing the picture to my friends. When I would ask her why not, her standard response would be, “You don’t know who’s out there.”
I took a sip of my tea. My fingers were shaking so badly, I put the teacup down and stared into its depths. Johanna touched my hand. “How did your parents die?”
I sighed. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“I don’t have all the information. My aunt wouldn’t tell me. That’s why I’m here. It’s a long story.”
“We have a whole pot of tea, and more where that came from.”
So I told her. I told her I was born here in Burlington and after my parents died, my aunt Rose packed me up in her car and we drove clear across the country until we ended up in Portland, Oregon.
“Aunt Rose was the only mother I ever knew. She’s been gone about a year.” I bit my lip. “Ovarian cancer. I still miss her.”
“Oh, Marylee.”
I swallowed and continued. “But she kept warning me about Burlington. She told me not to come back here.”
Johanna’s eyes were wide. “And she never told you why?”
I took a swallow of tea and shook my head. “She was thrilled when I began going out with he-who-shall-not-be-named. I think she thought that was a surefire way to keep me from ever coming here to Burlington…”
I let my voice drift off and thought about that whole chapter of my life.
“He had stood with me throughout her six-month battle with cancer, he’d been the comfort I needed, my rock. The day after my aunt’s funeral, he proposed.” I said it quietly. “We ended up setting a date a year in the future. I lived that year in a kind of stupor, grieving for my aunt, my best friend and only living relative. I couldn’t seem to focus on wedding plans. I couldn’t seem to focus on anything.
“Three weeks before the wedding he bailed. I supposed it was only to be expected.”
“Oh, Marylee!” Johanna came over and hugged me.
I blinked rapidly to keep the tears at bay. A shiver danced across my skin and I wrapped my arms around myself. It didn’t help. I got up and turned up the thermostat. I glanced out the back window as I did so, and a truck rumbled down the back alley between the buildings on this rainy night.
Johanna took off her sweater. She was now down to a tank top in my warm kitchen, but bless her, she didn’t say anything about the place being too hot. Yet, I could not rid myself of the chill. I wondered if I would ever be warm again, whole again, like a real person.
I continued. “Since I’ve come here, I try to think back. I try to remember this place, but I can’t. I was too young. The first memory I have is of Aunt Rose driving. It was raining. I remember the sound of the windshield wipers, back and forth. For hours I watched them while my aunt kept driving and driving, not saying anything.”
Johanna pulled her legs up underneath her and was sitting yogi-style on my kitchen chair. She was listening intently.
“When I was growing up my aunt was always so jumpy, so jittery. Any time there was a phone call that hung up she’d go crazy, running around locking all the doors and windows. I think we were the first house in the entire country to get a home security system. She was so nervous, my aunt was.”
“Maybe she had a reason to be,” Johanna said.
That statement clouded the air like smoke. I thought of the shadow that had moved across the coffee shop window tonight. Had I seen something? Or had it been a product of my overactive imagination? Was I becoming like my aunt Rose after all?
Johanna got up and tucked a quilt around my shoulders. She asked, “Have you been back to the house you lived in when you were here?”
“I don’t even know where it is.” I paused and looked at the droplets of rain clinging to my balcony window. “When I was about fourteen I went through a sort of rebellious period. I sneaked into my aunt’s desk. She always kept it locked, but I knew where the key was. I was looking for something, anything, a picture, an address, a news clipping about the accident. But I found nothing. I had all her papers all over the bed, and that’s when my aunt came through the door.
“I looked up expecting her to be furious. But she came and sat beside me and held me in her arms for a long time. She just held me and held me. And when I looked up I saw that she was crying, too. I think that was the beginning of us being close.”
“You must miss her very much,” Johanna said.
“We sat there for a while and then she said, ‘I’m only trying to keep you safe. I’ve devoted my life to keeping you safe.’ And then she said, ‘Let’s go make paper instead.’ That was her answer to everything: Let’s make paper.”
“Paper?” Johanna looked at me, nearly spilling her tea.
I smiled, just a little. My aunt used to make paper. She had a special blender set aside just for her papermaking. We used to tear up old pieces of paper and then they would