A Long Time Gone (9 page)

“Sure. It's not like I have anything pressing right now. Maybe Chloe can help me. . . .” My voice trailed off as I saw two figures approaching from the side of the house. One I recognized as Tripp, and the other was a man in his mid-fifties wearing a uniform and a hat with a brim almost as broad as his belly.

As he approached I noticed the white skin that appeared almost translucent, sunspots the size of dimes marring his cheeks. He wore dark aviator sunglasses but I knew his eyes would be pale blue. Anybody with his coloring had no business in the Mississippi sun.

Tripp and Tommy nodded at each other while I became aware of Chloe slowly backing away from Tripp. I turned to watch as she and my mother headed toward the garden. I wondered if Carol Lynne was surprised by the state of the garden each time she saw it, if it was a shock she had to endure twenty times a day or however many times she walked out the back door.

I watched as she stopped in front of the garden gate and her hand moved to her mouth like she did when she was upset. I remembered
that about her, at least. I turned back to Tripp and the sheriff, unable to look any longer.

Tripp introduced me. “Vivi, I'd like you to meet Sheriff Donny Adams. He's new to these parts, so you might need to fill him in on a little bit of your family history.”

The sheriff took off his hat, revealing a completely bald pate with skin even paler than his face. He stuck out a meaty paw and shook my hand. “Not too much of a stranger to these parts—I'm from Leland, and I've been the sheriff here for about five years now. I'm surprised we haven't met.”

“I haven't, I don't . . .” I paused, the throbbing in my head making it difficult to form words into sentences.

“She's been gone awhile—out to California,” Tripp explained.

The sheriff nodded, replacing his hat. “Sorry to hear that.”

Tripp's cell phone rang, and he stepped away to answer it as Sheriff Adams pulled a pad of paper and a pencil from his breast pocket. The end of the pencil was chewed like a beaver had gotten hold of it.

“So,” he said, drawing out the word. “Any idea who might be buried in your yard? Looks like it's been here longer than you have, but maybe there're some family stories passed on down to you.”

“About a dead body?”

“About anybody missing. Anybody who left and never came back.”

I stared at the sheriff for a long moment, his image shot through with the kaleidoscope holes of my now full-on migraine. “Not that I can think of. For some reason, we always seem to find our way back here. My mother might know more . . .” I stopped, not really sure how to finish the sentence. I had no idea what my mother might know, or might remember. The only thing I was sure of was that she'd never said anything more meaningful to me than good-bye.

“She's having memory problems,” Tommy responded for me. “Mostly short-term, so you might be able to get something useful from her.”

Sheriff Adams jotted down something on his notepad. “So no family historian who keeps track of the family tree?”

Tommy and I looked at each other while I gritted my teeth, wondering how much longer it would be until I could run upstairs.

Finally, Tommy said, “Our grandmother, Bootsie, was into that kind of thing. Always talking about what this ancestor did to the house
or garden, who died young, who embarrassed the family. I wasn't really into all that, so I didn't pay much attention. She didn't have anything written down that I can remember. Before Vivi left she said she would write down some of the stories, but I guess we both figured we'd have more time for that.” He shrugged, his gaze traveling toward my mother and Chloe. Carol Lynne was staring at the garden while Chloe looked up at the house, taking in all of its peculiarities. I couldn't read her face from where I was, and I was glad.

Tommy continued. “The only thing that stuck with me—and she probably did this on purpose, since I'm a guy—was that the house is always left to the oldest girl. Started back two hundred years ago when the original house was built. It's sort of the family tradition.”

“Interesting.” The sheriff jotted something else in his notebook. He looked up, and I tried to focus on my reflection in his dark glasses, anything to distract me from the pounding in my head.

“You said family members had a habit of always finding their way back home. So no stories about somebody leaving and not coming back?”

Tommy and I shook our heads.

“So nothing specific about your family history that stands out?”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “The only old story I remember is that the woman who built this house left it, her husband, and her children and went back to New Orleans, where she was from. I think Bootsie said she came back—eventually. But that was when all this was mostly swamp, and life was hard. Bootsie said the land broke her.” I took another deep breath, trying to push the pain aside long enough so that I could think. “And we had an ancestor who drowned in the 1927 flood. I remember that because the waterline on the wall in the foyer has been preserved. You have to walk by it every time you go up or down the stairs, which is about as many times as Bootsie would tell me the story. It was her mother, but that's all I remember. It's probably all she knew. It happened the same year Bootsie was born.”

“Interesting,” he said again. “You remember her name?”

Tommy and I shook our heads in unison. “It'll come to me,” I said. “I know Bootsie probably told me about a hundred times. I'll let you know if I think of it.”

After a moment, Tommy said, “You might could talk with Cora
Smith. Her grandma used to work for Bootsie. I think she might have even been here before Bootsie was born. Maybe she heard something.”

“Um-hmm,” said the sheriff as he continued writing things on his pad. When he was writing he screwed his mouth up so that one corner was puckered. I thought the only thing missing from his country law enforcement ensemble was a half-smoked cigar dangling from his lips. “Know where I can find Miz Smith?”

“She's been helping us with our mama.” Tommy glanced at his watch. “She should be here around noon, although sometimes she comes earlier if she can. She volunteers at the library some mornings.”

Tripp hung up his phone and stepped toward us again. “The remains have been sent up to the lab in Philadelphia for a more extensive evaluation, but there're a few things I can take a stab at now. It's definitely female, and I'd say it's been there at least fifty years, just by looking at the roots of the tree. We'll need the forensic anthropologist to tell us for sure, but looking at the bones of the pelvis I'd say she was young—not out of her twenties, don't think. And there's some pelvic scarring, which means she'd given birth at least once.”

I felt sick to my stomach. I wanted to blame it on the migraine, but his words made me think of the young woman buried under my tree, someone my age. And the child she left behind. I clenched my eyes, fighting the image of me I kept putting on the bare skull.

The sheriff stopped writing and directed his gaze at me. “I'm gonna see if they can get any DNA from the remains, and if they can, I'd like for you to give us a cheek swab just to see if there's some relation. You planning on hanging around for a while?”

He and Tommy stared at me expectantly while I just looked back like an opossum in the middle of the highway, preparing to curl up so the world would go away. “I, uh, yes. For a little bit anyway.”

“She's got no place else to go,” Tripp said, his expression blank.

Tripp's phone buzzed again, and he glanced at the screen. Shaking his head, he said, “I gotta get back to work. Old Mrs. Lee at Sunset Acres passed away in her sleep, so I have to head over there. And a wild hog has torn down the fence in the front yard of the house I'm supposed to be closing on in an hour, and is charging at everything that moves.”

Chloe, apparently bored with the garden and her inspection of the house, had moved within earshot. “A wild hog?”

Tripp nodded. “It happens out here in the boonies sometimes.”

She looked appalled. “What are you going to do with it if you catch it?”

“Eat it, I hope.”

She blinked rapidly at him, trying to determine whether he was joking.

I was more fixated on what he'd said before. “A house closing?”

He pocketed his phone. “Yeah. Have my own real estate business, too. Helps to pay the bills. There aren't enough bodies to keep a coroner busy full-time.”

He raised his hand and said good-bye before walking back to his car. Chloe ran toward him a little ways and then stopped. “What's a wild hog?”

Tripp stopped and faced her. “It's like a big pig but with tusks and sharp teeth. You wouldn't want to mess with one.”

Her face seemed even paler than usual. “What kind of a shit hole is this place?”

Tripp stared at her as my mother approached, the bottom hem of her jeans heavy with mud. “Young ladies do not use that kind of language,” she said, shaking her finger in Chloe's face. “You will apologize now, or I will have to wash your mouth out with soap.”

Color returned to Chloe's face as she whipped around to my mother. “What the . . . ?”

She didn't have a chance to finish before Tripp stepped into her line of vision and cleared his throat. “Remember what we talked about?”

She closed her mouth, her eyes darting from me to my mother as if she were looking for somebody to take her side. Crossing her arms over her chest, she said, “Whatever.”

“Excuse me?” Tripp said, leaning close to her.

“Yes, sir,” she mumbled.

“That's better,” he said. With a final wave he set off again, turning back once so we could see him put his first two fingers in a “V” shape to point at his eyes, and then he looked at Chloe before heading around the corner of the house and out of sight.

“I think Cora's here, Sheriff,” Tommy said, pointing to the side yard, where a single parking slot had been added years ago to accommodate Tommy's motorcycle habit. I hadn't noticed a bike since my
return, and I wondered if he still rode. We watched as a light blue Toyota sedan pulled into the space.

“Come on and I'll introduce you,” Tommy said, beginning to lead the sheriff away. He glanced back at me. “Find me later and I'll get you some of those little plastic bags.”

I remembered the hatbox in my hands, suddenly feeling the weight of it. I nodded, glad to have an excuse to run upstairs to my room. Addressing Chloe, I said, “Could you please bring Carol Lynne inside and turn on the TV until Cora is done with the sheriff? I've got to take this upstairs.” I started walking quickly toward the house, dreading the part where we had to walk past the garden again.

Chloe ran to catch up with me. “Have you called my dad yet? He probably won't answer the phone, but you should leave him a message just in case.”

Damn
. “Not yet.”
Not before I'm fully medicated.
“I will this morning. But I spoke with Imelda last night so she wouldn't panic.” I began walking quicker.

“How come you call your mom Carol Lynne?”

The pressure cooker going off in my head was nearly unbearable by now. “The same reason bears crap in the woods. It just
is
.”

“Vivien Leigh! I raised you better than that.”

I stopped, swaying on my feet from either the migraine or the anger, I wasn't sure.
You didn't raise me at all.

Chloe wrinkled her nose, making her actually look like the twelve-year-old she was. “I thought Vivien Leigh was an old movie star. My friend Hailey's mom has a framed poster in her screening room with that name on it.”

My mother beamed. “Vivien Leigh played the lead in my favorite film. But my mother thought naming my daughter Scarlett was too tacky.”

“Tacky?” Chloe asked, squishing her nose again.

“Craptastic,” I translated, seeing past my migraine to capture a word from her conversations with schoolmates she was desperate to be friends with in the backseat of the car I was chauffeuring.

“Vivien Leigh!”

I sighed, my whole body now vibrating from the pain in my head as I wondered what forces of nature had conspired against me to place
Chloe and my mother together in the same geographical location. With me. I wasn't handling this well. If I were being honest, I'd even say I wasn't handling it at all. I felt like an eighteen-wheeler headed downhill whose brakes had failed. But for years I'd taken the shortcut to dealing with my problems, and I was ill equipped to change gears now.

I was still thinking of something to say when my mother placed her hand on the broken gate and stared ahead of her as if she were seeing something more than just mud and weeds.

“I think we should fix this garden before Bootsie notices.”

Chloe glanced behind her. “Only if you can make a fence high enough so the wild hogs can't get in.”

I studied my mother for a long moment: her pale hands and braided hair, the beautiful face that I used to dream about as a child. That angry and hurt little girl was still inside me, banging her fists on my ribs every time I looked at my mother. We'd both grown older, but I was no less angry.

“That's a good idea,” I told her, hoping she'd forget. But her green eyes met mine with hope and expectation, and a small part of me wanted her to remember—wanted her to remember so I could abandon her and the garden just as it started to mean something to her. As if dispensing some of my hurt would somehow lessen it.

I opened the kitchen door and held it for Chloe and Carol Lynne, then ran upstairs to my room to take as many pills as I needed to make me forget the anger and the guilt, where I was, and what had brought me here.

I shook two tablets into my palm and swallowed them dry, not wanting to take the time to refill the glass on my nightstand. I sat on the edge of my bed staring at the butterflies, wondering why they hadn't flown away by now, and thinking of the young mother buried beneath my cypress and why she'd chosen now to speak from the grave.