His smile stayed in place. “Your mother kept too much. Old paperwork. Things that only reminded her of sadness. Let me handle it.”
“I’ll decide what stays.”
“You’re grieving. This isn’t the time for emotional decisions.”
I looked past him toward the back window. Victor’s empty shelter was visible through the glass.
“Mom told me something about you,” I said.
Mark’s hand stilled on the box.
“What did Stephanie say?”
“That if you came around after she was gone, I shouldn’t let you touch the blue box.”
Something moved through his face — not quite fear, but its first cousin. Then the practiced smile returned.
“She was sick, Fiona. Not everything she said at the end should be treated as instruction.”
“She was scared,” I said. “That’s different from being confused.”
He glanced toward the relatives in the living room and lowered his voice.
“Leave old pain buried.”
I thought about my promise. I thought about the word erase.
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
The next morning I cooked beef stew — the only thing I knew I could make without ruining — and drove back to the house with a container. The shelter was empty, but before I could absorb what that meant, I heard a car door and found Victor standing near the corner of the house in the borrowed coat, with Mrs. Bell beside him, and my mother’s locket in his hand.
What the Locket Contained, and What Victor Said When I Told Him My Mother Had Only One Brother
“She told you it was lost,” Victor said again.
“Why would she lie about a necklace?”
His thumb traced the silver edge.
“Because she gave it to me, and she couldn’t explain why without explaining everything else.”
“She gave it to you,” I repeated. “When?”
“I gave it to her first,” he said. “When she was maybe ten years old. She’d had a terrible day. I told her if she wore it, she could pretend I was right beside her wherever she went.”
Mrs. Bell, standing quietly by the car, lowered her eyes.
Victor opened the locket.
Inside was a photograph so faded it took a moment to understand. Two children on porch steps. A boy with his arm around a smaller girl. Both of them squinting at the camera in the particular way of children who are accustomed to sun and outdoor afternoons.
Scratched into the back of the locket in uneven childhood handwriting were three words.
My safe place.
I stared at it.
“That’s Mom,” I said.
“Yes.”
“And the boy is you.”
“Yes.”
I took a step back.
“No. My mother had one brother. His name was Mark.”
Victor’s face held the expression of a man delivering something he has been carrying for a long time and knows will hurt on arrival.
“Mark was the youngest,” he said. “I was the oldest.”
“You’re lying.”
“I wish I was.”
“If you were her brother,” I said, my voice rising before I could manage it, “why did she make you live in a tarp shelter behind our house? Why didn’t she bring you inside?”
Victor flinched slightly. Not from the volume, but from the question itself.
Mrs. Bell spoke before he could.
