She saw a little curl of smoke drift up from the bin and walked calmly back to her loom, doing her best not to smile.
“Fire!” someone yelled not three minutes later. And in an instant, the place was alive with panic, all the women scrambling, surging toward the doors. Jane wasn’t worried. The foreman’s office was on the far end of the cavernous space—they all had plenty of time to make it to the doors and out before the whole wretched place went up in flames. Still, she shrieked and ran as the others did, grabbed Maggie Bianco’s hand as she passed when she saw Maggie standing frozen, looking around in confusion, and urged her on—“Let’s go, Mags! You’ll be all right, but we’ve got to go!”
But something was wrong.
Instead of following the other workers out of the mill into the fresh air, she and Maggie ran smack into a throng of women pushing, shoving forward, crying out, “For God’s sake, move!”
The doors wouldn’t open.
“They’ve bolted them from the outside!” someone yelled.
The women, they pounded and screamed and wept. Jane lost hold of Maggie. She felt the press of bodies behind her, crushing her.
There was another scream, too. A different one.
Tom Chancy was screaming. Jane could turn her head just enough to see the walls of his office fully engulfed.
At least there was that.
CHAPTER 21
Olive
S AUGUST 5, 2015
As soon as Olive saw Daddy’s truck leave the driveway, headed to work, she was out the door, making a beeline for the old maple at the edge of the yard.
He’d taken yesterday off so they could make some progress on the house together, and honestly, she couldn’t wait for him to leave and go back to work. She wanted some alone time. Time to go over everything she’d seen and heard at Dicky’s and time to do some serious detective work.
She got to the maple at the edge of the yard and looked around, making sure no one was watching—silly, really, because there wasn’t anyone out in those woods, ever, except for Mike sometimes. He hadn’t shown his face or called since he ditched her at the hotel the other day.
There was a hollow spot about four feet up in the old tree, a place where a branch used to grow. Now, there was the perfect little cavity tucked into the trunk, about four inches high and two inches across. She and Mama used to leave each other secret messages and gifts there: chocolate coins, acorns, pennies flattened out on railroad tracks. When Olive was very little, Mama told her the gifts were from the fairies.
Olive reached in now, feeling for the treasure she’d stashed there: Mama’s silver necklace with the broken chain. She pulled it out and took it into the house. She brought it to her room, where she took the silver amulet off the broken chain and polished it with toothpaste (she’d seen Mama polish silver this way). She didn’t have a new chain for it, but she had a thin leather cord left over from a leather craft kit Mama had given her. She put the silver pendant on to the cord, tied a knot at the ends, and slipped it around her neck, tucking it under her shirt.
After seeing the symbol on the floor at Dicky’s hotel the day before last, the necklace, the symbol itself, felt important. She couldn’t stop thinking about it. And Olive had this idea then that wearing it might help act as a magnet, might pull Mama closer to her or at least bring Olive closer to finding out where Mama had gone.
Mama had called it her I see all necklace; maybe, just maybe, it would help Olive see things, too.
Aunt Riley would understand. She believed in things like having visions and magical necklaces. But no way could Olive tell Riley about finding her mom’s necklace. Not yet anyway. She’d keep it a secret for just a little while.
Necklace tucked safely under her shirt, guiding her in some new strange way, she went down the hall to Daddy’s room. Like it or not, she now thought of it as his room, not their room any longer. It was partly because her mother had been gone so long and partly because it was a completely different room now. It had bigger closets, a door to the bathroom right from the bedroom. A new, much larger window.
“Your mama always loved the view of the mountains from here,” Daddy had said when he planned it. And Olive remembered her mother looking out at the mountains, saying they looked like a sleeping giant.
“Don’t you think, Ollie?” she’d asked. “Look, there are his feet, his legs, his round belly. And there are his shoulders, his chin and nose.”
And Olive saw the shape of the man in the mountains but was frightened, because she was little and the idea of a giant right outside their door scared her. “How long has he been sleeping?”
“Oh, a long, long time, I think,” Mama said. “Maybe since back before there were people here even.”
“What if he wakes up, Mama? What if he wakes up and finds out that everything’s different? What if he’s angry?”
Her mother had smiled. “I don’t think that’s anything we have to worry about, Ollie.”
Her father had placed their bed against the north wall so they could look out the new picture window. As with all the other renovations, the bedroom was not finished. The floor was still bare plywood because Daddy didn’t know what Mama would like best: carpeting or hardwood, or painted wide pine planks maybe. And the inside of his own closet had no drywall, no ceiling, just exposed framing and wires, a light fixture screwed right to the open junction box. He had only a few things hanging up in there: a couple of flannel shirts, one good white dress shirt, a blazer and a pair of nice pants he wore to funerals.
She stood in the bedroom now, saw the unmade bed with the new comforter her daddy had bought—it was covered in ducks and hunters in red flannel with guns. She looked around and realized that with the exception of the clothes that had been placed in her new closet, all traces of her mother were gone. The room no longer smelled like her perfume. The top of the dresser had been cleared of Mama’s makeup and stack of magazines. Olive wondered, not for the first time, what Mama would really think when (if) she came home. Wouldn’t it be unsettling to find that everything had changed, that nothing was the way she remembered? Daddy believed it would be this big, wonderful surprise, but Olive couldn’t help but imagine how shocked Mama would be. How the changes might actually make her angry, make her think they’d moved on to new things without her, tried to erase all traces of the way their lives had been before. It would be like the sleeping giant waking up to find everything changed.
Feeling like a trespasser, Olive started with her mother’s closet. What she was looking for exactly, she couldn’t say. A clue. Something unusual. Something to give her some insight into what had been going on with Mama in those last weeks. She went through the pockets of pants, shirts, and jackets, found nothing but breath mints, a Rosy’s Tavern matchbook, receipts from the grocery store and gas station. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing that told Olive anything new.
She continued to look, listening carefully for the sounds of a car or truck coming up the driveway. Daddy should be at work until six tonight, but he sometimes came back because he forgot something—his lunch or Thermos usually. Riley would occasionally pop in unexpectedly, just walk right in and take a look around just to check up on them, to make sure Olive was doing okay. She’d say she just dropped by to say hello, but Olive caught her opening the fridge and cabinets, as if she was making sure there was food. She’d caught her poking around in the rest of the house, too—opening drawers, going through closets. Maybe she was looking for clues, too; something to tell her where Mama might have gone.
Riley and Olive’s dad had argued the other night when Riley came by, but Olive caught only the end of it.
“I’m not talking about forever, Dusty,” Riley said. She was in the kitchen putting away a load of dishes she’d just washed. “I’d just move in for a little while. I could help with the renovations. Do the shopping and cooking. Be there for Olive.”
“Olive’s
fine,” he said sharply. “We’re both doing fine. We don’t need a goddamn babysitter.”
Olive had walked in then, and they’d changed the subject, starting talking about what color Daddy and Olive should paint the kitchen.
Now, Olive dug farther back in her mother’s closet and found two clean green aprons that Mama wore when she cashiered part-time at Quality Market. One of them still had her name tag attached: lori with a little stick-on flower with a smile in the middle. A happy have a nice day daisy.
Her mother’s old purses were on the top shelf and Olive went through those next, found change, old lipstick, an unlabeled key that could have gone to anything. They never locked the doors on their house, and this was not a car key. Olive looked at it, ran her finger over its teeth, then slipped it into the pocket of her jeans. She kept looking, sure there had to be something that would help.
Tucked up in the back corner of the top shelf was the mauve-and-tan box that held Mama’s best shoes. They were her special shoes, her “fairy-tale slippers” is what she called them. They were ivory-colored leather with silver beads embroidered across the toes in a flower pattern. They had a low heel and a delicate strap that fastened with a tiny silver buckle. Olive remembered one night, not long before her mother went away, how she’d awoken late at night, unable to sleep. She’d gone downstairs for a glass of milk and caught Mama sneaking in. It was nearly two in the morning. Mama was all dressed up and had her fancy ivory shoes on and much more makeup than she normally wore. “Shh,” she’d said, putting a finger over her lips. “Don’t tell your father.” Then she’d slipped the shoes off and carried them upstairs, creeping up the steps in her stockings.
Olive reached for the box now and could tell before opening it that there was nothing inside. She pulled off the lid, found only a crumpled piece of tissue paper and a single silver bead that must have fallen off. She took the bead out, tucked that into her pocket beside the key.
Olive looked through the rest of the closet, through the jumble of other shoes at the bottom, but the ivory shoes weren’t there, either.
Her mother must have brought them with her or been wearing them the night she left. Olive looked and didn’t notice anything else that was missing. All her other shoes seemed to be there: her cowboy boots, black heels, flip-flops, sneakers.
Olive searched the closet for other missing things but didn’t notice anything special. Mama seemed to have left all of her favorites: her old Levi’s jacket that she’d had since high school and still wore, her suede boots, the purple silk top she wore to job interviews and meetings at Olive’s school, her favorite black jeans. If Mama had been planning a trip, why hadn’t she packed any of her favorite things?
A hard knot formed in Olive’s stomach.
Maybe she found the money and just took off. Why pack clothes when you can buy a whole new wardrobe, a whole new life? It made sense in a terrible way: If you wanted to start over, wouldn’t you rather leave every trace of your old life behind? Or maybe there were things she’d taken, clothing that Olive just didn’t notice was missing.
Olive continued her search, moving faster now, just wanting the whole thing to be done and over with. It was too much, being in the closet, surrounded by all of Mama’s things.
She found more receipts stuffed in jacket pockets, all for regular things: milk and eggs, a haircut and color at House of Style, a cup of coffee and candy bar at a gas station up in Lewisburg.
Lewisburg.
That was weird. It was a tiny town in the middle of nowhere as far as Olive knew.
She looked at the date on the receipt. It was from May 10 of last year. Just a couple weeks before Mama left. The knot in Olive’s stomach tightened.
Went missing, a little voice told her. She didn’t leave. She went missing.
Receipt in hand, Olive jogged down the steps and into the living room, searched the bookshelf, and pulled out the worn Vermont road atlas they had. She flipped to a page toward the front that showed the whole state. Using the index, she found Lewisburg, J-10 on the grid.
Someone had drawn a tiny star next to it in red ink.
She put her finger on the town and couldn’t imagine what would bring her mother there. It was totally off the beaten path, wasn’t on the way to anywhere. Then she noticed other red stars. One in Elsbury. Then another, here in Hartsboro.
Olive blinked down at the stars, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.
The three towns—Lewisburg, Elsbury, and Hartsboro—formed almost a perfect equilateral triangle.
The image reminded her of the triangle in the necklace she was wearing and the same image she’d seen chalked on the floor of Dicky’s old hotel. But the necklace and drawing had a freaky triangle with a square, and a circle and an eye at the center.
The necklace under her shirt seemed to grow warmer against her chest. The whole room felt warm, too warm. She looked down at the triangle of red stars on the map.
She thought about the Bermuda Triangle, a place where people disappeared, boats and planes just fell off the map.
That’s what people said anyway, but was that what really happened?
Was it possible to lose people, a whole boat or plane even?
Was there an edge of the world, or a doorway, that you could fall through and be lost forever?
Was that what happened to her mama?
CHAPTER 22
Helen
S AUGUST 5, 2015
“I’ve got good news,” Riley said when she called. “They’ve finally finished the repairs to the historical society. Mary Ann gave me the okay to go back in and start putting the place back together again. I’m heading over this afternoon. Want to join me?”
“Definitely!” Helen said. “I’ve got news, too.”
“About the mill? How’d your trip go?”
“You’re not going to believe it. Hattie’s daughter died in that fire,” Helen said on the phone.
“What? No way!”
“I’m sure of it!” Helen was pacing back and forth in the tiny trailer kitchen. “I can’t prove it exactly, but I know it was her.”
Helen looked out the trailer window, saw Nate carrying boxes of electrical supplies into the house: rolls of cable, metal junction boxes, plastic boxes for all of their outlets and switches. She’d promised she’d be up to help him get started in a few minutes. She’d told him nothing about what she’d seen in the house, about her research this morning. When he saw her on the computer, she told him she was looking for roofing materials. Nate had been advocating for basic gray asphalt shingles. He said they’d be easiest to acquire and install, and they were affordable—he’d long ago calculated how many bundles they’d need and put it in the budget. Helen was hoping to find something more unique: reclaimed tin roofing, slate, maybe cedar shakes.
“Tell me everything,” Riley said.
Helen took a breath and started at the beginning. She told Riley about her trip to the mill, the bricks, the stories the foreman told her, and what she’d seen in the house last night.
“It was Jane. I’m sure of it. And I think bringing the bricks here helped her come back. I know it sounds crazy, but I think Hattie wanted me to go to that mill to bring something back to the house.”
Riley was quiet for a few seconds.
“Doesn’t sound crazy at all,” she said.
“I think you were right—if they have an object, a physical thing connecting them to their lives, to the way they died maybe, it acts as a kind of doorway—a way back into our world.”
“It would be nice if we could confirm it,” Riley said. “You know, prove that Jane really did die in that fire.”
“Agreed. I found this website that lists the names of the people who died at the mill that day and there’s only one Jane—a Jane Whitcomb. I did a little more research—checked out genealogy sites and public records—and found marriage r
ecords for a Jane Smith and Silas Whitcomb in 1934. They lived right in Lewisburg. According to the records I found, they had two children, Ann and Mark. I haven’t looked into what happened to them yet. After Jane was killed in the fire, Silas remarried and had several more children. Do you think the historical society might have more information on Jane? Photos even? I found a photo of the mill workers taken the year of the fire. Jane’s in it. I just know it’s the same woman I saw last night. Maybe we can match her to an old photo of Jane Breckenridge?”
“I think there are a couple photos, but Jane was just a girl when her mother died and she disappeared, so I’m not sure we’ll be able to recognize her,” Riley said. “Let’s plan to meet at the historical society at three. We’ll see what we can find.”
“See you at three.”
. . .
It amazed Helen how little could be left when a person was gone. A human being lived an entire life full of family and friends, dinner parties, work, church, and what was left? A couple of photos, a line or two in a town newspaper, an obituary usually, a tombstone with a name and dates and little else. Unless you kept digging. This is what she loved about history: the thrill of filling in the blanks, digging for and finding the hard evidence—birth and death records, marriage licenses, census data, photographs, diaries, and letters—and then using hunches and intuition to put it all together into a cohesive narrative. Studying a person or event from long ago was like trying to solve a mystery: following clues, piecing things together.
There was no gravestone or obituary for Hattie Breckenridge. No mention of her or what had happened to her in the local paper. Very little proof that she had existed at all.
“It’s like she was a ghost even back when she was alive,” Helen said. She sat across from Riley at a big table in the center of the historical society. The space was in a disheveled state because of the flood—boxes and plastic totes were piled up on desks and shelves, files and documents haphazardly thrown in to save them from water damage.
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