Limetown

by Cote Smith

  “Anyway, I thought it might be good for you,” her mother said. “Could be a nice reset button. Plus,” she said, “you’ve never been overseas. Who knows what you’re missing?”

  At the time the thought of leaving Lawrence, of not just escaping the Midwest but the country entirely, had been very appealing, but with the recent mysteries and her mother’s strange behavior, Lia had gradually grown unsure. People went abroad to find themselves. But Lia found it hard to imagine her future when she didn’t even understand what was going on in the present. Her mother continued to disappear, but Lia didn’t know why. She had an uncle whose connection to her family was a tightly held secret, and who had lived in a town whose population had vanished entirely. How could she think about the next four years when every day threatened to erase what she thought she knew about the previous eighteen?

  Before summer vacation started, Miss Scott set Lia up with a job at a small newspaper just outside Lawrence, in a town called Perry. It’ll be good for you, Miss Scott said. Something to keep that brain of yours busy. Perry used to be part of Lawrence, Lia learned from Art, her new boss, before the state split the towns into two during redistricting, around the time Lia was born.

  “In fact,” Art said, “I believe it was the same year. Well, that’s something you can check on. That’s your job. Check the facts.”

  Lia was paid little, and the work was tedious, but the tasks were manageable, and there was satisfaction in asking someone a question and getting a definitive answer. Most days she sat at her corner desk playing solitaire, waiting for Art to hand her an article with a bunch of numbers and quotes circled. She could check most of them over the phone, though she preferred to do so in person. Miss Scott had taught her that people talked more face-to-face, when there was less room to hide what they really thought.

  In her second week on the job, Art sent her to an old couple’s house that was “out in the boonies,” as he described it. The article was a boring piece about city expansion. Perry wanted to buy a plot of land, but the couple wouldn’t sell. Didn’t see the point, they said. They’d lived there their entire lives. Plus, their kids were gone and they didn’t need the money.

  “They won’t answer my calls,” Art said. “Go poke around a bit. Check these offer prices the city gave me. You can take a picture if you want, though I doubt we’ll run it.” Lia asked him for the name of the couple, but he said he couldn’t remember. It was Sanders or something. Anyway, she could check that too.

  The house was on an old, loose gravel road off of Highway 40. Lia drove slowly up the long driveway, giving the couple plenty of time to hear her approach. No one came out. She climbed the porch, knocked, and waited. She circled around back, found an empty clothesline and nothing more. She was ready to leave when a car pulled up. An old woman stepped out. She was in her seventies, maybe, wore a print dress that was last in style before Lia was born.

  “We don’t want any,” the woman said, and walked past her. Lia told her she wasn’t selling anything. She was from the paper. “We don’t want that either.”

  The woman searched in her ancient purse, rattling around pill bottles and a coin purse before digging out a house key.

  “I’m just here to check some facts,” Lia said. “About the city’s offer. Then I’ll be out of your hair. My name’s Lia. Lia Haddock.”

  “Haddock?” the woman said. She turned and looked at Lia, her initial suspicion fading. “And you work for the paper?”

  Lia nodded. The woman’s gray eyes shifted, performing some secret calculation.

  “Well then,” the woman finally said, “I suppose you better come in.”

  * * *

  The house was small. Two bedrooms, one bath, one floor. It was the kind of house people were perfectly happy with, until they realized they could have more. So said the woman.

  “Is your husband here?”

  The house felt and looked empty. In the living room sat a single chair in front of the TV, an ancient box with rabbit ears. There was no couch, no end or coffee tables. In the kitchen there were no magnets on the fridge, no dishes in the sink.

  “He’s at church.” She grabbed a rag from a kitchen drawer and started wiping the TV. A thin layer of dust filmed the screen. “But he doesn’t take care of the financials.”

  “So is it true? You’re not going to sell.”

  “He wants to. Give the money to the church. I imagine he thinks they’ll build a new one and name it after him. But it’s not our house. Not really. We just look after it.”

  “You don’t live here.”

  “We live up the street. The city’s offered on both. I’m sure the numbers you have are correct, but I’m keeping this house until I die. In case the old residents come back. That’s the Christian thing to do.”

  “When did they leave?”

  The woman stopped her dusting. “Many years ago,” she said. “Before you were born.” For a moment her face softened, perhaps drifting into the past. Finally, she shrugged. “You can look around, if you want. Doesn’t bother me. Just don’t go in the attic. It’s not safe.”

  Lia left the woman in the living room, though she could feel the woman’s eyes on her as she made her way down the hall. Everything creaked, the wooden floors, the doors to the bedrooms. The first room was the master, dark and unadorned. Lia removed the lens cap from the camera that Art had lent her, but there was nothing to capture. No pictures on the wall, only the dark curtains, shielding the room from the harsh light of summer.

  The second room was down the hall, opposite the bathroom. It was smaller, a child’s room. There were two beds, pushed together awkwardly with no space in between. Lia ran her hand over the walls, found faint lines where crayon had colored torn wallpaper. She opened the closet, empty. When she turned around, she gasped. The woman was standing in the doorway, staring.

  “Find everything you need?” she said.

  “I didn’t find anything.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  Lia took a picture of the house before she left, from the front yard. The woman stood watching behind the screen door.

  “Oh, I need to double-check your name,” Lia said.

  The woman mouthed her name behind the screen. Lia couldn’t hear her clearly, but it sounded like she said “Sinner.”

  * * *

  After work, Lia went home and was surprised to find both of her parents’ cars in the driveway. Inside, they prepared dinner. A special meal, her mother said, in honor of Lia completing her first week of work. (It was only her fifth actual day, but she didn’t argue.) Her father chopped vegetables while her mother monitored a sizzling pan of meat. They talked about the weather, a possible thunderstorm. If Lia didn’t know better, they could have been any normal family.

  But she did know better. That evening, as a distraction from the weird normalcy that had taken over her house, Lia opened a book she found lying on the coffee table. But she couldn’t concentrate. She read the same sentence over and over, inadvertently turning the words into a chant. The chant was interrupted by her parents’ voices, a murmur until Lia opened the door and their words traveled upstairs. She stepped into the hallway.

  “I know, I know,” her mother said. “But a woman I met at a conference, she knew someone who worked at this lab. If I could find—”

  “And then you’ll be done? God, Allie, you just can’t help yourself.”

  “Don’t tell me what I can’t do.”

  There was a brief silence, filled by the whistle of a heavy wind.

  “Just say what you mean,” her mother said. “You don’t want him here.”

  “We tried that.”

  “That wasn’t his fault.”

  “Of course it was.”

  “We have to find him.”

  Her father sighed, as loud as the wind whirring outside. “We can’t keep pretending,” he said.

  “Pretending what?”

  “Maybe there isn’t anything to find.”

  The downstairs we
nt quiet. Then the door slammed. A moment later something slammed in the kitchen too, her dad’s fist on the table, perhaps. Again and again. A wolf at the door. No, each pound was a question, bouncing in Lia’s head. They kept adding up, these questions—about her mother, her uncle, Limetown, about her past and her future.

  Lia retreated to her bedroom. She needed to get away from the pounding below. She tried different corners of her room, of the house. The pounding downstairs quieted, but the questions did not. She needed higher ground. She found herself below the attic door. It was late by then, and the day had already begun to replay itself in her mind. The house. The woman, whispering “sinner” behind the door.

  Don’t go in the attic, she said. It’s not safe.

  Their attic was much smaller than Lia remembered. But it was not unsafe. Years ago, when she was still a kid, her mother strung Christmas lights throughout so nothing could hide in the dark. She’d done the same thing at their old house, or so she said, though Lia didn’t remember.

  She found the light switch and smiled when the room lit up green and red, yellow and blue. Bright moonlight poured through the attic’s circle window, casting a spotlight on a stack of boxes. Lia sat down next to the boxes and opened one. She found old family albums that she’d combed through before with her mother, on a snow day when both their schools were closed. The photos starred a littler Lia, dressed up in a variety of embarrassing outfits, including more than one polka dot dress complete with frilly shoulders, ill-placed hairpins in her short hair. Her parents smiled down at her. Not pictured anywhere was Emile. Or any other family member. No aunts or grandparents, which made sense, she guessed. Her mom and dad had told her so little about their respective families. They were all either dead or disappointing, she was told, and in many cases, both.

  In another box she found an old typewriter, preserved in its shell. She clacked it open and found no notes inside, no letters or forgotten messages. Next to the typewriter was an old Polaroid camera and a plastic bag filled with what she initially thought were photos, but upon closer inspection turned out to be postcards from different years and places—Colorado and Utah, Idaho and Oregon. Beneath the postcards were a few books, stuffy poetry and science fiction. Lia thumbed through a few, found a John Donne collection at the bottom, bookmarked at a poem called “The Dream.” “Dear love, for nothing less than thee / Would I have broke this happy dream . . .” Lia rolled her eyes, and was about to return the book to the box when she noticed a lump in the book jacket. She fished it out. It was a note, folded into fourths, and on the front was a drawing of a bird, etched deeply into the paper like a carving on a tree. It reminded Lia of a hairpin she used to have as a child, one she lost she couldn’t even remember when. On the back of the square was an old piece of tape, which peeled off easily when Lia slipped a fingernail beneath it. The square unfolded, blooming like a flower, revealing neatly written words, addressed to no one.

  I watched you for a long time before all of this. You always had that far-off look on your face, like you were tuned into some station only you could hear. You’re the only one who gets me. How is that? How do you know who I really am?

  Meet me where we meet.

  A dark stain rendered the signature illegible.

  “Lia?” Someone was calling up to her. The voice was a ghost in the attic. “Honey, are you up here?”

  Her eyes adjusted and she could see her dad’s head poking up through the attic door. “What are you doing?”

  Lia put the book back in its box, but palmed the note like a magician hiding a playing card. “Just bored,” she said. “Thought I might build a fort. You know, like old times.”

  Her dad climbed a few rungs, so Lia wasn’t talking to his disembodied head. “Is that Emile’s old stuff?”

  “I don’t know. It’s mostly books.”

  “Your uncle was a big reader. A lot of poetry. He tried to get me into it, but I never understood.”

  “Does this typewriter still work?”

  “I have no idea. Honestly, I thought your mom pitched this stuff a long time ago.”

  Her dad sighed. The mention of Lia’s mother seemed to deflate him.

  “Is she back yet?”

  He shook his head. “I’m assuming you heard us.”

  “Hard not to,” Lia said. “Was it about Emile?”

  “It was.”

  “You guys never talked about him before.”

  “He’s still family,” her dad said. “We’re all he’s got.”

  Yes, but wasn’t he always family? Hadn’t he been family for the last ten years, or however long it’d been since she last saw him? What had changed other than the fact that now he was missing?

  “Don’t worry about any of this,” her dad said. “Worry about having a weird roommate this fall.”

  “Dad. Come on.”

  “Look, you know how long it took me to finish school. I took the road less traveled and it got me everywhere except where I wanted to go. You understand?”

  Before she could answer, however, before she could tell him he missed Frost’s point, or ask him how anyone could know what path was best, the garage door rumbled to life, shaking the attic walls and announcing the return of Lia’s mother.

  Her dad descended a few rungs, then stopped, his head and neck still visible above the floor. “Hey, Lia. That ‘road less traveled’ stuff. That’s poetry, right?”

  “Yes, Dad.”

  He smiled and climbed down into the hallway. A moment later Lia thought she heard her mother’s voice, calling for her dad, apologizing. Or maybe it was the other way around.

  * * *

  Art was angry when Lia arrived at work the next morning. The Sinners had had a change of heart. They were going to sell their homes after all, which meant Art had to rewrite the whole damn article.

  “But I just talked to them,” Lia said. “Mrs. Sinner said she didn’t care about money.”

  “Sinnard,” Art said. “And that’s just something people say. No one cares about money until they do.” He instructed Lia to run by the house again, check the new number. “And grab a pull quote, would you? I’m tired of talking to these people.”

  Lia drove to the house where she’d met Mrs. Sinnard the day before, but no one was home. She tried their primary residence. It was a mile down the road and identical to the one she’d visited previously, except for a coat of bright sunflower-yellow paint. She peered through the screen door. Mr. Sinnard, Lia guessed, old and overalled, sat in a rocking chair, watching what sounded like the news. He waved Lia in, but didn’t speak. On the news, a man recapped the previous day’s tragedies. The plane crash was long forgotten; he promised instead to update viewers on Limetown. Lia stood and watched over Mr. Sinnard’s shoulder. The update, however, was that there was no update. No one had been found. The government continued to claim the Limetown Commission’s investigation was ongoing, but they spoke to the public with the same tone a weary parent tells a pestering child: “We’ll see.”

  Mrs. Sinnard appeared from a back room, her white hair covered with a lavender headscarf, a fanny pack wrapped around her waist. From somewhere Lia couldn’t see, a cuckoo clock chirped birdsong. “You’ve returned.”

  “You changed your mind,” Lia said.

  “And the world wants to know why.”

  “Just Art, my editor.”

  “Art,” she said. “Of course he became a reporter.” She looked at Mr. Sinnard, as if for affirmation. But he kept his eyes on the TV.

  “You know him.”

  “We knew everyone, once upon a time. Mostly through church. Back when things like that mattered.”

  “Is that why you’re selling?”

  She glanced again at Mr. Sinnard. “You look like him, you know. Those dark eyebrows, thick as caterpillars.”

  “Who?”

  “Your father, of course.” Mrs. Sinnard paused. “You didn’t talk to him about your visit?”

  Lia shook her head. She felt the pounding in her head retu
rning. “Why would I?”

  “I guess they never told you about us.”

  Mrs. Sinnard floated to the dining room window, which faced west toward the other house. “Did you bring your camera?”

  “Yes,” Lia said. Miss Scott had always said you never know when your word won’t be enough.

  “Good. There are some things I want to show you in that old house, before it’s gone.”

  * * *

  Mrs. Sinnard drove Lia the short distance to the old house. It was approaching the middle of the day. The sun shone unfiltered, and the air was menacing with humidity. Inside the house was no relief. The Sinnards kept the air off to save money, Mrs. Sinnard explained. She had Lia open the front and back windows, praying for a cross breeze.

  “You saw the rooms, yes? But you didn’t see the attic.” They walked back to the kitchen. The attic door was already open, the ladder down. Mrs. Sinnard pointed up.

  “You told me it wasn’t safe,” Lia said.

  “Don’t worry: You’re a Haddock. You’ll be fine.”

  Lia took a step, hesitated. “What’s up there?” she said, but Mrs. Sinnard wouldn’t say. Only, “Don’t you want the whole story?” Lia looked up. She ran through the different ways an attic could be unsafe. An unstable floor or ceiling. Outdated insulation that irritated the eyes and burned the skin. But what if there was more? She thought of her family’s house. What if this attic, like theirs, had its own secrets, boxed away? She had the impulse to find out.

  The ladder shook under Lia’s weight. She reached for the floor to pull herself up. Her hands came away covered in dust. The air was stuffier up here, the room much darker than her parents’ attic. There was no window, no Christmas lights. Lia stepped carefully, scanning the attic, corner to corner, board by board.

  She called down to Mrs. Sinnard. “What am I looking for?”

  No one answered. The floor groaned beneath her. She made her way to the back, where she found a cloud of cobwebs.