by Cote Smith
“There’s nothing up here,” Lia said. “I’m coming down.”
Silence.
“Mrs. Sinnard?”
This time came a reply. But it wasn’t a voice; it was a slam, a click, and then, darkness. It took Lia a moment to realize what had happened. Mrs. Sinnard had closed the attic door, locked it shut.
Lia’s heart jumped in her chest. “Hey! What are you doing?”
Lia crawled back to the door, grasped for a handle that wasn’t there. She yelled for Mrs. Sinnard to let her out.
More silence. She yelled again. She counted her breaths like sheep. One, two, three. Four, five, six. “Are you there? Please let me out.”
Finally, a voice.
“Not yet. Close your eyes. Are they closed?”
“Yes,” Lia lied.
“Now imagine I am gone. There is no one coming to get you. It’s you and God. That’s it. That’s what I saved them from. They prayed and prayed, and God sent me. I saved them, and still they ran away.” She started to cry.
Lia’s breaths quickened, seven, eight, nine. Ten. “Who? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Your father. And your uncle.”
Lia tried to process what Mrs. Sinnard was saying. She closed her eyes, stopped counting her breaths. Her father never talked about the people who raised him. Lia only knew that his guardians had taken him in after his mother was no longer able to care for him and Emile. She’d never thought that his guardians would still be alive. Or that they would live so close by.
“You . . . were their guardians.”
“We knew what my husband’s sister was.”
Not just guardians—family. Lia imagined her dad as a child, holding Emile’s hand where she now stood, their troubled mother below. Her dad must’ve thought of his mother whenever Lia asked to play in the attic. “He never talks about it,” Lia said. “He never even told me your name.”
A last sob caught on a laugh. “Yes, well, I don’t blame him. It wasn’t easy for us either.”
Lia’s breaths slowed.
“All right,” Mrs. Sinnard said. “I’m going to let you out now, but you need to promise me that you’ll come see me again. Say it’s for work. There’s a history here. And you’re a part of it.”
Lia opened her eyes. There was a message on her phone. It was from her dad. Call me when u can. Something to tell you.
“Lia? Are you listening?”
She clicked her phone off.
“Yes,” she said. “I promise.”
* * *
Lia called her dad on the way back to the newspaper office, half listening the entire time he talked. Her brain was filling up with all the questions she had for him. Why did he never tell her about the Sinnards? Why did he return here, to his hometown, if his childhood was so unhappy? Why would he want them close?
“Apple, are you there?”
He never called her that anymore.
“Family meeting. As soon as you get home.”
When Lia didn’t respond, he hung up.
* * *
Family meetings were rarely good news. Normally, the meetings began with a sad attempt at humor by Lia’s dad, before getting to the business at hand, which usually involved the ways in which the family was disappointing one another. When Lia entered the living room, her mother and father were sitting on the couch. This family meeting was different. Her father did not joke.
“We’ve made a decision, your mother and me. Something we think is the best for the family,” he said. Lia’s mother sat tucked into the corner of the couch, her face pale. Lia stared at the space between her mom and dad and tried not to see it as the most obvious of metaphors. “Lia,” her dad said. “Did you hear what I said? We’re moving.”
“What? Moving? Where?”
“Washington. State. We think. Or Oregon. Your mother likes Oregon. Anyway, somewhere remote and beautiful.”
Lia pulled up a map in her head. Even after Australia, her parents would be on one coast, she on the other. “Why?”
Her dad glanced at her mother. He bridged the gulf between them and rested his hand on her knee.
“We could use a fresh start too. And you’ll be leaving soon for college, so. We no longer have a reason to stay.”
Lia never understood how adults could say something absurd and act like it was perfectly reasonable. “But this is our home.”
“I know,” her dad said. “But it’s just a house. All the things you want to keep but can’t take, we can hold on to.” He talked a little more, filling in the ancillary details, while her mother turned and stared out the living room window, saying nothing. They wouldn’t put the house on the market until the summer was over. They would quit their jobs and find new ones. People do this kind of thing all the time, he said.
Lia looked at her mother for support.
“I don’t get why you guys chose to live here in the first place. It doesn’t make sense.” She thought of the Sinnards, who were also selling a house suddenly. “Nothing makes sense.”
“That was your dad’s idea,” her mother said, finally chiming in.
“Alison.”
“Why can’t I tell her?”
She took his hand off her knee.
“We came back for Emile,” her mother said. “So he would know where to find us.”
“Why would he need to find you?” Lia asked. This time her mother glanced at her father before she continued.
“Because he’s done this before,” her dad said. “Disappeared, then—”
“Not like this,” Lia’s mother said.
“Well . . .”
“Like when he and dad dropped out of high school,” Lia said.
Her parents looked at each other. “How do you know about that?” her dad said.
Lia could have told him the truth then, about how she had come to meet Mrs. Sinnard, and the things Mrs. Sinnard revealed to her after she came down from the attic. Instead, she chose to protect her source. “I found some postcards in Emile’s things. They were all blank, but one had a date. It was from Colorado, I think. Nineteen seventy-nine. I did the math.”
“Let’s stick to the meeting’s agenda,” her dad said.
“What else is there to say?” Lia said. “You’re moving. I’m moving. That’s it.”
Her dad’s eyebrows—her eyebrows—fell.
He stood up and went out to the backyard, which, he explained, would need a lot of work before the house went on the market.
“He thinks he’s doing what’s best for us,” her mother said, after Lia’s dad left. “That’s all he wants.”
“What about you? What do you want?”
“I want you to go to college.”
“Duh.”
“Lia,” her mother said. “Would you believe me if I told you it wasn’t worth it? Finding the answers to all these questions you have. All this trouble.” Lia didn’t say anything. Her mother smirked. “Yeah, me neither.”
Lia curled up in her chair. “I want to,” she said. “I just— it’s like there’s this part of my brain that won’t turn off.”
She stopped there. She didn’t tell her mother about her trouble sleeping, how lately she’d lie in bed, different scenarios running in her head—her mother leaving, not returning, Emile returning, Emile not returning, her parents learning that he was dead or, worse yet, never learning anything at all—how she analyzed everything she’d seen or heard that day, seeing a mystery in every little thing, pulling every thread, so that when morning came, she woke up feeling unraveled.
“It takes practice,” her mother said.
“Or distance.”
Her mother looked at Lia, annoyed. Her eyebrows were different from Lia’s and her father’s. Lighter, livelier.
“I got you something,” she said, and went to the kitchen. She returned with a small box. “It’s a GPS,” her mother said, before Lia had a chance to open it.
“I see that. What for?”
“For the one-month anniver
sary of your graduation.”
Lia didn’t tell her that wasn’t for two weeks still. She turned the box over in her hands. “Sure you don’t want to keep it? You know, for your big move.”
“Lia, this is what’s best. For the family.”
“Yes,” Lia said. “You seem real excited.”
Her mother sat back down. She shook her head and laughed. “Okay, Lia. You’re an adult, right? You tell me what I should do. Should I look for Emile? And how do I do that and keep this family together?”
“Mom.”
She leaned forward. “No, let’s hear it. Should I drive all night to Limetown? Because I’ve done that. Should I show up on that asshole Villard’s doorstep and promise not to move until I got answers? Did that too. And guess what? I got nothing.”
She leaned back against the couch, her arms crossed.
“You know your dad went to the police, looking for me? I can’t leave him again like that. He doesn’t deserve it.”
Lia didn’t have the answers either.
It would be days before they would look at or speak to each other again. Lia accepted the spot at Deakin as an apology to her mother.
* * *
A couple of weeks passed. When Lia wasn’t at work, she hid in the attic. Her parents had gone from never around to home all the time, and the attic was the only place she could be alone. She knew she should have been packing. But for every box she packed downstairs, she allowed herself to open one above. Few were labeled, which allowed Lia to make up her own stories about whom they belonged to. A pair of hiking boots, her dad’s size. She remembered her dad telling her that before Lia was born he backpacked through national parks in Colorado and Utah. But why couldn’t the boots belong to Emile? Maybe he liked to hike too. Maybe before he left he gave them to her dad and said, Here, hold on to these for me. Until I come back.
What Lia liked she kept for herself. A yellow scarf, for example, soft and warm. A Moleskine notebook, its pages blank. An old pin from the World’s Fair. All these she hid in her room, safe from the emptying of the house, in a box she labeled COLLEGE.
On the weekend, she lied to her parents (as, she believed, they had lied to her), and drove to Mrs. Sinnard’s house. Mrs. Sinnard liked Lia to come on Sundays, while her husband was at church. When Lia asked her why she didn’t go anymore, she explained that she had an entire life to say her piece to God. If He hadn’t gotten the message by now, she doubted He ever would.
They drove the mile to the vacant house together. A few city workers were planting poles for construction fencing, outlining the property borders, preparing the house’s demolition.
“It comes down on Wednesday,” Mrs. Sinnard said. “Middle of the week, just like that.”
It was another humid day. Scattered thunderstorms teased relief.
“How often did you visit the house? When my dad and uncle lived here.”
“We were never invited.” She took Lia’s hand, and they walked around to the back of the house. One of the workers had spray-painted a big X on the side, so there wouldn’t be any confusion as to what should be destroyed. “After their father left, I never saw those boys. Not once. When she went to the store, she locked them in the attic.”
“How do you know what it was like, if you were never allowed inside?”
“Your father told me. The night they ran away. They walked all the way to our house. I’m not sure how they found it. I know it doesn’t seem far by car, but that night there was a major snowstorm. When they made it to our doorstep, only your father’s feet were cold. He must’ve carried your uncle the entire way.”
She let go of Lia’s hand and drifted inside, through the back door. Inside, the house was gutted. The drywall and plaster had been torn down, the copper wire and piping ripped out. Lia followed Mrs. Sinnard as she floated from room to room, her arms folded across her chest, as if a chill followed her wherever she went.
“Why hasn’t he ever mentioned you?”
Mrs. Sinnard ran her hand over the windowsill, which was painted shut. “We should have been better to them, but we were afraid, like everyone else.”
“Afraid?”
In the window, Mrs. Sinnard lowered her eyes. “We’d been parents once before. It didn’t work out.”
Lia stepped closer. “And that’s why you were afraid? You’re not telling me everything.”
“No, I am not.”
“Why?”
She stood by the window; sprinkles beat the pane.
“Because I’m still afraid. And you should be too.”
“Of what?”
“Of what happens,” Mrs. Sinnard said, “when your uncle is around.”
The rain started to come down in full, the drops turning into fat punches. Lia looked out the window. She was from Kansas. A storm like this was nothing. Still, she felt a tingle of fear, picturing a grown woman afraid of a boy. Still afraid after all this time.
“Tell me,” Lia said. And when she refused, Lia tried using every technique she’d learned from Miss Scott, but all Mrs. Sinnard said was:
“Let’s get out of here before the whole thing comes crashing down.”
* * *
Mrs. Sinnard asked Lia to return on Wednesday, the next time her husband attended service, which was also the day of the demolition. Lia agreed, but explained that she wouldn’t be around much longer after that. She told her about Australia and how her house was filling up with boxes.
“Once I’m gone, I doubt I’ll come back,” Lia said, hoping to speed up whatever revelations remained.
“I see,” Mrs. Sinnard said. But she would not share the secrets Lia most wanted to hear.
Work was uneventful Monday, though on Tuesday the article about the Sinnards’ properties finally ran. Art ended up placing one of Lia’s photos along with it, the first of anything significant she created for the paper that made it to print. She worked late that evening, helping Art fact-check a back-to-school weekend insert. The sun had long set by the time they were finished, and when she got home, the house was dark. Lia magnetized the article with her photo to the fridge and called for her parents as she weaved through towers of boxes in the living room. Through the sliding glass door that led to the yard, Lia saw her father, standing in front of a sizable bonfire.
Out back the air was thick with smoke. Lia thought of the bonfire at Lost 80, Brad’s vigil, which somehow felt like a lifetime ago, though the memory of returning home and finding her mother, pale and panicked, still raised her skin. She touched her father’s elbow.
“Where’s Mom?”
Her dad shrugged. He had a beer in his hand, and several empties littered the grass around him. “Gone,” he said. “Always chasing, never realizing.”
He was practically singing. Lia asked him where she went.
“Who? What, when, where, and why. These are the questions, honey.” He finished his beer and dug another from a cooler. “Who, your mother. What? I don’t know. When and where, I don’t know that either. But why!” He toasted the star-speckled sky. “For Emile. Always Emile.”
He sat down in a lawn chair.
“Do you know when she’s coming back?”
“I do not.”
He lowered his head to his chest, in shame or sorrow, it was difficult to tell. Lia hadn’t seen him like this before. She turned away and stared at the fire. It was then that she saw what sat atop the flames. The burnt clothes, the curling boxes. Books of poetry, their words on fire. Lia circled around to find the other items, some of which refused to burn. The typewriter was blackened but otherwise unimpressed by the heat. Her hand went to her neck, and she thought of the yellow scarf, safe in her room, hidden at the bottom of her box for college.
“What if he comes back?” Lia asked.
“He won’t. He left that stuff the last time he was here. You were little. You don’t remember.”
Lia shook her head. She didn’t tell him that she tried to, that she wore his scarf and rubbed his pin, hoping for a memory, a piece
that would solve the puzzle.
“Why did he leave?”
“Why did your mother leave? Why does anyone leave? Either because they’re cowards or martyrs. Maybe both.”
“Mom’s not a coward.”
“No,” her dad said, “she certainly is not.” He picked up a branch and poked at the fire, stirring the embers. Lia left him out there to watch what remained burn.
She went inside and up to her room. The walls were blank. There were boxes where there weren’t boxes before, labeled in her mother’s handwriting. She must’ve grown tired of Lia dragging her feet. Lia found the college box in the back of her closet, where she’d left it. She dug for Emile’s book of John Donne’s poetry, which she’d stashed with the yellow scarf. She opened the book to the note, thinking that if she reread it, she might discover something hidden between its lines. But there was another note paper-clipped to the original that she hadn’t seen before. She did not recognize the handwriting, though as she read it, the voice sounded familiar.
Here is what I will not do. I will not tell you how sorry I am. You are right not to want me here. I will not tell you where I’m going. You are right not to follow. And I will not tell you what you mean to me, what you have always meant. You are right not to care.
But I will tell you this. You are the only one who understands me. This house, everyone inside, is the closest I’ve ever come to a home. Should anything happen to me, know that my last thought resides here.
And now good-morrow to our waking souls.
E
P.S. Tell the Apple I love her.
E was Emile. Lia was the Apple. That she understood. It was what her parents liked to call her, though she didn’t remember why. The rest confirmed what she’d gleaned. Emile had stayed with them when she was little. He was happy. Then something bad happened. Something he had done? He left. Where did he go?
Mrs. Sinnard had said she was afraid of what happens when Emile was around. Lia suddenly felt that she could not wait until tomorrow to find out why. She wanted to go to the Sinnards’ house tonight. Mr. Sinnard would be angry, Mrs. Sinnard would be startled, but before she knew it, summer would be over. They were running out of time. Lia could be direct and forceful, as Miss Scott had taught her, and in doing so, she would finally get the answers she needed.