by Hillary Avis
Mr. Simon shook his cane at her from across the room and called, “You better bring her back, young lady! Don’t be hogging the dog!”
“Don’t worry, I’ll bring her tomorrow,” she said as she clipped on Willow’s leash. Tomorrow—that was all she could promise. Next week was a different story. Next week, everything would be different.
Chapter 18
Allison left Willow in the back yard with a bowl of water and the remains of the butcher bone while she made the walk to the ministorage place. The storage unit was a little over a mile away, sandwiched between the Dream-a-Lot motel and the trailer park on the other side of Claypool Creek, and she wasn’t sure she could manage her wheeled basket, the one she used for hauling clothes to the laundromat or groceries when she made a big run, and Willow at the same time.
She dragged the cart behind her, bumping it over the places where tree roots had pushed up the sidewalk until she reached the storage unit, a row of uniform metal buildings punctuated by blue doors that was surrounded by tall, chain-link fencing. She punched in the code to enter the gate—easy to remember because it was 0521, the same as her wedding anniversary, May twenty-first. Then, conscious of the security cameras watching her every move, she wheeled her cart around to the back of the second building, where her unit was located, and unlocked the door.
The cramped, five-foot-by-five-foot space was stacked high with boxes. Thankfully, she’d had the sense to label them on the outside with permanent marker when she’d packed them. Paul’s two boxes of clothes and shoes were on top. She broke open the seal on the first one and found a short-sleeved button-up and a pair of stone-gray chinos to match, the kind of dressy outfit Paul wore on the rare occasions he wasn’t up to his elbows in flour and yeast.
She stowed the clothes in the bottom of her cart and turned her attention to the other boxes—the ones marked “kitchen” and “misc.” On top of Paul’s outfit, she piled as many items as she could reasonably fit in the cart—decorative plates, a tea set nestled in a hat box, a marble mantel clock, a set of steak knives, a snow globe with a tiny dog inside, some silver iced tea spoons, and a stuffed lamb with a music box inside that had been hers as a baby. Nothing from Paul’s family.
Satisfied, she sealed up the boxes and stacked them neatly back in the storage unit. When she got home, after a trek made much more arduous by the twenty pounds of junk in her cart, she was surprised to find Taylor in the back yard with Willow. They were both lying in a giant hole that Willow had excavated in the middle of the lawn while Allison was gone.
“Shouldn’t you be in school?” she asked him, more dismayed by the layer of reddish dust that covered him from head to toe than the hole in her lawn. Michelle was going to be thrilled when he tracked all that inside. Willow paddled her feet, kicking more clods of dirt on top of him.
Taylor puffed the dirt away from his nose and rolled over to squint at Allison. “Nah. Grandma says it’s better if I rest. I’m going back tomorrow.”
“You don’t look like you’re resting.”
“She was lonely.” Taylor sat up and shrugged as he dusted off his blue jeans. “She doesn’t like being by herself.”
Allison grinned. It was cute how Taylor felt so connected to Willow after their overnight adventure. But it wasn’t so cute if they were going to tear up the yard every time she left for an hour. She had enough on her plate as it was. “Maybe now you can help her put some of that dirt back into the hole,” she said drily.
“Taylor!” Michelle’s voice carried from next door, the worry in it obvious. “Where are you?”
He hopped up and, with a not-so-regretful shrug at Allison, nimbly pulled himself up and over the fence between their properties. “I’m right here, Grandma,” he said, his voice flat and bored, as though he’d been in his own back yard the whole time.
Willow paused her digging and listened intently as Michelle came out and crabbed about Taylor’s dirty clothes and face. It wasn’t until they were both back in the house and the door banged shut behind them that Willow relaxed and resumed her project. Her ears were barely visible over the top of the hole, now.
Allison clicked her tongue disapprovingly and as she approached to evaluate the damage, Willow snorted, sneezed, and then rolled over in the dirt to show her belly, her ears pulled back against her skull, her lips pulled back slightly from her teeth.
Fear.
Just a little bit. But it was still there.
Allison gently stroked the dog’s exposed belly. “I know you like to dig, but this isn’t a good spot. Someone could trip and fall in this hole. But we’ll find you a home where you can dig to your heart’s content, I promise.”
Willow grumbled, but eventually, Allison coaxed her out of the hole, ruffled her fur to release most of the dirt, and let her back into the house.
AFTER DINNER, ALLISON took her time cleaning up. She scrubbed down the dining table and dried it carefully before sliding the two boxes of heirlooms from the entryway down the hall to the dining room. She unpacked the items, laying them out in neat rows on the table as she grouped them together—the cooking tools in one corner, the china in another, the figurines and shelf-fillers in another. A fresh notebook page to catalog her finds in the center.
She felt like an archaeologist preparing her artifacts, hoping to unravel some mystery of the past if she just studied them hard enough. The truth was there on the table in front of her—somewhere. She picked up the figurine of the little boy fishing and turned it over in her hands. What could Elaine want with this? How could this—a knick-knack anyone could find in an online auction or at a thrift shop with a minimum of effort—be the missing piece to Elaine’s plan? Allison couldn’t remember if Paul had even liked it, though it’d sat on the mantel in their living room for decades since Paul’s mother died. The only person who’d really liked it was Emily—or at least she had when she was little. That’s the only reason Allison had included it in the box. It certainly wasn’t Emily’s style now.
Allison sighed and set it back down on the tabletop. This was like having one piece of a jigsaw puzzle and trying to imagine the whole picture. Except she had, spread before her, a single piece hidden among many other pieces, dozens of decoys that could lead her astray. Unfortunately, she had no sense of why anyone except Emily would want any of this stuff. It was all so...ordinary.
She sagged against the edge of the table and, at her feet, Willow let out an enormous huff and flopped her giant head down on the floor. It seemed a hopeless task, choosing correctly among the seventy or eighty objects spread out in front of her. Elaine knew exactly what she wanted—and Allison’s sole advantage was that Elaine didn’t yet have it.
Four days. She had four days to figure it out. Four days until Elaine descended to pluck the final piece of her puzzle from the box and settle it into place. But when Elaine looked into the box, she wouldn’t find it, Allison thought fiercely.
She pushed her chair back and went to her cart that was still parked by the front door, swiftly packing the random items she’d pulled from the storage unit into the boxes she’d just emptied. She’d only managed to haul enough to fill one box, not two, but it didn’t matter. Elaine would be deterred, at least temporarily, and that would give Allison time. Time to figure it out.
Because Allison had another advantage. Thanks to Elaine, she’d been waiting for Paul’s memories to return for years now. Thanks to Elaine, she had learned patience.
Chapter 19
Saturday
Four days later, and Allison was no closer to figuring out which item on her dining table was so important. But now every piece was tagged with a numbered sticky note and she had a long list scribbled in her notebook, recording the size, shape, and material of each object and everything she could remember about it, plus anything she’d learned from her internet searches.
Plate, ten inches diameter, decorative, image of a woman selling balloons, manufactured by Royal Dalton in the 1970s, inherited from Paul’s great aunt Mabel. Wid
ely available online. Weighs one pound.
Yes, she’d even broken out the kitchen scale. That’s how determined she was to approach this task as a dispassionate scientist rather than a desperate memory widow. Allison brushed a stray Willow hair off the plate in question and lifted it to scrutinize the brush strokes on the hand-painted surface. Though the plate was mass manufactured, each one was unique—ever so slightly altered by the hand of the painter.
It had to be something particular like that, didn’t it? Something specific, something distinctive. If Elaine could just go out and buy another one, she wouldn’t be so determined get her hands on Paul’s heirlooms. Even if she was trying to recreate some idyllic family scene she’d read about in the memory books, Paul wouldn’t know the difference between this plate and one painted by another decorator in the Royal Dalton factory, not by looking.
Allison glanced at the clock on the table—it was almost time to go meet Emily, Zack, and Elaine at Golden Gardens, but she still had a few minutes. She rearranged the items, swiftly sorting them into new groups, careful not to brush their numbered Post-Its to the floor. This time, rather than function, she sorted by uniqueness. The machine-made items, items that were one of thousands, in one group. The customized things like the hand-painted plate in another. The third group, the smallest group, contained the items that were completely one-of-a-kind. Needlepoint projects, carved tchotchkes, handmade pottery.
It had to be one of those things, didn’t it?
A knock came at the door and Allison nearly jumped out of her skin. Instantly, Willow was on her feet, barreling toward the front of the house, her bark so deep it felt like it vibrated Allison’s soul.
“Easy girl, it’s fine,” she murmured to Willow, although the dog had to know she was lying with the way her heart was hammering so loudly even in her own ears. The adrenaline must be wafting off of her, too. Willow snuffled the crack under the front door and growled low in her chest.
Allison clipped on her leash just in case. Though Willow was usually friendly to strangers on the street, it was rare to have visitors here at the library, so Allison had no idea how she’d react to someone standing on the porch. She cracked open the door, an excuse ready on her tongue for whoever was there, but her defenses fell away instantly when she saw her daughter’s face.
Emily looked picture perfect, relaxed now that her last term of medical school was behind her and her internship was yet to begin. Her wavy caramel hair was half up, exposing sparkling diamond studs in her ears that matched her new engagement ring that she touched self-consciously as she stood there, beaming. Past her, Allison saw a red Acura parked on Rosemary Street and was suddenly conscious of Elaine and Zack watching her from the car.
“Mom!” Emily’s nose crinkled with amusement. “Don’t look so surprised! You knew we were coming.”
A little growl erupted from between Willow’s bared teeth and Allison flushed. Willow wasn’t supposed to guard against Emily, for heaven’s sake. She nudged the dog with her knee so she’d knock it off. “Of course I did. I just thought we were meeting at your dad’s.”
“I wasn’t going to make you haul a bunch of boxes all the way over there.”
“Just one box. It’s no trouble, really. I’ll see you there.”
Emily rolled her eyes and leaned a little to look past her into the entryway. “Come on, grab the box and we’ll give you a ride, too. You can’t bring the dog in the car, though—you know Zack’s allergic.”
Allison couldn’t help glancing at the car. She couldn’t see Zack’s face, only his fingers impatiently drumming on the steering wheel. In the passenger seat, Elaine didn’t look happy at all to finally be getting her hands on Paul’s heirlooms. Instead, she looked confused. She was staring at the front gate, shaking her head in disbelief.
That was the moment Allison realized that Elaine hadn’t known. She’d had no idea that Allison was the new guardian of the memory library. She’d had no inkling that Allison wasn’t just Emily’s ignorant mother, a rube standing in the way of her plans. An inconvenience. But now she knew. Elaine turned her face slowly toward the porch where Allison and Emily stood, her mouth open in shock.
Allison couldn’t help it—she laughed. For once, Elaine was lost. For once, her plan hadn’t accounted for something. When she’d murdered Taylor’s parents, torn out Paul’s memories, and handed the library over to Myra, Elaine didn’t plan on Myra someday passing the guardianship to Allison.
How could she have predicted it when Myra and Allison weren’t even friends back then? It wasn’t until Paul moved to Golden Gardens a few months later that Allison knew Myra as more than an occasional bakery customer. Paul’s memory loss brought them together and forged a deep friendship, deep enough that Myra trusted her with the deepest of secrets—the library.
Emily followed Allison’s gaze to the Acura and cleared her throat. “It’s not a big deal to leave her here for one day, is it?”
Allison gave herself a mental shake. This wasn’t just about Elaine. This was about Emily and Paul, too. As much as she wanted to sabotage Elaine, she couldn’t undermine Emily’s relationship with Paul. “No—sorry. Let me get the box.”
She slipped back inside and grabbed the box, balancing it precariously on one hip as she unclipped Willow’s leash.
“Be good,” Allison warned her. She usually put Willow out when she’d be gone more than an hour, but Willow had settled down and was now sitting calmly inside the entryway, her tongue lolling out. She’d probably get into more trouble outside, with her barking and digging, than she would inside. Plus, the dog was a convenient excuse to duck out early from Golden Gardens if Elaine proved unbearable.
The Acura’s horn sounded when Allison stepped out onto the empty porch. Emily, who’d already gone back to the car, waved from the back seat and gestured behind her to the trunk, which was popped open. Allison quickly locked up, stowed the box in Zack’s pristine trunk, and got in the back with her daughter.
In the front seat, Elaine had apparently gotten over her shock. She twisted to get a better view of Allison, a plastic smile pasted across her face. “I thought you said you had two boxes for Emily?”
Allison matched her smile and syrupy tone. “I thought I’d have to carry them over, so I squeezed it all into one.”
“Well, isn’t that nice?” Elaine didn’t sound too thrilled, the greedy cow. “I guess we’re ready to go.” She patted Zack on the shoulder, the glittery red bangle on her wrist flashing in the pale morning sunlight that angled through the windshield.
Allison’s breath caught. Elaine’s bangle was the exact same shade as the red gem she’d found on the river path. Could it be that Elaine was there, watching her? She swallowed. “Pretty bracelet.”
“Why, thank you. Zacky and Emmy just gave it to me for Mother’s Day. I think I’ve worn it every day since.” Elaine held out her wrist for Allison to admire, twisting her arm to make the bracelet sparkle even more. Zack pulled out from the curb with a lurch, and Elaine pulled her arm back to the front seat, but not before Allison noticed that one of the gems was missing.
Her chest felt tight. Elaine had spied on her in front of Golden Gardens—but why? What was she doing in Remembrance? Maybe trying to figure out where Allison lived, so she could steal whatever it is that she wanted from those boxes.
That only made Allison more determined to keep it from her.
“The school’s right there—I used to walk over from the bakery,” Emily chattered eagerly, leaning forward to point out Remembrance landmarks to Zack as he drove. “You wouldn’t believe it now, but in those days, the highway actually had traffic. All the kids would bunch together and then make a run for it to beat the log trucks, can you imagine?”
Allison couldn’t help relaxing and enjoying the moment, even with Elaine eavesdropping in the front seat. It wasn’t Zack’s fault that his mother was twisted. Maybe he and Emily could have a good life together, once Elaine was out of the picture.
Allison held
her breath as Zack parked and, ever the gentleman, opened her door before dashing around to let his mom out, too. She hadn’t really thought about what would come after—after she stopped Elaine and exposed her for what she really was, a thief and a murderer. What would that life even look like?
Before she could think more about it, Elaine gripped her elbow, propelling her toward the front entrance. “I think it’s best if you stay in the background,” she said in a low, hard voice. “You know—to reduce Paul’s stress. For Emily’s sake.”
It was a threat. The words were innocent enough to anyone else’s ears, but Allison knew what Elaine meant. Emily was in danger if Allison didn’t toe the line. She swallowed the lump that rose in her throat. “Of course.”
Beside her, Elaine relaxed, her posture shifting from crabbed and tight to poised and elegant as Zack ran ahead to open the door for them. Elaine breezed through like she owned the place and behind her, Allison grabbed Emily’s hand and squeezed. Her last chance to be herself before she took on the role of helpful friend, background to the real family reunion. “Have a good visit with Dad, honey.”
Emily didn’t let her hand go. “I wish you could tell him. I really do. I hate this.”
“We’ll tell him soon.” It was a promise to herself as much as to Emily. “Before the wedding, I swear.”
Chapter 20
Myra’s face lit up when she saw them come in. She hustled over from the kitchen, her arms outstretched. But instead of hugging Allison or Emily, she embraced Elaine, then stepped back to look her up and down. “Oh my word, it’s so good to see you. What are you doing here in town?”
Allison froze. She tried to wrap her mind around the surreal scene in front of her, only half listening as Elaine explained to Myra that her son was now engaged to Emily and pulled Zack forward to introduce him. Zack got a dose of Myra’s hugs, too.