Did I get letters from Mom? Probably. I don’t remember. I don’t actually remember getting the mail for that matter but I must have, because I have a piece of it in the tub with me. It’s stuck to the back of my knee and is covered with thick splatters of toothpaste, which tells the thirsty Sherlock Holmes in my brain that this is probably what made me decide to sleep in the tub again. The envelope is here, too, badly torn.
It’s been forwarded. Fuck, how long is the post office going to honor that forwarding request? Isn’t there a statute of limitations on that sort of thing?
It’s the newsletter. The Shuler Family Newsletter.
My family. Well, my father’s family.
Through the red and blue spattering of toothpaste I see faces smiling back at me, faces that look like mine. “You look like a Shuler,” my mom used to say in a way that didn’t always feel like a compliment. But I do look like a Shuler. I have their dark hair, ruddy complexion, black eyes. I’m tall like the Shulers and I have their good teeth. I think I look a lot like my uncle. I used to, at least. I haven’t seen him in years.
Who keeps me on this list? Who decided that I should get this newsletter and what is their intention? Is it a melancholy reach across a divide that can’t be bridged? Is it a passive-aggressive way of reminding me of the other set of genes I carry? Or is it just an oversight? Did someone just forget to delete me from the database and thus subject me to this annual recounting of the loving family, the growing and evolving family I’ll never be a part of again?
God, it almost makes me want to drink right now. I would. I could. I have. But I know that doesn’t make this any better. Not that I’m ever looking to make things better. I think I’m mostly just looking to keep bad things at a manageable distance. I consider plugging the tub and filling it, soaking in it before I come to my senses. I grab the towel beneath me; it’s dry. I didn’t soak last night, either. Well, not on the outside at least.
I have to get to work. I sit as cross-legged as I can manage in the narrow tub, run my toothbrush under the spigot and scrape a gob of toothpaste off the side of the tub. That should seem grosser than it does but once the cool mint hits my inflamed mouth, I don’t care. I rest my forehead against the faucet and scrub at my teeth. I don’t want my eyes to come into focus but of course they do.
“The world may celebrate love on February 14, but we Shulers celebrate the power of love and remembrance on February 17. It’s the day we learned that nothing can truly stop a—”
The rest of the headline vanishes under smeared toothpaste. It doesn’t matter. I’ve read that line every year for almost twenty years. I’ve had almost two decades to absorb the message that nothing, not even death, can keep someone from loving and being loved. Nothing can keep the Shuler clan from loving their son, brother, uncle, David. He’s the reason they put their newsletter out in February, rather than in their Christmas cards. He’s the reason they send the newsletter out at all, to remind the world that they love their son, that he’s still a part of their family.
Unlike me.
Stiff muscles and bruised skull aside, I’m glad I read the newsletter last night. I’m glad I was already many drinks in when I read it; it muffles the bony fist of it under the numbness of a regular hangover. If I had just come home and found that waiting for me? Well, I still would have gotten destroyed, but I would have gotten rage drunk. Or worse, weepy drunk. Every drop of wine would have tasted like tears and loneliness, and I’ve had enough of that.
It’s so quiet in the bathroom. Did Jeannie pass out on my couch? Did my neighbors have a big night? I didn’t hear them. That doesn’t mean much, but I can’t recall any bursts of rage in the fog of my memory. If last night had hurt enough to be a tub night, I would have been looking for anything to divert me from the pain. It’s a wonder I haven’t gone over there and kicked someone’s ass yet.
Of course, this is my first February here.
It’s so quiet, distractingly quiet. I cock my head listening for the usual noises. Aside from my neighbors, the apartment complex is not very noisy, but usually in the mornings I can hear traffic on the road in front, birds calling, ambient noise of humans getting their day started. Today I hear nothing. For just a second I wonder if I’ve gone deaf and then I wonder if that would be a bad thing. But that thought doesn’t go anywhere. I hear myself moving inside the tub.
Rising stiffly—I’m really too old to be sleeping anywhere but in a good bed—I lurch out of the tub, out of the bathroom, and move as quietly as possible into my living room. It just feels different. Everything is where it should be, more or less. A wine bottle lies on its side. We had Fritos, apparently—they’re spilled across the coffee table. The lamp beside the couch is knocked over but that’s not unusual. I always bump it, even when I’m sober. The couch is empty. I hear a soft snore coming from the back of the apartment. Jeannie must have taken my bed.
The overhead light is off but the room is illuminated. Not brightly but brighter than usual. And it’s so quiet. It takes me several minutes of staring and wondering before I see what’s different.
It’s snowing.
I step to the window in the kitchen, wide-eyed. The light off the snow is a luminous gray-blue. It’s snowing hard and from the undisturbed drifts over the parking lot below it looks like it’s been snowing all night. That’s why it’s so quiet. A blanket has been thrown over the world.
A quick glance at the clock lets me know that the blanket also muffled my internal alarm clock. It’s nine-thirty and I’m late for work. I hate to look away from the snow for even a second, but I run to get dressed. I can’t wait to walk in this snow. I can’t wait to see the views from the hillsides and from the Jenkins Building.
In less than ten minutes, I bundle up without waking Jeannie and now I’m slogging through the powder. My boots are new and warm, white Snowlions that tie below my knees and are guaranteed to keep me warm down to minus forty. Tights under my jeans and thermal underwear under my shirts, all buried underneath a coat, scarf, hat, and mittens, makes me feel like I’m six again and my mother has bundled me up to go sledding. I feel like my arms should stick out to the sides and I should waddle but I’m a lot taller than I was at six. I’m better at all these clothes. But still, I smile at the feel of it. It’s nice to lose myself in a good memory for once.
I fall twice on the way to campus and I don’t care. All around me, people are laughing and sliding, trying unsuccessfully to make snowballs with the powder. The flakes are fat and gorgeous, falling like fabric all around me, and I can only catch glimpses of the mountainsides in the distance through the clouds and the snow. This isn’t a Midwestern snowstorm. The wind doesn’t howl like a tortured soul, like a demon that’s coming for you. It’s blowing the snow everywhere but the mountains break up its strength, distract it from tearing us all to pieces. The wind seems to play with the snow and even though my eyes are watering and my cheeks are chapped, I can’t stop smiling.
I don’t even cut through the maintenance room to get to my office. Instead, I haul myself up the concrete steps, kicking off drifts of snow as I go. When I turn the corner to climb up the steps to the front door, the storm pauses. The snow slows for just a moment and I can see out all the way into the valley. I need a bigger word for beautiful. Snowflakes blow into my gaping mouth as the wind picks back up, the snow comes back down, and the view is obscured.
It doesn’t matter. I saw it. Everything is better now.
On the second floor, Meredith meets me in the hallway, waving her arms as she does, shooing me back toward the stairs. She yells at me, telling me that my penalty for being an hour late is to take a plastic bag full of books back to the library. She’s not mad, I can tell, and she probably would have asked me to take them back even if I’d been on time. She’s in house shoes; she’s probably stripped off all her outer gear already and doesn’t want to put it back on.
I don’t even pretend to compla
in. She doesn’t bother to scold me any further, she just shoves the bag into my bundled up arms, and pushes me into the stairwell.
I’m getting better at the snow and only slip once going down the outside stairs but catch myself without even spilling the books. This makes me feel proud, like I’m finally becoming a West Virginian, a mountain-dweller. I wave to Walter Voss, who is coordinating the maintenance crew’s shoveling duties. He waves back with his shovel. I suspect it will be a while before they start their work. It would be madness to try to stay ahead of snow like this.
Even here, in the middle of campus with students running and laughing in the snow, silence rules. The snow muffles all but the most extreme sounds—a diesel truck, a high-pitched squeal—and the soft light makes the whole campus look like a dreamscape. I have to push the library doors hard to open them over the black mats that have been put down from the entrance all the way to the circulation desk. Eastern Allegheny College is no stranger to snow. They’re prepared to keep the library from being flooded by wet boots.
I shake the snow off the bag. It has piled up on the creases and I scoop what I can off the books that stick out the top. The girl at the desk waves me over, a towel ready to dry off anything that enters. She laughs and tells me not to worry, that she doubts she’ll have much work today. It’s nice to see I’m not the only one grinning at the weather.
The snow seems to be letting up a bit as I head back to Jenkins. Sounds seem a little clearer—snow blowers and car wheels spinning. I hear a lot of laughter. The sun is trying to break through the heavy clouds and there are intermittent rainbows where it hits the snow just right. I’m going to regret not wearing sunglasses but I don’t care. For now the world is gray and blue and white, with bright shots of red brick and green pine. I tip my head back and let the snow fall over my face.
I feel dizzy with the sensation and from looking up into the falling flakes. I shake my head hard, shivering at the snow that slips past my scarf and collar. I could stand here all day.
It’s February 18 and the world is completely new.
I laugh when I realize I’ve stepped off the path and the snow is almost up to my knees. I turn the corner at the student center and the wind gusts up from the valley below, momentarily blinding me with blown snow. I blink it away and stop.
The light is different here. The blue-gray fog is broken, not by brick and spruce but by a sharp, pulsing blue and red. Blue and red. Bright, blinding.
Police lights.
I know what the cop’s radio will sound like before I get close enough to hear it. People are talking, gathered in a cluster around the maintenance door at the basement. Sirens sound from over the hill. More cops are showing up. They never come one at a time. They’re like starlings; they move in thick, black flocks with lots and lots of noise.
My hangover reemerges with a sour taste in my mouth as I keep trudging closer. Probably a break-in, I tell myself over a voice deep within me whispering something much different. An accident. Someone fell down the stairs or sledded into the building. Someone vandalized the Jenkins Building or someone’s car slid off the road and down the embankment. There are plenty of reasons cops would have their lights on. Fewer that they would use their sirens, but I can think of some.
Someone must have been hurt. It must have been an accident. The words roll through my mind as I watch people huddle together, some crying, some hugging, all eyes glued to the maintenance door. College kids are so dramatic. Always weeping. And cops, oh, cops love to turn everything into a fucking scene. I’m shaking my head, willing myself to become annoyed at what is surely an exaggeration of drama for an unimportant event.
A student holds his arm out to stop my planned march through the scene. Cop radios are blaring as two more patrol cars pull up on the parking lot. Everyone’s yelling at everyone else to stay back and I really don’t have time for this.
“You can’t go in there,” the kid says, all lit up with the excitement of whatever this bullshit is. “They’re closing the whole building. It’s a crime scene.”
No shit, kid. Anyone could see that. The red and blue flashing lights are a huge giveaway. So is the yellow tape that the cop is stringing from the corner of the building to the edge of the crowd. The urge to lie down and close my eyes is almost more than I can resist and I already know what the kid is going to say happened here. He’s dying to tell me. He’s dying for me to ask but I already know. I know why they use that tape, why they move so quickly. They don’t move like that for vandalism. They don’t tape off accident scenes that quickly or into that big of a space. Nope, I know this drill. I know what I’m seeing.
Someone has been murdered.
I’ve seen it before.
CHAPTER FIVE
Collins, Illinois
February 1998
Jeannie Fitzhugh, 17 years old
Anna Shuler, 12 years old
This was serious.
Jeannie didn’t know exactly what this was but she knew it was serious. At first she thought it was Iggy. Her brother had just gone back to college and Mom and Dad always made a big thing about him not getting in trouble, not forgetting to pay his rent and all that. But this was different. Mom had been on the phone all day. Like, all day. And not just one call. Jeannie had heard her more than once say, “She’s going to have to call you back.”
That meant Jeannie was missing calls and that was so irritating. She was supposed to be meeting Leighanne at the arena for practice. The regionals were coming up, and Mom knew how important those were to her but Jeannie knew this wasn’t the time to bitch about it. It wasn’t just the phone calls, either. It was the quiet around the phone calls, the way the air felt charged and hushed at the same time, like everything in the house was holding its breath.
Mom and Dad were not fighting in that really deliberate way that meant both of them wanted to freak out on the other one, like when they got lost driving to Montreal last summer. Jeannie and Iggy had sat in the back seat, pressed into silence by the weight of the unshouted words in the front seat. Mom’s white lips and Dad’s great sighs eventually made Jeannie crack up, and then Mom laughed and all the tension disintegrated.
This wasn’t like that.
When she heard her mother raise her voice behind the closed door and hiss “Because she’s my sister,” Jeannie understood that they were at a whole new level of complicated.
She busied herself in the kitchen making brownies so that she could stay out of the way and keep an ear tuned for what exactly was going on. Aunt Natalie was always good for some serious drama. The door to Dad’s office opened and closed a couple of times and Jeannie could hear the door to the crawlspace opening. That’s where the suitcases were. Holy cow, how serious was this?
Mom came into the kitchen first, Dad right behind her. He didn’t look at her, instead concentrating on putting money inside an envelope. Dad loved organizing things in envelopes. Mom gripped the counter, watching Jeannie stir the brownies that were already mixed. Jeannie didn’t care if the brown goo burst into flames, she didn’t think she could stop stirring.
“Jeannie, honey, your father and I have to go out of town for a few days. We have to go to Bakerton. To Aunt Natalie’s.”
Jeannie nodded. “Is she okay? Is it about Uncle David?”
Bull’s-eye. Mom’s eyes widened and Dad stared at the envelope in his hands so hard it looked like he was trying to make it levitate. Ever since Uncle David left Aunt Natalie last winter, the drama had been building.
“Everyone is fine.” Mom-voice. “But something very complicated has happened and . . . ” Her voice broke and Jeannie felt her stomach flip-flop. Whatever this was, it was DEFCON 4, for sure. It was serious enough that they were going to leave her alone in the middle of a school week. They were leaving her cash and it didn’t look like they were even going to bring up checking in with Mrs. Carnahan across the street. They hadn’t even warned her not to ha
ve a party.
Jeannie’s mom came around the kitchen island and didn’t wait for Jeannie to put the gooey spoon down. She hugged her daughter tightly and whispered, “I love you so much.”
Aunt Natalie had been arrested. Mom told her when she called from Bakerton but she wouldn’t say what the crime was. Mom called every day, and every day she sounded a little wearier. The situation went from being “a big misunderstanding” to “a huge mess” to “a very serious situation.” On the fourth day, she called to tell Jeannie they were bringing her cousin Anna to stay with them “while this gets sorted out.” She asked Jeannie to clean out a few drawers in her room for her young cousin, saying she knew how inconvenient it all was but that it was really important.
When they got back home the next evening, Jeannie was glad she hadn’t argued with her mom over this. Her parents looked exhausted; she’d never seen her mom’s eyes so red even though she smiled a lot as she petted and fussed over her cousin. Jeannie hadn’t seen Anna in over a year. She’d gotten a lot taller—she was almost as tall as Jeannie—and she’d always had that big-eyed look about her. Now, however, as Jeannie’s mom took her coat and put down her suitcase, she looked like she had no idea what was happening.
Whatever was going on here, it was a disaster. Dad looked like he’d been hit by a car; Mom looked ten years older. Anna couldn’t have looked more like an abandoned puppy. Jeannie, on the other hand, was an honor-roll junior, leading point guard for the Lady Generals, seventeen years old and ready to prove to her parents that she was worth the trust they were placing in her. Jeannie Fitzhugh was a young woman people could count on. She knew just what to do.
“Anna!” Big smile, big hug. She could imagine the long, long days of dour faces and weepy eyes Anna had been lost among. Her mother had been arrested for who knew what—drunk driving? Drugs? Hard to say with Aunt Natalie. And if Uncle David had been involved, that would have just compounded the situation. Well, Jeannie couldn’t do anything about that but she could definitely do something about the lost twelve-year-old girl in front of her.
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