by Mindy Mejia
To tell the truth, Mona and I were probably more alike than me and Bud. Neither of us had much time for small talk. So I knew she was here today for a reason.
“Mona.”
I sat down on the other side of the desk. Winifred stood behind her with her hand on Mona’s shoulder, giving the kind of silent comfort a friend should, but me, I had to put that desk between us. I had to look at her as next of kin, not as a woman I’d known for almost half her life.
“It never crossed my mind.”
She didn’t seem to be speaking to either of us. Winifred and I glanced at each other and waited for her to continue.
“In all the months since Greg’s been gone, I never once thought I could lose Hattie. It’s been Greg, Greg, Greg. Greg stepping on a land mine in my head in the middle of the night. Greg’s unit getting attacked. Greg’s face still and pale in a coffin. Greg’s been my nightmare and I thought I could trade them off. Greg’s tour is up in July, and Hattie had it in her head she was going to New York. I’d get one back and start worrying about the other. That seemed . . . fair.”
Her gaze finally focused and she looked at me now, all the anguish in the world swimming in her eyes.
“I never thought I could lose her when she was so close to me. Not here at home, in Pine Valley.” Winifred held tight to Mona’s shoulder with her bony fingers like she was keeping Mona upright, and shot me a look like women do when they want you to do something or they think you’re making a mess of it.
“Mona, what are you doing here? This is the last place you need to be right now.”
“There’s something you need to know. About Hattie.”
She reached up and patted Winifred’s hand. “Wait for me in the lobby, will you?”
“You sure, honey?”
“I’ll be along in a minute.”
Winifred gave her a pat and me a warning look before she left and shut the door behind her. Mona paused again. She seemed to be collecting her energy.
“All these people keep asking about me. Doing things for me. I can’t stand it. It’s not about me, Del. I would feel this way for the rest of my life if she could just be alive. It wouldn’t matter if I never saw her again, never hugged her. I would cut off my hands and feet just to know her heart was beating. That she was breathing and smiling and living somewhere. How can I live knowing she’s not? I can’t bear it, Del. I can’t bear it.”
She pressed her lips together, fighting for control.
“You have to take it one day at a time, Mona. Just focus on what’s next.”
She nodded. “Winifred says you learn how to live with it, that the grief becomes your new child.”
“She lost two; she would know.”
Mona nodded and took a deep breath, changing the topic.
“Bud says you don’t know about the DNA yet.”
“No, not yet. And I know Bud’s upset.”
“We’re all upset, Del.”
“No, I didn’t mean about—I meant—” Christ, I didn’t know how to handle women. Maybe if I’d been married for more than two seconds, I’d be better at this sort of thing. Mona saw my floundering and, despite what had just been robbed from her, still had the good grace to step in.
“Bud told me about your call this morning. He was angry. He expected more from you.”
“Mona—”
“I know, Del. You have to do your job. I know about disclosure and what you can and can’t say. I used to read detective novels.” Her gaze dropped. “For fun.”
“I’m not trying to keep Bud in the dark about anything.” I didn’t even realize it was a lie until the words were already out. I kept talking, just like the lying criminals did, trying to justify it, to make it better. “Once we get the DNA back, the whole game’s gonna change. Hattie’s killer’s not going to be able to hide for long. Believe me.”
She looked up again and I saw she trusted me. She trusted her friend of twenty-five years to find her daughter’s killer, and even though I knew I was doing the right thing keeping this Lund thing quiet, it still tore at me. It turned my stomach.
“Bud will understand later. He’ll calm down.”
I knew he might understand if he ever had to find out the whole truth, but I didn’t know if he’d forgive me for keeping it from him. I shook my head, needing to move on.
“What did you want to tell me about Hattie?”
“I’ve been thinking.” She took a deep breath. “I didn’t remember it when you came to the house. There was too much . . .”
She shook her head, looking like she was willing the tears back so she could get out what she needed to say.
“It was three weeks ago, during Hattie’s spring break. She was supposed to be working on Friday, but when I stopped up at the pharmacy for my pills, she wasn’t there. She’d left in the morning wearing her smock and her name tag. The girl who checked me out said she hoped Hattie was feeling better. I didn’t say anything. I just nodded.
“When I went home, Hattie was still gone and she didn’t answer her phone. She wasn’t at Tommy’s or Portia’s. After another hour went by, I went into her room. I usually don’t. Teenagers like to be left to themselves, you know, and Hattie never did anything that made me worry, so I gave her space. But when I still hadn’t heard from her I went in and started looking around.”
She took a deep breath. “It was in her computer.”
“What was?” I asked, wondering if I already knew the answer, but I didn’t.
She pulled some papers out of her purse and pushed them across the desk.
“I printed it before she got home. I’m not exactly sure why. I knew I wasn’t going to show Bud. Hattie was his little girl, his angel. He’s loved that child stupid since the day we brought her home from the hospital.”
The paper was a chart of some kind. On the left side there was a column that said Character and then a bunch of names. I skimmed down until I saw Tommy. Next to the character column were other headings. Under Through line, she’d written Sex and acceptance; under Needs she’d written To be told what to do, to fit in, to slobber all over me; and under the last column, Stage Direction, was Tell him he’s just like Derek. Keep him in social scenes. No more private parties.
“What is this, Mona?”
I looked at a few more. Bud’s Through line was Farm and family. The stage direction for Portia was Talk about Portia as much as humanly possible without puking. Hard not to smile at that one. I’d done a fair amount of talking to Portia lately, myself.
“That’s what I asked her when she came home. She looked sad and a little windblown, red nose and eyes. She’d been outside somewhere. I demanded to know where she’d been and why she lied to her boss. She said it wasn’t any of my business, that she was eighteen and an adult and could do whatever she wanted.”
“Typical teenager.”
“Typical teenager—not typical Hattie. I’d always gotten the feeling that Hattie told people what they wanted to hear. I couldn’t ever prove it before, but a mother knows when her child is putting on a show. I can see their hearts, Greg and Hattie, whether they want me to or not. Hattie was a people pleaser, although I could never quite figure out if she did it because she didn’t want to disappoint anyone or if she just didn’t know what she wanted for herself.
“Anyway, she yanked the computer out of my hands and said it was her property; she’d paid for it fair and square and I didn’t have any right to touch it. Then she stormed off to her room and slammed the door. I followed her in there and told her it was my door, that her father and I had paid for it fair and square, and she didn’t have any right to shut it in my face. Then I asked her about that spreadsheet. I said, what are you trying to do with that? People aren’t characters in one of your plays. She claimed it was just an exercise. Something to help her be a better actress like her camcorder was.”
Mona shook her head, remembering. “I said something like, who do you think you’re fooling? And then she started crying. I went over to the bed and
held her for a while, stroking her hair just like when she was little.”
Mona teared up and wiped her eyes with a tissue. “It’d been a long time since she’d let me that close. She was her daddy’s girl. Always kept me at a distance. I never knew why . . . why she did that.
“But that day she needed me. She let me in a little. She cried and I held her and she said that the only person she’d been fooling was herself. I told her to stop thinking about what she could be for everyone else, stop putting on shows and people would respect her for it in the long run.
“She said it was hard to think about the long run, so I told her just what you said to me right now. Take it one day at a time. She had to figure out what she wanted and concentrate on that. I kept talking for a while, just rocking her back and forth and trying to get through to her. It felt like I had my baby girl back for a moment.
“She never told me where she’d been that day and I didn’t push her on it. I didn’t want to break that fragile bond, to have her shut me out again. Now, though . . . now I wonder if she was mixed up in something that got her killed. If I had just made her tell me, or grounded her . . .”
She broke off again and wiped her eyes with the tissue.
“You can’t think like that, Mona. You can’t blame yourself.”
“I don’t blame myself. I blame the murdering bastard who did it. But maybe I could’ve prevented it. Maybe if I’d been more strict with her—”
“She’d have run just as hard in the opposite direction,” I interrupted. “That’s what kids do. It’s how they’re wired at that age.”
She wiped her eyes some more, nodding. “I know that, Del. It’s just these thoughts. These thoughts keep finding me. They won’t let me go.”
“And we don’t know she was mixed up in anything yet. Kids go out to that lake and have sex all the time.”
“But there was the envelope.”
“What envelope?” I sat up straighter.
“It came that night—a white envelope in the mailbox. No stamp, no return address, just Hattie’s name on it. She took it from Bud and disappeared up to her room.”
“Did you find out what was in it?”
“No.”
“Have you seen it since then?” I wouldn’t have noticed something that mundane when I’d searched her room.
“No.”
“And the next day she disappeared again.” I pieced the timing of it together.
Mona looked surprised. “How did you know that?”
“Portia.”
She nodded. “Portia dropped her off because her truck had broken down off the highway north of Rochester.”
“What was she doing up there?”
“She said she went shopping.”
“Shopping for what?”
“I don’t know, but again—I didn’t push her on it because she seemed happier. I figured she’d sorted out whatever it was that needed sorting. When Bud grumbled about the truck breaking down over supper that night, she cracked jokes and teased him. Told him it was a sign that Bud should buy her a new car, a convertible so she could drive with the top down all the way to New York. Then he told her that her allowance was now a nickel a week and she could save up for it herself. They went back and forth all the time like that, ribbing each other. She seemed fine, happy, like I said, not like she’d been crying on my shoulder the day before. Maybe it was just teenage mood swings. One day they’re on the top of the world, the next day their life is over.”
I heard it in her voice, how she caught herself, how the sarcasm came back and punched her right at the end of the word and suddenly she doubled over. Silent sobs shook her shoulders, too deep for noise. Too raw.
Winifred, who’d been standing guard out by the file cabinets, hurried back into the office and held Mona by the shoulders. I grabbed some takeout napkins from a drawer and shoved them across the desk, but Winifred rolled her eyes and produced a handkerchief from her purse. Mona wiped her face, pulling herself together, while I felt about as useless as thumbs on a snake.
“Mona, I need you to do something for me.”
She managed to calm down and sat up straighter. The grief hadn’t made her weak. A woman like Mona Hoffman—a true farm woman who faced every season and every storm with an equanimity that would make God jealous—thrived on action, on measuring out the task and getting it done. Even here, in the darkest days of her life, I knew she would do whatever I asked of her.
“I want you to look through Hattie’s room again, and her truck, anywhere she might have left that envelope.”
“Okay, Del.”
“There’s a few other things we need to know the whereabouts of, too,” I added on an impulse. “Her suitcase and her video camera.”
“What?” Surprise broke through the other emotions.
I described them both briefly and said, “We think they’re missing.”
“The suitcase was her Christmas present from us. Bud bought it at Brookstone. She loved it.”
She said she would look for Hattie’s things after they picked out the casket flowers for the funeral.
“We’re having the wake tonight at the house. Just family.” Mona glanced away as she got up to leave.
I walked them out, but stood back while the old woman helped the younger one into the sedan. A news van hovered on the other side of the street, waiting for a break in the story. They’d be swarming around the funeral tomorrow, trying to interview anyone they could about the “curse killing.” At least I could take care of that nuisance for Bud and Mona. I didn’t feel capable of much else as I watched Mona’s car pull away.
It was a long while before I went back inside.
PETER / Friday, March 21, 2008
COULD A body tear in half? I stood under the tree, one of Mary’s sprawling oaks that had shown her what she wanted to do with her life, and watched Hattie walk away from me. Her ultimatum hung in the air. Come to New York with me or I’ll tell Mary about us. She hadn’t said those exact words—had she?—but the threat was there, glittering in her fearless eyes.
I watched her shrink across the field, her steps eating up the ground with a callous teenage confidence that would have told the sun itself to fuck off. My desperation grew proportionally with the distance between us. Everything in me burned to run after her, to haul her back here, tie her to this tree, and put her mouth to use until it couldn’t speak a word of truth or lies. Give her exactly what she wanted and then find a car and drive. Show her everything. Make us both forget this town and ourselves and every terrible decision that had brought us to this place and time.
But New York? What did she expect me to say? Yes, I’ll move to New York with you? I’ll throw away any chance of getting my life in Minneapolis back and go live on the streets of New York City with you? That’s where we would be—on the street. Even if I could miraculously line up a teaching job for the fall, I wouldn’t get a paycheck until October. I had a thousand dollars left in my savings account, which was nothing, yet Hattie thought her two grand would somehow support both of us in the most expensive city in the country?
She had no idea what she was facing. She had no friends there, no contacts, no plan. She needed me. God, she needed me almost as much as I craved her, and the temptation to give in to her insane demand practically overwhelmed me.
Except I couldn’t forget Mary.
Mary kept me rooted to the spot, watching Hattie until she disappeared into the woods. I didn’t give a shit about the rest of it—my job, my reputation—nothing in this Pine Valley life mattered anymore except Mary. She’d told me her plans to stay on the farm over a month ago and we’d been living in a stalemate ever since. I hadn’t given her an answer as to whether I would stay and she hadn’t brought it up again. We existed in parallel, passing perfunctory remarks like well-mannered yet distant neighbors. I knew she was waiting for me to make a decision, but I honestly couldn’t tell whether she cared about what that decision would be.
Was it any wonder I’d set
up this rendezvous with Hattie? Hattie, who’d curled up in my lap like I was her haven from the world, who’d pleaded with me and threatened to break me, like I was someone worth breaking.
I drank the rest of the wine and tossed the leftover food to a circling crow, then lay down and stared at the sky through the bared branches.
Would she really do it? Would Hattie talk to Mary the next time she came into the pharmacy? She’d told me over and over that she would do anything for me, that she was the right woman for me, but which version of her? Even if she wasn’t a born actress, she was still eighteen, for fuck’s sake. What wouldn’t a scorned eighteen-year-old do?
When I couldn’t stand thinking about it anymore, I gathered everything up and walked back to the barn. Hattie was already gone when I got there. Maybe she was home already, planning the best way to ruin me. It wouldn’t take much. A quick phone call to Mary or a confession to her parents, and my life would be over.
I hurled the empty wine bottle against the barn wall, but it didn’t even crack, so I kicked it into the pond that was forming on the far side of the building. It was tempting to toss her picnic blanket in after it. Instead, I left it in a dry corner wrapped around the book.
When I arrived back at the house, Mary’s truck was parked in the driveway. She’d said they were going shopping in Rochester after the doctors’ appointments, but it wasn’t even noon. They were home early.
I tossed the picnic basket in the backseat of my car and then opened the front door quietly. If I had any ideas of sneaking upstairs, they immediately died when I saw Mary sitting on the couch in the living room, staring at me like she’d been counting the minutes until I got home. The TV was off. Elsa was nowhere to be seen. The overwhelming assault of guilt compounded as the seconds ticked by and Mary remained motionless. She’d hardly paused in the last year. Could there be any doubt about the reason for her still life now?
