by Mere Joyce
“Does the stereo still work?” Nolan asks.
He heads straight for the sound system next to the TV.
“Should.” Forrester shrugs, moving over to the box of movies. “Won’t get any reception for the radio, and there’s no Bluetooth. CD player’s fine, but I warn you the selection is even worse than the movie choices.”
“I’m sure we can find something.” Nolan smirks.
He sets about rifling through the CD cases as the rest of us get to work. Forrester and Thomas collect the VHS tapes from the floor, placing them back in their cases while Hailey and I strip the sheets from the sofa bed.
“What are you going to do with all these movies?” Eli asks, watching the others dump tapes into the big box.
Forrester shrugs again, his head lowered, his dark golden-brown hair obscuring the view of his eyes.
“Throw them out. No market for VHS anymore, and there’s nothing here you can’t get for cheap elsewhere.”
“I doubt you can find The Peanut Butter Solution on Netflix.” Allison laughs.
“Well, maybe I’ll keep that one,” Forrester says, but he doesn’t take the movie out of the box.
“Not my first choice, but it’ll have to do,” Nolan mutters.
He lifts a CD from a cracked and scratched case, eyeing the underside of the disc before popping it into the stereo.
“I suppose that’s true,” Eli says, his gaze still set on the box of movies. “VHS tapes like these are worthless now. Seems a waste, though.”
“You’re free to have them if you want,” Forrester says, his voice an odd mix between bothered and unconcerned. “I’m not keeping them for my own sake. I hardly ever watch movies.”
The grungy strum of a guitar sounds out from the stereo, followed by the upbeat tempo of a beating drum. I pause in my work on the bedsheets, listening as a man’s voice begins singing an indie rock tune.
“My parents used to love this album.” I smile.
Nolan glances over his shoulder at me.
“Ours, too,” he says, nodding.
“I know this song,” Allison says, snatching the CD case from Nolan. “Sloan? Never heard of them. Why is this so familiar, though?”
“We used to listen to it during the summers here,” I say.
I bend back down to continue my task, folding the sheets into neat, off-white squares.
“Did we?” Allison looks at the case before placing it back on the TV stand. “I don’t remember. Well, maybe I do a bit.”
“It’s a good CD. If peppy alt-rock fits your tastes,” Thomas says as he closes the flaps of the cardboard movie box. “I’ll take the movies back with me and get rid of them later,” he adds to Forrester. “You’ve got enough to take in your car as it is.”
“Thanks.” Forrester nods as he turns to unplug the TV set.
We put the sheets in a pile by the stairs, and then we fold the bed into its frame before fitting the cushions back into place. When we make the first trip up to load the TV and the box of movies into the cars, Allison goes to the kitchen to collect cleaning supplies.
“You don’t want to leave the TV for staging?” Eli asks as Forrester hauls the old thing outside, Thomas grabbing the back to help steady the weight. “It’ll make the room a bit unbalanced, won’t it?”
“Oh, don’t start your design detailing now,” Hailey says.
“It’ll sell better with good staging!” Eli argues, not even questioning how she knows of his interest in design.
Hailey rolls her eyes.
“It won’t need any help getting sold,” she says.
I’m sure she’s right. The cottage might have an outdated decor, but that doesn’t change the fact it’s well built and situated on a gorgeous property. Nothing beats a place like this, and buyers will clamor to get their hands on it.
“I’ve got a friend who wants to buy the TV,” Forrester says. “Figured I might as well take it back with me now and get the money.”
“We can take out the entire TV stand,” Hailey suggests. “Then no one will even know the TV is missing.”
“That could work,” Eli adds, sounding something close to excited. “We can reposition the couch across from the fireplace. That’s where it should be, anyway. Right by the fire — make that the centerpiece of the room. Less a recreational space, more a sophisticated lounge. People will like that.”
“You sound like you’ve given this thought,” Hailey says, her eyebrows raised in question.
Eli rakes shaggy hair to one side of his forehead and places his hands on his hips in an almost defiant pose.
“They’re actually my dad’s thoughts,” he mumbles. “Back then, every trip home from the cottage he’d spend at least half the time talking about how much he would change if he owned the place. I think it drove him insane it belonged to Simon.”
“Funny, isn’t it?” Hailey says, letting her breath out in a long sigh. “When we’re kids, we think our parents are just, you know, our parents. And parents know best. They’re always right, and they don’t have any flaws … except when they don’t let you do what you want. Nothing major, though. Nothing earth-shattering. But then you grow up.”
“And suddenly you realize they’re just people,” Nolan cuts in. “You see them as people, not as parents. And as people, they’re not perfect.”
“Nowhere near it,” Allison mutters, joining the conversation as she meets us out on the back porch, rags and spray bottles in hand. “How is that fair? Shouldn’t we always see our parents as perfect? Isn’t that our right — their right, too?”
“How will we ever learn from our mistakes if we can’t see them played out across the generations?” Hailey asks.
Eli scoffs.
“We still don’t learn, even when we do see it,” he says.
I’m not sure whether it’s Eli’s words or the cold snap outside that makes me shiver. As Thomas and Forrester push the TV into the Jeep, I hug my arms to my chest and wonder at how fast the temperature dropped overnight. Autumn is here today, and it makes me excited for the second round of turkey and trimmings I’ll have with my parents and a group of their friends tonight. But the excitement is bitter-sweet. Along with it comes annoyance that this family holiday will be spent with family friends instead, and I can’t escape the depressing weight of knowing Hudson won’t be in attendance, either.
The bite of the breeze feels like worry, too — worry I’ll slip back into my normal life at home and leave all of this behind as if it’s nothing more than a momentary glitch in time.
When the TV is loaded up, we go back to the basement and dismantle the rest of the stand. The stereo is left on the floor until everything else has been packed away, and then we shut Sloan off and bring the stereo up as well. Allison takes charge of the bathroom, and Hailey pulls out the clunky old vacuum I’m stunned still roars to life. Eli pushes the furniture around with Thomas’s help, and we pick up all the last odds and ends until the basement looks neat and un-lived-in.
“I think that’s it,” Forrester says from the bottom of the stairs as he surveys the finished room.
The set-up is strange with the sofa facing the fireplace and the TV gone — like we’re standing in someone else’s room, gathered in the basement of a stranger’s house.
My eyes settle on the painting as my cousins start up the steps, and I move to the mantelpiece to straighten the frame before we go. I drag the far bottom corner over an inch, the weight more unsteady than I expected. The painting rocks a little, like it might wobble and fall, before settling into place. When I let my fingers go, however, the weight tips the whole frame back to its previous position, the painting drooping on the left side.
“It might need to be adjusted at the top,” Forrester says, eyeing the painting like it’s a stubborn pet.
He steps over to help me lift the frame so we can adjust where th
e wire hangs on its thick nail. But as we move the painting out from the wall, something bumps, jostles, and tumbles onto the mantelpiece before dropping to the floor.
I gasp, worried we’ve ruined the beautiful landscape, until I realize that what fell was a small, zippered leather folder. Forrester frowns and bends to retrieve the item, and I walk my fingers across the length of the painting to feel the slit in the backing paper where the journal must have been stuffed.
“This is my dad’s,” Forrester says, confused. He turns the folder over, and then fingers the gold zipper along its edge. “He used these for his calendar and receipts and stuff. I don’t know why he’d have put one behind the picture.”
“Why don’t you open it and find out?” Hailey suggests, her intent innocent but her voice still bordering on sarcastic.
“Probably just more receipts,” Forrester says with a nod as he unzips the case and looks at the contents. “Receipts, construction contracts, or just a bunch of …”
I glance away from the painting as Forrester trails off. When my eyes reach his face, I see it’s drawn and white.
“Forrester?” I ask.
Hailey puts a hand on his arm.
“Hey, what is it?” she half-whispers, rubbing the sleeve of his black knit sweater.
Forrester shakes his head.
“It’s …” He pauses, drawing something out of the folder. “It’s Julie.”
“What?” Hailey crowds next to him, looking over his side at the contents within the case. Her eyes widen when they take in the sight before her. “Oh, shit,” she mumbles, her hand still grasping his arm.
“What about Julie?” Thomas asks from halfway up the stairs.
He leans over the banister, straining to see what’s in the folder. I step toward Forrester, my eyes trained on the black leather shaking in my cousin’s grip. I reach for it, wisp my fingers against it, before Forrester speaks again.
“She’s dead,” he says. I pause, my hand falling back to my side. Forrester looks up, and I’m the closest, so I’m the one he makes eye contact with. “And she’s family.”
Hailey
MY EARS RING WITH the stupid saying my dad always uses when the world flips upside down. Hell’s bells and a shitload of spells.
Hell’s bells, indeed.
The death certificate is enough of a shock on its own. But the other document — the birthcertificate — piques my interest more.
Julie Annabelle Hacher. Hacher. Julie was one of us. She belonged to our family.
Forrester unfolds the birth certificate, but it’s not one of the small blue cards I’m used to seeing, the ones we keep stored in a fireproof safe at home — the kind my mother doesn’t have, or at least won’t let me see. This one is longer, a folded document on creamy paper stating not only Julie’s birth information but also her parentage.
Her link to us all is far closer than I’m comfortable with.
“That’s Grandpa,” I say in a husky voice, pointing to the man listed as Julie’s father. I never met him, but he’s still Grandpa — still mine.
“But that’s not Grandma,” Kayla adds, leaning over the folder and reading the certificate upside down.
“What?” Thomas sounds bewildered.
“Was it a first marriage? Did our grandfather have a first marriage?” Eli asks, his voice tight.
I look at the birth date. February 22, 1976. I don’t know the exact birthdates of all my relatives. But I know enough to figure out this date doesn’t give any sound answer to Eli’s question.
“She was born between brothers,” I say. I try to keep my voice even, but it wavers on the last note. “Somewhere in the middle, I think. During the marriage, for sure.”
“But she wasn’t Grandma’s daughter?” Kayla asks, sounding confused.
She glances up at me, but I avert my gaze and stare back at the sheet. She must make her way to staring at Allison instead because the girl heaves a sigh of annoyance.
“He had an affair,” she says matter-of-factly. “He had a child out of wedlock. Our grandmother must have gotten over it, so it shouldn’t surprise you.”
“Yeah, except it should,” Nolan replies. “This woman was our aunt. We never knew our dads had a sister.”
“Half-sister,” Thomas corrects.
Nolan shrugs his comment away.
“Sister enough to take her photo and have her at Christmas,” he argues.
“Until she screamed,” Kayla says. “Then she wasn’t around anymore.”
“I think I might have an answer for that,” Forrester says. “Or, at least part of an answer. Look at this.”
He hands me another sheet. This one is a hospital record. Well, not a hospital, but something close to it. A clinical home, with medical records and admittance papers.
“She lived in a group home,” I tell the others. “Looks like she was there for a number of years, anyway. I wonder what happened to her mother.”
“Maybe she died, too,” Kayla suggests.
“Or maybe she didn’t want to care for someone with a disability,” Allison counters.
“Disability?”
I raise my head, my idiotic brain making connections it should’ve made the moment I saw the first picture of Julie yesterday. Fluorescent lights and a high-pitched giggle. I did my high school volunteering in a long-term care facility, gaining experience I thought would be useful for the nursing career that never panned out. One woman who lived there had Rett syndrome. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. Julie’s body, the way her head was small, the way she had to be fed by someone else. The screaming.
Hell’s fucking bells. The screaming.
“There’s a neurological disorder called Rett syndrome,” I say to the others. “It mostly affects girls, I think. And —” I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to pull facts out of my stupid, stupid brain. “And those with the condition are prone to outbursts of laughing, or sometimes screaming.” I open my eyes and look at my cousins. “Julie must have had it. Why didn’t I notice before? She probably lived in the home, and Grandpa took her out for family visits. Our parents must have decided her outbursts were too frightening for us kids, though. Might explain why we never saw her after that day. She didn’t disappear … she just disappeared from us.”
“Until she died,” Eli reminds me.
I sigh, looking back at Forrester’s folder.
“Until she died,” I agree.
I pull out the death certificate and look at the cause of death. Asphyxiation. She died of choking, which fits with Rett syndrome. As the disorder progresses, sufferers lose the ability to chew and swallow. Choking’s not uncommon.
“I feel awful,” Kayla says. “I was terrified of her, but she …”
“You were young,” Thomas cuts in. “We all were. We didn’t understand.”
“And why didn’t we?” I ask, my voice harsh, although it’s not anyone here I’m angry with. “Why didn’t we see her again after that day? Why didn’t we get the chance to learn and understand?”
“Because our parents didn’t want us to be scared?” Nolan suggests.
“Or maybe because she was an illegitimate child,” Eli mutters.
“Shut up, Eli,” Allison snaps. “It didn’t seem to bother them, so it shouldn’t bother you.”
“I’m sure it bothered our grandmother!” Eli steps close to his twin, staring her down like he might start brawling with her at any second. “I’m sure she wasn’t too happy her husband cheated and kept the evidence around for everyone to see.”
“Maybe he had a good reason for cheating,” Allison argues. She sounds uncomfortable, like she doesn’t quite believe her own words.
“Yeah, like Dad does?” Eli asks, his speech rigid. “What brilliant reasons might those be? Was Julie’s mother nice and young, only seven years older than our dad was? Or did our grandf
ather just think she was a good piece of ass?”
I don’t know what Grandpa thought, but right now I think my mouth might be gaping like one of the fish out in the bay. So, this is what they’ve been fighting about all weekend. Uncle Joey’s having an affair. With a twenty-something. And his teenage children know about it.
“Hell’s bells” is no longer sufficient for how messed up this weekend has become.
“Maybe we stopped seeing Julie because she died,” Forrester says, his voice a soft murmur under the twins’ fight.
Allison starts to respond to Eli’s rant, but I hold up a hand to quiet her as I turn back to Forrester.
“What did you say?” I ask.
Forrester only shrugs, staring at the papers before him.
“When did she die?” Kayla asks, looking at me with anticipation.
Like it would make any difference. Even if Julie died the very night of the screaming, it wouldn’t make me feel any better about the terror I’ve subconsciously harbored all these years.
Forrester hands me the death certificate. I guess I’m the town crier for these horrible declarations. If it was anyone else handing off the responsibility, I’d tell them to shove it and walk away.
But it’s Forrester, so I take the paper and pinpoint the date of Julie’s death.
“September 5, 2006,” I say aloud. “So no, it was a few years after the screaming.” I look up at my cousins to see all of my cousins staring back at me. No one says anything. For a minute I assume they’re taking the news in, but when they continue to watch me, I realize their gazes are expectant. “What?” I ask, looking back down at the sheet. “There’s nothing else, that’s it. September 5, 2—”
“2006,” Forrester finishes. I gaze at him, and he gazes at the paper. “Ten years ago.”
“So, what does that have to do with anything?” I ask.
Halfway through the question I’ve already found my answer. Ten years ago. The last time any of us saw one another.
