Elliott sat down at the dining room table with Logan’s laptop. He looked up at me and said, “We might as well start looking.”
I pulled my computer out too, and we sat across from each other at the table. We kept looking over our computer screens at the other one.
I said, “I really appreciate how much you’re helping me with this little mystery.”
Elliott looked up from the screen. “I’m just using you for the story.” He ran his hand through his hair. Thinking. “Don’t let me overstay my welcome.”
I said, “You can stay as long as you want.”
He smiled that lopsided smile. “Good to know.”
I looked back at my computer and pretended like I was able to concentrate on it. Luckily it didn’t take much of my mental capacity to begin searching for George Kipp Jones III. I was operating on about a fourth-degree black belt in Googling at this point so I was able to find his birth certificate in no time. His birth weight was low, only five pounds ten ounces. That was small for a boy. Very small. But then I noticed another box, checked in the affirmative, which read “Plural Births Only.” Apparently George had been a twin. In the box next to “Birth Order” was the note “1 of 2.”
So George had been a twin and had been born first. George’s mother was Ester Rebecca Jones and his father was George Kipp Jones Jr. His mother’s profession was listed as a nurse and his father was listed as an army officer. As I zoomed in to the grainy scan of the document I thought it was interesting, especially the way it was obviously written with a fountain pen, which had splattered ink on the edges, but I still didn’t see what it had to do with my mother.
The next document I was able to find was his death certificate. Birth and death and not much in between. I read quickly through the grim facts. He died February 27, 1972. Age: twenty-five years, seven months, fifteen days. Cause of death: primary streptococcal pneumonia.
I looked up and asked Elliott, “Pneumonia? Who dies of pneumonia?”
He took his glasses off. “Tolstoy died of pneumonia.”
“Show off.” I clicked on the next link in the search query. “But Tolstoy was old, right? Old people, especially old people in Russia, can die of pneumonia, but a twenty-five-year-old?”
Elliott snapped his fingers. “Corey Haim, he died of pneumonia too.”
Now I was laughing. “Why do you know that?”
Another fuzzy scanned image came up on the screen. I squinted to read the words and “oh my God” fell out of my mouth. It was a marriage certificate.
Elliott came behind me to read over my shoulder. “What?”
“She was married to him. My mom and George Jones were married.” I felt a crack open somewhere. Something shifted. My mother had a whole life I didn’t know about.
“You didn’t know that she’d been married before?”
I couldn’t say anything. I just shook my head. Elliott was quickly digging through the papers scattered on the table. He found my phone and handed it to me. “I’m guessing you want to call your sister.”
I started speaking before Georgia could even say hello. “Georgia, I found George Jones and . . . you aren’t going to believe this.”
Georgia was speaking in her clipped, scolding tone. “I tried to call you earlier.”
“Did you hear me?”
“Have you talked to Leo today? He’s been trying to call you all—”
“Georgia! Listen, George Jones and Mom were married.” I was pacing the small living room.
“What?”
I read the date off the screen. “On September 4, 1966, George Jones and Jane Rutledge were married.”
“What!”
How many times would I have to say this before she could process it? I spoke very slowly. “They. Were. Married.”
“Well, that . . . I don’t . . . I can’t believe it. How could she not tell us that? Do you think Dad knew about it? But nineteen sixty-six. Wouldn’t she have still been in college? She would’ve only been twenty-one. Wait no, twenty! I can’t believe she never told us she’d been married before.” Georgia’s words were flying out of her all mashed together.
They had been married for about five years. Why had she never told us about him? Maybe his early death was too painful for her to talk about. I thought back to when I was twenty, how very young I was.
I mumbled it under my breath. “Twenty.” I looked at Elliott and asked, “Why do twenty-year-old kids get married?” I knew it was a different time and place, the sixties in the South, but it just wouldn’t be like the Jane Hughes I knew to get married before she graduated from college.
He knew what I was getting at. “Because they have to?”
My phone barked. “Olivia!” I had forgotten that Georgia was still there.
Elliott and I were already starting a new search, fingers typing frantically on the keyboard. He said over his shoulder, “We should check birth records for nineteen sixty-six and nineteen sixty-seven.”
Georgia sounded breathless and angry. “Who are you talking to, Livie?”
“It’s Elliott. I’m talking to Elliott.” Before she could start in on me for that I cut her off. “We’re going to check the birth records to see why Mom had to get married when she was twenty.”
We searched for hours through every state and county website we could access but we couldn’t find any birth certificates from 1966 or 1967 for my mother or George Jones. It was another dead end.
Elliott tried to make me feel better. “Logan mentioned there were stories about the Joneses from Huntley in the newspaper archives. We could search through there to see if we find anything.”
I stood up stretching my back then went to the couch and flopped down closing my eyes. I was so tired. “I can’t look any more today. I still can’t believe she was married before. And I feel like everything I find out about my mother or her time here involves death and endings. People dying, the town drowning, the house burning down. It’s like everything she knew here died, so she just walked away and never looked back. It’s so depressing.”
Elliott sat next to me and kicked his feet up on the coffee table next to mine. “Well, the good news is it looks like they got married because they wanted to, not because they had to. She was probably in love with him.”
My eyes were closed, and I didn’t want to open them again. “Remember when you said I was being kind of weird about the lake?” I felt him nod his head. “Well, starting tomorrow I’m about to go to a whole new level of weird about George Jones.”
Elliott laughed and pulled me to my feet. “Come on. We’re going down to the water.” We ordered pizza for dinner and ate it down by the lake. We took some chairs from the porch and carried them down to the small sandy beach at the edge of the water. We stayed down there past the pale, hazy blue sky of late afternoon and through the orange and pink wisps of sunset and finally into the twilight hour as the black silhouettes of the trees began to outline themselves against the pale gray sky.
I watched the water as it changed with the diminishing light. Elliott had found a fishing rod on a nearby dock and I tried to fish. There’s a lot of waiting when you’re fishing. Which is really boring. The whole time I was sitting there I just kept thinking, How many secrets was this lake hiding? How many lives were altered by the rushing of floodwater and the passage of time? Why didn’t she ever tell us she had been married before?
Also: What am I going to do about Leo? What am I going to tell Elliott?
Maybe “boring” would be the wrong word to describe my experience fishing. Maybe agonizing would be better. Yes, fishing was agonizing.
Elliott went up to the house to search for something to drink and came back with two beers. He handed me one, and then sat next to me again. I hadn’t bought any groceries yet. “Where did you get these?”
“I suppose they were left by the previous tenant. There are also a lot of coffee filters for some reason. Cheers.”
We tapped the cans together. “Cheers.”
Ellio
tt took the fishing rod from me and stood at the edge of the water reeling the line back in. I suspected I was doing it all wrong, although how one could hold on to a pole incorrectly was beyond me.
My phone rang, upsetting the solitude. I groaned as I fished the phone out of my pocket. “I hope this isn’t the office again.” I had several missed calls on my phone and I knew that most of them were from work.
It was Georgia. She was having a hard time dealing with the fact that our mother had been married before too. She sounded unusually tired. “What exactly are you doing right now, Livie?” I think she knew the answer already. She was just waiting to see if I would lie to her or not, to gauge how completely I was messing up my life.
I looked at Elliott, who was casting his fishing line far out into the lake. He looked back at me with those green eyes and smiled.
I decided to fess up to her. “I just had dinner with Elliott.” He looked pleased that I was telling my sister about him. “I think I mentioned Elliott to you.”
Georgia didn’t say anything. I thought maybe I had dropped the call. But then I heard her say, “Dammit, Livie.” And she hung up the phone.
Elliott said, “So you mentioned me, huh?”
I kicked him lightly with my foot and teased, “Nothing good I assure you.”
My phone rang again. Georgia must have been unsatisfied with her level of admonishment. I picked up. “What now?”
“Livie?” It was Leo.
Shit.
Elliott was looking at me and I just froze. Leo said it again. “Livie?”
I had to say something. I could feel a lone bead of sweat trail down my back. “Hi. I’m here. What’s going on?”
“I need to talk to you. You were supposed to call me today remember? I’ve been trying to get in touch with you all day and you haven’t answered.”
“We were at the cemetery today.” That seemed like the safest thing to say.
“Okay. Great. But you said you would call me. I need to talk to you. The deposit for the gallery is due by Friday if we want it for the reception.”
Oh my God, this is not happening. I tried to sound like I wasn’t freaking out internally. “Can I call you later?”
“No, Olivia. No, you cannot call me later. We need to firm this up. Your phone’s been going straight to voice mail all day. It’s been very frustrating not being able to get in touch with you.”
I didn’t know what to say. I had to talk to Leo but I couldn’t do it right now. And I couldn’t do it on the phone. Elliott was slowly reeling the line back in.
I could hear Leo’s shoes clomping on the floor of the kitchen. He was waiting for me to say something. I panicked and hung up on him.
I had never hung up on him before.
The phone rang right back. I felt the blood drain from my face. I was gripping the phone to the point where my knuckles were turning white. I couldn’t do this now.
I cocked my arm back and threw my phone in the lake. It was ringing as it sailed in an arc through the air and didn’t stop until it plopped into the water.
I stood up and stared at the ripples. Elliott came to stand next to me and we both stared silently at the dark waters of the cell phone–eating lake.
Elliott put his arm around me. “Olivia, I am so proud of you. You just went a little bit crazy.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off the water. What good did that do? Now I didn’t have a phone. That was just . . . stupid! My brain was reeling.
Elliott was laughing with his arm around my shoulder. “Was that your office?” I nodded, lying. He said, “I honestly didn’t think you had it in you.”
This is why you don’t go off half-cocked and do spontaneous stupid things! This is why you plan things! This is why you do not put yourself in situations that make you lose your mind!
Elliott tightened his grip. He stopped laughing, probably sensing that I wasn’t finding any of this funny. “It’s okay. We’ll get you another phone. We’ll fix it.” We watched the ripples cast out from my drowned phone. His voice was quiet. “But I do think you need to seriously consider more than just a leave of absence from work.”
Elliott realized that I hadn’t spoken. I was just standing there dumb struck with my mouth hanging open staring at the lake. He moved in front of my face and bent down a little to be in line with my eyes. He said, “Hey, really. It’s okay. You just got to the point where you snapped. It’s not the end of the world. It’s just a phone.”
It wasn’t just a phone.
“Elliott, I think I’m kind of confused right now.” My voice sounded strange and shallow. I couldn’t quite get enough air.
He smiled and brushed the hair out of my face, trying to calm me down. “I can tell. Is it because of everything with your mom? Is it just work? Do you want to talk about it?”
I shook my head.
He laughed at what must have been a very strange and pained expression on my face. “Okay. But remember, I’ve been where you are with work. I know what it’s like to be all tied up with your job and your life and feel like there’s no way out. It makes you crazy. It makes you do insane stuff”—he pointed at the water—“like throw your phone in the lake.”
My heart was racing. He didn’t realize that I had just thrown much more in the lake than my cell phone. We were standing there facing each other at the edge of the water.
He tucked my hair behind my ear. “Why don’t you just leave your job and go off the grid. You can hide out down here with me.”
He was joking, being silly, but I was about to break into a full panic attack. I could feel tears sting my eyes. “I . . . what?”
Elliott laughed then. He grabbed one of my hands and looked down at me, smiling. “I’m serious. Clearly technology is a problem for you.” He was making jokes to ease the tension either because I had just freaked out and lost my mind a little bit or because he had said, out loud, that I should stay here with him. What did that even mean? Was he just kidding or was he telling me something else? At the moment he simply kept teasing me. “You may need to go full Amish. Live out your days in a cabin on the lake.”
His grip tightened around my hand and I could feel myself calming down, letting go of the panic I felt moments ago. He smiled and I couldn’t help but smile back. I asked, “And what will I do for sustenance in this Amish lake cabin?”
Elliott filled his cheeks with air and blew out slowly, thinking. “That’s a really good question. It could be tricky, especially since you are such a terrible fisherman.”
Logan was right. He did make me laugh. I took a step closer to him. “How hard can it be to hold a stick until a fish is fooled into biting it?”
He was shaking his head, disappointed in my portrayal of fishing. “You will definitely starve.”
“I can always order pizza.”
“No, you can’t. You don’t have a phone.” Elliott stopped talking and something in his eyes changed, became more serious. He reached up and took my face in his hands and everything felt different. I could feel myself being drawn in to him. He bent down to kiss me and everything else seemed to vanish.
Our moment down by the lake was suddenly and abruptly cut short when Logan came home, bursting through the screen porch door and screaming down toward the water, “Aunt Livie? Are you down there?”
She was proud of herself for getting home before her curfew; I was lamenting the fact that I didn’t let her stay out until eleven.
I walked Elliott out and watched as he walked down the sidewalk toward his house. I started to consider all that had just happened, all that it would mean, and then shut it off. I couldn’t let my mind go there.
I went inside to the little kitchen and got a glass of water. I walked over to the mantel where the urn containing the remains of my mother had been placed and clinked the glass on it. Why didn’t you ever tell us about him, Mom?
I took Logan’s phone and called Georgia back. I had forgotten to tell her that we didn’t find any evidence of a shotgun wedding. No evid
ence of a little bastardly bundle of joy in the mix. For the first time she sounded like she was in a near panic about not being down here with me. She started to say something about Elliott, but I stopped her. “Look, it’s complicated and I don’t want to talk about it right now.” She was saying something else but I just kept talking over her, not letting her get a word in. “Gigi, will you do me a favor? Call Leo and tell him that my phone . . . my phone fell in the lake and I will call him first thing in the morning after I buy a new one. Don’t embellish.”
“Fine. But I have to say something.” I just waited. Georgia’s voice didn’t sound angry anymore, just concerned. “You may be messing up your life in a way that you won’t be able to fix.”
I knew she was right. “Maybe.” I hung up the phone. What had Elliott said about going to Atlanta? He had burned it down again. Throwing my phone in the lake felt like me striking my own match.
SEVENTEEN
When I woke up the next morning Logan had already left for work. She was going to be catching a ride to the marina by boat with Laura, the girl I had met. Apparently Laura lived across the cove. Not a bad way to commute.
I walked into the kitchen and was assaulted with a barrage of fluttery white paper hanging from the ceiling. It looked like a very overzealous child had hung paper snowflakes all over the place. There were dozens and dozens of them.
I stepped under the falling snowflakes suspended in mid-flight and twirled my hands around. They moved on the breeze I created. Then I noticed that some of them had writing on them.
I pulled one down. I realized the white papers were actually coffee filters and the note on the one I pulled down read: “Four o’clock.” I pulled down all of the other filters with writing on them and laid them out on the counter.
I arranged them into some sort of logical message:
Good morning!
Why do you think there are so many coffee filters? It’s weird.
I won’t get to see you today. I have to be in Chattanooga for the night.
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