The gravel drive is up ahead, where the pavement ends and the treacherous, winding driveway begins. It curves up to an almost full “P” before it stops in front of the house.
Thank God the neighbors can’t make out the house from the highway – two large maple trees stand in front, shielding Priscilla from the prying eyes of outsiders and those that think she needs to move into town, with no reason to stay out here all alone.
“When she comes home, she needs to know where to find us,” Priscilla always said. The paint’s crumbling, once snow-white now faded and gray, the harsh winters and spring showers tattering the outside. Even the front door is lackluster yellow, once sunny and bright.
I park, taking a final drag on my cigarette. Grabbing my cell and purse, careful to lock my car doors even in the middle of nowhere, I peer at my surroundings, a nervous habit since that day she went missing. I stub out the cigarette, leaving the butt on the ground.
When I step up the rickety stairs to the front porch, a fake bouquet of flowers greets me in a stand. I brush my feet off on a faded welcome mat, the welcome worn out ten years before.
I inhale, holding my finger above the doorbell.
Pausing, I gather my thoughts.
Here goes nothing. I press the bell, waiting as it chimes.
She must’ve been waiting for me on the other side of the door, opening it immediately as if she’d been standing behind it, holding the knob. Priscilla is tiny, her and Bristol both 5’4. She doesn’t look much different, still underweight, just a little saggy for her age. Her face has taken the most beating – wrinkles cover her forehead and her eyes are creased, years of tears and constant worry, I think.
Her eyes are still bright, the brilliant green color Bristol had, and the same lip shape. Her strawberry blonde hair tinged with grey underneath a bandana,. her velour tracksuit and tennis shoes on as if she just got back from a walk.
“Oh…Blair,” she says, reaching a hand to her chest. “You scared me.”
“You look like you were expecting someone to come,” I say pointedly.
“I just didn’t think it would be this fast.”
“Are you going to let me in or should I stand on the porch?” I’m in no mood for her passive-aggressive tendencies.
“Come on in.” She steps away from the door, holding onto it for support in case she loses her balance. She looks gaunt, smaller than usual.
I feel like I’m in a stranger’s home, everything the same as when I left, yet everything different. The kitchen is small and clean, laminate flooring and a huge walk-in pantry to store all the jars that she cans for the winter, a project her and Bristol liked to do. New appliances are the only change, and the light over the kitchen table.
A puzzle is out, the Bridges of Madison Country, a fifteen-hundred piece puzzle, or so the box proclaims.
“Looks like you got a lot of work to do to complete that.” I motion to the scattered pieces.
She nods.
“Where’s the box?”
She grunts, ignoring my question. “You saw the picture?”
“Of course, why do you think I’m here?”
I pull gloves out of my purse, sure she’s already tainted any evidence. She gestures towards the dining room. “It’s in there.”
The living and dining rooms are combined, my daddy’s reclining chair still in the same spot. She got a newer couch after Oggie died, our old neighbor informed me of that. The television’s been upgraded since a decade ago, seated on a stand next to the same mahogany dining table. A mantel over the fireplace showcases photographs of Daddy and Bristol.
I’m nowhere to be found. I swallow a lump, striding to the table.
“Did you forget your manners?” Priscilla asks. “Shoes. Leave them at the front.” She wrinkles her nose. “You smell like grease and smoke.” I make sure to move closer to her to squeeze past, brushing her shoulder. She twists her face in a frown. “Those cigarettes are going to kill you.”
“Something has to,” I say evenly. Sliding my sandals off, I tiptoe back into the kitchen, watching her sink into a chair at the dining room table.
Noticing my hands, she snorts. “Gloves? Is this an episode of that CSI show?”
“No, Priscilla, it’s so any evidence or fingerprints aren’t disturbed.” I glance at her. “Except I’m sure you already did that.”
She makes a ho-hum noise and drums her fingers on the table.
The box is plain, no marks, red tissue paper inside, and the latest gift.
I take a deep breath before peeling away the tissue. Her B necklace and a tooth are nestled in the bottom, the gold chain starting to tarnish in places. It looks like a front tooth, one of her bicuspids, but I’m unsure.
Laid next to the box, what looks to be a tattered page out of a children’s book, edges jagged like it was carelessly ripped, has a note written on it. I know Bristol’s handwriting and this belongs to her. Trying to swallow, a massive rock might as well be lodged in my throat, the struggle to breathe coming in short bursts.
It’s written in blue magic marker, dated 2007, a plea for help from Bristol.
Except now a message is scrawled over her print.
My hands shake, the red letters that overlap her writing are slanted, heavy and coagulated like dried blood, the message short but omnipotent. 2008 DEAD.
“This must be the final package.” I say, resting my hands on the table.
“No, her body coming home would be,” she admonishes.
“That sonofabitch.” I mutter.
“I need to see her remains to believe she’s really gone.” She glares at me. “Not all of us can be so quick to write off our children.”
Sarcastically, I mumble, “You wrote off both your children, so I guess you win.”
“You left,” she spews.
“You kicked me out.”
“We did it for your own good.”
“You did it because you couldn’t bear to look at me.”
“It was hard.” She stares back at the box. “This is too hard. No mother should have to watch her daughter suffer and be helpless. She needs to come home to us. I still can’t believe she’s really gone.”
A pause lingers between us. “She can’t be dead.” She says stiffly, as if her words settle the matter once and for all.
“All of the other girls are dead.” I say. “Why would Bristol be special?”
“How can you come in here and act so damn ignorant? Your sister is special.”
“That’s not what I mean…” I inhale. “Why would he keep her alive and not the rest?”
“Because…” Priscilla doesn’t elaborate. “She’s your sister.”
“I’m going to call the police. Have them come take the box to the lab for testing.” I head to the wall phone. Priscilla’s one of the only people to still have a landline.
Same idea, same comment. “What if she calls home and can’t reach us?”
I call the state police, they’re familiar with our case and have been for years.
The packages come on the anniversary of her disappearance.
Every year.
First anniversary, her half-empty tube of lip gloss arrived, a piece of her strawberry blonde hair twisted around the wand inside. It doesn’t matter how small the object, they’re always in the same size cardboard box.
Her clutch the second year, the lining ripped inside.
Third came my pink-and-black plaid skirt, the one she was wearing the night she disappeared.
Bristol’s Nebraska ID, her age still seventeen, the picture faded and laminate torn was our fourth year surprise. It was wiped clean, no prints, not even hers.
Fifth, her knotted white tank top, ripped and now a yellowish-color.
A lock of hair the sixth year, it’s a huge chunk, a trace of red like blood, confirmed to be hers.
Stilettos, the ones she could hardly walk in, the type Priscilla forbade. That was the seventh year. Everything was stored as evidence, but always the same issue,
fingerprints wiped clean or no latent ones could be found.
Ninth, a ripped-out page from a library book, her written plea inside.
Detective Osborn’s been handling the case since Goodman retired, at least on a local level. The Honolulu police are in charge of the open investigation into the disappearance of Bristol, but the items my parents receive are collected by our local jurisdiction and sent to the crime lab for processing.
“Osborn.” A man answers, his voice has a Texan lilt since he came from Dallas.
“Hey Osborn, Blair Bellamy here.”
“Blair, hi, what a surprise. Haven’t heard from your kind in a long time.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Though it’s never good.”
“True, this isn’t either. Priscilla got a package that has a single tooth and Bristol’s necklace.”
“Necklace?”
“Yeah, we had matching ones that my daddy gave us the Christmas before she disappeared.”
“Oh, geez, I’ll be over this afternoon to grab it.”
“Thanks.”
“Tell Priscilla hi and I’ll see you later.”
“Okay.” I hang up. Priscilla watches me like a hawk, ready to pounce.
“I need to get in her room,” I say after hanging up.
“Why?”
I glare.
She nods. “Fine.”
We head up the stairs, her walk more pronounced as she holds onto the railing for balance. I almost feel sorry for her, but I can’t.
At the top of the stairs, you hang a right and there are two bedrooms with a Jack and Jill bathroom between them – our rooms and bathroom.
As soon as I left, my room turned into a Find Bristol/sewing area, my bed scooted into a corner, the rest of my furniture moved into storage or sold.
The other bedroom up here’s a guest room now, it was slated to be Isaiah’s room, but after Bristol disappeared, that was off the table.
Carefully, Priscilla slides her necklace off, twisting the key in the door handle.
The lock clicks and I’m hit with a musty scent. It’s pungent, and I cough as the stale air fills my lungs.
I feel as if I’ve stepped back into time, 1998, the posters untouched, her bulletin board, the small desk she did her homework at. A Destiny’s Child, K-CI & JoJo, and Backstreet Boys poster cover one wall. The pictures pinned up on the corkboard are of her and her friends at various locales – school, church, volunteering. There’s an award for cheerleading, debate team, and a Certificate of Excellence at the nursing home she worked at a few hours a week.
Bristol Bellamy, loved and revered by everyone.
I step into the room. An eerie silence follows, her comforter still the same daisy one she had when we left on our trip, her bean bag chair still in the same spot. Hell, her chemistry textbook is still open to page three-hundred and seventeen, the homework assignment only half-finished, signaling she thought she’d come back from spring break and finish it.
I sigh.
Priscilla doesn’t know everything.
Underneath Bristol’s desk, we found a loose floorboard. We cut it in half with our daddy’s hand saw so we could have a secret hiding place. We slid a rug over the spot, the desk over the rug, and no one was the wiser.
She’s eyeing me suspiciously as I grab the desk and tug, grunting as I pull it away from the wall, sliding the daisy area rug away from its permanent location.
“What in the world are you doing?” She’s annoyed. “You can’t come in here and move stuff around.”
I ignore her, sinking to my knees to pull out the floorboard.
Her eyes glare at my back as I yank at the slat, exposing a gap in the floorboard with a small box hidden.
“What’s that?”
“Everything I’ve saved from the case.”
“You have information you didn’t give to the police?” Her eyes narrow, hands clenched at her sides.
“No, this is all saved from back then. In case we ever needed it.” I shrug.
“Why is it here?” She motions for me to give it to her.
I hold it out of reach. “Because I put it in a safe place here and you locked me out, then kicked me out.”
No response.
“So now what?” I ask, pulling the smooth box onto my lap. It has a lock on it, the key safe in my apartment.
“Now you have to find her.” She’s dead serious. “You have to go back to the island and find her.”
“She’s gone, Priscilla.”
“No, she’s not.”
“Ten years is a long time.”
“You’re telling me.” She sinks onto the yellow and white comforter. “I know what it feels like. I’ve been with her the whole time.”
“You want me to go back to the island and what? Ask people from a decade ago the same questions, except now all this time has passed and their memories are blurred? Why would they remember anything differently?”
“Because time has a way of sorting through things for you.”
“Maybe they will remember it wrong.”
“Maybe. But I think you know a lot more than you ever let on.”
“I was drugged, you know this. Dammit, why do you keep picking at these wounds, Priscilla?”
“Stop calling me Priscilla, I’m your fucking mother.” She’s calm as she says this. “These wounds have never healed, nor can they, because we have no answers, that’s why.”
“And what can I do the police can’t?” I brush a tear angrily from my cheek. “The FBI, the police, psychics, private investigators. They all tried and failed.”
“They weren’t there that night.”
“Neither was I.”
“Have you tried hypnosis?”
“Yes. Nothing.”
“You know something.”
“I do not.”
“Who were those boys?” Priscilla picks at a loose thread on the comforter. “Did you meet them at a bar?”
“No, they taught us surf lessons.” I’m impatient, we’ve been over these details and this story a million times. She always asks, wanting a different answer.
“How’d you get in the bar?”
“Someone else’s IDs.”
“You gave her someone else’s ID to use? Of all the asinine…”
I interrupt her. “I did no such thing.”
“Where’d she get it then?” She’s accusatory. “I know you didn’t bring them with from here. I searched your luggage before you left.”
“She bought them from Will Loomis.”
“Bristol would do no such thing.”
“Okay, Priscilla. I have no reason to lie.” I smirk. “You have to stop putting her on this pedestal like she’s not just a teenager.”
“You just want to run her name through the muck, don’t you?”
“Don’t you get it? You can’t keep making her into a saint, Priscilla. Bristol was a great kid. She still was a teenager.”
“Was?” Priscilla puts her hands on her hips. “Watch how you speak of her in this house.”
Disgusted, I murmur, “No wonder she wanted away from you.”
“She wanted no such thing. She was going to help with Isaiah. You had to ruin that, though. Your daddy’s only shot at having a boy.”
“I wish it were me that was taken.”
“Me too.” She huffs, her hands twisted in her lap. “What’s in the box?”
“Just notes I wrote from that first week, people I encountered.”
“Haven’t the police interviewed all these people?”
“Yes.”
“We need to go back to Honolulu.”
“What’re you talking about?”
We went together once as a family when they thought they found her body, but it was another girl. Her name was Sonia Sutherland, and she had been missing from Mobile, Alabama. Her and Bristol looked eerily similar – strawberry blonde hair, green eyes, smattering of freckles, and same body type and height.
This was a little over si
x months after she’d been gone.
I know it’s selfish, but I had prayed it was Bristol. That she wasn’t suffering, that she’d found peace. Also that I would have closure, some peace, and that I could stop living in the past. That maybe my parents would forgive me.
“We have to go back, search the island.”
“Why?”
“Why not?” Priscilla shoots back.
“No one’s seen a trace of her in ten years,” I answer.
Priscilla looks at me, really looks at me. The first time in forever, she sees me instead of looking through me. “I’m dying.”
“What do you mean, dying?” I ask.
“I have cancer.”
“Yeah,” I shrug, “a lot of people have cancer and survive.”
She swallows. “I have colon cancer, stage four. Doctors gave me less than a year to live. I’d like to know what happened to my baby girl.”
“What about your other girl?”
“She’s sitting in front of me.” She strokes her chin thoughtfully. “I’ve always known where you were. You did nothing with your life, wasted it away. You weren’t hard to track or find.”
“Then why bother me now?”
“Because you can do something with your life, Blair. You can find your sister and prove you have some worth before I die.”
“You act like I don’t want her found.” I shake my head in disgust. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I’ll sweeten the deal, Blair,” Priscilla says. “I’ll make you an offer you won’t be able to resist.”
“What’re you talking about? I don’t want anything from you.”
“You have nothing, you’ve shit for brains, working at a bar, living in a dump, jumping from man to man who you think will fix the broken parts of you. You’re broken, Blair, accept it. Permanently broken. Stop trying to find someone to put you back together.”
“Why’re you so mean?” I stand. “I’ve got to get going.” I nestle the box in my arms, cradling it like I would a small child.
“Why won’t you show me what’s in the box?” Priscilla grabs the rail, slowly pulling herself down the stairs.
Into the Night Page 26
