Bringing Maggie Home

by Kim Vogel Sawyer

  Meghan punched the connect icon on her phone. “Give me just a minute, Sean.” She slid the phone in her pocket, tucked the crutches under her arms, and moved as quickly as the crutches allowed to the hallway. But dog whimpers from the bedroom made her change course. She entered the hall bathroom and closed the door with her elbow. Sinking onto the toilet lid, she let the crutches fall to the floor. Then she lifted the phone again.

  “Sorry about that. I needed to find a private spot to talk.”

  “Uh-oh. That bad, huh?”

  “Not the way you think.” She quickly filled him in on bringing out the box of photographs and Grandma’s reaction to it, and then she repeated her grandmother’s confession about the little sister neither Meghan nor Mom knew existed. “I’ve never seen anybody so overcome by emotion she lost consciousness. What a horrible burden Grandma’s been carrying all these years. She really believes it’s her fault Maggie died.”

  “How could it be her fault?”

  “Apparently she and Maggie went to the woods together and Maggie got lost. Grandma said when she lost Maggie, her family lost everything.” Awareness bloomed, and Meghan gave a slight gasp. “Mom told me years ago that her grandfather was an alcoholic who died of liver disease. That’s why Mom has never touched booze and forbade me from drinking, too, just in case there’s an alcoholic gene. I wonder if he started drinking after Maggie disappeared.”

  “That’s incredible.” She pictured him shaking his head in wonder. “It had to have felt good for her to finally spill the secret.”

  “It might be a while before she feels good. Right now I think she’s pretty raw even if she’s also relieved. She wants to tell me about Maggie so someone remembers her. I’m gonna let her talk as long as she wants to, and I’ll make sure to write it all down so it isn’t forgotten.”

  “You’re a good granddaughter.”

  She smiled. “You’re a good listener. Thanks for checking in on me.”

  “You’re welcome.” An odd squeak came through the line—probably him settling into the leather recliner that faced his big-screen television. “How’s it going between your mom and grandma? Everything peaceful? I prayed for them this morning.”

  Affection flowed through her. How’d she get so lucky to land Sean as a partner? She couldn’t imagine any of the other detectives caring about her personal life the way he did. “I appreciate that. And guess what? No battles today yet and it’s almost noon! They went grocery shopping first thing, and Mom fussed about the heat, but she hasn’t launched any complaints about Grandma. Of course, Grandma passing out in the middle of the living room kind of sent all conversation out the window.”

  Meghan paused, recalling Mom’s face when Grandma fainted. “You know, it’s funny. Mom usually has this look when she’s around Grandma—this teenage sullen, rebellious look. But the minute Grandma’s eyes rolled back and she collapsed, concern chased the ‘look’ away, and so far, even though Grandma confessed something that had to have shocked Mom, she hasn’t painted it back on. That’s a real…” Should she use the word? It sounded so religious—something she’d never claimed to be. Yet it fit. “Blessing.”

  “Well, Meghan, God works in mysterious ways. Maybe your grandma passing out was His means of softening your mom toward her.”

  Did God really care enough to be involved in the little details of their lives? A funny ache developed in the center of her chest. She’d have to give his suggestion some thought. “Maybe…”

  “Do you need to get back to your grandmother? I can tell you’re still worried.”

  She laughed. He was a good investigator if he could read her emotions from the distance of fourteen hundred miles. “If you don’t mind, I would like to get back in there. I can hear Mom and her talking, and I don’t want to miss anything important.”

  “All right, then, go. I’ll keep praying for that peace you requested, and now that I know your grandma’s been holding on to a secret, I’ll pray especially hard for her to forgive herself.”

  She couldn’t have asked for anything better. “Thanks, Sean. Bye now.” She dropped the phone back in her pocket, retrieved her crutches, and hurried to the living room. “Sean was checking in on me.”

  Grandma nodded. She didn’t quite smile, but she’d lost the tense expression she’d worn before Meghan had left the room. Whatever Grandma and Mom discussed during her phone call with Sean, it couldn’t have been unpleasant. “He sounds like a very good man.”

  “He’s a good friend.”

  Mom sent her a speculative look that she chose to ignore. She settled on the ottoman again. “Grandma, can I ask you a question?”

  “Of course, honey.”

  Meghan blinked back tears at her grandmother’s familiar, kind, inviting tone. “You said your mother didn’t allow you to talk about Maggie.”

  “That’s right. It hurt Mama too much to talk about her. So Daddy said we had to let her go.” Pain flashed in Grandma’s dark eyes, proving it still hurt her, but her voice reflected only the gentleness Meghan remembered from childhood.

  She put her hand on Grandma’s knee. “Then why did your mother let you keep pictures of her?”

  Eleven

  Mid-September 1943

  Cumpton, Arkansas

  Hazel Mae

  Noises from Maggie’s bedroom early on a Saturday morning brought Hazel out of bed like a lizard darting for shade. Nobody’d gone in Maggie’s room in all the weeks since she disappeared. Had God answered her prayers and brought Maggie home? Hope beat like a bass drum in her chest.

  She ran across the hallway on bare feet, her nightgown flapping, and burst through the doorway. But the hope plummeted the moment she found only Mama in the room. Then fear struck when she realized what Mama held. “What are you doing…with that?” Hazel was careful not to ask “with Maggie’s doll.” Mama either flew into a rage or broke down in tears whenever someone mentioned her youngest daughter’s name.

  “Packing it away.” Mama placed the doll with its sausage curls and lacy dress in the bottom of a wooden crate. Then she reached into the bureau and pulled out the stack of Maggie’s dresses. She dropped them over the doll.

  Hazel’s mouth fell open. How could Mama pack up Maggie’s things? When Maggie came home, she’d expect to find her dresses and her new birthday doll waiting for her. She’d be so sad if they were missing. Mama wasn’t thinking right.

  Hazel darted forward. “Don’t.”

  Mama gave her a sharp look. “What did you say to me, young lady?”

  Hazel chewed her lower lip and wrung her hands. “I…I said ‘don’t.’ ” She swallowed. “Please?”

  The stern lines on Mama’s brow remained. “Go back to your own room, Hazel Mae, and leave me be.”

  “But, Mama—”

  “Go!”

  Hazel fled to Mama and Daddy’s room. Daddy was slipping his suspenders over his shoulders. He frowned when Hazel barreled into the room.

  “What’re you doin’ up, girl? Rooster ain’t even crowed yet.”

  “Daddy, Mama’s in Maggie’s room. She’s packing up Maggie’s clothes and toys. You gotta—”

  “Move, girl.”

  She shuffled out of his way.

  Daddy strode past her to the bureau. He rubbed oil between his palms and ran his fingers through his dark, thick hair, forming shiny waves that flowed from his high forehead to his neckline.

  Hazel pushed so close the spicy smell of his hair oil made her nose twitch. “Daddy, didn’t you hear me? Mama’s—”

  “Never you mind. It’s time.”

  “Time…for what?”

  “To close up that room. Lookin’ in there every day an’ seein’ her things is too hard on your mama’s heart.” He spoke with a flat tone. Hard. Chilling. “Gotta close it up. Gotta let her go.”

  Hazel drew back as if he’d slapped her. “But when she comes back—”

  Daddy grabbed her shoulders and leaned down so his face was only inches from hers. “She ain’t comin
’ back, Hazel Mae. Now instead of arguin’ an’ creatin’ trouble, since you’re up, go help your mama clean out that room. Take everything she wants gone down to the burn pile. I’ll see to it this evenin’ when I come in from the field.”

  Tears blurred her vision. “B-but, Daddy…”

  He released her with a little shove. “Go on, now. Be a help instead of a hindrance.” He turned his back on her.

  Hazel scuffed out of the room, sniffling, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands. She wanted to obey Daddy, but how could she do what he asked? She entered Maggie’s room and stopped just over the threshold. The crate waited on the floor next to the bureau, overflowing with Maggie’s dresses, slips, aprons, hair bows.

  Mama sat on the edge of the bed with an open album in her lap, lifting out pictures and dropping them into a shoe box.

  “Mama?”

  Mama didn’t look up, but her hands went still.

  “Daddy says I’m—” Her chin quivered so bad it was hard to talk. She gulped. “I’m supposed to help you.”

  “Come over here, then.”

  She might have been wearing concrete blocks for shoes, it took so much effort to walk across the room.

  Mama stood and dropped the album on the bed. “Take out any pictures of—” She gritted her teeth for a moment and closed her eyes. “Any pictures from June 1940 up ’til July 1943.”

  All of Maggie’s short life. Hazel’s chest ached.

  “Put ’em in that box. Then put the album back on the shelf in the parlor.”

  Hazel looked into her mother’s face, begging with her eyes instead of with words.

  Mama wouldn’t even glance at her. “Gonna go get your daddy’s breakfast started.” She left the room.

  Hazel perched on the edge of the bed and looked at the page Mama’d already stripped. The little corners that held photographs in place were still there, but the page looked so sad and lonely with the images gone. She pulled the shoe box closer and peered inside. The ache in her chest made it hard for her to breathe. She started huffing, like she’d run a race, while she picked through the pictures Mama’d taken out of the album. Then she gasped.

  She pulled a single picture from the box. Why wouldn’t Mama keep this one? It wasn’t of Maggie. Gripping it between her fingers, Hazel clattered down the stairs and into the kitchen.

  Mama stood at the stove moving sizzling strips of bacon around in the skillet with a fork. “You done already?”

  “No, ma’am, but you made a mistake.” Hazel held up the picture so Mama could see it. “This is me, Mama. Me with the neighbor’s dog an’ our old barn cat, Boots.”

  Mama’s eyes looked cold and distant. “Throw it out.”

  Hazel gazed at the picture. The dog, Farley, died a year or so ago. He used to come visit her a couple of times a week. Such a gentle dog. He never once chased the chickens or tried to snap at her. She still missed him. “But why?”

  Mama rushed at her, her fists raised like a prizefighter. Hazel instinctively took a step backward and brought up her arms to defend herself even though Mama had never hit her in the face. Only on the bottom, and then only when she’d been very bad.

  “I said throw it out!”

  Hazel gaped at her, almost as frightened as she’d been when she couldn’t find Maggie. Did Mama intend to get rid of her pictures, too, and pretend that she’d never had a daughter named Hazel Mae? “But…But…”

  “You think I want to look at that picture with you holding on to animals like they’re something special? Do you think I want to keep remembering how it was so important for you to save a burrow of bunnies—wild rabbits, for heaven’s sake!—you had to leave your sister untended?” She grabbed the picture and waved it in the air. “I want it gone, Hazel Mae, do you hear me?”

  Hazel nodded, too afraid to speak.

  Mama shoved the picture back into her hands and stomped to the stove. “Go finish the job. And when you’re done, none of us—not me, not your daddy, not you—will ever talk about her again.” Mama covered her face with her hand and groaned. “I should’ve kept her home with me. I shouldn’t have trusted—” She dropped her hand and noticed Hazel Mae standing there. Her face contorted. “Go!”

  Hazel ran upstairs and slammed herself into Maggie’s room. She leaned against the door panting, listening to be sure Mama hadn’t followed. Mama had looked wild. Scary. If Mama came after her with that look on her face, Hazel would jump out Maggie’s window and run into the woods. She’d be safer with the bobcats and bears than she felt with Mama right now.

  Nobody came after her, so she crept to the bed and the album. Sniffling and blinking back tears, she meticulously removed every photograph of Maggie, every photograph of Hazel with Maggie, every photograph of Mama with Maggie, of Daddy with Maggie, of the four of them together as a family. And she came to the last photograph, taken on Maggie’s third birthday.

  Her fingers trembled as she slipped the picture of Maggie holding her birthday doll—the very doll in the bottom of the crate Daddy wanted her to carry to the trash pile. Her nose burned with the effort of not crying. She couldn’t do it. But if she didn’t, Daddy would know. He’d see that the box wasn’t there, and he’d be mad at her. As mad as Mama was. She couldn’t have both of them so angry and scary.

  But Daddy hadn’t said anything about the photographs. Mama wanted her to take them out of the album, but she never said to burn them. So Hazel wouldn’t be disobeying if she hid them instead.

  She hurried into her room and flung the closet door open. On the shelf, her treasure box sat underneath a stack of her favorite picture books—the ones she kept up high so Maggie couldn’t tear the pages. She pulled down the box and the books and went back to the hallway. She peeked out to make sure neither Mama nor Daddy were around. Then she darted into Maggie’s room and closed the door again.

  Heart pounding, she dropped to her knees beside the bed and opened her treasure box. She took out the pretty leaves she’d collected, a few school papers with praises from the teacher written on them, a handkerchief her best friend embroidered for her, and a 1918 Mercury head dime she’d found when Daddy had dug a new well. When the box was empty, she transferred the photographs into the treasure box and slipped the lid into place.

  As furtive as a cat stalking a mouse, she carried the cardboard box to her bedroom and returned it to its spot in her closet. Back in Maggie’s room, she put her treasures into Mama’s shoe box. She sat for several minutes gazing at her special things inside the box. But the pictures were more special. She had to save them. She slapped the lid on the shoe box and placed it, along with the picture books she’d never let her little sister use, on top of the crate. She took it all downstairs.

  Mama glanced over when Hazel stopped in the doorway between the kitchen and dining room. Her gaze fell on the crate and lingered. “You got them all?”

  Hazel nodded, inwardly praying Mama wouldn’t ask to look inside the shoe box.

  “Take it out, then.”

  Hazel scurried through the kitchen and out the back door as fast as her burden would allow. The sun still hid behind the trees. Mist hovered like a gathering of ghosts. The yard, cloaked in gray, looked as dismal as Hazel felt. She choked back a sob and moved onward. The dewy ground chilled her bare feet and she wished she’d put on shoes. But she wouldn’t go back. She followed the winding path to the scorched patch where Daddy burned their trash every week. Old newspapers, a few tin cans, and a pair of worn-out gardening gloves already waited inside the short wire frame that kept the trash from blowing away until Daddy could light the fire.

  She stood at the edge of the enclosure, her chest pounding, thinking about the things inside the crate and inside the box. She didn’t want to let them go. Didn’t want them turned to ashes. But Daddy would look for the crate and the box when he came out this evening. Sucking in big breaths of the morning air for fortification, she braced herself to throw the box and crate over the fence. But worry that the shoe box’s lid would pop of
f—and her deception would be uncovered—stopped her.

  Gripping the crate tight against her middle, she lifted one foot and pushed the honeycomb-shaped wire down. The sharp points pricked her sole, and she grimaced as she stepped inside the enclosure. The fence sprang back, catching the hem of her nightgown and scratching her calf. Little droplets of blood welled up and trickled down her leg. She ignored the warm tickle and set the crate and box in the middle of the burned patch as reverently as the preacher laid his Bible on the pulpit at church.

  She allowed herself another minute or two to gather her courage to leave the things behind. Then she pushed the fence down and stepped out of the circle. Thin lines of blood dribbled down her ankle and under her foot, leaving little dots of red on the hard ground. She lifted her gown and examined the scratches. They weren’t deep. They’d heal without leaving a scar. But her heart might always wear a scar at what she’d been forced to do.

  As she headed for the house, dragging her heels, she said the words she’d never say to her mother’s face. “You might’ve made me throw her things away, and you might not let me say her name ever again, but you can’t make me forget her. I won’t ever forget.”

  Present Day

  Kendrickson, Nevada

  “That evening Daddy set everything in the burn pile on fire. Maggie’s clothes, her doll, they all went up in smoke, and Mama and Daddy never knew I kept those photographs.” Hazel tucked a strand of hair that had escaped Meghan’s ponytail behind her granddaughter’s ear. “And not once in all the years since have I opened the box and looked at them.”

  “Never?” Margaret Diane frowned at Hazel, disbelief evident in her expression.

  “No.” Hazel met her daughter’s gaze. “At first I was afraid that if I looked at the pictures, I might accidentally talk about her. Looking at the pictures would let her stay fresh in my mind. I had to be silent about Maggie to honor my mother. Do you understand?”

  Her daughter’s doubtful look didn’t fade, and Hazel couldn’t blame her for the reaction. How ridiculous it sounded when spoken out loud. But it had made perfect sense to her as a ten-year-old, and the habit of leaving the lid on the box had prevailed through the rest of her childhood and even into adulthood.