Still no letter from Sam. First I told myself that he was busy finding a place to stay, getting himself sorted. Then I worried that he’d interpreted my no-show at the airport as a message that we were over. But how could he? After the way we felt, the things we said? I don’t mention his name to Mom – I don’t want to hear her say I told you so. He doesn’t know about Dad, about his trial. His not-knowing creates another distance between us, bigger than an ocean.
What if he’s dead? What if he hasn’t written because he’s ill or been killed, and my whole life I’ll never know the truth? He may as well have stepped off a cliff. He’s gone as completely as that. And I miss him. I miss the curved line of his dark eyebrows, his bones, his skin, the fleshy knot of his beating heart. I miss his lopsided smile. His voice. His singing. I miss him holding me. The way he made me feel.
‘I’ll write to you when I’m on the plane,’ he said. ‘I’ll post it as soon as I land.’
Maybe he hated the story I gave him; he’s disappointed I’m not the writer he hoped I’d be.
Maybe it’s to do with the thing he was going to tell me; maybe he’d changed his mind about seeing me again. No. I don’t believe it. Dammit. I can’t and I won’t.
Mom does nothing all day. She gets dressed, but then sits and stares into space, drinking iced sweet tea from a Mason jar. I’m not much of a cook, but I can manage fried chicken. Mom nibbles at what’s on her plate. She’s thin. A Thanksgiving turkey’s wishbone has more fat on it. She’s changed since the day of Dad’s arrest. She doesn’t even water her geraniums; she just talks and talks about her life as a girl in South Carolina. She’s started to use the names of her parents and brother with casual familiarity, as if her mom and dad are still alive and she’s just stepped out of her childhood home and will be returning any moment.
‘Did I tell you about the time I went picking wild plums?’ she asks, twiddling the end of her hair ribbon between her fingers. ‘Oh, I did love the taste of those plums. But they hung in a thicket where everyone said rattlesnakes lived. Daddy banned me from going into that thicket, but I disobeyed him. Well, my Lord, I nearly stepped on a sleeping rattler! Can you imagine? There it was, coiled in a circle under my raised shoe. Saw it just in time, those viper diamonds on its back. Had to stop myself screaming. Bit my lip so hard it bled. Put me off plum jelly for years.’
Mom won’t discuss Dad or what’s happened to him. She won’t visit him either. He got five years. On top of his jail sentence, he has a heavy fine, and must pay back every cent he took. It will take him a lifetime and more. We’ve been living off my wages and the stash of bills hidden at the back of my drawer that I’d been saving for a plane ticket to London. Our lease is up on the house soon; we can’t afford to renew. I chew my food, half listening to Mom’s chatter, her stories about warm peach cobblers and fireflies; tales of her white cat, Magnolia; descriptions of the moss-strewn cypress trees in the swamps. She doesn’t understand – or won’t understand – the situation we’re in. I’ve decided to write to her brother, Daniel, tell him what’s happened. She kept the letter he wrote her about their parents’ deaths.
Thinking about writing to Daniel brings the pain of Sam’s missing letter back. It’s a physical hurt behind my ribs. I press a hand to my chest, as if I can push back the sorrow. I turn a sob into a cough, scrub my face on the edge of my shirt, dabbing at my eyes before I collect the dirty plates from the table and put them in the sink. I force myself to think about what I’ll say to her brother. I won’t tell Mom I’m writing him, not unless I get a reply.
Wiping my eyes, collecting myself with a little shake, I put a cup of coffee in front of her. She looks at me vaguely and smiles. ‘Bless your heart, sweetie.’ Sometimes I’m not even sure she knows who I am. She sits at the kitchen table for hours, completely still, not even playing a silent piano. There was ash in the sink. When I asked her what she’d burnt, she looked vague. ‘Trash,’ she said. ‘Just some old trash.’ Her fingers twitch constantly, as if she’s striking a match. I worry she’ll burn the house down while I’m at work. She wanders around before dawn like an antsy ghost. I’ve found her out on the porch a couple of times, first thing, sitting on Dad’s broken-down chair, humming and watching the road.