91: Porter and Sarah had made their way back to the rental car in relative silence. Porter drove, and Sarah was on the phone booking flight reservations.
She cupped her hand over the microphone. “The next flight doesn’t leave until four in the morning. That gives us a little over five hours. Should I book it?”
“What?”
She repeated the question.
“Yeah, sorry. My mind is racing right now.”
He stared out the windshield at the road, at the white stripes flying past and disappearing behind them. There were very few cars out at this time of the night. For this he was grateful. It felt like he and Sarah had the road to themselves, the lights of Greenville approaching in the distance. “Maybe we should find a hotel room near the airport, someplace we can get cleaned up and change.”
Sarah finalized the reservation and disconnected the call. “May I remind you, you still haven’t bought me dinner? As first dates go, this one has been unique, I’ll give you that, but I’m not sure I’m ready to rush into a one-hour stop-and-bop motel with you, Mr. Porter.”
The bound package they’d found in the lunchbox at the lake sat in the center console, the word Mother barely visible in the dim light of the envelope, Bishop’s voice, his words, shouting out from the composition book.
Dinner.
They hadn’t eaten since New Orleans.
His stomach gurgled.
Thirty minutes later Porter sat on one of the double beds inside a small room at the Greenville Airport Motel 8. Taco Bell wrappers littered the table near the door. Sarah was in the shower.
The package felt heavy, heavier than it probably should, not necessarily with the weight of paper but with something else. He couldn’t put his finger on it. Someone’s life trapped inside.
Or the rantings of a madman.
He felt that way about the diary when he first read it, but two hours ago he had been standing in the very place where the events inside it had played out.
The Carters.
His mother.
His father.
The two men Porter later learned were Kirby and Briggs.
All of them.
All of it, true.
The envelope and composition book were bound together with a piece of black string. He couldn’t help but wonder if it came from the same roll he’d used when he tied all those boxes.
Porter removed the string, opened the envelope addressed to Mother, and unfolded the pages. The paper crinkled under his touch.
How long had they been there?
How long had this letter waited for a mother who never appeared?
Porter recognized the handwriting immediately, a younger version of the writing in the diary.
Momma. I know you have always wanted me to call you Mother, but I really just want to call you Momma. Is that so wrong?
Momma
Momma
Momma
Momma.
Sorry, Mother.
I am so sorry. I am sorry for whatever I did that would make you want to leave me behind. I am so sorry for all that I did that would make you want to run away without me.
Did you leave because you didn’t have a choice?
Did you leave because those men came to the house and you had to get away?
That’s it, isn’t it?
You wouldn’t leave me otherwise. Not like this.
I was too slow getting back from the lake. If I had gotten back faster, you would have told me to hop in the car with a skippity jump, loaded up my bags, and all of us would have gotten away together. We would have started a new life together and left this one in the rearview mirror, blurred by the dust behind that green Plymouth.
I didn’t want to write this letter, but the doctor told me I had to. He also told me he wouldn’t read it, but I know that he will. Father taught me to recognize a lie, and Dr. Joseph Oglesby is not a very good liar. He thinks he is, but he is not, no ma’am, not in the slightest. His dead little eyes shrink whenever he tells a fib, thirty-two of them in our last session alone.
Hello, Dr.
You should cut your hair. The comb-over is not fooling anyone. You look silly.
I’m sorry.
I shouldn’t say such things.
Father taught me better than that.
He once told me it is better to shower someone with compliments, let them swim in them until they’re drowning. They’ll reach for you and hold on tight, your friend forever.
Not Mother, though, not my mother, not you. If you realized I was giving away too many compliments, you’d probably tell me to take them back.
The two of you are different.
Were different.
Father.
Oh, my father.
I can’t write about that now. I know Dr. Oglesby wants me to but I can’t, it hurts too much. It hurts almost as much as when I dug up the spot at the lake under my cat, when I found my knife.
I knew what that knife meant.
You left me, Mother.
As much as I’d like to believe you didn’t leave me intentionally, as much as I’d like to believe you had no choice but to run off without me, I know that is not true.
I knew the moment I saw that knife.
Why do you hate me, Mother?
Why do did you hate Father so?
After the house, after the fire—Do you know about the fire?—After the fire I was brought to the Camden Treatment Center just outside of Charleston.
The people here are very nice, even Dr. Oglesby with all his lies. They gave me my own room. There is a window, but it doesn’t open. No summer breezes for me, only the steady hum of the air conditioner.
Dr. Oglesby asked me to keep a diary.
He gave me a black and white composition book and told me it would make the perfect diary.
I told him only girls wrote in diaries, and he told me a journal then, I should keep a journal, that’s what boys do.
I told him I would think about it.
I’m a smart boy. I know he only wants me to write things down so he can read them, so he can better understand me.
Would that be so wrong?
To be understood?
Don’t worry, Mother. I won’t tell him your secrets.
Your secrets are safe with me.
Most of them.
Your loving son,
AB
P.S. Tell Mrs. Carter I said hello, the man with the long blond hair too. I’m sure one day I will see all of you again. I’ll keep my knife close until that day, I’ll keep it sharp. Thank you for returning it to me.
“Anything good?”
Porter looked up.
Sarah stood at the bathroom door wearing a white towel, another wrapped around her long hair in that way only women seemed to know how to do, steam escaping from behind her.
Porter caught himself staring at her tanned legs and forced himself to find her face.
“Maybe I should get dressed.”
“No. Yes. I mean, go ahead. I’m going to get in the shower.” Porter swallowed, his face burned.
This isn’t high school. Pull it together.
Looking away, Porter dropped the letter on top of the composition book and crossed the room, entered the bathroom, and closed the door at his back.
She smelled like lilacs.