“This is where the Latham boys found Ellis,” I say, a bit mystified, as we approach the farmhouse I thought I’d never see again.
I tried to find it once. But it had been too many years and too far away to relocate it. I’d just turned fourteen, and Grandmama had pissed me off about something. I had a good mind to find the babies’ grave and call the police myself, tell them some kind of story that Grandmama was the one who killed them. But roads in the hills are windy and many, and finding that place was like looking for a black cat in a coal cellar. Besides, bike-riding around for hours worked some sense into me. And I realized they’d probably know I was lying.
Or worse, Grandmama would tell them it was me who murdered them, even though that was only half the truth.
In my memory, I can still see Stone Rutledge’s low-to-the-ground Corvette bumbling its way over the driveway. The wailing of that woman whispers on the winds even now. From the looks of it, nobody has been here since.
There’s something about returning to the scars of your past that reopens the wounds. Raw and festering, seeping with guilt. I can almost feel the hell fires burning my feet.
“Hold up.” Raelean gently grabs my elbow and stops me from beelining for the house. She nods toward the north end of the property. Through a break in the trees, I can see the flashing blue lights of Deputy Parnell’s car parked off in the distance on the main road.
Quietly, we slip around the edge of the woods until we are safely on the south side of the house, blocked from his view. It’s not until we’re walking in the thick of the overgrown weeds of the yard that the decrepit house comes into full view. Dingy white clapboard siding droops like aged skin. The rusty red metal roof peels back, exposing its ribs of dried-up wood bones. It’s a rotting corpse, wasting away in a forest of summer green.
A shadowy presence inhabits the house and the land. Eyes from the woods watch us. Something darker knows we’re here.
“I’m not sure about this,” Raelean says, low and quiet.
“Stay here, then.” I push aside the prickling of my sixth sense and walk to the spot where Bone Layer parked our truck once before.
Behind the house, deeper in the woods, I can just make out another area of yellow police tape. I assume it blocks off the section of trees around where Ellis was found; it’s about where the grave of the babies would have been. Black ferns devour the small space, crawl up the pine trees like parasites. A stain, rotting the earth. I turn away, unable to shake the weight of my contribution all those years ago.
Raelean wiggles the doorknob, but it’s locked. A laundry room window facing the carport has a cracked pane. I manage to slip my hand through, without cutting myself on the jagged glass, and unlock it. The window is just plain stubborn, but I work it high enough to shimmy in.
A frail wooden drying rack collapses under my weight. The crashing sticks sound thin, snapping in the emptiness of the room—my entry as graceful as sneaking into Adaire’s room.
“You alright?” Raelean cups her eyes as she peers through the windowpane.
“Grown-ass woman floundering on the floor like a damn toddler,” I mumble to myself. “Yep. All good.” I thumbs-up and then crawl off the broken rack—leaving my dignity behind—and unlock the back door to let her in.
“Have you been here before?” Raelean’s voice falls flat against the hollow of the room. Her eyes search mine, trying to read what I’m not saying.
“I came here once as a kid.” I leave it at that.
The air is dry and stale like clothes stored in a musty wooden chest stuck up in the attic. There’s a loneliness that accompanies a home that’s been unlived in for years, a sadness for the life not being lived under its roof.
One step from the laundry room to the kitchen and every detail comes rushing back. Even where Stone and the rich panicked lady stood on the linoleum checkerboard floor.
“What do you hope to find here?” Raelean pokes her head into one of the rooms down the hall.
Answers, I think to myself. To which questions, I’m not sure. All of them, really.
I find the only room that sticks heavy in my memory, where death took those babies.
The furniture no longer a burden to the room. It doesn’t stop my mind from seeing it there, ghosting on the floor. The long gauzy curtains—tattered at the ends—barely sway in the breeze. I’m taken back in time to when that wooden potato box slid out into the hallway. Guilt seeps in. Sorrow lingers heavy in my chest for the wrong I wish I could undo.
Solemnly, I turn to Raelean. “I’m not sure what I hope to find. But you know how sometimes there are things that tumble into your life? Random coincidences you shrug off to just that?”
“Yeah?” She stretches the word, unsure where I’m going with this.
I quirk my head at the garish wallpaper covering the hallway. Large roses on a dreadful dark—almost black—hunter green. I trail my hand along the thorny vines of rose stems, curling their way down the hall, until I end up in a living room at the front of the house.
“But then sometimes there’s that niggling feeling in your gut that says maybe these aren’t coincidences at all. Instead, they’re just an intricate web of unknowns. Each thread you discover tells you a piece of the story. Until, eventually, it all makes sense.”
“I guess.” Raelean scrunches her nose at the horrid wallpaper, same as in the photo the sheriff showed me of my mother. The regal chair she sat in is long gone, but this is where she reigned. Then it hits me.
“We’re looking for a box,” I say, suddenly realizing it was here on this floor where it sat. “My mother had this key. It goes to an old wooden box that’s about yea big.” I illustrate the size with my hands.
“So now we’re looking for a box?” Raelean raises a questioning eyebrow, her face as flat as her voice. Those blue eyes of hers scan me pitifully. It makes me feel like a lost child who can’t find her mommy in the grocery store. “Look, sweetie, I know you miss Adaire,” she says softly. “But it’s like we’re on a wild-goose chase. Whatever this is—” she circles a finger in the air, referring to us in this house “—it isn’t going to bring her back. Whatever you think you’ll find, they will never implicate Stone Rutledge, not now that he’s dead, anyway. And none of this helps clear your name.”
Her words sour my mood. I hear what she’s saying, I do. She thinks I’m desperately grasping at straws, searching for answers as to why Adaire is dead when I should be saving myself. But for some reason, I can’t let it go.
“You’re wrong,” I say, rather sure of myself, despite having no evidence to back me up. “And yes, we’re looking for a box. Adaire gave me this key.” I tug at the brass chain hanging around my neck, then tuck it back into my shirt. “Sheriff Johns showed me a picture of my mom in this house with this box. I don’t know what the hell any of it means, but if Adaire told it to me, then it means something. If you don’t want to help me, fine. You can leave. But if you think there’s even a tiny chance Adaire was trying to tell me something important before she died, then I’d appreciate it if you could help me search the house.”
Raelean stares at me for a long scrutinizing moment without budging a lick. Her hot pink lips pucker tight as she tries to decide if she’s going to ditch me or help. “Fine.” She turns on her heels. “But hurry it up,” she says over her shoulder, “because, if we get arrested, it’ll be your ass I throw under the bus. I’ll check the bedrooms, you check the kitchen.” Raelean marches her short self down the hall into the first of the rooms.
I close my eyes and breathe a sigh of relief.
Then a solid thunk hits the kitchen window. A familiar sound. I bolt my eyes open and catch a glimpse of a dazed bird flying away. To the right, something flickers inside the dark recess of the kitchen pantry.
Curious, I step inside and close the door behind me. The darkness drinks me in, except for the thin line of light peeking between the knotty pine boards. A breeze drifts through the fine crack. I feel around for a handle or a knob, finding none, but the wall wobbles as I fondle it. With both hands pressed against the wall, I lean into it and push.
The wall depresses inward slightly. When I release the pressure, it pops open with a spring, revealing a now-present door. Its seams hidden between the tongue and groove of the wood. I stick my finger in a knot with a rotted center and pull open the door.
A hole opens into the ground. Three dirt steps disappear into a narrow cinderblock hallway. A hint of light promised at the end of the hall.
There’s a crash from deeper in the house. “I’m alright!” Raelean hollers. Followed by a few choice words.
I shake my head, smiling, then descend into the root cellar.
