I did not sleep.
At one fourteen in the morning, I sat in the kitchen wearing Daniel’s old robe over my nightgown, the locket open beneath the yellow light above the stove.
RUSSELL TATE.
ST. ANNE’S.
08/19/81.
I kept returning to the date because it was the one fact that refused to bend around my memories.
On August eighteenth, my mother had entered my bedroom holding the locket.
At least that was how I remembered it.
She stood near the door with her mouth set tight and told me Russell was gone. She said he had left with another girl. She warned me not to chase him.
I had demanded proof.
She told me she had spoken to Russell’s mother.
I asked why he had not said goodbye.
My mother answered, “Because some boys are cowards.”
I hated him for that sentence.
For years afterward, whenever Russell crossed my mind, I heard my mother’s voice attached to him.
Coward.
Liar.
Boy who left.
Yet on August nineteenth, he had been admitted to a hospital only a few miles away.
Why?
I tried remembering whether I had actually seen Russell after August seventeenth.
No.
The seventeenth had been a Monday.
We met near the river after dinner.
Russell was nervous about something.
That detail returned so suddenly I sat upright.
He had kept rubbing his thumb across his knuckles.
“What’s wrong?” I had asked.
“Nothing.”
“You’re terrible at nothing.”
He smiled.
Then he told me his father wanted him to take a job in St. Louis after graduation.
I thought he was going to say he had accepted.
Instead he said, “Come with me.”
I laughed because we were seventeen.
He did not.
“I mean it, Mary Lou.”
“We haven’t even finished school.”
“We will.”
“My parents would kill me.”
“Then we’ll wait.”
“For what?”
“For you to be eighteen.”
That conversation had terrified me.
It had also thrilled me.
Russell wanted a future.
The next afternoon, according to my mother, he ran away with somebody else.
The contradiction had bothered me in 1981.
I had eventually buried it because seventeen-year-old girls are very good at believing adults when adults insist they understand the world better.
At six thirty, I called Rebecca.
“You’re going to the storage unit,” she said immediately.
“I haven’t decided.”
“You called me before sunrise.”
“I’m awake.”
“Exactly.”
I rubbed my eyes.
“I need to know.”
“I understand. You’re still not going alone.”
“I am capable of opening a storage unit.”
“You don’t even have a key.”
That stopped me.
I had been so focused on the date that I had overlooked the obvious.
“How am I supposed to get inside?”
“Maybe whoever left the receipt is meeting you.”
The thought made my skin prickle.
“Then I definitely need to go.”
“And I definitely need to come.”
“You have work.”
“I have sick days.”
“You’re not sick.”
“My mother is about to meet a possibly dead boyfriend beside a mysterious storage locker. I think Human Resources will understand.”
Despite everything, I laughed.
Rebecca arrived at eight seven.
She wore jeans, sneakers, and no makeup. Her dark hair was twisted into a loose knot, and she carried two coffees.
She hugged me before saying anything.
Then she saw the locket around my neck.
“You’re wearing it.”
“I wanted both hands free.”
“That’s not why.”
“No.”
She touched the dent near the hinge.
“This really is the same one?”
“I would know it anywhere.”
I opened it and showed her the initials.
Rebecca smiled faintly.
“Teenagers have always been dramatic.”
“Your father carved our initials into a picnic table.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“He had better handwriting.”
I almost smiled.
Then she noticed the hospital band.
Her expression changed.
“This was inside?”
“Yes.”
“Why would somebody hide it there?”
“I think I was supposed to find it.”
Rebecca looked toward the driveway.
“Then whoever planned this knows you pretty well.”
That was exactly what frightened me.
We drove to River Storage with the air conditioner running hard against the morning heat.
The Mississippi flashed between buildings as we crossed town.
I tried not to look toward it.
Rebecca noticed.
“You don’t have to do this.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Even if Russell is dead?”
“Yes.”
“And if he’s alive?”
I turned toward her.
She kept her eyes on the road.
“I don’t know what I’ll do.”
“Do you want him alive?”
The question was too intimate to answer quickly.
“I want the truth alive.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
“No.”
Rebecca waited.
Finally I said, “For forty-three years, I have loved a memory and resented the person inside it. I’m not sure which feeling belongs to Russell anymore.”
“That sounds complicated.”
“It is.”
“Dad knew about him?”
“Not everything.”
“Was Dad jealous?”
“Your father was jealous of anybody who could repair a carburetor.”
Rebecca smiled.
I looked through the windshield.
“Daniel knew there had been somebody before him. He never asked for details. Maybe he understood that some stories become private not because you still want the person, but because you don’t know how to explain who you were with them.”
Rebecca reached over and squeezed my hand.
River Storage sat behind a chain-link fence on the edge of an industrial road.
Rows of orange doors stretched beneath corrugated roofs.
Unit 214 was near the far end.
The brass padlock looked new.
Rebecca examined it.
“No key.”
I took out the receipt.
The handwritten date was still there.
8/22.
“Maybe eight twenty-two isn’t the date,” Rebecca said.
“What else could it be?”
She looked at her phone.
The time was 8:18.
We stared at each other.
“Oh,” she said.
At 8:20, nothing happened.
At 8:21, I could hear cicadas buzzing in the weeds beyond the fence.
At 8:22 exactly, still nothing.
Rebecca exhaled.
“Maybe we’re being ridiculous.”
At 8:24, a white pickup turned into the lane.
It moved slowly.
My body knew before my mind did.
The truck stopped three units away.
A man opened the driver’s door.
He placed one boot on the pavement.
Then he reached behind the seat and took out a cane.
Gray beard.
Blue work jacket despite the heat.
Red Cardinals cap.
Rebecca’s fingers closed around my forearm.
“Mom.”
The man turned.
I saw the scar.
Time did not reverse.
Nothing so merciful happened.
Instead, seventeen and sixty-one existed inside me simultaneously.
I saw the boy who taught me to skip stones.
I saw the old man leaning on a cane.
And somehow they occupied the same pair of eyes.
“Russell?”
He removed his cap.
His hair was almost white.
He looked at me as though the sight hurt.
“Mary Lou.”
My knees weakened.
Rebecca steadied me.
Russell took a step forward, then stopped as if remembering he no longer had the right.
“I didn’t know whether you’d come.”
“You did this.”
He looked at the locket.
“Yes.”
“You pawned it.”
“Yes.”
“You put your hospital band inside.”
“Yes.”
Anger arrived before tears could.
“You knew where I lived?”
His face tightened.
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
He did not answer quickly enough.
“For how long, Russell?”
“Years.”
The word struck me like an open hand.
“You knew where I was for years?”
“Yes.”
“And you never came?”
“No.”
“Never called?”
“No.”
“Never wrote?”
His expression changed.
“I wrote.”
“I never received anything.”
“I know.”
“Then don’t tell me you wrote.”
“I wrote twenty-seven letters.”
Rebecca glanced between us.
I felt suddenly cold.
“Where are they?”
Russell looked toward Unit 214.
“In there.”
He removed a key from his pocket.
The padlock opened with one turn.
When he lifted the metal door, sunlight reached into a narrow room crowded with boxes.
Dozens of them.
Some were labeled by year.
1981.
1982.
1983.
Others had names.
MARY LOU.
SYcamore.
RIVER.
On the back wall hung a photograph.
I walked toward it.
Russell and I stood beside the Mississippi at seventeen.
His arm rested around me.
I remembered the day.
But I did not remember giving him the photograph.
“Where did you get this?”
“You gave it to me.”
“When?”
“Two days before everything happened.”
I turned.
“What happened?”
Russell leaned heavily against his cane.
“I was hoping we could start with something easier.”
“There is nothing easy left.”
He looked at Rebecca.
“You must be Rebecca.”
My daughter stiffened.
“How do you know my name?”
Russell lowered his gaze.
“I knew when you were born.”
The air seemed to leave the storage unit.
I stared at him.
“My mother told you.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Shortly after.”
“And you still stayed away?”
“Yes.”
Rebecca’s voice sharpened.
“Why?”
Russell looked at me rather than her.
“Because by then I believed Mary Lou wanted nothing to do with me.”
“I never said that.”
“I know now.”
“My mother told me you left with another girl.”
“I never left with anybody.”
“You were at St. Anne’s.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
His fingers tightened around the cane.
“That is where your father took me.”
I stopped breathing.
“My father?”
Russell nodded.
“What happened?”
He looked toward a box marked 1981.
“Before I tell you, you need to understand that your parents were in trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Money.”
My father had been proud to the point of cruelty about money. He counted change twice at grocery stores and refused loans from relatives because owing anyone made him furious.
“What does money have to do with you disappearing?”
“Your father owed my uncle Walter.”
I remembered Walter Tate vaguely—a broad man with thick hands who owned part of an auto-repair business outside town.
“How much?”
“Enough to lose your house.”
I stared at him.
“No.”
“It’s documented.”
Russell opened the box.
Inside were property records, bank notices, letters, and a yellowed legal agreement.
He handed me the first page.
My father’s name appeared near the top.
Walter Tate’s appeared beneath it.
The amount owed made my stomach tighten.
My childhood home had been collateral.
“I never knew.”
“Your parents made sure you didn’t.”
“What does this have to do with us?”
Russell rubbed his forehead.
“My uncle thought our families could solve everything privately.”
“How?”
“He proposed an arrangement.”
“What arrangement?”
Russell looked ashamed although the shame clearly did not belong to him.
“He knew we planned to marry eventually.”
“We were seventeen.”
“He knew that too.”
“What did he want?”
“He offered to forgive part of your father’s debt if our families became connected.”
Rebecca whispered, “Through marriage?”
Russell nodded.
I felt sick.
My first love had become a line item in a debt negotiation.
“Did you know?”
“Not until August eighteenth.”
“What happened that day?”
“I confronted your father.”
My fingers tightened around the document.
“About using us to settle his debt?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“He told me to stay away from you.”
“And you refused.”
Russell gave the smallest nod.
“I told him you had a right to decide for yourself.”
That sounded exactly like the boy I remembered.
“What did my father do?”
Russell touched the scar above his eyebrow.
The same scar I had thought came from a childhood bicycle accident.
Then I realized something.
The old scar had been smaller.
This one cut farther into his eyebrow.
“What did he do?”
Russell’s voice dropped.
“He hit me.”
Rebecca inhaled sharply.
“With what?”
“A tire iron.”
I stared at him.
“He hit you with a tire iron?”
“Once. I stumbled backward and fell down the basement steps.”
I could hear my pulse.
“Was that why you were at St. Anne’s?”
“Yes.”
“How badly were you hurt?”
“Concussion. Broken ribs. Shoulder injury. A lot of blood.”
“And my father took you there?”
“Eventually.”
“Eventually?”
“He thought I was dead at first.”
I had to sit.
There was an old folding chair beside the boxes.
Rebecca pulled it open for me.
“My father thought he killed you.”
“Yes.”
“And my mother?”
Russell’s silence answered before he did.
“She knew.”
I closed my eyes.
“She knew you were in the hospital?”
“Yes.”
“She came to see me.”
My eyes opened.
“What?”
“The morning of August nineteenth.”
The date on the wristband.
“What did she say?”
Russell looked at the locket hanging against my chest.
“She brought that.”
My hand rose to it.
“No.”
“She told me you had given it back.”
“No.”
“She said you knew what happened with your father and blamed me.”
“I didn’t know anything.”
“She said you never wanted to see me again.”
I stood so quickly the folding chair fell backward.
“She told me you left with another girl.”
Russell closed his eyes.
“I know.”
“She lied to both of us.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I spent forty-three years asking the same question.”
I looked around the storage unit.
At boxes.
Photographs.
Documents.
A life archived around a girl who had believed herself forgotten.
Then Russell pulled a yellowed envelope from inside his jacket.
My maiden name was written across the front.
MARY LOUISE TURNER.
“I wrote this from St. Anne’s,” he said.
I could barely speak.
“Why do you still have it?”
“Because your mother never gave it to you.”
He held it toward me.
I did not take it.
Not yet.
Because beneath my name, in my mother’s unmistakable handwriting, someone had written two words across the envelope.
RETURNED. REFUSED.
And I had never seen it before in my life.
Click here to continue reading: PART 3: Russell’s Unsent Letter Proved Someone Had Chosen Our Future for Us Before Either of Us Understood What Was Being Taken
A Twelve-Dollar Toaster Led Me to the Silver Heart I Had Watched Vanish Beneath the Mississippi Forty-Three Years Earlier
Part 2 of 47
