Dead Letters(96)

With a jolt, I remember the letter we found on Wyatt’s truck. I fish it out from my bag and look at the cryptic final sentence: Underneath these carefully constructed surfaces we conceal our missing pieces. The letter U, for something concealed underneath a constructed surface. Not unlocked, after all.

I walk outside to the deck, Zelda’s long-ago summer project, jump off the edge, and peer below. There’s a tiny crawl space beneath it, and I’m just able to cram myself in. I inch along, scanning. In the corner, I see a zip-lock bag taped where two pieces of wood meet, lurking like a spider’s tight ball of eggs. I tug it down and edge back out from beneath the deck.

A playful hand has labeled the bag with permanent ink: U found U!

Inside, I find Zelda’s variety show of mind-altering substances. A bag with some pot (it smells like the terrifically strong stuff they grow locally), a depleted eight ball of coke. Mom’s name is on a few prescription bottles: codeine for the rheumatism in her hands, some more clonazepam. The only prescription in Zelda’s name is for Ritalin, and the bottle is mostly untouched. I wonder if she was selling the tablets; Zelda certainly doesn’t need any more energy. There’s no sign of any pills like the others my mother takes, nothing that indicates Zelda was ever diagnosed. Then I remember that she mentioned stealing prescription pads from Whitcross—she wouldn’t have needed a diagnosis for the medications.

But there’s nothing in her name. No SSRIs, no meds to help neurological symptoms like tremors and shakes. Maybe she wasn’t certain enough of her self-diagnosis to forge a prescription. She was paranoid, for sure, but probably very aware of the fact that paranoia and delusions are symptoms of dementia.

As I pull out one of the last bottles, a piece of paper tumbles from the bag. Zelda’s handwriting.

What’s missing, sweet sister mine?



I frown. Well, the rest of the alphabet, obviously. What can she mean? How on earth would I know what isn’t here? I crumple up the paper and sit back on the deck. She sent me snooping around her stash. And she wants me to look for something that’s supposed to be here. She has every pharmaceutical under the sun, except for the ones I came looking for. Does she know I came hunting for proof of her illness? Or does she want me to look for something else?

In irritation, I take the bags back out and sift through the semitranslucent orange vials again. I read where each prescription was filled, look at every name. I check for generic as well as brand name. I have no idea what she wants from me. I uncrumple the note and read it again. This time, I flip it over and see that she has written on the back too.

You’ll find it in Mom’s room, where it ultimately belongs.



Still doesn’t mean anything to me, but at least I know where to go looking. I pack all the pills into the grubby bag again and slap it back into the corner of the crawl space. I leave the Airstream and mosey on toward the house, thinking.

I pad inside, where it is cooler, and take a long drink of water from the tap, not bothering to fetch a glass. The sort of thing that Nadine hates. Usually, I do too. I head upstairs, prepared to dodge everybody again, but Marlon is asleep on the balcony in a patio chair, and I don’t see Opal. Mom is sitting in her chair, staring blankly down at the water with a flaccid expression. She doesn’t even blink. For a second, I am certain that she’s dead, but then she tilts her head slightly at the sound of my footsteps, and I let out a breath that is maybe not quite as relieved as it should be.

“Mom, come inside,” I whisper, trying not to wake Marlon. Nadine purses her lips and continues staring. “Mom. You’ll get sunburned.” She doesn’t even bother shaking her head, just looks off into the distance, at the vines she grew. Or, rather, paid other people to grow. I’m about to fight with her when I realize I just don’t care. I’ll bring her a hat later.

Her room is cool and dark, and the fan has been left on. I realize with a jolt what a terrible caretaker I’ve been during the last few days, how I’ve relied on Marlon and Opal to deal with her. All the while carrying a chip on my shoulder because I’ve been saddled with her. If my father and grandmother hadn’t been here, Nadine would still be in her dirty nightgown, rolling around in her musty sheets without having eaten breakfast or taken her medications. Zelda has been doing this every day for two years. Jesus.

My phone vibrates. I tear at my pocket, trying to reach it, assuming it’s Zelda, that she’s somehow intuited my presence here in this room. But there’s nothing—no message, no email. I realize that it was actually my own phone buzzing at me and see a text from Nico.


I am at the bar across Hotel Victoires. Looking for your twin I assume. I will call if I will see her. Please call me.



I slide the phone back into my pocket. I will. I will. But first I need to find whatever Zelda has squirreled away up here. Maybe she meant that she was taking Mom’s dementia drugs? When Nadine was first diagnosed and we were just getting used to the daily regimen of fistfuls of meds with unpronounceable names, we called them her Forget-Me-Nots. I prowl around the room, checking in the twin nightstands next to the bed first. Everything in the room has a double: one for Nadine and one for Marlon. Two nightstands, one on either side of the bed, two tasteful laundry hampers next to each other near the bathroom, two reading chairs in opposite corners, with matching throws draped artistically over their winged backs. Nadine never redecorated, but she had at least begun to occupy the dresser and closet that had once been Marlon’s. She kept some of her own books on his nightstand. Still, there was lopsidedness to the room, like a limb that’s been in a cast displayed next to its healthy partner. Nadine fully occupied only one half of the room.