Everything You Want Me to Be(69)

She wiped her eyes some more, nodding. “I know that, Del. It’s just these thoughts. These thoughts keep finding me. They won’t let me go.”

“And we don’t know she was mixed up in anything yet. Kids go out to that lake and have sex all the time.”

“But there was the envelope.”

“What envelope?” I sat up straighter.

“It came that night—a white envelope in the mailbox. No stamp, no return address, just Hattie’s name on it. She took it from Bud and disappeared up to her room.”

“Did you find out what was in it?”

“No.”

“Have you seen it since then?” I wouldn’t have noticed something that mundane when I’d searched her room.

“No.”

“And the next day she disappeared again.” I pieced the timing of it together.

Mona looked surprised. “How did you know that?”

“Portia.”

She nodded. “Portia dropped her off because her truck had broken down off the highway north of Rochester.”

“What was she doing up there?”

“She said she went shopping.”

“Shopping for what?”

“I don’t know, but again—I didn’t push her on it because she seemed happier. I figured she’d sorted out whatever it was that needed sorting. When Bud grumbled about the truck breaking down over supper that night, she cracked jokes and teased him. Told him it was a sign that Bud should buy her a new car, a convertible so she could drive with the top down all the way to New York. Then he told her that her allowance was now a nickel a week and she could save up for it herself. They went back and forth all the time like that, ribbing each other. She seemed fine, happy, like I said, not like she’d been crying on my shoulder the day before. Maybe it was just teenage mood swings. One day they’re on the top of the world, the next day their life is over.”

I heard it in her voice, how she caught herself, how the sarcasm came back and punched her right at the end of the word and suddenly she doubled over. Silent sobs shook her shoulders, too deep for noise. Too raw.

Winifred, who’d been standing guard out by the file cabinets, hurried back into the office and held Mona by the shoulders. I grabbed some takeout napkins from a drawer and shoved them across the desk, but Winifred rolled her eyes and produced a handkerchief from her purse. Mona wiped her face, pulling herself together, while I felt about as useless as thumbs on a snake.

“Mona, I need you to do something for me.”

She managed to calm down and sat up straighter. The grief hadn’t made her weak. A woman like Mona Hoffman—a true farm woman who faced every season and every storm with an equanimity that would make God jealous—thrived on action, on measuring out the task and getting it done. Even here, in the darkest days of her life, I knew she would do whatever I asked of her.

“I want you to look through Hattie’s room again, and her truck, anywhere she might have left that envelope.”

“Okay, Del.”

“There’s a few other things we need to know the whereabouts of, too,” I added on an impulse. “Her suitcase and her video camera.”

“What?” Surprise broke through the other emotions.

I described them both briefly and said, “We think they’re missing.”

“The suitcase was her Christmas present from us. Bud bought it at Brookstone. She loved it.”

She said she would look for Hattie’s things after they picked out the casket flowers for the funeral.

“We’re having the wake tonight at the house. Just family.” Mona glanced away as she got up to leave.

I walked them out, but stood back while the old woman helped the younger one into the sedan. A news van hovered on the other side of the street, waiting for a break in the story. They’d be swarming around the funeral tomorrow, trying to interview anyone they could about the “curse killing.” At least I could take care of that nuisance for Bud and Mona. I didn’t feel capable of much else as I watched Mona’s car pull away.

It was a long while before I went back inside.





PETER / Friday, March 21, 2008


COULD A body tear in half? I stood under the tree, one of Mary’s sprawling oaks that had shown her what she wanted to do with her life, and watched Hattie walk away from me. Her ultimatum hung in the air. Come to New York with me or I’ll tell Mary about us. She hadn’t said those exact words—had she?—but the threat was there, glittering in her fearless eyes.

I watched her shrink across the field, her steps eating up the ground with a callous teenage confidence that would have told the sun itself to fuck off. My desperation grew proportionally with the distance between us. Everything in me burned to run after her, to haul her back here, tie her to this tree, and put her mouth to use until it couldn’t speak a word of truth or lies. Give her exactly what she wanted and then find a car and drive. Show her everything. Make us both forget this town and ourselves and every terrible decision that had brought us to this place and time.

But New York? What did she expect me to say? Yes, I’ll move to New York with you? I’ll throw away any chance of getting my life in Minneapolis back and go live on the streets of New York City with you? That’s where we would be—on the street. Even if I could miraculously line up a teaching job for the fall, I wouldn’t get a paycheck until October. I had a thousand dollars left in my savings account, which was nothing, yet Hattie thought her two grand would somehow support both of us in the most expensive city in the country?