The Invited(72)

Feeling like a trespasser, Olive started with her mother’s closet. What she was looking for exactly, she couldn’t say. A clue. Something unusual. Something to give her some insight into what had been going on with Mama in those last weeks. She went through the pockets of pants, shirts, and jackets, found nothing but breath mints, a Rosy’s Tavern matchbook, receipts from the grocery store and gas station. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing that told Olive anything new.

She continued to look, listening carefully for the sounds of a car or truck coming up the driveway. Daddy should be at work until six tonight, but he sometimes came back because he forgot something—his lunch or Thermos usually. Riley would occasionally pop in unexpectedly, just walk right in and take a look around just to check up on them, to make sure Olive was doing okay. She’d say she just dropped by to say hello, but Olive caught her opening the fridge and cabinets, as if she was making sure there was food. She’d caught her poking around in the rest of the house, too—opening drawers, going through closets. Maybe she was looking for clues, too; something to tell her where Mama might have gone.

Riley and Olive’s dad had argued the other night when Riley came by, but Olive had caught only the end of it.

    “I’m not talking about forever, Dusty,” Riley said. She was in the kitchen putting away a load of dishes she’d just washed. “I’d just move in for a little while. I could help with the renovations. Do the shopping and cooking. Be there for Olive.”

“Olive’s fine,” he said sharply. “We’re both doing fine. We don’t need a goddamn babysitter.”

Olive had walked in then, and they’d changed the subject, starting talking about what color Daddy and Olive should paint the kitchen.

Now Olive dug farther back in her mother’s closet and found two clean green aprons that Mama wore when she cashiered part-time at Quality Market. One of them still had her name tag attached: LORI, with a little stick-on flower with a smile in the middle. A happy have a nice day daisy.

Her mother’s old purses were on the top shelf and Olive went through those next, found change, old lipstick, an unlabeled key that could have gone to anything. They never locked the doors on their house, and this was not a car key. Olive looked at it, ran her finger over its teeth, then slipped it into the pocket of her jeans. She kept looking, sure there had to be something that would help.

Tucked up in the back corner of the top shelf was the mauve-and-tan box that held Mama’s best shoes. They were her special shoes; her “fairy-tale slippers” is what she called them. They were ivory-colored leather with silver beads embroidered across the toes in a flower pattern. They had a low heel and a delicate strap that fastened with a tiny silver buckle. Olive remembered one night, not long before her mother went away, how she’d awoken late at night, unable to sleep. She’d gone downstairs for a glass of milk and caught Mama sneaking in. It was nearly two in the morning. Mama was all dressed up and had her fancy ivory shoes on and much more makeup than she normally wore. “Shh,” she’d said, putting a finger over her lips. “Don’t tell your father.” Then she’d slipped the shoes off and carried them upstairs, creeping up the steps in her stockings.

Olive reached for the box now and could tell before opening it that there was nothing inside. She pulled off the lid, found only a crumpled piece of tissue paper and a single silver bead that must have fallen off. She took the bead out, tucked that into her pocket beside the key.

Olive looked through the rest of the closet, through the jumble of other shoes at the bottom, but the ivory shoes weren’t there, either.

    Her mother must have brought them with her or been wearing them the night she left. Olive looked and didn’t notice that anything else was missing. All her mother’s other shoes seemed to be there: her cowboy boots, black heels, flip-flops, sneakers.

Olive searched the closet for other missing things but didn’t notice anything special. Mama seemed to have left all of her favorites: her old Levi’s jacket that she’d had since high school and still wore, her suede boots, the purple silk top she wore to job interviews and meetings at Olive’s school, her favorite black jeans. If Mama had been planning a trip, why hadn’t she packed any of her favorite things?

A hard knot formed in Olive’s stomach.

Maybe she found the money and just took off. Why pack clothes when you can buy a whole new wardrobe, a whole new life? It made sense in a terrible way: If you wanted to start over, wouldn’t you rather leave every trace of your old life behind? Or maybe there were things she’d taken, clothing that Olive just didn’t notice was missing.

Olive continued her search, moving faster now, just wanting the whole thing to be done and over with. It was too much, being in the closet, surrounded by all of Mama’s things.

She found more receipts stuffed in jacket pockets, all for regular things: milk and eggs, a haircut and color at House of Style, a cup of coffee and a candy bar at a gas station up in Lewisburg.

Lewisburg.

That was weird. It was a tiny town in the middle of nowhere as far as Olive knew.

She looked at the date on the receipt. It was from May 10 of last year. Just a couple weeks before Mama left. The knot in Olive’s stomach tightened.

Went missing, a little voice told her. She didn’t leave. She went missing.

Receipt in hand, Olive jogged down the steps and into the living room, searched the bookshelf, and pulled out the worn Vermont road atlas they had. She flipped to a page toward the front that showed the whole state. Using the index, she found Lewisburg, J-10 on the grid.