Burn Our Bodies Down(54)

“Well,” Gram says once the car has finally disappeared over the horizon. “That was quite enough excitement, I think.”





nineteen





gram doesn’t say anything as we go back into the house. It feels like too long a walk, the ash plains hovering beyond Fairhaven, the Miller house bright across the fields.

I end up at the kitchen table again, shucking corn for Gram while my mind follows Mom into the town she left behind. Katherine, the fire, the questions nobody ever got answered—will people still hold it all against her? After all, I don’t think the past ever really leaves, in Phalene. It breathes. It holds on.

It happens again.

Maybe I should’ve gone with her. She did come after me. And she’s never done anything that big before.

No. Stop it. I always do this, anytime she gives me anything.

I tear the husk from the last ear of corn so hard it slices into my palm. I left her. It’ll take more than one good thing to get me back.

Gram steps away from the stove and fetches a bottle of water from the fridge, holds it out to me. As I take it, she says, “It was wise of you not to go with Josephine.”

“Was it?” I crack the cap of the bottle, take a long sip. Above me, the kitchen light is catching Gram’s shoulders, her brow, throwing her face into shadow until she moves, leans on the counter with her hands folded in front of her.

“Yes. She’s never been suited to motherhood.” Gram shares a satisfied smile with me, like she expects me to join in. “Well, you know that better than anyone.”

“I think we do just fine,” I say. It’s not true, but that’s not the point. Gram doesn’t get to judge Mom, not when she helped make her this way.

“Oh, you do?” Gram is watching me, a look on her face I know too well from Mom’s, and I suppose from my own. Simmering resentment, almost an eagerness to be made angry.

Does she think I chose her? I know that’s what it looks like. But I chose myself, chose getting answers. Not Gram.

“She’s not perfect,” I say. “But I love her. And I know she loves me.”

Gram’s better at this than Mom. The wound is there for only a second before she seals herself back up. “Does she?” she asks. “Everything she hid from you—is that love?”

It feels like I’m waking up. Like everything since the morgue was a dream, a fever, and now I’m here, back in my body, alive with anger. “She didn’t do it alone,” I say, leaning across the table. “Katherine? The girl? And you’re standing there like you haven’t lied right to my face.”

“Because your mother asked me to,” Gram says. “I’d do anything for my family. Especially if it means protecting you.”

I stare at her, my mouth open. How can all of that be true? And how can it still mean the fucking world to me to hear it, after everything I’ve seen here?

Gram straightens up then, brushing her hands on her jeans. “Actually,” she says, “that reminds me. There’s something I want to show you.”

Another shot at answers, so here I am, waiting on the landing as she pulls down a rickety staircase to the attic. It’s barely wide enough for one person. “Up there?” I ask, nervous.

“After you,” Gram says. She’s smiling.

“Okay,” I say. Give her my best smile back and take a few tentative steps up. The stairs creak underneath me, the dark slithering down from the attic to clutch at my ankles. For a second I imagine Gram shutting the trapdoor. Leaving me up there.

“Is there a light?” I ask, hesitating.

“At the top,” Gram says. So I keep going.

Up, up, step after step, until at last I reach the attic, and I edge forward, waiting for the floor to drop out from underneath me. Gram’s footsteps follow me up the stairs. I let out a small breath of relief.

Finally, “Here,” comes her voice from behind me, and I hear a click. Light ricocheting around me, spraying from the bare bulb above. The ceiling just beams and the roof beyond, the walls made of slats with insulation peeking through.

Just ahead of me a bookcase is practically empty save for a handful of picture books stacked on the bottom. Next to it, three plastic garbage bags that look like they’re holding clothing, with the sleeve of a coat poking out the top of the nearest one.

Gram takes hold of my elbow, steers me to the other side of the attic. “Over here.”

The light barely reaches this part, but it’s enough to make out a collection of cardboard boxes stacked against the wall. Some of them damp with mold, some of them with newspaper spilling out the top. Gram lifts one of the boxes off the stack and sets it on the floor. I recoil as a mouse comes skittering out a hole in the bottom and disappears into the dark.

“What is all this stuff?” I ask as she sorts through the contents.

“Some of Jo’s and Katherine’s things,” Gram says, her voice muffled. I lean in eagerly, try to get a glimpse of what’s inside.

Finally Gram straightens, pulling something out of the box. “Here it is,” she says.

A dress, with a prim little collar and long sleeves that close around the wrists with a bow. It looks like the one the girl was wearing, like the ones I found in my dresser, dated and too formal for anything I’ve seen in Phalene.