Older. Gruff. Like a man who’d been watching TV and didn’t want to be interrupted.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m sorry to bother you. I’m looking for Margaret Feeney. This is June Abernathy’s daughter. My mother’s been staying with her this week.”
There was a pause.
“Who?”
“Margaret Feeney,” I said again. “She’s an old friend of my mother’s. My mom gave me this number.”
He went quiet.
A long, strange quiet.
Then he said:
“Ma’am, Margaret hasn’t lived here for eight years.”
My stomach dropped.
“What?”
“Margaret Feeney,” he said slowly. “She was my mother-in-law. She lived in this house. She passed away in 2018. My wife and I bought the house from the estate. We kept the phone number.” He paused. “I’m sorry. Nobody’s asked for her in a long time.”
I couldn’t speak.
“Ma’am?” he said. “Are you okay?”
“She died?” I whispered. “Eight years ago?”
“March of 2018,” he said. “Cancer. She’s buried at Calvary Cemetery. Up on Peach Street.”
“And nobody’s been staying there? This week? An eighty-year-old woman? June Abernathy?”
“No, ma’am,” he said. “It’s just me and my wife. Nobody’s stayed here.”
I hung up.
I checked the number again. On the Post-it note. In my mother’s handwriting.
It was the same one.
The same one Mom had given me before leaving.
I sat on my mother’s couch with the Post-it note in my hand and stared at her bedroom door.
Margaret Feeney had been dead for eight years.
My mother had known her since first grade. Of course she knew.
She’d lied to me.
For seven days.
I didn’t knock again.
I didn’t go home either.
I fell asleep on the couch around one in the morning.
The next morning, I found her asleep in her armchair.
In the living room. The old blue recliner by the window that used to be Dad’s. She must have come out of her bedroom sometime during the night.
She was wrapped in a quilt. Still wearing the gray cardigan. Her head was tipped to the side. Her mouth was a little open. She was breathing softly.
In the morning light, she looked even thinner.
I stood over her and watched her sleep.
Then I looked down.
Beside her, on the little side table, lay a train ticket.
An Amtrak ticket. Printed. Folded in half.
I picked it up.
ERIE, PA (ERI) to CLEVELAND, OH (CLE).
No.
Wait.
I looked again.
PITTSBURGH, PA (PGH) to ERIE, PA (ERI).
Dated Friday. Three days before her supposed return.
She hadn’t been in Erie on Friday.
She’d been in Pittsburgh.
Then she’d traveled from Pittsburgh to Erie on Friday. And from Erie to Cleveland on Monday.
What was in Pittsburgh?
And underneath the ticket was a luggage tag.
Leather. Brown. The kind that buckles around a suitcase handle. It had been unbuckled and laid flat.
I turned it over.
There was a little plastic window. And a card inside. Typed.
Not Margaret’s name.
Not my mother’s.
SAMUEL J. REINER
1847 Beechwood Blvd.
Pittsburgh, PA 15217
I’d never heard that name in my life.
I put the ticket and the luggage tag back exactly where I found them.
I looked at my mother. Still sleeping.
Then I went down the hall.
Her bedroom door was open now. Just a crack.
I pushed it open.
The black suitcase was on the floor at the foot of her bed. Zipped closed.
I knelt down next to it.
I’d never in my life gone through my mother’s things. Not her purse. Not her drawers. Not her mail. She’d raised me better than that.
I quietly opened the black suitcase.
Inside were neatly folded clothes.
My mother’s clothes. Her nightgowns. Her underwear. Her two pairs of slacks. Her good blouse. Her toiletry bag.
Folded perfectly. The way she folds everything. In thirds.
But also something else.
A sweater. On top. Not hers. A man’s sweater. Navy blue wool. Old. Soft. Worn at the elbows.
It smelled like a man’s aftershave. Old Spice, maybe. And something else. Something like a hospital.
Underneath the sweater, there was a sealed brown envelope.
Manila. Thick. Sealed with tape.
Nothing written on the front.
And next to it, an old-fashioned digital camera.
A little silver Canon. The kind everybody had in 2006. With a wrist strap.
I switched it on.
The screen lit up. A little battery icon blinked red in the corner.
The battery was almost dead.
I pressed the button to view the pictures.
There were only four photographs.
I opened the first.
It was taken in a hospital room.
I could tell. The beige walls. The window with the vertical blinds. The IV pole. The rolling tray table. The little whiteboard on the wall where nurses write their names.
There was a man in the bed.
Sixty, maybe. Thin. Very thin. Bald. Pale. Wearing a hospital gown. An IV in his arm. A tube under his nose.
And sitting in a chair next to the bed, holding his hand, was my mother.
She was wearing the gray cardigan.
They were both crying.
Not small crying. Faces crumpled. Tears running down. My mother had her free hand pressed against her mouth. The man had his eyes squeezed shut.
They were holding hands so tight their knuckles were white.
I stared at it.
Then I looked at the second.
The same hospital room. Same man. Same bed.
This time, he was holding something. In his lap. Spread out across the hospital blanket.
A baby blanket.
Small. Knitted. Yellow. Faded almost to cream. With a white border. And a little pattern of ducks around the edges.
I knew that pattern.
I knew it the second I saw it.
My mother knits. She’s knitted my whole life. Sweaters. Scarves. Mittens. Afghans for every couch in the family. Baby blankets for every grandchild.
Every baby blanket she’s ever made has the same pattern around the border.
Little ducks.
She learned it from her grandmother in 1955. She told me once. She said it was the first thing she ever knitted. She said she’d made one baby blanket with ducks when she was seventeen, a long time ago, and she’d put a little of herself into every one since.
The man in the hospital bed was holding a yellow baby blanket with ducks around the border.
And it was old.
Very old.
Older than me.
My hands were shaking.
I clicked to the third photograph.
