Flutter (28 page)

Once I had practically committed the details to memory, I rubbed at the kink in the back of my neck and decided I’d better go. Ash was probably getting worried, nervous. But I wanted to look at a few boyhood pictures of Ash first.

I couldn’t help myself, but I tried to keep an ear out for any noises, any cars driving up the gravel road.

I sat on the bed in Ash’s boyhood room and pushed my face into his pillow. I ran my fingers along his high school yearbook, his baseball trophies. I found a book of his sketches on his desk. I was awash in all things Ash, and I loved it.

I picked up a silver-framed photo on the nightstand next to Ash’s bed. It was a younger, teenage Ash and little Frankie. I saw then that the boy in my loops was definitely Frankie. I noticed the subtle differences, his sticking-out ears, his smile to the wrong side. Frankie.

I put the photo down and quickly retraced my steps in the upstairs rooms, making sure I hadn’t left anything out of place. In the master closet, I realized I hadn’t put the shirt box back. When I placed it behind the crate of magazines, a different box caught my eye. It was marked “Wedding.”

I took this box down quickly and opened it. I pulled
out a white and cream satin album with a picture on the cover—Ash’s mom and dad, their wedding day.

They were beautiful. And happy-looking, and full of dreams for the future, surely. Had they known the heartache that was in store for them? Had she known his potential then? I felt a bit guilty looking through the album, like it was none of my business, but I had to.

Ash had his dad’s build and coloring, but his looks favored his mom—the same eyes, the same line to his nose, the same crooked smile. But his mom had a beauty mark below her left eye. It stopped me for a moment when I noticed it, yet I couldn’t place exactly why.

I flipped the page to a portrait of the bride and groom in front of the altar and let out a gasp.

It was
the
church. The altar, with the kaleidoscope stained glass behind them.

“Holy shit.” I couldn’t believe it. “Holy shit,” I repeated. All my searching. Here it was. I stared at the colors, the abstract pattern.

I flipped the pages of the wedding album quickly, looking for something, anything, that might stand out, might lead me to what Frankie wanted me to find. I passed the smiling faces of Ash’s parents again and again. Ash’s parents dancing. Ash’s parents cutting the cake. Ash’s parents sitting on an old stone bench outside their church. Nothing jumped out at me. What was I looking for?

Sweat broke out on my brow now. I felt so close. I skimmed
through the photos, studying them more slowly. Over and over. But it wasn’t until I was about to give up, about to search the rest of the closet, when I found what I was looking for.

As I stared at the last photo in the album, I noticed that the backing on the inside back cover seemed worn, ragged, ripped at the bottom. And my eye caught an old, tattered corner of paper sticking out from behind the backing. I tugged at that piece of paper and saw that someone had deliberately slit the backing with something, a knife or scissors. A piece of paper was hidden under there. I pulled it out quickly, carefully. It was a heavy, thick sheet of stationery. I opened it and could see immediately that it was a letter, written in blue ink, in a clumsy scrawl.

My Dearest Dolly
, it began.

I felt my throat tighten then. I wiped the sweat from my brow, my heart picking up its pace. I flipped to the end of the letter and saw that it was signed
Your Joe
. Ash’s dad had written this.

I felt like an eavesdropper, a criminal, a sneak. But I knew I would read it. I had to read it. I owed that to Frankie … and to Ash.

I’ve missed you. And I’m sorry. I can’t begin to apologize to you. You know everything where you are, Dolly
.

You know everything. You know Alvin wasn’t driving his truck that night. You know that it was me, Dolly, that Alvin was riding shotgun
.

You know that I let him take the fall. I didn’t know he was
dead when I ran off. I didn’t care, I guess. I just moved his body over to the driver’s seat, and I took off into Houbolt Woods there. I was sober enough to save myself, not a scratch on me
.

And I tell myself that I didn’t know it was you that I hit, but where you are, Dolly, you know the truth
.

How I can live with what I did, I don’t know. But you know I’m not the heathen that I’ve behaved like. Not deep inside. It’s too late for me, I reckon
.

I am glad for the sour pain I feel during the few times I let myself get really sober. Like now
.

I deserve it. I deserve much worse
.

I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Dolly
.

The letter continued for a few more lines, but the writing was smudged, blurry.

I reread the letter several times and tried to make out those last few lines. I couldn’t tell what they said. But I could recognize Frankie’s name. Something about “our son Frankie.”

I couldn’t believe it. My mouth hung open.

My heart pounded in my chest, and I could feel the buzzing forming behind my eyes. I clenched my teeth then and willed myself to calm down, to push it back.

I plopped on the floor of the closet then for a long moment, cross-legged, and placed the letter on the floor next to me with two fingers. I didn’t want to touch it. I didn’t want to read it again. I didn’t want to see it.

He forced Ash to think it was his fault for so many years.

I hated this man. I hated this excuse for a man, even if he laid his remorse out in a letter for all to see. Because it was a coward’s apology. A demon’s apology.

Even if, in his heart of hearts, he truly meant it, I hated him for what he had done to Ash. Even if that letter showed a sliver of the real Joseph Clarke, I hated him. It wasn’t enough that he beat his wife senseless for years? Or that he was the drunk driver? He had to blame his only living son and push his guilt onto him for years?

Could Ash really have spent the last six years of his life not knowing the truth?

I put my face in my hands then and shook my head, my heart breaking for Ash. What would this do to him?

The snowdrifts pushed up against the west side of the barn, probably three or four feet deep, and the wind was cold, wet. But it was warmer here. Warmer than the UP, but that wasn’t saying much. I walked slowly over to the wooden sliding door of the barn, the letter in my hand.

When I slid the door open, I saw a faint, warm glow of a lantern coming from the far side of the barn. It wasn’t much light, but I could see enough. I could see the shapes of things, impressions. The barn was an empty and unused shell, a large rectangular building with horse stalls on the left side and a hayloft in the rear, a ladder leading up to it from the east corner. The same barn I had met Frankie in.

My eyes adjusted more to the dim light as I took a few
steps inside. The hayloft at the other end of the barn looked cushy and full of fragrant hay. And the rickety wooden walls gave more protection from the whirling cold wind than I’d thought they would.

I could see stacks of burlap sacks, old farming equipment, and a small snowblower, all abandoned near the empty horse stalls. On the right-hand wall, a collection of antique-looking garden tools hung from a pegboard: rakes and shovels, diggers and a sickle, a pair of small axes. Surely part of Dolly’s collection. And there, on that same wooden workbench, sat the Victrola, the dulcimer. And tacked above that workbench was the jersey. It was dusty, dirty with cobwebs, the number
nine
not as shiny as in the loop, but still calling out to me like a beacon.

I stood nervously inside the door of the red barn and shifted my weight from one foot to the other. I made out Ash’s figure in the hayloft. I walked toward him, the single sheet of stationery a heavy weight in my hand, and on my heart.

Ash gripped a small flashlight between his teeth, and he was laying out a flannel blanket over the hay on the floor of the loft.

“What did Frankie call you?”

Ash stopped what he was doing, took the flashlight from his teeth. He regarded me with a smile, his eyes far away. “Nine or Niner. Everybody called me that. My baseball number.”

And, in the end, that was all I needed. It all made sense. I made my peace with it all.

I stood staring into space, accepting how wrong I had gotten everything. But I was here. I was doing what Frankie wanted me to do.

“What is it?” Ash asked, knitting his brow. When I didn’t answer, he quickly backed down the slim ladder leading from the barn floor to the loft.

“I found this,” I said. And I just handed him the letter. I had no words that could possibly soften the impact.

It didn’t take long for him to read his father’s confession. I watched the look of bewilderment flash across his face, and then his eyes went back to the beginning. He read it over several times.

“Where did you find this?” he asked, his voice low, quiet. His eyes never left the letter.

“In your parents’ wedding album.”

“My father was the driver?”

Ash’s hand that held the letter began to shake. I saw his face flush with anger. “How did I never know this?”

“I don’t know, Ash, but this isn’t—”

“That bastard killed them himself.
He
was the driver!” Ash brought his hands to his head in exasperation. “All these years, Emery!” His voice echoed off the empty walls of the barn.

I looked at Ash, the depth of hurt and confusion and loss in his face, in his eyes.

“And the key,” Ash said, digging the key from Frankie out of his pocket. “This key is just like the one from my dad’s truck. And Alvin Miller drove the same kind of truck. Same make, same model, just a blue one, not red.” Ash shook his head in disbelief.

“Frankie wanted you to know the truth,” I said.

But it was like Ash couldn’t hear me.

“Pop was here in that house, force-feeding me this bullshit about how I had killed them, how
I
had killed them!”

“I know.” I tried to put my arms around him, but he was furious, pacing the barn floor.

“Look at the key … huh.”

We were quiet together in the barn then, Ash with all his ghosts, all his demons. Me standing, watching him. Ash paced, shaking his head in disbelief. Every muscle in his body looked tense, his jaw, his neck, his hands—everything clenched, at the ready.

So many years—
years
—of anguish, heartache for him.

I thought again of those French doors. The scene of the crime. So many crimes there in that house.

I didn’t know what to do for him. When he finally stood still, I reached for him, and I held him. I felt his tired, wiry limbs relax and give in against me. He rested his head on top of mine.

“I’m sorry,” I repeated.

“I think I need a minute,” he said, letting go of me.

“No, please stay,” I said.

“I’ll keep close. I need to walk. Clear my head.”

Reluctantly, I let him leave. With his ghosts.

I watched him walk out of the barn door, into the night, into his past. I hoped that he would find peace in this somehow, at least open the door to it, open his mind.

My heart twisted in my chest for Ash and what he was wrapping his mind around out in the cold, but I knew I was doing what I was supposed to be doing.

I climbed up to the hayloft and found a second flashlight. I stuck it in my back pocket and turned the lantern to its lowest setting, hoping to keep our hideout a secret. I finished the chore that Ash had begun, arranging us a makeshift bed.

He had brought two pillows from the house, and I fluffed them, placed them next to each other. And then I unfolded a few more blankets, laid them out for us to sleep under. I noticed that the yellow quilt looked handmade. I kneeled in the sweet-smelling hay and took the flashlight out of my pocket. I shined the light onto the seams of the quilt, and sure enough, it was all hand-sewn, a patchwork quilt with
many different materials, mostly yellows and oranges, calicoes and ginghams, plaids and florals.

I wondered to myself if Ash’s mom had made this beautiful piece of handiwork. As I kicked off my boots and changed into my blue flannel pajamas covered in ducks, I decided that she must have.

I quickly snuggled underneath the blankets and thought about how it would’ve been nice to meet her, to know her, to talk with her.

I looked up through the peaked barn roof above me. It was low, closer to me than a normal ceiling. I peered through the wooden slats of the roof. I could see the stars, clearly, brightly shining in the dark winter sky. Tiny bursts of light twinkling through the dreary gray slats. I lay there for a long moment and looked at the stars. And I hoped against hope.

I sat up for a second and reached for my backpack then, and I took out the yellow Dala horse for good luck. I looked around, searching for somewhere, some ledge, in the hayloft where I could place it. A little piece of our haven, our cabin. I realized then that there was something written on the underside of that horse that I’d never noticed. I turned it over and shone the flashlight on it. In tiny red writing, it read, “A life without love is like a year without summer. —Swedish proverb.” Smiling, I placed the Dala horse under my pillow.

I snuggled into the cozy bed and tried to set my worrying aside. I tried to recapture that feeling that I usually had in the loop, that feeling of only the here and now, that feeling
that nothing much else mattered. I was here with Ash, now. I smiled to myself and cuddled under the warm blankets and the soft downy yellow quilt.

I was exhausted, but my mind was reeling. The day had been too long. Too much had happened. Too much was still in front of us. What were we going to do?

I was lying in bed biting my nails when I heard Ash’s boots on the ladder to the hayloft. He didn’t say a word. I heard him shuck off his boots. Then I could feel the heat of his body instantly, as he lifted up the comforter and climbed in next to me. His hands encircled my waist, and he pulled me toward him.