As Luke pulls into my driveway, the porch light blinks on. I glance at the dashboard clock and realize that it’s nearly eight o’clock, which is not so strange, except that I left before eleven this morning and haven’t called since.
“She must be worried.” Luke says what I’m thinking.
“She should be,” I say.
“Go easy on her.”
“I’ll try,” I reply weakly before I slide out of the van and head inside to confront my mother and discover the truth about my missing memories.
35
“Who was Jonas?” I ask again, somehow guessing the answer but needing confirmation.
My mother’s eyes share a mixture of shock and sorrow that makes me want to look away.
But I don’t.
“Who was he, Mom?” I ask a third time, softer now.
“How do you know…” She looks down at her hands. I stay still, watching her realize that how doesn’t matter.
Mom lifts her gaze once more, but though her head is high now, her posture has cracked.
“Jonas was your brother,” she says in a near whisper.
I am silent, unable to ask her to go on, but she does anyway.
“He died.”
“I know. I was at the cemetery. I saw his tombstone.”
“Why…” She stops herself. “Well, that part doesn’t matter.”
“I’ll tell you how I ended up there after you tell me what happened to my brother,” I say, a tear racing down my cheek, “and why you lied about him. Lied about me.”
“Oh, London, I didn’t lie. I kept a very sad truth from you. I thought…”
“What, that I should be blissfully stupid my whole life?”
“That I could save you the pain,” Mom says, touching her hand to her cheek in anticipation of tears to come. I can see that I’ve exposed an old wound. A very deep, painful one.
“Something terrible happened to him a long time ago,” Mom begins, glancing at me every so often but mostly watching the patterns in the carpet, as if they’re feeding her lines. “Your brother was taken. And killed.”
I inhale sharply. “Who did it?”
“We never knew.”
My mother’s shoulders are heaving now, and I’m the parent for a moment as I walk over to the couch and hold her in my arms. She cries on my shoulder for a brother I can’t remember.
I want to know more, but I can see that talking about it is devastating to her.
>“Thank you,” I whisper, edging closer to the stone.
“No trouble,” Santa says, turning back toward the shed. “Take your time; I’ll close up when you leave.”
I hear his boots crunch away as my eyes lock on the piece of stone like it’s going to grow a mouth and tell me all the answers.
WIFE, MOTHER, GRANDMOTHER, FRIEND