that she’d only gone for a walk, that any moment she would walk back in the door with a handful of late-summer berries or a single fallen maple leaf, like a giant golden palm. We pretended that she’d only gotten lost in the colors of fall.
Sometimes I’d sit on the porch and squint my eyes, imagining that the red of a maple tree was the velour bathrobe Daddy had given her three Christmases earlier. That the wind was her hair. But inevitably, the trees remained trees and she didn’t come home.
When she left, she didn’t take much, just enough to let us know that she’d gone willingly. A suitcase, a fisherman’s sweater. Her favorite jeans, her shoes and socks and toothbrush. When I ran away at six years old, I took the same sorts of things: my tattered sock monkey, six pairs of underwear, a hairbrush. Of course, I only got as far as Lake Gormlaith before I turned around and came home. But she wasn’t a child; she wasn’t afraid of leaving.
It wasn’t until later that I found the other missing things. The good flashlight, the radio, the pocketknife I’d won at the state fair. Her best slip, a scarab bracelet from Boo, and the copy of Alice in Wonderland we bought at the library sale that reminded her of the one she had when she was little. The magnetic plastic pages of the photo album didn’t lie right now that some of the photos were gone: my first cartwheel, Quinn learning to ski. I searched my drawers for other things she might have taken; I ran my fingers through my hair, wondering if she might have cut a lock of it while I was sleeping.
I think I was the first one to realize that she wasn’t coming home. Daddy and Quinn didn’t know her like I did. They believed she needed them, when I knew she didn’t need any of us.
In September, I started high school, terrified by the maze of classrooms and the ease with which everyone seemed to move along the pale green hallways. I sat near windows. I spoke to no one. I thought my silence might make me invisible, as if a voice alone could make you real. Becca and I had opposite schedules. We passed each other in the hall, similarly scared, but reversed, like faces in a funhouse mirror. We had the same lunch period, thankfully, and we sat at the far end of the cafeteria, studying the gestures of the pretty girls and the way the boys walked. For twenty minutes each day we pretended that all of this would be all right, that some of the Quimby kids might befriend us, that we didn’t come from a town without a name. But it was clear early on that the dividing lines were drawn long before we got there. We were the poor kids, the Pond kids—as if we’d come from the murky depths of the sawdust-bottomed Pond instead of from our mothers’ wombs. And with my mother gone, it seemed this could be true.
Quinn was a senior that year. Sometimes I saw him emerging from the boys’ bathroom in a halo of smoke, hands shoved into his pockets, laughing with the other guys. He would nod at me, but we didn’t speak. I knew that he had worked too hard for this, and I wouldn’t take it from him. He’d fought his way from the depths of the Pond, crawled out, evolved.
When school was over and we were outside the big brick building, he’d find Becca and me sitting under a tree by the football field and offer to drive us to Boo’s on his way to work at the Shop-N-Save. Quinn drove our mother’s car, another thing she had left behind. There were still candy wrappers from her Tootsie Rolls in the ashtray, and an empty paper coffee cup rimmed with her lipstick rolling on the floor. I would let Becca sit up front while I peered through the back window at everything falling away.
At Boo’s shop, we played dress-up: Becca searching the discarded clothes for some hidden treasure, and I for clues about where my mother had gone.
“Look at this!” Becca said, pulling a paisley scarf from a plastic bag like a magician.
Someone had just dropped off ten Hefty bags full of clothes and ties and shoes.
Boo was sitting behind the makeshift counter, untangling a mountain of costume jewelry. “It’s silk, I think,” she said, looking up over the tops of her glasses. She and my mother didn’t look related. She was Mum’s little sister, but while my mother was miniature, like a doll, Boo was like me. Tall. Big hands, long legs. Boo had even played basketball for the UVM girls’ team. Sometimes when the shop was quiet, she and I would shoot hoops outside the garage.
I tore open one bag, and a bunch of scuffed shoes fell out. They smelled like sweaty feet.
Becca stood in front of the full-length mirror, adjusting the scarf around her neck and head. The burgundy swirls clashed with her strawberry hair.
I reached for another bag. It was light. Inside were two pillows, lumpy and stained. “Ugh,” I said and tossed it in the trash can.
“Someone dropped off some dresses. Nice ones,” Boo said. “Why don’t you look through those instead?” She motioned toward a rolling rack at the far end of the garage.
Becca let the scarf fall from her hair and rushed to the rack.
I sat down next to Boo on an orange leather hassock. The stitching was coming undone, and the stuffing inside was gray.
“How’s school?” she asked.
“I hate it.”
She nodded and worked on the chains in her fingers.
“How’s your dad?” she asked.
I shrugged. For the first few weeks after Mum left, Daddy stayed at home, sitting on the front porch smoking cigarettes, staring into the trees. I think he saw the red of her ratty old bathrobe among them, too. But when it was clear she wasn’t coming back to us, he didn’t wait anymore. In the mornings, he’d get dressed as if he were going to work, and then he’d get in his truck and leave. Sometimes he didn’t come home until midnight, and I knew he was looking for her. I imagined him driving all over the state, to Burlington and Rutland and Montpelier, searching for her, as if she would just be walking along the edge of the interstate or sitting in a restaurant somewhere and he would be able to take her hand and lead her home. He wasn’t looking for a job, because he was too busy looking for her. I didn’t tell Boo that, though. I only shrugged.
Becca had something pink in her hands. “Can I try this one on?” she asked shyly.
“Of course, honey. Use the bathroom inside.”
Becca scurried into the house, and I watched Boo’s fingers. Three silver chains, knotted and intertwined. A heart pendant, someone’s class ring, a broken locket.
“Tell me about Gramma,” I said.
Boo rolled her eyes.
“Please?”
“Which story?” she asked, loosening one of the reluctant necklaces.
“The one about when she finally left Grampa and took the train to California.” In this story, which Boo and my mother told together, my grandmother wore a straight gray skirt and a hat with a peacock feather. She carried a plaid suitcase in one hand and a train case filled with makeup in the other. In this story, she smelled like Evening in Paris perfume. My mother once found one of the midnight-blue bottles, broken and buried in the mud near the Pond, and she held it in the palm of her hands like a wounded baby bird.
Boo set the jewelry down and looked at me sadly. “Your mum didn’t go to California,” she said softly.
My throat ached. I looked at her, but she wouldn’t look at me. Her fingers worked the tangled necklaces, her eyes straining in concentration.
My throat was thick, my hands shaking. “Tell me,” I said
