Chapter 12 of 28·5 min read·The next morning through that afternoon
The Address on the Hill
The next morning, Mara copied the Duluth address onto an index card, though the same address was already written in Elena’s hand inside the box. She copied it because the act gave her something to do while June made coffee and Thomas stood by the museum’s emptied display cases, looking at the pale rectangles where labels had hung.
“It’s a house now,” June said. She had Ruth’s old tenant records spread beside the copier. “At least, according to the county site. The building was converted into apartments in 2003. Teresa Venn has no current record under that name.”
“She may not use it,” Mara said.
“People who want to be found usually leave a forwarding address.”
Mara slid the index card into her coat pocket. “She left one.”
June’s mouth tightened. “Twenty-eight years ago.”
Noah arrived before Mara could answer. He carried two paper cups and a canvas bag containing a sweater, a phone charger, and the practical supplies he brought whenever his mother was about to do something she had already decided was unreasonable.
“You’re going to Duluth,” he said.
Mara took the coffee. “We are.”
“Who is we?”
“Me and you, apparently.”
He looked at June. “Did she ask?”
“No,” June said. “She announced.”
Thomas remained by the cases. “I can drive.”
“No,” Mara said.
He accepted that without protest. His silence had become another form of injury, something she kept finding herself touching.
June gathered the papers into a folder. “Call from the road. If Tess answers, don’t start with the pump house.”
“What should I start with?”
“Your name. Her name. Something that doesn’t sound like an accusation.”
Mara looked toward Thomas. “He said she didn’t exist.”
“I know. That’s why I’m suggesting a gentler opening.”
The drive north took four hours. Snow lay in the fields in thin, dirty bands, and the highway narrowed whenever wind lifted it across the pavement. Noah drove with both hands on the wheel. Mara held Elena’s photograph in her lap, the one showing Elena and Tess on the steps of the Minneapolis building. Cal stood behind them, smiling toward the person who had taken the picture.
“He looks like someone who was always being forgiven,” Noah said.
Mara glanced at him. “You’ve never met him.”
Next
Mara is about to hear Elena’s recorded explanation, but Tess’s warning suggests that the accepted story of the camera began with a memory Mara cannot trust.
She put the photograph back in its envelope. The car filled with the sound of tires on wet road.
After an hour, Noah said, “You don’t have to make her tell you everything.”
“I know.”
“You also don’t have to make her forgive Elena.”
“I know that too.”
He nodded, though neither answer seemed to satisfy him. He had learned not to push when she used that tone. Mara wondered whether she had taught him restraint or merely passed down the family method for refusing a subject.
The address led them to a steep street above the harbor, where narrow houses stood close together behind iron railings. Number 418 had been divided into three apartments. The front steps were swept, and a blue ceramic bird hung beside the door.
Mara checked the card. The number was correct.
Noah remained at the curb. “Do you want me to come?”
She looked at the door. “Wait here.”
“Absolutely not.”
“You’re not part of this.”
“I’m your son. That’s worse.”
She almost smiled. Then she climbed the steps.
A woman answered on the third knock. She was perhaps forty-five, with dark hair cut close to her jaw and a pale, narrow scar running from beneath her lower lip toward her chin. Age had not erased it. It had simply given the mark a place among other lines.
Mara stopped before she could speak.
The woman looked at her, then past her to Noah waiting by the car. “You took your time.”
Mara’s fingers closed around the index card in her pocket. “Teresa Venn?”
“Not usually.”
“Do you know who I am?”
“I know who you were.”
The woman’s eyes moved to the photograph in Mara’s hand. Mara had not remembered taking it out. Tess recognized the image without seeing the front.
“Elena said you would come when the museum closed,” Tess said.
“It hasn’t closed yet.”
“That’s not what she meant.”
Wind pushed a strand of Tess’s hair across her cheek. She tucked it back, exposing the scar completely. Mara remembered it beneath the pump-house light, a pale slash on a girl’s face turned toward the camera. She remembered, too, her own hands gripping the camera and Elena shouting from somewhere beyond the flash.
“May we come in?” Mara asked.
Tess did not move. “Is Thomas Reed with you?”
“No.”
“Is he still pretending he saved everyone?”
Mara felt the question settle between them. “He says he helped conceal what happened.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“No.”
Tess studied her for another few seconds. Then she opened the door wider. “Your son can come in. He looks less likely to tell me what I remember.”
Noah joined them, carrying the canvas bag. The entryway smelled of cedar and frying onions. Tess led them into a small sitting room crowded with books, folded blankets, and framed photographs turned face down on a shelf. She pointed to two chairs but stayed standing.
Mara sat. Noah remained beside the door.
“Elena told me you remembered the pump house,” Mara said.
“I remembered before she told me what to call it.”
“Did Daniel fall through the cover?”
Tess’s expression did not change, but her thumb rubbed against the side of her hand. “Yes.”
“Did Raymond close the door?”
“Yes.”
“Who was the other man?”
Tess looked toward the covered photographs. “You still want the answer to be one person.”
Mara waited.
“There were two men outside after Raymond took your camera,” Tess said. “One was Thomas. The other was Cal. But Cal was not there to help Raymond. Not at first.”
Noah shifted near the door. Mara kept her gaze on Tess.
“What does that mean?”
“It means your sister misunderstood him, and I misunderstood her. We all kept changing the story so we could stay inside it.”
“Did Elena leave with Cal?”
Tess’s eyes hardened. “She left because Cal found us. That isn’t the same as leaving with him.”
Mara thought of the photograph: Elena’s hand on Tess’s shoulder, Cal smiling behind them. The image had seemed to show protection and possession at once.
“Where did they go?”
“I don’t know where Elena went after 1996.” Tess crossed to a cabinet and unlocked the bottom drawer. “I know where she intended to go.”
She removed a small cassette tape in a cracked plastic case. A strip of masking tape bore Elena’s handwriting. Mara recognized the slant before she read the words.
*For Mara, if she asks the right question.*
Mara stood. “What is the right question?”
Tess held out the cassette but did not release it. “Not who hurt Daniel. You already know enough to be angry about that.”
“What, then?”
“Ask why Elena took your camera.”
Mara looked at the tape. “She didn’t. Raymond took it.”
“That’s what you remember.”
The sentence entered the room without raising its voice. Noah looked at Mara, but she did not turn toward him.
Tess let go of the cassette. “There’s a player in the kitchen. It still works. Listen before you decide Elena was protecting you.”
Mara took the tape. Its plastic case was warm from Tess’s hand.
Outside, a ship sounded once in the harbor, low and distant. Tess moved toward the kitchen, and Noah stepped aside to let her pass. Mara remained in the sitting room with the tape in her palm and the covered photographs along the wall.
She had come for Tess’s memory of what happened after the flash. Instead, Tess had placed Elena’s voice between them and suggested that Mara’s own memory had begun earlier than she knew.