“This,” I said, waving my hand around, “is where my grandfather met with visitors.”
“Okay,” Aaron said, like he was as sure as I was about why I had given him that information.
“I got to see…,” I said. Check and see if what I was feeling about things was the way they were.
We walked down the hall, our feet making whisper sounds on the wooden floor. Aaron stood close behind me. I could hear him breathing. The kitchen door was open. The sink brimmed with water. I hurried past the half bath, where that sink too, was full—to the bottom of the stairs that led up to the bedrooms and the big bathroom that Momma and Aunt Linda and I had shared over a year ago.
Neither Aaron nor I moved. Stood there. Looking up.
She’s gone. She’s gone. She’s gone.
“Seems like all the lights are on up there, too,” Aaron said. His voice was near my ear. “Does your mom usually leave everything turned on?”
Was he scared? He didn’t sound it.
You are.
Yes, I was afraid. Heart-thumping terrified.
“No,” I said. “Just the opposite.” My hand rested on the oak banister that wiggled a little when you touched it. I could smell the storm coming, dark and damp. “Especially in bad weather. She thinks lightning will strike us if we’re using the electricity.”
“Oh.” Aaron glanced behind himself, like maybe he measured the distance from where we stood to the front door and freedom.
“You can go home now, if you want,” I said, giving him a chance to get away.
“No,” he said. “I’m staying. Till you find her.”
Relief surged through me. “I better check upstairs then.” I paused. And looked him right in the face. “If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
Up we went then, his words the permission we needed. The landing was spotless, but had a musty, closed-up smell. Something it took me a minute to adjust to every time I came in from outside.
At the top of the stairs, I started thinking awful stuff.
Like what if Momma had killed herself? Or had fallen in the bathroom, where I knew we’d see the tub and sink full of water. Had banged her head? Had bled to death?
Outside thunder sounded and, as if on cue, the rain started, pinging on our tin roof. I switched the landing lights off. A long square of light fell from the bathroom, stopping at our feet. Behind us, the stairs were dark, but the last bits of sunshine splashed up the steps from the living room.
“My room first,” I said. I felt out of air.
Aaron said nothing, just hung close to me. I pushed open my door. Everything on in here too, even my desk lamp and the bulb in the closet.
But nothing else was changed. A deep breath of wind pushed into the room from the two open windows, blowing the curtains out till they almost touched the twin bed, still unmade, my jammies dropped on the floor where I’d stepped out of them. The closet door ajar.
I switched everything off, closed the closet with a slam, then shut the windows halfway.
“Momma’s room,” I whispered. “Let’s check there.”
Past the bathroom we tiptoed. Lights on. Tub full. Sink filled to overflowing. Momma’s almost dried and dirty footprints, feet bare, on the pale pink tile.
“She was here,” I said. Not that I had to. “But it’s been a while.”
“Uh-huh?” said Aaron, like it was a question.
How would I find Momma in her room? Dressed in nightclothes? Clean from a bath? Wearing Granddaddy’s old flannels shirt and blue jeans that were so big she had to tie them on?
Would she be half-naked? Angry at a stranger following me? Sleeping?
I tapped at the door and waited.
There was no sound from inside the room. Only the sigh of the storm, the patter of the rain from outside.
Turning the doorknob, I held my breath. I half expected, opening Momma’s bedroom door, to see her crouched in a corner in a T-shirt, her hair straggly, her eyes showing white. Here the lamp was on, too. I glanced around the room quick. But she wasn’t anywhere to be seen.
“What?” Aaron said. His voice sounded surprised. “Why?”
“Why what?” I said.
Aaron sounded breathless. “Why all the stuff? Why all the food?”
“Oh.” I waved my hand in the air, dismissing it. Then I looked back into my mother’s room and saw it the way it must look to Aaron.
Stacked to the ceiling along one wall were tuna, peaches, green beans, and other canned foods. On the side of the room that had a window was the toilet paper. Sanitary napkins. Tampons. Pads of paper bought cheap at Shopko. Crawling up the wall, covering most of the window. Boxes and boxes of M&M’s with almonds reached for the ceiling, too. And clothes, all different kinds of clothes, stored in plastic containers. Every wall, every window in the room, was hidden with Momma’s storage. Food, clothing, emergency items. All the things Granddaddy had said she should buy.
I spun around, facing Aaron, feeling defensive all the sudden. I leaned in his face. “What?” I said.
He almost couldn’t get the words out. “There’s so much,” he said.
“So?”
“I mean, it’s like a grocery store in here. Why do you have it all, Lacey?”
Yes, why?
I had no answer. I looked back in the room again. At everything. So much of everything that the two windows were blocked.
“I told you,” I said, turning to face Aaron. I clenched my teeth. Balled my fists. “I warned you things weren’t right.” I stared at him. Daring him. Daring him to run. To leave. So what! So what if I didn’t have a friend. So what if I was alone. I had been alone with Momma for a year. What was one more day?
“Oh,” Aaron said.
And then as fast as the defensiveness had come, a wave of tiredness swept over me. For a moment, I didn’t think I could keep up the search for my mother. For a moment, I wanted to walk back down the stairs, out the
