Surviving Valencia

She pulled a folded sheet of paper from her pocket. “This is where I’m going, you goddamned little know-it-all. You think you’re so smart. You’re going to be sorry tonight ever happened.”

It was a pamphlet for a support group of parents who had lost their children. It was from the church three blocks away. My mouth opened but nothing came out and I closed it again.

I watched her brushing at her eyes as she clomped down the street.

Chapter 31

Three days had passed since the latest mystery letter had arrived. Three days of going crazy, crying in the bathroom, sneaking cigarettes. I carried my phone with me at all times, 911 just a few clicks away, my fingers on it like it was the trigger of a gun.

Adrian was back.

“Honey, what’s going on? What’s the matter?” he kept asking.

I didn’t want him to touch me. What I needed to do was go to the police. Instead, every time he left me for any length of time, I went back to the bookshelf and pulled down the decorating book. I had to be discreet. I would watch his car going down the street and when it turned the corner I would race to the bookshelf.

The long, white envelope hiding within the book bore a Minneapolis postmark and three ordinary stamps in a neat row. Inside were two old Polaroid photos, both unmistakably my sister. She was wearing her green sweater I’d seen her wear dozens of times. In one I could see her gold watch, a graduation gift from our grandparents. Duct tape was over her mouth but her eyes were open and focused on the camera. She was very scared and very much alive.

Her hands were bound with duct tape also, positioned peculiarly as if she had been told to pray while the tape was wrapped around them. In both she was curled up like they had been taken when she was somewhere small and uncomfortable. Then it became obvious to me that she was stuffed into the place where a passenger’s feet go in a vehicle. A big vehicle, like a truck. I could make out part of the dashboard and glove box above her head.

At the bottom of each Polaroid, scrawled in black ink, was her name: Valencia Loden. As someone might name a recipe card or a folder in a file cabinet. This made me think that whoever did this had a need to keep organized, that Valencia was one of many.

Typed on the notebook paper was the message ADRIAN CORBIS, The past ALWAYS catches up with you. It’s only fair…

It was impossible for me to believe that Adrian could seriously have anything to do with this. I needed to talk to him and show these to him. We needed to go to the police. My brother and sister weren’t accident victims; they were murder victims. And these letters were a direct connection from the killer straight to our door, which obviously led me to believe we could be next.

But why were they addressed to Adrian instead of to me? Wasn’t I more of a missing link than he was? I began to think perhaps he really was involved, and the implications of this, of our entire life together, gave me chills.

I decided I had to talk to him.

But I was afraid of what he would say, and I could not bring myself to do so.

And then I decided that I must, must, talk to my parents about this. But every scenario I played out in my head was a hysterical, out of control mess.

So I decided then I would go to the police, alone. I’d talk to them, let them sort this out. But I was skeptical of how they would handle this, of whether they would be honest, or smart, or thorough enough to really help me. And to go to them, before speaking with Adrian was a betrayal. It was resigning myself to his guilt. I imagined his eyes, pained. I imagined him being taken away from me and I felt as though my heart would break.

So in my usual fashion in times of crisis, I did nothing.

I stayed in my bathrobe and I drank coffee in place of food. And over and over and over again I went to the book and touched, smelled, devoured the pictures of my sister. Long forgotten details of her. Purple embroidered flowers along the cuff of her sweater, right where the duct tape ended. Despite the Savannah heat, I got goose bumps of cold and fear, feeling I was with her, feeling I was her. My memories, scenes frozen in amber, thawed and seeped from the forgotten depths of my mind, catching my present self in their rich sap, immobilizing me further. I was in quicksand. Like an Alzheimer’s case, the past was real and the present was only a bad, fuzzy dream.

Long forgotten glimpses of 1986 were coming back to me. I remembered our house filling with relatives in days following the twins’ deaths, and a woman I had never met before trying to force feed me pumpkin pie. I could smell the pie, the memory was so vivid. One of my little cousins was there and he broke a coffee cup. The pieces got swept into a corner and stayed there for days, weeks. The most absurd thing was one of my aunts somberly handing me a booklet about getting my period. I already knew all about periods. I had read Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret at least four times. Who would think to bring that for me? I guess to those who knew my mother best, it was obvious she would be taking early retirement.

My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the garage door opening. I shoved the pictures back in the book and replaced the book on the shelf, my heart beating so hard that the sound of it seemed to echo off the walls. I ran and sat down in the living room. If I was going to talk to Adrian about this, we needed to be somewhere safe. A public place with lots of people around. Just in case.

Just in case.

I hated myself for thinking that, but I did think it.

Wherever we went, it could not be too small or quiet. I couldn’t risk us being overheard. We needed to go somewhere busy. Bustling. Like a diner. Or a pancake house.

I heard him come in, go into the kitchen, set down something on the table. I heard the jangle of keys and the rustle of paper.

“Hi, Honey.” He appeared before me with one hand behind his back. I stiffened against the back of the couch. “For you,” he said, presenting me with a small bouquet of flowers.

“Thanks,” I said. “What’s the occasion?”

“Well…” He sat down beside me and put his arm around me, “You’ve been acting a little funny since we’ve been trying to get pregnant, and I just want you to know that if this isn’t the right time for you, then it’s not the right time for me either. I just wanted you to know… it’s okay.”

He gave me a little hug and we both sat there in silence until I got up to put the flowers in water.