Chapter 11 - What The Scarf Remembered
The motel heater clicked on and off all night and never really warmed the room. I laid the scarf across the second bed and left it there while I brushed my teeth, while I tried to sleep, while I gave up and sat at the small table with the photo.
In daylight the spill from the trash bag looked different. The scarf wasn't ruined, just creased where it had been folded under one of my dresses. Blue border, small patterned center. I'd stopped wearing it because the silk had thinned at one corner. I ran my thumb over that spot until the threads went soft with heat from my skin.
The photo I'd saved was the lake. Me at nineteen or twenty, sitting on a dock with my feet in the water. My mom beside me, laughing at something out of frame. I'd looked at the front a dozen times since the driveway. That morning in the motel I turned it over.
There was writing on the back. Faded blue ink, slanted left.
July — keep this one, E.
I stared at it so long the letters blurred. Then I got the folder out of my tote and set it on the table next to the photo. For Emma, When He Betrays You. Same slant. Same left lean on the E. Same way the pen lifted too fast off the y so it almost disappeared.
My hands went cold. I hadn't compared them before because I hadn't wanted to. I held the photo edge to the folder edge, back and forth, like that would change it.
It didn't change.
I called Denise from the motel phone because my cell was down to eight percent and I didn't want to waste it. She picked up on the third ring with road noise behind her.
"It's early," she said. "You okay?"
I told her I was at the motel off the highway. I told her about the writing. She went quiet in a way that meant she was pulling over.
"Read it to me again," she said.
"July — keep this one, E. And on the folder, For Emma, When He Betrays You. It's the same hand."
"You sure?"
"No," I said. "But I think so."
I described the letters. The E with the middle line short. The way the o didn't quite close. Denise didn't answer right away. I could hear a turn signal.
"That scarf," she said. "The blue one?"
I looked at it spread on the bed. "Yeah."
"I remember that scarf. You wore it to your aunt's anniversary party. At the country club."
I closed my eyes. I could see the ballroom carpet, the round tables. I had borrowed a navy dress that was too long and used the scarf to cover the strap where it kept slipping.
"Carol's party?" I said. "My mom's sister?"
"That one. You kept adjusting it all night. Your mom kept telling you to leave it alone."
I almost smiled. Then it landed. My mother had been there. Carol had been there. The older women from my mom's side, all in the group photo by the cake.
"Who took pictures that night?" I asked.
Denise thought. "Your uncle had one of those film cameras. But your Aunt Carol was the one writing names on the back of everything. She always did that. She did it at your graduation party too."
My throat tightened. Aunt Carol had died three years ago. I had her casserole dish in a box somewhere and a Christmas card she'd sent with a twenty folded inside after I got married.
"Emma?" Denise said. "You still there?"
"I kept thinking the writer was someone my age," I said. "Someone warning me about him. But this handwriting — if it's Carol, she'd have been in her sixties when she wrote on the photo."
"That fits a generation that would write 'when he betrays you,'" Denise said carefully. "Not if. When."
I didn't answer. I was looking at the scarf again. Carol had complimented it that night. She'd tied it differently for me in the bathroom, looser at the neck. She'd said blue was my color.
"Where's her stuff now?" Denise asked.
"Storage," I said. "After she died, her son put what was left in a unit out by the county road. He told me if I ever wanted to go through the family boxes, he'd leave my name on it."
"Do you think there's more writing to compare?"
I folded the scarf once, then again. It made a soft sound against the bedspread.
"I think I have to look," I said.
Denise didn't try to talk me out of it. She asked if I wanted her to come. I told her no, not yet. I needed to see it alone first, before I made it mean something.
After we hung up I packed the tote slowly. Scarf on top, folded flat. Photo slipped between two pages of the motel notepad so it wouldn't bend. Folder underneath, where I didn't have to look at the handwriting until I chose to.
At the door I stopped with my hand on the knob. The heater clicked off. The room went very quiet.
May you like
I wasn't ready to say Carol's name as the answer. I wasn't ready to say anyone's name. But the slant of that E wouldn't leave me alone.
I checked out at the front desk, asked the clerk to hold the room for one more night, and pulled out onto the highway toward the storage units, with the scarf in the passenger seat and the photo where I could see it at red lights.
