Page 198 of One Wild Wish

Three extended beats later, he moved away, my serenity leaving with him. “Take your time with her stuff,” he said. “I’ll make myself at home.”

Easier said than done in a packed-up house, but August knew these walls as well as me. He’d been the one to make pencil marks in the pantry every year I grew taller. He moved that way now, toward the kitchen, farther from me. The distance felt physically painful. I also appreciated it; he always knew what I needed.

I examined the relic before me. Billy Idol stickers. INXS. Depeche Mode. I traced the stained graphics, beyond baffled. Maybe someone had lent my mother the case. Someone who’d enjoyed music and had let loose. Someone who hadn’t shuffled through a quiet life.

Afraid to disturb its contents, I eased the suitcase on its side and opened it. A musty smell hit me full force. I rubbed my nose, but the stale aroma stuck to my nostrils. Seventeen years of confined clothing.

Clothes I couldn’t believe had belonged to my mother.

Sitting cross-legged, I pulled out one item at a time: a neon windbreaker, high-waisted jeans, a micro-mini skirt, bright tank tops that would fit Barbie-Man. She would have been twenty-eight when this went missing, not sixteen. The styles were as baffling as the concert stickers, until I noticed the Rolling Stone magazine below, from 1990.

The year I was born.

Could these contents and band stickers have been from then? They certainly fit the bill, but that wouldn’t explain the eleven-year gap between being packed and sent on a Greyhound bus.

More confused than ever, I spent time with each piece, smoothed the worn fabrics, tried to picture my mother in something other than black, white, gray, or beige. She’d kept her hair short, her shoes functional and flat. Whoever this Mary Hamilton had been, she’d had questionable taste, too, but colorful.

Two pairs of shoes were below her clothing. One was a cute set of beaded sandals. Sandals I’d actually wear. I ran my fingers over the blue beads, unsure how this miniskirt wearing, INXS-loving girl had had the color sucked from her life. Except the possible answer had my throat feeling thick. If the Rolling Stone date was the more accurate one, if these contents were from 1990, not 2001, then I was the thing that had sucked her color dry.

I’d been the child she hadn’t wanted.

I clenched and unclenched my hands, unsure why my heart rate had picked up. I didn’t love my mother. Miss her? Not on your life. She was unimportant, a barely-there blip on my ancestral radar. So why was I zoning out, staring at nothing while my lungs worked double-time?

Too much history had been unearthed today. August. My WTF. My crappy childhood. August. An unhealthy amount of time passed as I touched those sandals.

Eventually, I shook my head and reached for the other shoes. These were odd—soft black leather with laces and small square heels. Deep creases ringed the middles as though the arches had been bent every which way. Jazz shoes? For dancing? I snorted out a laugh. This was too much. Picturing my mother taking a bong hit was easier than imagining her shaking jazz hands. These couldn’t belong to a woman who’d never listened to music.

I turned the soft shoes over, ran my fingers along the soles and laces. Inside the heel was a scribbled name: Mary Hamilton. My breath caught.

That tiny scrawl shot this reality home, confirming beyond a doubt these belongings had been hers. The mother I’d come to resent had lived a phantom life.

I moved faster, going through her toiletries (red lipstick, the woman had red lipstick!), sifting through her lacy underwear, and a bible. The bible made sense. From what I knew of my grandparents, they were religious. The zealot sort whose lives revolved around church. I set the book aside, along with every other article she’d lost. Nothing pointed to any friends she’d had, or a boyfriend. I still couldn’t accurately gauge what year it was all from. It was just stuff, like August had said.

That didn’t stop me from another exhaustive analysis, the same intense focus I used at my job.

When couples applied for adoption, I double, triple, and quadruple checked their facts, making sure babies were matched with the right parents. If Mary Hamilton had applied for a baby from me, I wouldn’t have allowed her to adopt a Home Economics egg.

But every day, I made families whole. I helped babies land in loving homes, with caring parents who would nurture and protect them, everything I never had.

I applied the same extensive analysis to the artifacts before me. I turned every item of clothing inside out. I checked the edges of the suitcase. I flipped through the entire Rolling Stone issue, finding nothing but one dog-eared page: a “fancy” boombox advertising quality CD sound. Totally cool and retro, but not a clue to my father’s identity or the suitcase’s origin.

I started again.

Partway through my third pass, strumming teased my ears. August. I blinked at my surroundings, unsure how long I’d been searching through the case. A glance at my phone told me almost two hours had passed. Two hours, and August was still here. He must have found my old guitar among the boxes. My small pile of memories I couldn’t part with.

He played a quiet tune, familiar soft notes: America’s “Horse with No Name,” the first song he’d ever taught me. The simple melody flowed with only two chords, easy to teach. August had sat with his legs around me, my back rounded against his chest, his fingers moving mine along the strings. I’d figured it out pretty quick, but had pretended to struggle—to keep him close, to keep his hands on mine, to pretend I’d been brave enough to spin and press my lips to his.

His choice of song pulled at me. The nostalgia in here must be getting to him, too. Forgetting the mess I’d made on the floor, I leaned on my hand to push to my feet and sneak a peek of him, only to realize my mother’s bible had gotten lost under my debris. It caved slightly when I picked it up, the middle of it denting. Odd.

I shifted to my knees and opened the cover. “Holy shit,” I murmured.

My pulse was back to hammering, a frantic tune drowning August’s soft song. My mother, the apparent rebel, had cut out the interior of her bible like she’d been an undercover agent. Inside her hidey hole was a journal.

Carefully, I extricated the journal from its hiding spot and opened the cover. I grinned at the scrawled note:

If you’re reading this, you’ve stolen my property.

Put it back or face the consequences.