Laura McHugh - The Weight of Blood

She looked forward to spending the winter in the front room by the woodstove, gazing out over the dead fields and working on her quilts. As soon as the first hard frost hit, she dumped the bag of clothes on the floor and started cutting. She’d heard by then about the baby. Birdie Snow had told her. Ransome stitched a crib-sized quilt, piecing together bits of Lila’s abandoned jeans and shirts and nightgowns, and held back a square from one of the prettier blouses to use on another project.

She didn’t go to Lila’s baby shower, but she sent the quilt and let the gift speak for itself. She stayed home that day and sewed together the first two pieces of a new quilt: the silky square she had saved from Lila’s blouse, and one she had cut from the first girl’s pink T-shirt. Maria , she printed on the back of the pink square, and Lila on the other.

Over the years it fell to Ransome to clean up what the girls left behind, and they almost always left clothes. They shed their outfits like old skins, leaving them in piles on the floor. She tried to pick something she remembered the girl wearing, something to link a face and name, and she’d cut a square and sew it to the rest. Her quilt of lost girls. It felt right to keep a record, guilt stitched into the seams. She touched the squares and said their names, like a Catholic worrying rosary beads, so that when the time came to sew on the backing, she could still recite them by heart.

A few weeks after the tornado struck, Daniel and I sat on a blanket at the mouth of Old Scratch. It was an unlikely spot for a picnic, but the cool air from the cave was soothing in the late-August heat. I had brought a bouquet of wildflowers for my mother and placed them in a patch of sunlight nearby. One good thing had come out of the storm: Daniel had found work clearing debris, allowing us some time together before he had to go back to Springfield and start classes at the tech college.

“You ready for school to start?” Daniel asked, eyeing the remains of my lunch.

“Yes and no,” I said. I gave him my half-eaten sandwich, and he stuffed it in his mouth. “I’ll miss you around here. But it’s good that you’re going, I guess. At least my dad thinks so.”

He smiled. “Good that I’m going to school or good that I’ll be gone?”

I punched his arm. “You’ll visit, right?”

“Until you’re sick of me.”

We sat in silence for a while, staring into the cave. I didn’t know which, if any, of Crete’s last words were true, but I chose to believe that my mother hadn’t meant to leave me. I didn’t need to know everything about her to know how much she had loved me.

Daniel brushed my hair back over my shoulder. By now I’d stopped cataloging all the times he touched me; not that the thrill had worn off, just that I had lost track. He’d shown up at my house the day after the storm, walked up to the door, and pulled me into his arms without saying a word. He had kissed me right there, in front of my dad, who hadn’t even protested.

“You getting used to working for Carl?” he asked.

“He’s annoying,” I said. “But it’s kind of nice having him around.” However hard it was for Dad to sit at Crete’s desk every day, surrounded by reminders of his brother, he was unapologetically delighted to have a job that kept us tripping over each other every day. We’ll be spending a lot of time together before you leave for college , he’d said with a bittersweet smile.

I was worried about my dad. He couldn’t bring himself to say much to Birdie, though he knew she had shot Crete only out of fear for my life. I’d told him what I had found in Crete’s basement—the folder with Mom’s picture and her unsettling job application. Everything left his face: color, emotion, awareness. He retreated to his room to drink, and I went to stay with Bess and Gabby for a few days. They had stuck to me like a couple of seed ticks, constantly asking if I was okay.

While I was there, Gabby took me out to the woodpile to see the one remaining possum from the litter of babies I’d brought her back in May. Its siblings had all disappeared into the woods, but the last possum appeared to have formed a bond with its adoptive mother, the mama cat, and it had chosen to stay. Gabby got all teary when we found the cat and the possum curled up together to sleep, and Bess rolled her eyes and told her to go light a joint.

When Dad came to pick me up and take me home, he reeked of smoke, and his eyebrows were singed. He’d spent a whole day at Crete’s house, burning things. He’d carried all the boxes of paperwork out of the basement and set them on fire. He looked rough, but he was sober, so I got in the truck with him. Neither of us said anything on the ride home, but I figured when he was ready—if he ever was—he would talk.

Many things were in limbo. Ray said that, without a body, it could take years for Crete to be declared legally dead, yet he insisted that I see the will right away. Both houses, the store, the land, the insurance, an astonishing assortment of bank accounts: all in my name. For Lucy, who is like a daughter to me . However I tried to interpret them, those words hit me hard. I didn’t know for sure whether Crete had attacked my mother—and whether it was possible that he was my father—but I knew I was nothing like him and that Carl would always be my dad. Still, as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t escape the fact that Crete and I were family. We had loved each other. I had loved a monster, and a monster had loved me.

It was a relief for my dad to have our home and property restored to us, and while he’d never imagined himself a shopkeeper, it was clear he felt a sense of pride in taking over his father’s business. The cash was another matter altogether. In addition to the bank balances, there was the safe under Crete’s desk. Dad had drilled it open and found it packed with stacks of bills. I had no way of knowing how much of it was made off girls like Cheri and Holly. Girls like my mother. I wouldn’t keep it. I wanted to use it to help other girls escape, or to keep them from being trafficked in the first place. Ray promised to help me find the best organization to give the money to, and I would make the donation in Cheri’s name.

I hadn’t expected to feel guilt snaking through me as I read Crete’s will. The things he had left for me meant nothing compared to all that I’d lost, all that he’d taken away, and I hated him for it. He deserved to pay for what he’d done. But I’d never wanted him dead. I remembered how he had sung to me, though sometimes I wished I could forget.

It was well past lunchtime. Daniel and I needed to be heading back, but neither of us was in a hurry to leave.

“So, do you think you’ll come back here after college and take over the family empire someday?” Daniel asked.

I didn’t know the answer. The Ozarks did have a way of calling folks home, though I’d never thought I would be one of them. All my life I had told myself I didn’t belong here. Henbane was a map of the devil, his backbone, eye, and throat, its caves and rivers a geography of my loss. But I hadn’t taken into account how a place becomes part of you, claims you for its own. Like it or not, my roots tangled deep in the rocky soil. I would leave Henbane, but home sings in your bones, and I wondered how far I could go before the hills would call me back.

“Maybe,” I said, leaning in to him. “And if you’re lucky, maybe I’ll hire you.”

I ran my fingers along the chain around my neck; they came to rest on the blue butterfly. I’d taken Cheri’s necklace out of hiding, though I didn’t feel right wearing it. It would always belong to her. I unhooked the clasp and rose to place the necklace with the flowers. I’m sorry , I whispered. For everything . I hoped that somehow she could hear me.