Lauren Miller - Free to Fall

“I don’t know,” my dad replied. “She asked me not to open it and I haven’t. It’s been in a safety deposit box at Northwest Bank since two days after you were born.”

I reached for the envelope first. The front was blank, but when I picked it up, I saw handwriting on the back. My mom had written my name, in blue ink, right along the seam of the flap. I recognized her handwriting from the tag she’d pinned to my baby blanket, which I kept in a little zippered pouch on my nightstand. Aurora. I hated my name, the hardness of the r ’s, but in my mom’s loopy script, it looked so feminine and delicate, so unlike its typewritten form. I touched my finger to my tongue and then pressed it onto the tip of the cursive capital A . The ink bled a little, and when I pulled my finger away, there was a faint blue stain on my skin. It seemed impossible, that the same blue that had been in my mother’s pen, a pen that she’d held and written with when she was very much alive, was now on my finger. I felt tears creeping toward the corners of my eyes, and I blinked them away.

Writing in ink along the edge of an envelope’s flap is like sealing it with wax. If it’s been opened, you can tell because the tops of the letters don’t line up exactly with the bottoms. These were unbroken. Is that why my mom had written my name where she had, to let me know that the words inside were meant for only me? My heart lifted just a little at the thought.

“Are you going to open it?” my dad asked. He was, I realized, as curious as I was about its contents. I slipped the envelope into my bag.

“Not yet,” I said, and reached for the box. The gift I would open now; the note I would save until I was alone.

The box was lighter than I expected it to be, and when I picked it up off the table, I heard a sliding rattle as its contents slipped to one side. I took a breath and lifted the lid. Inside was a silver cable chain with a thick rectangular pendant. My dad smiled when I pulled it from the box.

“I thought that might be what it was,” he said. “She didn’t have it on when she d—” He choked a little, his eyes dropping to the table. “When you were born. I always wondered what she’d done with it.”

“This was hers?” I asked.

He nodded.

“She came back from Theden with it,” he said.

I palmed the pendant, studying the odd symbol etched into its surface. It looked kind of like a fishhook with the number thirteen beneath it. Her graduation year. “What is it?” I asked.

Dad shrugged. “I always assumed it was some school thing,” he said. “Your mom never said. But she treasured that necklace. I’m not sure I ever saw her take it off.”

I set the pendant back in the box. “I’m so confused, Dad. Why would Mom ask you to lie to me?”

He hesitated for so long, I wondered if he was going to respond at all.

“Something happened to your mom at Theden,” he said finally. “She was different when she came back.”

“Different how?”

“The Aviana I grew up with was ambitious, for one thing. Not in a bad way. She just had these big dreams, you know? When she got into Theden, I figured that was it. She’d go, and she wouldn’t come back. And that was okay. I loved her. I just wanted her to be happy.”

“And was she?” I asked. “Happy?”

“I thought so. She had all these new friends and was always going on about her classes. When she didn’t come home for Christmas our senior year, I resigned myself to the fact that I probably wouldn’t see her again. Your grandparents were gone by then, so she didn’t have much of a reason to come back.” His brow furrowed. “But then, about a week before she was supposed to graduate, she showed up at my house and told me she’d dropped out. She said she’d changed her mind about college. Didn’t want to go anymore. She said she wanted to start a family instead. Then she asked me to marry her.”

I stared at him. This bore no resemblance to the love story I’d heard growing up. Two high school sweethearts who eloped in the Kings County Courthouse on graduation day and honeymooned in a camping tent. That version made sense. This one didn’t. My dad could tell what I was thinking.

“Your mother was impulsive,” he replied. “Irresistibly impulsive. And I was powerless to refuse her.” He smiled and signaled for our waiter. But he hadn’t given me the answer I was looking for. He may have explained why he’d gotten married at eighteen, but not why my mother had wanted to, or, more important, why she would’ve dropped out of the most prestigious high school in the country just shy of graduation. Why she would’ve given up her future for something that could’ve waited.

“And that’s it? That’s the whole story?”

Dad looked hesitant, like he didn’t want to say yes but couldn’t in good conscience say no. “Your mom, she was unlike anyone I’d ever met,” he said finally. “She had this . . . quality about her. An inner calm. Even when we were kids. She didn’t worry about stuff the way the rest of us did. It was like she was immune to it almost.” He paused, and the thought I did not inherit that shot through my head. His eyes were sad when he continued. “When she showed up at my house that day, she seemed . . . shaken. But when I’d ask her about it, she’d shut down.”

“What could’ve happened to her?” I asked.

“I’ve asked myself that question a thousand times,” Dad replied. “Wishing I’d pressed her more to find out. But I thought I had time. I didn’t think she’d . . .”

The unspoken word hung heavily between us. He didn’t think she’d die . But she had, just eight months later.

“But something happened,” I said. “Something must’ve.”

Eventually Dad nodded. “Something must’ve,” he said.

“PEANUTS OR PRETZELS?”

“Pretzels.” Hershey held out her hand without looking up. We were midair, side by side in first class (thank you, Theden), and I was waiting for her to fall asleep so I could finally open the card from my mom, but my companion was completely immersed in one of the many gossip magazines she’d downloaded to her tablet. I hadn’t slept the night before, thinking about that little paper rectangle, wondering what it said, hoping it would answer the shit storm of questions in my head.

“Sir? Peanuts or pretzels?” The flight attendant had moved on to the man across the aisle from me.

“Peanuts,” he mumbled, and the flight attendant reached into her cart.

“Uh, actually, would you mind having pretzels instead?” The man, Hershey, and the flight attendant all looked at me. “I’m allergic to peanuts,” I explained.

“There was no allergy listed on the manifest,” the flight attendant said accusingly. “Cindy!” she called down the aisle. “Is there an allergy on the manifest?” Cindy consulted her tablet then came running toward us, tripping over a man’s foot and nearly face-planting in the process. I heard Hershey snort.

“Aurora Vaughn, 3B. Peanuts.”

Our flight attendant’s expression went from accusing to five-alarm fire. She started snatching peanut packages from passengers in neighboring rows.

“Sorry,” I said to the guy across the aisle.

“So what would happen if you ate one?” Hershey asked me as the flight attendant handed me a bag of pretzels.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I had a pretty bad reaction to a peanut butter cracker when I was three. A woman at my daycare had to use an EpiPen.”

“Does it freak you out?” Hershey asked. “Knowing that you’re one poor snacking choice away from death?”

I looked at her. Seriously? Who said things like that?