Alexandra Burt - The Good Daughter - A gripping, suspenseful, page-turning thriller

“All in all I’m still pretty shaken up about this woman in the woods,” I concede. “Please forgive me if I’m not making much sense. I don’t really understand what’s going on with my mother. Is there anything you can prescribe for her? Someone she should see?”

“Your mother’s diagnosis isn’t just a matter of a blood test or therapy. It’s hard to pinpoint any diagnosis at this point. I need to know more about her, but she seems tightlipped, which makes it difficult for me. There should be some extensive counseling and I have offered to set up an appointment with a colleague of mine, but”—I can hear him switching the phone to the other ear—“she just flat out declined.”

I punch down the urge to ask him the question that is rising like mutant dough over the rim of a bowl: the possibility of heredity.

“I prescribed her anxiety medication that should mellow her out some for now. Your mother isn’t bothered too much about anything but her purse. She is quite upset about it. She told me she lost it where the police picked her up. I assume she had her wallet and credit cards in there. She didn’t elaborate, but if you could make an attempt to locate her purse that would make life a lot easier. Not just on her.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“We are testing her for Alzheimer’s but I don’t think that is the case. We just want to make sure. She is scheduled for release in forty-eight hours. I really want to talk to you in person so I can get a better picture of what set her off. Do you think you can pick her up Wednesday afternoon? We can talk then?”

“Sure,” I say. “Anything else I can do?”

“Keep all stress away from her when she comes home, make sure she takes her medication, and just basically do what you can to keep her even-keeled.”

After I hang up the phone, I check under the sink for cleaning supplies. I rummage past the balled-up plastic bags and dirty sink towels, deformed and dried up. Empty spray bottles tumble out. There is Borax and some foam promising to do the work for you. Not a single sponge or glove. There is a jar. It seems to be an empty jelly or pickle jar, with the label pulled off partially but not quite; lots of white residue and glue sticks to the glass.

I lift it out of the dark below the sink and into the light, hold it up. It is a jar full of crickets, their antennae and legs tangled beyond recognition. There are about twenty of them, if not more. I shudder, wondering what that’s all about. Do people freeze and eventually cook them? I don’t know and I don’t plan on dwelling on it.

Later, at the market, I’m greeted by the scent of rotisserie chicken and a smile from a seventy-something age-spotted man with orthopedic shoes and a heavy limp. He offers me a cart and I decline, making my way straight to the cleaning supply section and grabbing one bottle of multipurpose cleaner, a box of wet mopping cloths, and yellow latex gloves. The lines are long; children are fussing and leaning out of carts, reaching for candy planted enticingly nearby. I don’t care to interact with anyone and use the self-checkout at the far end of the store.

The image of the crickets in the jar remains with me, even though I no longer ponder the logical reason as to its existence. I am realizing that most of my mother’s peculiarities cannot be explained by a sane mind. As I make my way back to the entrance, I pass a bank, a customer service counter, and a Western Union. On the wall that separates the restrooms, I see a poster dotted with pictures of children of all ages, declaring that Every Second Counts . I step closer. Individual pages behind document protectors are thumbtacked to a large blue board. I do the math; altogether there are eighty-four pages. Every page has a picture of a child, a name, gender, age, height, weight, eye, and hair color. This child was last seen on , then a date, sometimes a description of the circumstances— disappeared walking home from school or didn’t return from a friend’s house —and some have an additional age-progressed picture. I scan the missing dates and realize they reach as far back as ten years. Just a few of the pictures have a red Located banner across them.

I wonder where they are. Have they willingly abandoned their families or are some held captive? I cannot conceive of the fact that so many people, children at that, just float around somewhere, on the fringes of society, forgotten, abandoned, and written off. Those who are no longer alive ended up … where? In basements, ditches, hidden graves? Washed up on shores, floating on ocean surfaces in plastic bags? Hidden somewhere in basements just to be recovered decades later, in shallow graves in backyards? Or buried in some woods, underneath branches, shed leaves, bark, acorn caps and other vegetative debris in various stages of decomposition.

The images of missing children overlap and tilt my mind; suddenly I sense a zigzag pattern, like a contorted screen between my eyes and the physical world. I see flashing lights and my skin starts prickling. It begins in my fingertips and travels slowly up my arm and my shoulder blades, all the way up to my temples. As they start pulsating, I feel as if I am on my back in a field of prickly grass or some golden yellow crop that suddenly turns black right in front of my eyes. It grows all around me, tingling and pinching my skin. I want to scratch my entire body but my hands won’t cooperate and then billions of spores fly off the black crop and I can no longer breathe. The world around me is shrouded in hot and aromatic pungency and trying to escape this odor is like trying not to smell food cooking on a stove. I desperately bury my face into the crook of my elbow to make it stop, to escape this almost resinous compound. The scent reminds me of a place I can’t be sure of, for I don’t recall the location itself, but I stand barefoot on rough wood, a porch maybe, peeling away squeaky corn husks and handfuls of silk.

By the time I get home, the feeling has dissipated. The Texas summer sky is a doodle of colors, hesitant brushstrokes at best. The sun is about to set and the entire picture will soon turn into a canopy of luminous stars; minute specks of light will shine within the blackness.

I have never hulled the husk of an ear of corn in my life. Not that I know of. Just like the snow blizzard, maybe this is all just my brain misfiring?

Memphis

Days ago, when, through the peephole, Memphis laid eyes on the distorted bodies of two police officers standing in front of her door, the first crack had appeared. This is it , she had thought, now it all comes to an end .

That night, on a whim, when she had left the house and had tried to find the farm again—merely wanting to know if it was still standing, still out there at the end of a dirt road with its barn and shed—she had lost her purse. Just like that; it was in her hand one moment, gone the next. At first she hadn’t noticed, but once she did, she didn’t dwell on it. She was preoccupied with the scent of the night and the memories that rushed toward her.

Not a single car passed her as she made her way down the road. It was cool, at least in relation to the three-digit daytime temperatures, and her legs moved all on their own as if they were on a mission. Before she knew it, she was on the outskirts of Aurora, on FM 2410, and it seemed as if those three miles took her less than an hour to walk.

Thirty years had passed since she had left the farm, maybe more; she wasn’t so sure anymore. The departure had been hasty and unorganized and she had left everything she owned behind. After their time on the road, she’d lived right here in town, yet she had never been back, never so much as looked at it from afar, not until the police had come to her door.