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CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

I’m not ready to call it a night.

I exit the Beltway at Connecticut Avenue, a main artery that leads into the heart of DC. My city is spectacular on this crisp fall night, with the creamy marble of the Washington Monument soaring into the inky sky, and Lincoln’s forever watchful figure anchoring the west end of the National Mall.

I take the parkway that parallels the dark, gleaming Potomac River, heading into Alexandria, Virginia. That’s where I grew up.

The neighborhood where my dad, mom, and I lived has evolved, yielding to the hunger of suburban sprawl. Back then, there weren’t artisanal coffee shops and wine-tasting bars and apartment buildings with lobbies designed like gorgeous living rooms. It was a neighborhood for working-class folks, with a few parks and empty lots and some single-story homes amid the clumps of town houses.

It’s easy to find my way back to ours. The redbrick facade is unchanged, but the door is now painted navy blue and the landscaping is far more elegant. A graceful crepe myrtle stands in the center of the small yard—its slender, pale branches bare for the season—and the lawn is perfectly edged. After we got Bingo, my dad built a simple wooden fence to enclose the backyard, but it has been upgraded, too.

I can almost hear my mother’s voice, wafting from the kitchen up to my bedroom: “Stella! Dinner!”

If I didn’t answer right away—if I was watching Double Dare or playing with Bingo—she’d hurry up the stairs, her footsteps light and quick as a rapid heartbeat.

“There you are!” she’d say, the note of worry in her voice dissolving by the final word.

My mother had significant anxiety. I recognize that now. When her life imploded, she self-medicated, perhaps because help wasn’t available to her, or because she didn’t know how to get it.

When she died, she was a couple of years older than I am now. Only a few wispy fragments of her remain. The cardboard memory box in my house. Her gentle voice singing John Denver’s “Annie’s Song” as she put me to bed. Her whispered “No… please” on the night she died.

After I went to live with my aunt, I overheard her talking about my mother to her husband, her thin lips pursing as she scrubbed dishes in a sink filled with soapy water.

“Trashy… always had the boys chasing her… thought she’d just glide through life… she was an embarrassment.”

I wanted to burst into the room and scream at her: Stop!

The protest welled up in my throat, but I couldn’t release it.

So I turned and went back to my room. I never defended my mother. Not to my aunt. Not on the night she died, when I could have gotten out of the closet and maybe saved her.

Not even to myself.

I reach for my phone and enter her name into a search engine. Nausea rises in my throat, but I force myself to take deep breaths and look at the results.

I’ve spent so much time digging into Tina’s death. Don’t I at least owe my own mother that same effort?

Detective Garcia was right about the deaths of nobodies. My mother merited two lines in the police blotter: Mary Hudson, 40, found dead of a suspected drug overdose in a Northeast DC apartment. Police urge anyone with information to come forward.

The detective also told me cold cases never disappear. Files are kept for perpetuity.

I attach the link to an email and address it to Detective Garcia.

She was my mother, I type. And I’m finally trying to find out what happened that night.