Page 16 of Poison Wood

I cross the room to the antique dresser against the far wall. It was my mother’s when she was a little girl. Its dark wood needs polishing, but other than that it is still in good condition. It’s the spot where I kept my most cherished memento, my mother’s hairbrush. I pull it out and hold it to my nose. It no longer smells like her. I’m not exactly sure what she smelled like anymore. Like her scent, tangible things about her seem to fade every year.

One thing that doesn’t fade, though, is a memory of this brush.

It was spring of my freshman year. We were in the gym for a school-wide meeting on proper behavior in public places. The day before, one of the younger girls had been caught shoplifting in Natchitoches. We were all on the bleachers whispering to each other and ignoring B.O. as she droned on about proper young lady etiquette when something clattered into the middle of the gym floor.

I froze. It was a hairbrush.

B.O. bent down and picked it up. “All right. Who threw this?”

I heard the giggling behind me. Then I saw Katrina in the front row, doubled over laughing. The brush had gone missing the day before from under my mattress, where I kept it. My cheeks burned.

“I think it’s Rita’s,” Summer yelled down from beside me.

“Stop it,” I whispered to her.

“Well, it is,” she said loudly. “Isn’t it your mom’s?”

A few of the other girls started laughing.

“No,” I said.

B.O. looked up at me, and I remember the pity in her eyes as she held it out. I walked down in front of the entire school and took it from her, then ran.

I put the brush back and shut the drawer and walk to the dormer windows on the opposite wall. I look out into the dark night. This place is so far from city lights the stars look electric. And it’s quiet. Too quiet.

In summer, the nights here are loud with bull frogs and cicadas, but during winter, it quiets to the point it feels like a totally different place.

I exhale and open my phone and shoot off a text to Carl.

Any updates?

The reply comes back quickly.

Yes. Husband questioned. Mulholland wants to talk to you also. How’s Judge Mac?

I think of my dad and the way he looked in the ICU.

Stable. I think.

Good. Have you called Dom?

My head and heart are fighting again. My head is saying be professional, protect your career and Carl. But my heart is saying learn more first, protect your past. But it’s not just about protecting my past. It’s about protecting my only family, my father.

I know I’m too close to this story, but at the same time, that closeness could help. I can be objective. I know I can. I can look at it through a different lens now. But there’s a soft voice in the back of my head asking me what the hell I think I’m doing out on this tightrope.

Calling him first thing tomorrow.

Carl doesn’t respond, and I don’t push it.

I rub my face. I need to sleep. This day. But it’s not just this day. It’s the days that preceded it too. I’m starting to feel heavy, like I’m carrying a backpack full of rocks.

And one of those rocks is the memory of my mother in this house, in this room. Being in this space is such a double-edged sword. On one side, it feels comfortable and familiar, but on the other side, that familiarity is so sharp it cuts me.

Laura Sanders’s daughter will have to walk that line, too, one day. But why? Why did that little girl’s mother reach out to me? And most horrific of all, would she still be alive if she hadn’t?

I’ve never had a source die before, or after, speaking with me. I protect the secrets they tell me and, when those secrets must be spilled, protect their identities. Laura wanted to trust me with something, and in a weird way, I feel like I let her down.

I shower, scrubbing the layers of makeup off my face and rubbing Vaseline on my lashes until the washrag comes away stained black. With each layer I scrub off, I work through what Laura looked like from the one photo I found of her. Something about her was familiar. Possibly the sister of a student or in a younger grade than me. If she’d been in my year, I would’ve recognized her.