Page 38 of The Locked Ward

For the first time since I learned of Georgia’s existence, I’m not thinking about her. My focus has shifted to other members of my family.

I stand behind the bar at Sweetbay’s, checking supplies and unloading warm glasses from the dishwasher, but I’m preoccupied by memories of my parents.

Ever since they died, I’ve ached to talk to them just one more time, but now the tenor of that conversation would change.

How much did you know about my twin? I’d demand.

And what was your connection to the Cartwrights?

Finding that duplicate religious figurine means I need to throw away all my assumptions. I’ve been trying to learn Georgia’s life story. But I also need to look at my own.

“Miss?”

I nod at the customer who is holding up his empty pilsner glass, trying to get my attention. I fill it with Michelob and scoop some pretzels into a small wooden bowl, sliding both toward him.

“Worked here long?” he asks, crunching into a pretzel.

Normally I’m focused on customer service. Repeat business is the backbone of my bar, and most people like talking to the owner because it gives them a sense of community. I always take the time to learn customers’ names and their preferred drink, just as my father did. Today I can’t fake it.

“A few years.” I smile noncommittally and turn around, busying myself by wiping down the counter. During a lull, while Scott finishes mixing dirty martinis for two women who are trying to flirt with him, I slip through the doorway into my office.

I exhale as I close the door and settle into the wooden chair with rolling wheels my father used, the one with the worn lumbar pillow my mother bought him to support his back.

His desk was always tidy, but mine is covered in paperwork.

The framed photographs he displayed are still next to my computer, though: one of our little family at Christmastime when I was about eight, another when I was in high school standing in front of my mother’s espalier apple tree, and one of us at my college graduation.

I stare at the graduation picture, taking in my father’s grin that reveals slightly crooked teeth, his dark suit, and his strong arms wrapped around my and my mother’s shoulders.

My mother wore a yellow dress, and her dark hair was curled.

She always put up her hair with pink plastic rollers the night before special occasions.

It was just the three of us celebrating that day.

My aunt Joan, who’d married a military guy, was living in Germany, and she and my father weren’t close.

And though my mother traveled to see her parents in Arizona once a year, she almost always went alone, so I didn’t have much of a relationship with them.

My parents didn’t have many friends, either.

I always figured that since my dad worked nights it was difficult for them to sustain a social life.

But now I’m eyeing my history with suspicion rather than trust.

I pick up the graduation photo I’ve seen thousands of times. I stare at my parents’ faces, summoning a remembrance of that day.

When I found them in the audience after I’d walked across the stage to get my college diploma, they were wiping away tears. “You make us so proud, sweetheart,” my father said. My mother just hugged me for the longest time. I think she was too choked up to speak.

All around us, my fellow graduates were celebrating with loud groups of siblings and aunts and cousins and grandparents. But it was just the three of us, like it had always been.

We went to a French restaurant for my graduation dinner.

We’d eaten out before, but this was different.

It wasn’t the neighborhood pizza joint or the Thai restaurant we liked for takeout.

It had a name I couldn’t pronounce, and a leather-bound menu, and place settings with multiple forks and spoons.

I was completely out of my element. But my father wasn’t.

He ordered a bottle of wine, and when the waiter offered him the cork, my father knew exactly how to sniff it and nod his approval.

He swirled the sample of ruby liquid in his goblet, then took a small sip and held it on his tongue, considering, before swallowing and telling the waiter the vintage was delicious.

When my mother excused herself to go to the restroom, my dad stood up from the table, something I’d never seen him do before.

He asked my mother and me what we wanted for our first and main courses and ordered for us, flawlessly pronouncing “fromage.” He knew which fork to use for salad, and he taught me how to arrange my silverware on my not-quite-empty plate to signal I was finished.

This was an alien world to me and my mother. But my father had clearly inhabited it before. It would be impossible to fake that kind of ease.

For a casual blue-collar guy, he had a deep familiarity with the trappings of elegance.

But that wasn’t all: My parents didn’t have a lot of extra cash.

My mother dyed her hair in the bathtub and never paid for a manicure.

She’d found her yellow dress at a discount store.

But my dad’s suit fit him so perfectly it seemed custom-tailored.

He wore a crisp white shirt with French cuffs, and gold cuff links that I’d assumed were fake.

I’d never seen the suit until he pulled it out of his closet the day before my graduation and asked my mother to iron the shirt.

It didn’t occur to me to ask where or why he’d gotten the fancy suit and cuff links. They weren’t the sort of items he’d invest in because he planned to get a lot of use out of them.

My subconscious had held on to these details for a decade, as if patiently waiting for me to acknowledge them.

I look around the office again, trying to see everything anew.

My gaze lands on his tall metal file cabinet.

My father kept meticulous records. He wasn’t good with computers; he was always calling me when his desktop crashed or he needed help finding a file.

But he kept a decades-old paper trail of maintenance bills, warrantees, county health certificates, tax records, and distributor bills.

My father died suddenly. He wouldn’t have had time to clear away anything from his office that he didn’t want me to see. I never came in here when I visited him at the bar; it was more comfortable to chat from a counter stool or in a booth together.

His files seem as good a place as any to start.

The top drawer of the metal cabinet squeaks as I open it, like it’s protesting being disturbed. Some of the papers inside are so old they look brittle.

I begin to search, a sense of trepidation creeping down my spine.