Page 88 of The Quiet Tenant

You need to see. You need to know. It’s been five years. You need to see him, all of him.

caroline, caroline, camping stuff. Then, all the way at the back, a row ofmiscellaneous.

You lean against the nearest pile of boxes. Your chest rises and falls.

miscellaneous.Banal boxes, the same dirty-beige cardboard as the rest, his writing in black marker on the front.

Except—a quick look around to confirm—the miscellaneous boxes have humidity stains. All of them, and only them. Abstract shapes like maps of foreign lands, spreading on the top left corner of one, the bottom half of another.

Miscellaneous.

Another look around—there are no pipes here. Not at the right place, not where they’d need to be to cause that kind of damage. The stains are old, prominent. Not a light drizzle of rain on moving day.

These stains have been here for a long time.

The boxes were stored somewhere else before. In a different room—a cellar, maybe, in an old house with leaky pipes. Not the best place to keep them, but they were hidden from view. No one would want to go poke under the leaky pipes.

And now, they are hidden again. Not as skillfully—there is less room in the new house, fewer nooks and crannies—but still. They arerelegated behind all the other boxes, almost buried under them. You wouldn’t find them unless you were looking.

Your hand, shaking as it approaches the box. The first of three that he piled on top of one another. The cardboard must be fragile, ready to tear at the first sharp tug. You must proceed gently.

The box slides into your arms, then onto the floor. Its top is folded shut, not taped.

Good.

You can almost hear it rattle inside. His soul, the abyss of him. A portal for you to fall into.

Fear knots around your rib cage. It’s just things, you tell yourself. Things that belonged to you and people like you.

What else did he keep? The sweater you wore that day? Underwear? Wallet, driver’s license, credit card?

Trophies. Evidence. Proof of who you are.

Are you ready to see her again—the younger you, the one who slipped through your fingers, the one you couldn’t save, not really, not entirely?

What about the others?

Are you ready to see them? To meet them?

You pinch one of the top flaps between two fingers. Pry it to the side slowly, always slowly. Another flap. The rustling of cardboard against cardboard. Something giving in, a treasure chest creaking open.

—

THE BOX OPENSin a whiff of mildew. Its contents—no one really wants to know what’s inside. No one really, truly wants to hold that information in their heart, carry it with them forever. But someone has to do it.

You bear the weight so others won’t have to.

First, you see the photos. Polaroids. Makes sense: no memory cards, no film to develop. Most of them taken from afar. Silhouettes. Clothing styles from different times, beginning, you would say, in the 1990s.

The photos are divided with rubber bands into nine small stacks. Bile burns the back of your throat. Do you look?

Of course you look. Someone must see them. Take in their faces, their smiles, their postures, the color of their hair. Missing women, missing people. Stories that ended, and no one has any idea how. Except him, and now you.

You will remember.

You see the first and you see the second and the third and the fourth and the fifth—and then you. A you that feels more like a her, so different from the person you are now.

Your knees quiver. You swallow, or try to. Your tongue rubs, dry, against the roof of your mouth.

---