Page 76 of Whiskey Chase
When I tried to lift the lid, I found the trunk locked. I frowned at the lock. I’d played with this trunk a million times as a kid. Hell, my brothers used to take turns hiding in it when we’d played hide and seek. It had never been locked.
I glanced over at Devlin. He was sitting on the white-washed floor sorting stacks of paperwork. I studied the lock. It wasn’t as if it was a particularly challenging lock. One or two whacks with a hammer would break the clasp easy enough. And I was curious enough to know what my parents had thought was worth locking away. But I didn’t like the idea of busting up something Mama valued.
I glanced over at Devlin who was happily sorting papers like the hot closet nerd he was.
Obviously, there was a key of some sort that locked the damn thing. I closed my eyes and let my mind wander. The trunk was old. It wouldn’t be an ordinary key that fit the lock. I opened my eyes. It couldn’t be that easy, could it? I rose and jogged downstairs to the front door. Dad’s key ring was right there. I picked it up and thumbed through them. Front door, back door, garage. My house. Truck keys. And one stubby, brass, unlabeled key.
I held my breath and headed back upstairs, the weight of the keys heavy in my hand. What secrets could my parents possibly have kept? They were an open book of misery and dedication to commitment. It was probably a stack ofSports Illustratedissues or doll clothes. Or, ugh, a fat pile of unpaid bills that my father hadn’t told me about. That would be a nice slap in the face.
I returned to the bedroom and stepped over Devlin’s incomprehensible organizational system. Kneeling in front of the trunk, I slid the key into the lock. It turned with no resistance.
I felt a nostalgic tug when I saw the green flowered fabric lining. The smell was the same, old and musty, but now instead of being an empty hiding place for kids, the interior of the trunk was packed full. I brushed a hand over my mother’s favorite dress. I’d boxed up her clothing the week after the funeral and given it to the Bootleg Community Church to distribute to the needy. I hadn’t even noticed that her soft, spring green dress was missing.
My father must have tucked it away, I realized. Along with her bed pillow and it’s carefully cross-stitched pillow case. I unpacked them slowly, running my fingers over long familiar mementos. Their wedding album came next. They’d married in a hurry and without their families’ joyful acceptance. So, their album consisted of a dozen sepia-toned shots of my mother in a high-necked lace dress that her cousin lent her. Daddy was oh-so-young in his baby blue suit. His shirt had ruffles on it, something that never ceased to entertain me. As a little girl, I’d insisted on perusing the album hundreds of times and never once had I realized it was like admiring the chain that tied my parents to their unhappy life.
I flipped through the thick pages, studying each picture. There were no glowing smiles during the ceremony, but the last shot was a candid of my father looking down at Mama with a tenderness that rarely showed in the ensuing years. Mama was looking up at him and laughing. In that picture, she sparkled. It wasn’t all bad, their life together. And this picture was living proof of that. There were pockets of happiness in that lifetime. But I wanted more than pockets.
I shot a look at Devlin and found him watching me. “You had about a million emotions go across your pretty face in the last minute,” he told me.
“Oh, yeah?” I asked. He gave me that half smile that I liked so much.
“What did you find?” he asked, standing up and stepping over his neat piles to get to me.
I stroked a hand over the dress, remembering endless hugs and Easter mornings. Everything always ended. The good and the bad. And while I hated it, it was also a comfort. Daddy was no longer suffering. And maybe now my brothers could start to move on.
Devlin’s hand squeezed my shoulder. He sank down next to me on the floor.
“This is some of my mama’s stuff,” I told him, handing over the photo album.
“May I?” he asked. I nodded.
He turned the pages. “I like your dad’s suit,” he grinned.
“He wore it to their prom and then their wedding. And one more time to Gibson’s christening. I don’t think he wore so much as a necktie after that.”
“Do you think Jonah would like to see this?” Devlin asked.
I looked at the album in his big hands. “I’d like to show him,” I decided.
“We’ll start another pile then.” He placed the ivory book on the bare mattress.
I gave him the dress. “This too.”
We dug back into the next layer of goodies in the trunk. I was delighted to find Jameson’s baby album and a stack of disciplinary reports from the high school regarding Gibson. These I could use for blackmail.
Devlin laughed his way through the reports, making sure there wasn’t anything important stuck between the pages of Gibson’s juvenile delinquent-ism. I found more loose family photos and the veil Mama had worn on her wedding day. There was a grimy folder of Sunday school lessons Mama had taught and my father’s neat collection of every single program of the Bootleg Annual Jedidiah Bodine Still Explosion Re-Enactment. We found odds and ends of family life. Mama had kept every sketch and drawing Jameson had done growing up. Even at seven, he’d shown artistic promise. Bowie’s good citizenship trophies and soccer team pictures were stacked neatly in an acrylic box.
“Oh, Dev. Look at this,” I said, lifting a photo triumphantly from the bowels of the trunk. “Me at prom.”
Devlin studied it, smiling sweetly at the 17-year-old me. I’d worn an electric blue two-piece dress because everyone else was wearing black. My hair, it had been even longer then, was piled on top of my head in Medusa-like coils. I was the punky Tinkerbell to Freddie Sleeth’s smirking seventeen.
“What was your prom night like?” Devlin asked.
“Well, a lady never kisses and tells,” I told him. “But I can tell you that Freddie’s pick-up got a flat on the way to the dance, and we had to change it in a mud puddle. He got flustered and dropped the lug nuts right into the mud, and I ended up having to fish ‘em up. Changed the tire too sincesomeone’sdaddy never showed him how. Still made prom queen even covered in mud,” I said smugly. “How about yours?”
Devlin looked embarrassed. “I borrowed my parents’ driver and Town Car in the tux I already owned and took Lilibeth Paxton to a candlelit seafood dinner on the water followed by an evening of elegant entertainment and dancing.”
“Could we possibly be more different?” I asked him.
