I sat on the cot again, doing my best not to look at those pictures on the floor. Even if what Howie said might have been true, I didn’t like him talking about my mother that way. I stared blankly at those milk crates as he walked to the desk and fished an envelope out of a drawer. “I want to show you something, Sylvie,” Howie said, sitting beside me on the cot, the thin mattress sinking in a way that brought our bodies closer. I felt his arm graze mine as he opened that envelope.
From inside, he pulled a few black-and-white photos, like those in my father’s desk, only with none of the blurry shafts of light or mysterious figures. The first picture was of the theater—not the ramshackle place it was now, but back when the building looked majestic, when that marquee stood upright just as I’d imagined. In the crowd out front, I saw women with dark lipstick, spidery eyelashes, and dresses so glittering they seemed to be made of hundreds of tiny flashbulbs. The men at their sides sported dapper suits and bowler hats. Howie let the picture speak for itself before handing me another of a man and woman dressed more simply. The man twisted the crank on a taffy machine; she held the finished product in the air, stretching it thumb to thumb, laughing. Something about them seemed familiar, and I felt a stirring in my chest.
“Are they—”
“Your grandparents, Sylvie. In the candy shop that was once part of the theater.”
We looked at them for a long moment. I studied their faces, hunting for glimpses of Rose in my grandfather’s strong chin, of myself in my grandmother’s wide eyes. In each, I saw my father, Howie too.
“I must be getting old,” my uncle told me, speaking more calmly, “because I’ve never been the nostalgic type until lately. But I’m finding it’s a strange thing to be the last one left in a family. You spend a lot of time thinking about the past, wondering why things turned out the way they did.”
His words led me to glance away from the photos and down at that messy carpet of newspaper clippings. My mother and Penny and all those headlines.
“You must be wondering why I kept those,” he said.
I nodded, then said, “Yes. I am.”
My uncle tucked the first two photos back into the envelope, holding on to the third facedown so I couldn’t see it just yet. “If there’s one place drunks love, Sylvie, it’s a public library. Nice and quiet when you’re nursing a hangover. You can sleep the day away without anyone bothering you except maybe some nag of a librarian. The Seventy-Eighth Street Community Branch in Tampa—that was my favorite whenever a rent check bounced and the landlady padlocked my door. In my more sober moments, I used to dig around there for stories about my brother. Even if I didn’t believe the things he claimed, I felt proud he’d made something of himself. Jealous, too, since he was keeping me from the dreams I had for the theater. Later, after what happened, collecting those papers became a kind of obsession—one I’ve kept up since I got here. Guess I’m still trying to make sense of it all. Thing is, all those articles list the same facts. I know how hard it must be, Sylvie, but you were there that night. Can you tell me what happened inside that church?”
Shhhh. . .
As he drew closer to that question, the sound in my ear grew steadily louder. Useless, I knew by now, but I pressed a finger to my ear anyway. The thought of Rummel and Louise filled my head. “I tried,” I said, offering an answer I did not plan, but one I might well have given them, because it was true, “always to be their good daughter, the one they could count on and be proud of. But when it mattered most, that night in the church, I failed. Not only couldn’t I save them, I can’t even identify their killer with any real certainty now that they’re gone.”
“But the papers—”
“I know what they say. But I’m telling you otherwise.”
When he spoke next, I heard something different in Howie’s voice, a kind of hunger. “Are you saying you don’t know who you saw?”
I shook my head, staring at the final picture in his hands and waiting for him to flip it over. “What is that last photo?”
He let out a weighted breath and handed me the picture: two shirtless boys cannonballing off a rocky cliff into a pool of water. It was taken, he explained, at an old Indian well a few miles from the theater. “Our dad used to drive us there on hot days when the AC broke in this place. Lucky he got that shot, because it was one of the few times your father actually jumped with me. He was always so nervous and preferred to walk the path down to the water. I swear he was more at home with the things he thought he saw in the theater than out in the real world.”
“That night in Florida,” I began, bringing up something I’d always wondered about, “when you and my sister drove off in your truck, she told me later you said things that made her stop believing our parents. What did you tell her?”
My uncle took back the photo and returned it to the envelope, then thought better of it. “Here, Sylvie. Why don’t you keep these? They’re the few pieces of our family history I have to offer. And who knows? Maybe they’ll give you some small comfort if ever you need it.”
I thanked him and took the photos, slipping them into my coat pocket next to my journal.