The attic gave me that same frustrating feeling of déjà vu that I got from all the objects and places of my former life. Some of the objects—a child-sized vanity with a padded pink stool, a North Face frame backpack, a pile of old board games laced with cobwebs—drew me toward them like magnets. I knew they’d meant something to me, but I couldn’t remember what.
Emma stood still for a moment, wondering where the Mercers would have stored Becky’s things. It wasn’t as if there would be a big box in the corner labeled OUR ESTRANGED SECRET DAUGHTER’S STUFF. But she knew that Mr. Mercer had been up here recently for the pictures, so she looked around the attic for areas that seemed recently disturbed. Her gaze fell on an ornately carved Chinese chest. A bunch of graying shoe boxes were sitting next to it, as if they’d been recently shifted off the top. The patterns on its rosewood lid were clean and dust free. She braced herself and opened it.
The inside of the chest smelled like tobacco and old newspapers. A stuffed rabbit with one ear was nestled in the leg of a purple Dr. Martens combat boot. Under that she found a silver-plated hand mirror wrapped in a scarf, a bunch of shattered CD jewel cases, a dog-eared copy of Sylvia Plath’s Ariel, and a crumpled pack of cigarettes. It looked as if someone had swept up all the contents of Becky’s room and shoved them in the chest. Then, tucked near the bottom, under a pile of faded magazines, she found a composition book covered in doodles. Her heart lurched. She knew a journal when she saw it—she’d certainly kept enough herself. She just never knew her mother had.
Girl Finds Mother’s Old Journal, Contents Change Everything, she hoped, looking at the book’s cover. Then she flipped the journal open.
The handwriting was painfully familiar, the same untidy scrawl Emma remembered from childhood birthday cards and from the note Becky had left for her at the diner just a few weeks earlier.
At first, the journal’s entries were neat and tidy, dated even down to the time of day:
Today I woke up at five and could not sleep any more so I climbed out the window and went to Denny’s. Mom and Dad panicked and thought I had run away when I did not come down to the table and when they saw my shoes were missing. Can’t a person enjoy her Grand Slam breakfast in peace around here?
A few days later:
I got $200 for the cheesy diamond studs Mom got me for “sweet sixteen” last year. Part of me thinks I should feel bad for selling them but I’m not sweet at all and she should know that. Between that & the $150 I’ve saved babysitting for the Gandins, I almost have enough to get out of here.
Emma looked up from the book, a strange ache piercing her chest. She felt as if she was spying on her mother, never mind that almost twenty years had passed. But spying or not, this was her only lead. She turned another page.
The entries went on and on, one every few days. Sketches filled some pages, mostly elaborate abstract designs or flowering vines. An Emily Dickinson poem filled a sheet, with colored-pencil illustrations all around the text. Becky complained about school and her parents. She broke up with one boyfriend and hooked up with another one. She cheated on a third. She was always lonely, even when she was surrounded by people. She sounded surprisingly, almost disappointingly normal—creative and sullen and rebellious, but not crazy.
But about halfway through the composition book the entries started to change. The language became disjointed, the thoughts scattered. Dog next door keeps barking and if he doesn’t stop soon I may snap, she’d written one day. This town is poison. Even the clothes on my back hurt my skin. And then, one day, just the words Mama, I’m so sorry. The writing ran sideways in some places or curled around in weird spirals of text.
Emma turned another page. Her breath caught in her throat. Printed across two facing pages, in enormous block letters, was Emma.
On the next page it was repeated in long lines across the paper—Emma, Emma, Emma, Emma—in different sizes and scripts, ornate calligraphy and cartoon block letters and colorful sketches sprinkled with stars. She flipped through the pages, faster and faster. The rest of the book was filled with nothing but that one word, EMMA, scrawled wilder and wilder, in Sharpie, in pencil, sometimes written so hard the letters tore through the paper.
The book fell out of her trembling hands and hit the floor in a cloud of dust. The attic spun around her like a strange, shadowy carousel. She knew Becky was sick, but this … this was obsession.
I was afraid, too. What was going through our mother’s mind? Had she written this before or after we were born?
The garage door rattled open, and Emma jumped. She quickly slid the journal into her pocket and stood up. As quietly as she could, she went down the ladder, closing the hatch door after her.
The house was silent again when she reached the hall. She frowned and padded down the stairs to the entryway. “Hello?” she called. No one answered. She opened the front door and looked out on the lawn.