Chapter 10 Ilsa
Ilsa
Dad’s journal rested on my lap. The fire I’d started after getting home from school was crackling, and the lasagna I’d put in the oven was beginning to fill the house with scents of garlic and tomatoes.
I was sitting on the couch, my fingers poised on the journal’s cover, ready to flip it open.
But for the past ten minutes, all I could do was stare at the scratched leather surface.
That letter he’d written to Donnie after her death had been . . . excruciating. If this book was filled, cover to cover, with those letters, I wasn’t sure I could read them.
Donnie hadn’t just been Dad’s special friend. He’d called her the love of his life.
All these years, I’d thought he’d been in love with Mom. That he’d never moved on because she’d been his soulmate. But what if the reason he’d never come to visit me in Phoenix, what if the reason he’d stopped calling on Sundays, wasn’t because he’d been heartbroken over their divorce?
What if he simply hadn’t cared? What if his life in Montana had always been more important than his daughter?
What if it hadn’t been hurt keeping him away, but choice?
I was terrified of what I’d learn from this journal. Not just about Donnie, but everything Trick had told me yesterday had been rattling around my brain for twenty-four hours, and I couldn’t decide what was worse.
Knowing? Or not?
His cryptic letter delivered by his equally cryptic friend, Jerry, wouldn’t point me to a journal where Dad confessed to being happy his child lived three states away, right? Dad wouldn’t have begged me to visit if he didn’t care, right?
“Just read it,” I whispered.
I closed my eyes.
And opened the journal.
There was a very real chance that by the time I finished, I’d have more questions than answers. But there was also a chance I’d understand my dad. That this journal could help me say goodbye.
I flipped past the first entry, glossing over Dad’s letter to Donnie. I expected to find another on the following pages, but instead, there were no words, just a line drawn on the page annotated with tiny numbers.
“What the hell?” The details were so small I bent forward, squinting at the paper.
There were a few smudged eraser marks and some of the numbers were blurry, marred by finger smudges.
“What is this?” I asked the empty living room and flipped to the next page.
It was another line with another set of numbers, this one even messier than the last. But the line and numbers seemed to be the same as on the previous page.
Another flip, another line with numbers. Seven pages later, I still had no idea what Dad was trying to draw.
I squinted at the page, wondering if something would jump out at me. It wasn’t the profile of a person. It wasn’t a plant or animal or structure. It was just a winding line on a page sprinkled with numbers.
“Huh.” Well, this certainly wasn’t giving me confidence in Dad’s mental state.
I turned to the next page and found it filled with random words. It was four columns of impossibly small print, each letter capitalized.
Buck Knife
License
Chisel
Mirror
My head began to throb as I scanned the rest of the list. This one wasn’t on a napkin. And nothing was crossed out. Maybe this had been the first of many packing lists for his move with Donnie. As I scanned the items, they were all familiar. All things I’d found in various boxes.
The knife and a compact mirror had been in his hunting backpack along with five vacuum-packed MREs. That bag had also included his hunting license and an unused deer tag, both sealed in a plastic baggie.
As I stared at the tiny letters, so neatly organized in columns, my stomach sank.
“What was going on with you, Dad?” More than anything, I wished I could ask him in person.
The next two pages weren’t filled with handwritten notes or sentiments, but old newspaper clippings he’d glued into the book.
Each and every one was about the ghost town of Garrack.
One was how the state of Montana had taken over the abandoned town and would be administering it as a state park.
Another was a list of old mining towns throughout the state. He’d circled Garrack.
The same town he’d told me about in my letter.
I set the journal aside and shot off the couch, racing to my purse on the kitchen counter. I lifted out both letters that I’d tucked inside. The note he’d given Jerry to give me. And the letter he’d sent right before his death.
Maybe it was silly carrying it around with me all the time, but since I couldn’t make sense of it, there was always the wild hope that it would sink in through osmosis.
Carefully taking out the single sheet of paper inside the envelope, I read Dad’s letter for the hundredth time.
It was only a story. It was another of Dad’s tales, like those he’d make up when I was a kid, out fishing with him on his boat. I’d get bored and want to go home to swim, but he’d keep me out there for another hour by making up something fanciful.
This letter was only a story. He said so himself, right at the top.
But what if . . .
No, this wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. Lost gold from the mining days? That would be impossible. Wouldn’t it?
I paced the length of the house, walking back and forth between the fireplace and the stove, worrying my bottom lip between my teeth.
What did all of this mean? How did those articles tie to this letter? Unless . . .
Had Dad convinced himself that this legendary gold from the Garrack ghost town was real?
Was there something in that journal to explain the letter Jerry had given me? I took it from its own envelope, reading it for the millionth time.
“Find the atlas and the key,” I murmured, speaking the words aloud. Then I stared at them until they began to blur on the page.
What was I missing? Somehow, these pieces all linked together, but how? There had to be a missing piece. Dad was trying to tell me something, but what?
My gaze drifted to his closed bedroom door. I’d organized and cleaned that room, but I hadn’t gone in there since. I doubted I would until the spring, until it was time to take his ashes from the trunk where they were stowed and scatter them on the island.
Was there something tucked away beneath a floorboard in that room? Possibly a hidden compartment in his closet?
If so, I wasn’t finding it tonight.
On a sigh, I went to the couch and tucked both letters into the journal, closing the button snap. The timer beside the stove had a soft tick as it moved. There were still ten minutes to go on my lasagna. Time enough to talk to Mom.
I went to the phone, taking it off the cradle and pressing the numbers to my childhood home.
“Hello,” she answered.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Oh, hi, cutie. What a surprise. How are you?”
“I’m good. How are you?”
“Great. Just got home from aerobics.”
Mom loved her aerobics class. The exercise. The friends. The outfits. She had leotards and leg warmers in every color of the rainbow.
“How was class tonight?” I asked, leaning against the counter.
“A butt kicker.” She laughed. “What are you doing?”
“Making your lasagna.” The recipe was one of my favorites, and tonight, after a long week of school, I’d wanted a dinner that reminded me of home. It took forever to make, meaning I was eating much later than normal, but it would be worth it.
“Yum. You know, I created that recipe in that house.”
“You did?”
“I did. Your dad got so sick of lasagna by the time I had the recipe exactly the way I liked it. But he never complained. He’d just eat whatever I made and tell me it was delicious, even when it wasn’t.”
The tenderness in her voice made my heart squeeze. “That’s sweet.”
“He had his moments.”
“Did he, um . . . give you anything? Recently?”
“Other than a headache?”
“Mom.” I rolled my eyes. “Please.”
“Sorry, I’m kidding. And no. I haven’t gotten anything from him in a while. Though he did send me a box a while back.”
I stood straight. “When?”
“Gosh. It was over a year ago. After Thanksgiving. It was just some of my old things that I’d left behind.”
Damn. “Like what?”
“Some pictures. A diary I kept from before you were born. A few trinkets. Honestly, I didn’t really give it much attention.
After I opened it, I kind of got mad. I thought he’d actually remembered to send you a Christmas gift, early even, and when I realized it was just some old junk he could have tossed or given to me years ago, I put the box on a shelf in the garage and haven’t thought much of it since. ”
Over a year ago, after Thanksgiving, Dad must have been packing to move in with Donnie. He’d probably found Mom’s things and wanted to get rid of them.
“Would you send me that box?”
“Why?” Mom asked.
“I don’t know.” It was the truth. That box would likely be another I’d end up cleaning out. But what if there was something Mom had overlooked? Something that might trigger a few answers to the questions that kept multiplying? “I guess I’m just trying to understand him, Mom.”
“But it’s my stuff,” she said. “Not his.”
“Did you write about him in your diary?”
“I suppose. I can’t really remember what’s in that diary.”
“Would it be weird if I read it?” Probably. For all I knew, she’d written about their sex life.
I gagged.
Mom hesitated, like she was mentally rewinding to that time, to whatever she’d written. “Okay, fine. I’ll stick it in the mail tomorrow.”
“Thanks. There’s, um, nothing about you and Dad being together together in it, right?”
She burst out laughing. “No. I wouldn’t send it to you if there was. And I certainly wouldn’t have left that behind for your father to find.”
“Thanks, Mom.” I smiled, leaning against the counter again, staring down at my blue wool socks. “People around here call him Bluebird.”
“Still?”
“Yeah.”
She hummed. It was a peaceful note like she was glad Bluebird hadn’t faded away. “You know I gave him that nickname.”
“I remember.”