Chapter 35 Lili
Thirty-Five
Lili
The first time I stood in my dad’s office, I’d been overwhelmed by a kind of reverent longing. The smell of old books and
ink, the faint lingering scent of his cologne that I imagined more than actually detected, the organized chaos of papers and
artifacts—it all felt sacred. He spent so much time here, pouring himself into the past, and more than anything, I wanted
to be a part of that with him. Back then, I’d been so determined, so sure.
Now my hands aren’t whisper soft, brushing across the surfaces like they’re afraid to disturb his world. Instead, I plop into
the desk chair, letting it squeak under my weight, and set a cardboard box on the desk with a dull thud.
My notebook, stuffed with loose pages and photocopies, is the first to go in. Then the pictures—images of the diary, copies
of the letter and the map—followed by Dad’s notebook and, finally, the stack of postcards he sent me. Each item lands with
a quiet resignation, as though they themselves are ready to be packed away.
It only takes a few minutes to fill the box.
But I stand there for much longer, looking down at its contents while the lid hovers in my hands.
This is supposed to be the easy part—the end.
I’ve finally realized what I want. Once the lid goes on, the box can be sealed, and I can be free.
No more worn paths in the rug, no more broken promises, no more relationships destroyed. And yet, I hesitate.
“So you’re sure, then.”
Mom’s words from the doorway pull me from my trance, and I press the lid down, as if caught in the act of something I shouldn’t
be doing. “Yep.”
That morning, I told her I was finished with the museum and Dad’s research project, asked for a box, and told her we could
start packing up the study. She’d complied without a word, leaving me to walk into the room alone, but I knew her silence
wouldn’t last.
“Do you wanna talk about it?” she asks gently.
I check all four corners of the box, ensuring the lid is secure, then recheck. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
She steps closer. “Oh, I know that’s not true.” With a single finger, she inches the lid off and peers inside. “Wow, look
at all this.”
I track her movements as she lifts the postcards, flipping through them slowly, before setting them aside and opening my notebook.
Her hands rest on its cover, protective. “There’s still time, you know. You don’t have to pack it all away just yet.”
“I couldn’t find what he wanted. And I didn’t like what I did find.”
She reaches for my hand, rubbing it gently.
“I thought doing all of this would make me feel closer to him,” I tell her. “But it just made me feel farther away. Because
now I see exactly what mattered to him, and it wasn’t me. So why should I care about any of this?” I push the notebook away
dismissively.
Mom bends down, wrapping her arms around my shoulders from behind.
“I’m sorry he missed so much. I’m sure he’s sorry too.
” Her hands squeeze, surrounding me in warmth.
“But it’s okay to care about the things he cared about.
You can still be fascinated by your history, love it even, and not love the way he chose to pursue it.
You can love it your way, just for you.”
She says it so casually, as if separating the two is easy, but it feels impossible to me.
“I think I’m angry at him,” I admit, my voice barely above a whisper.
She breathes in deeply. “I can understand that.”
I stare at her, a lump forming in my throat. “I don’t want to be angry at him.”
“It’s hard to be angry at someone when they’re not here anymore.”
I nod, swallowing hard. “And I don’t know if he would’ve changed or apologized if he’d had more time.”
She hugs me tighter. “I know.” There’s a world of unspoken weight behind those words.
We stay like that, the silence and what ifs hanging over us. I glance at the desk, at the mix of my research and his, unsure
what to do with the ache in my chest.
Mom chuckles, her breath warm against my hair. “You’ll figure it out.” She grabs the box lid, holding it lightly. “Have you
shown any of this to Goldie?”
Shaking my head, I ease away from her, and move around to the front of the desk to continue packing up the room, starting
with rolling up his rug.
Mom’s voice stops me, and when I turn back, she extends the lid, her eyes thoughtful. “Maybe you should—you know, before you box it all away.”
Goldie is supposed to be painting the last section of the porch railing that morning. Instead, she’s lying on her back, staring
up at a spiderweb glistening with morning dew in the corner. The paintbrush dangles from her hand, forgotten.
The floor creaks as I step onto the porch. Goldie jackknifes upright, a fleeting attempt to look busy as she lunges for the
paint tray. But when she sees it’s me, not Mom, she drops the act with a sheepish grin.
Sunlight filters through the slats of the railing, casting dancing patterns on the porch floorboards. It’s warm already, the
air carrying the faint scent of freshly cut grass. I sit beside her and set the box down between us.
Goldie scoots closer, the spiderweb instantly forgotten. “What’s that?”
A streak of white paint is smeared across her forehead, but I ignore that and nod at the matching one on her hand. “That dry?”
She swipes it across her jeans to show me it is.
I lift the lid. “Dad’s stuff, my stuff.” I hand her his notebook. “Our stuff.”
Her eyes widen as she peers into the box, a slow smile spreading across her face. “That’s from the letter I found.”
I nod, feeling a pang of bittersweetness.
“Did it help?”
I hesitate, caught between a shrug and a nod. “I couldn’t figure it out in time.”
She lifts the photos, studying each one with care. “Where’s the original?”
“At the museum. Maybe Wren will find a way to display it someday.” My voice falters.
Goldie’s smile fades. “Sorry.”
I take the pictures from her hands, setting them aside. “Yeah. Me too.”
She rummages through the box again. “So, Dad was wrong then? She was a bad guy?”
“I can’t prove she wasn’t,” I say softly, the weight of my summer’s many failures pressing down on me.
I tell her about some of the diary entries Dad transcribed, the letter that seemed to be about nothing, and the map that we
can’t explain.
“Dad spent years trying to figure it all out. But I was going to do it all in one summer.” I scoff. What a joke. “Anyway,
I thought you might want to see it all before it gets packed away.”
She takes her time looking through everything, then offers me a side glance. “Sorry I couldn’t find anything else at Mrs.
Mayhew’s.”
“No, it’s great what you found. It was—” I hesitate. “It was what I needed to realize that I don’t need to find all the answers.
And if I never figure it out, then I’m okay with that.”
She nods, then adds more conviction to the gesture. “Dad copied parts of her diary, right? But he stopped too. Do you think
he decided he knew enough too?”
I hadn’t thought about it like that before, but it’s a comforting idea.
I always assumed he just ran out of time or into the same potentially damning evidence we did.
I like her perspective better. “Yeah, maybe. Maybe he was getting ready to box it all up himself.” I run my fingers over the cover of his notebook, the leather darker and softer than mine.
“Maybe he thought forty-three was going to be his year,” I say, thinking about the number he wrote so often.
“And he didn’t want to enter a new decade still trying to prove her innocence.
” He was forty-nine when he died, but maybe forty-three was how old he’d been when he found Kezia’s diary.
Could be that’s all the number ever meant.
Goldie frowns at me. “Forty-three?”
I show her a passage Dad transcribed, pointing to the number scrawled in the margin. “It’s something he repeated a lot in
his notebook. We could never figure out what it meant in relation to Kezia, and maybe that’s because it only meant something
to him.”
“And Edmund Harrington,” Goldie says, letting her attention wander back to the spiderweb.
“What do you mean?” I say slowly.
“Hey, how come the water doesn’t break the web? Isn’t it heavier than the silk?”
“Hey.” My voice sharpens. “Tell me what you meant. What does the number forty-three have to do with Edmund Harrington?”
She looks at me like I’m the ten-year-old. “That’s how many lines he wrote in his letter.”