Chapter Two Ashley
TWO ASHLEY
Her hands were stained up to the wrists, such a vivid red she was sure it would never wash away. Nearly two dozen jars of pickled beets lined the kitchen counters, waiting for the final stage: the hot bath that would seal the lids. The beets floated in brine like small hearts.
They’d never had such a crop.
The beets and potatoes had done well this year in the large garden that took up half of Gram’s backyard.
Ashley had suggested they downsize to a smaller, more manageable garden, maybe put in some high raised beds so Gram wouldn’t have to bend over and spend so much time on her knees, but Gram wouldn’t hear of it.
The many pounds of potatoes they’d harvested would be packed into wooden boxes and set in a dark corner of the cellar.
The beets they were canning would go into the pantry beside the jars of this year’s previous harvests: tomatoes, string beans, pickles, carrots, Gram’s famous strawberry rhubarb jam, and maple-spiced pickled crabapples, which she served alongside the turkey each Thanksgiving—one of those old family recipes that had been passed down for generations.
“Having a well-stocked pantry is better than money in the bank,” Gram would say, looking proudly at the shelves with their neat rows of carefully labeled jars.
Ash was slipping the skins off the final cooked beets, to then slice them in half and place them in the carefully sterilized jars, which her grandmother would fill with her secret brine recipe: water, vinegar, a good glug of maple syrup, bay leaves, salt, cloves, allspice, and whole peppercorns.
“So are you just going to ignore my question?” Ashley asked, side-eyeing her grandmother. Ashley was nervous, her fingers trembling a little as she dropped the sliced beets into the jars. She could almost feel the folded letter thrumming in the back pocket of her jeans.
“I’m tending to the brine,” Gram said, as she expertly ladled some into the jar of beets Ashley had just packed.
Her forehead was damp, her normally tidy gray hair coming undone from the bun she kept it in.
“These things take concentration, and you mustn’t disturb an old lady at work,” she added with a mischievous little grin.
She’d turned ninety-seven a couple of months ago, yet when she was in the kitchen, she moved like a young woman again, doing a graceful dance between stove and counter, chirping instructions to Ash: Doing good.
Almost there. No, Ash, not like that. Cut them a little smaller. That’s it. Good girl.
Gram was the most stubborn person Ashley knew.
But Ash could be nearly as stubborn. Tenacity, she preferred to call it—a word her high school chemistry teacher had used to describe her when writing a recommendation letter for college.
Ashley had gotten into UVM premed on a full scholarship based on her academics, low income, and sheer tenacity.
She was determined to be the first in her family in three generations to go to college, then medical school.
“You’ll do well because it’s in your blood,” Gram had told her back then. Gram’s father had been a physician.
Now Ash bit the inside of her cheek and decided to try the question again, phrased a little differently this time. “So you’re saying you have no reason to believe Mom might have gone to Boone’s Ferry? You know… back around the time… back then?”
Ashley had been wondering how to bring this up with Gram for days now, ever since she went digging through Gram’s desk looking for stamps and found the letter tucked in a drawer under a pile of old check registers.
Ash had decided she couldn’t bear to wait any longer to confront Gram, and figured that today, making the traditional family beets, was the perfect time.
Gram was happy, and most of all, she would be focused on the work, so she wouldn’t do what she usually did when Ash tried to bring up what had happened to Mom—just shake her head and wander off, declaring the conversation finished before it even began.
Ash also knew her grandmother didn’t like to talk about Boone’s Ferry, a little town up at the edge of Vermont, nearly in Canada.
It was where Gram’s mother and her family were from, where Gram’s parents, Dr. Thomas Endicott and his wife, Margaret, had lived.
But despite the fact that it was only four hours away, Gram had never been.
She’d grown up with her mother in Boston, then moved to Vermont just after getting married, to a little village in the Connecticut River Valley, and they had their own family.
Growing up, when Ash had pressed her mother as to why Gram didn’t want to talk about Boone’s Ferry, much less visit, her mom explained that it was likely too painful for her.
Gram’s father, whom she’d never known, had died, along with most of their isolated rural town, in a terrible outbreak of the Spanish flu.
Gram made a sour face. She set down the ladle, looked hard at Ashley. “What is all this about, really?”
Ash sighed now, leaned against the counter. “It’s been almost two years since Mom—”
Gram cut her off. “I’m well aware. I’m old, not senile.”
Ash laughed, “Christ, Gram, you’re more with it than I am most days.”
Gram opened her mouth to say something, to argue maybe or chide Ashley for swearing, but then snapped it closed. They were both silent a moment.
Two years ago, in mid-October, Mom had gone missing, wouldn’t answer calls or texts.
It wasn’t the first time. She would drop out of sight for a few days, but she always turned up with a story—she’d dropped her phone in the toilet at a dive bar in Maryland, or she’d spent all night dancing with a man who claimed to have been stationed at Area 51 and had seen what was being kept in a hangar there.
But this time, both her brother, Mal, and Gram seemed worried.
They’d called the police and reported her missing, told them she had a history of depression, of occasional erratic behavior.
Ash had insisted her mother would turn up and be fine, that if something were truly wrong, she would have known.
They were close, told each other everything.
The state police found her silver Subaru parked at a bridge an hour and a half away. It had been a rainy autumn, and the river was high and raging. Her purse was found in the car, her phone dead inside it. One of her shoes had washed up in a field two miles downstream.
Her body was never found.
Ash had refused to believe her mother had taken her own life, despite the evidence to the contrary. And it was, the doctors later told her, that denial combined with guilt and grief that caused her to have the breakdown that landed her in the hospital.
“Anyway,” Ash went on now, heading to the sink to rinse and dry her hands, “there’s something we need to talk about, Gram. Why don’t we sit for a minute—you could use a rest.”
“Horsefeathers! We’re nearly done here, and you know we can’t let the brine cool too much.”
“I found the letter,” Ash blurted out before she lost the nerve.
“What letter?” Gram eyed her suspiciously, reaching for a stained towel to wipe her own gnarled hands on.
Ash slipped the letter out of her back pocket. “I was looking for stamps and found this in your desk.” She opened the envelope, no return address but her mother’s familiar writing on the front with Gram’s full name and address. Ashley pulled out the letter, unfolded it for Gram to see:
October 14, 2014
Dear Mother,
I am in Boone’s Ferry. I came here to find the truth that you’ve worked so hard to hide from me.
I know everything.
We’ll talk when I get back.
Louise
Gram blinked at the letter, then looked away.
“How could you keep this from us?” Ash asked, trying to keep her voice calm, but still it cracked as the words came out.
Gram shook her head, went back to the beets, ladling brine into a fresh jar.
“Mom was in Boone’s Ferry just days before they found her car by the bridge! And you never told us. You never told the police. You said you had no idea where she was!” Her voice was shaking now.
Gram whispered something so quietly Ash couldn’t make it out.
Ash stared down at the letter in her hands: proof. Proof that she hadn’t been wrong in thinking there was more to the story.
Though Ash had been surprised to learn her mother had gone to Boone’s Ferry, it made sense.
Mom had been working on a family tree as a surprise for Gram.
She was one of those people who jumped from project to project and threw herself into each completely until she burned herself out, lost interest, and moved on.
There had been a UFO phase, an unsolved crimes phase, and many others—the latest was genealogy.
She’d hoped that presenting Gram with a family tree would help connect Gram with family she’d lost touch with.
But mostly, it seemed like Mom wanted to understand where she came from.
They’d talked about it just weeks before Mom’s disappearance.
They were in Gram’s kitchen, cleaning up after one of their weekly family dinners.
Ash had admitted she just didn’t get the fascination with genealogy.
“In order to understand who we truly are in the present, we have to look at the past,” Mom had insisted, her hands scrubbing a pot in the soapy water of the sink.
The ring she always wore, the old carved cameo of a woman’s face, sat on the counter next to the sink, watching them.
The ring had belonged to Gram, and before that, her mother, Margaret.
Ash picked up a glass from the rack and began drying it with a towel. “I just don’t see how learning the name and birthplace of your great-great-great-aunt or whoever gives you insight into who you are as a person now,” she said.
“You’re the doctor,” Mom said.
“Not yet,” Ash said.
“Well, don’t they teach med students about DNA?”
“Sure, but—”
“Just think of it, Ash,” she’d said with a dreamy expression.
“We are carrying little pieces of the people who came generations, centuries before us. Doesn’t that amaze you?
Our genes and chromosomes, they tell a story of who we are, where we came from—it’s not just one story living inside us, but thousands of stories just waiting to be understood, stories that link us to people who lived generations ago, who couldn’t even imagine our existence. How can that not excite you?”
Ash had shrugged. She was more interested in genetic markers for diseases, inherited mutations. More science, less story.
In fact, the last conversation Ashley had had with her mom was about the damn family tree.
Mom had called, sounding excited, a little manic even, and asked Ash if they could meet for coffee, said she wanted to go over something she’d learned while doing research.
Ashley was tired of feigning interest in their distant relations—a man who was an assistant barrel-maker on the Mayflower, a woman who was one of the first female lawyers in Boston.
She’d told her mom she was just too swamped with classes and clinicals, and had a killer exam coming up she really needed to prep for.
Her mom had sounded disappointed, strangely distant, but Ash figured it was due to her lack of enthusiasm for hearing more stories about long-ago ancestors who had nothing to do with her.
“Maybe next week?” Ashley had said, feeling a little guilty.
“We can go to that Thai place you love, the one with the fried coconut ice cream? And you can fill me in on everything you’ve learned. ”
Four days later, when Mom didn’t show up for Friday night family dinner, Malcolm had called the police to report her missing.
Ashley tortured herself replaying this conversation in the months to come.
If she’d only said yes, maybe things would have turned out differently.
Maybe her mother was really reaching out for help under the guise of the family tree.
And if only Ashley had realized it, had been more patient, less wrapped up in her own shit, maybe Mom would be here right now, in this kitchen, helping to make the famous family beets.
And Ashley might have graduated from medical school, instead of dropping out for a residency in the psych ward.
Might have… She stopped the thoughts right there.
She pushed herself away from the beets on the counter now. She knew what she needed to do. If she was ever going to truly understand and accept her mother’s death, she needed answers.
“Gram?”
Her grandmother still wouldn’t make eye contact with her. She was fussing with the lids now.
“I’ve been thinking about it, and I’m going to go up to Boone’s Ferry. See if I can figure out what Mom was up to there. Maybe Mal will come with me. We can show her picture to people, see if—”
“You’ll do no such thing!” Gram said, turning to face her, her voice sharp, clutching a jar of beets. “I’m telling you, there’s nothing to find there, Ash.” Her face was pinched in frustration.
Ash was quiet for a few seconds, looking at her grandmother. Gram was wrong, she felt it in her gut. And it wasn’t just frustration on the old woman’s face.
It was fear.
Ash continued, trying to keep her voice calm and steady.
“But you and everyone else are always telling me I need to find closure. Maybe if I go there, if I try to retrace Mom’s steps—”
“I won’t hear any more talk of it!” Gram’s voice shook. “No one is going to Boone’s Ferry!”
The jar slipped from the old woman’s hand and hit the wood floorboards with an explosion of glass, beets, and hot blood-colored liquid.