Three October 15, 2023
WHEN ELSIE parks her car in the lane beside Travis’s truck, Bailey is waiting for her on the porch wearing workout gear, her Sunday outfit. So, Zander must have already called her.
Behind her sister, at the open door, Travis hovers, dressed like a lumberjack in jeans and a plaid shirt.
His beard, untrimmed and uncombed, is particularly impressive today.
Bailey nods sideways at him and, as Elsie retrieves her backpack from the passenger seat, Travis rushes down the stairs to open the car door for her, then takes her bag and leads her up the stairs by the elbow as if she’s injured.
Elsie, enjoying the attention somewhat, doesn’t at first object and even finds a bit of wobble in her step, nearly tripping on the way up.
On the porch, Travis hands Elsie her bag and Bailey wraps an arm around her. “Are you alright?” she asks.
“He didn’t need to phone you,” Elsie says.
“Zander was worried about you. He said you experienced an emotional collapse at the lookout.”
“It’s the anniversary of Mom’s death. Anyone would.”
“Do you think you’re sliding into another episode?”
“I’m fine.”
“We’re just trying to assess if you need help or not.”
“You do still seem depressed, Ellie,” Travis says.
“It’s Elsie,” she says, under her breath.
She feels suddenly very heavy, weary. On the sidewalk below them, a woman pushing a jogging stroller gapes up at them.
Her baby, chewing a soother, also looks up, wide-eyed.
Elsie feels an almost irresistible urge to pick up the child and hug her. But then the kid hiccups a cry.
“You’re always dressed in black and sort of—” Travis stops before saying “messy” or “untidy.” Her wrinkled black shorts and leggings and well-worn boots. Her muddy raincoat and ragged backpack.
“I’m not depressed,” Elsie says, balling her fist. “I’m just—comfortable.
” Comfortable in her black clothes, her basement; comfortable floating through her days of mind-numbing routine.
She does still have mornings when she has to drag herself to work and would give anything to isolate herself in her basement suite, to do nothing but play her farming game, as she did in the months—the early years, really—following her mother’s death.
She eyes the cocoon under the porch railing as she thinks about that.
Okay, maybe she is still a little depressed.
“If you are sliding into another episode,” her sister says, “then the sooner you seek treatment the better.”
“I said, I’m fine.”
Elsie’s phone buzzes. A text from Zander.
Make it home okay?
She sends a smiley face and thumbs-up. Is that how Zander saw her today, as Travis and her sister do? Rumpled and depressed? She turns to the front door. “Can we please go inside?”
Travis checks his phone for the time. “Do you want me to stay?” he asks Bailey.
Elsie widens her eyes at her sister, begging her to get rid of Travis so she doesn’t have an audience for the rest of the conversation she knows she’s about to have, and mercifully, Bailey waves him off. “Go watch your hockey game,” she says. “But get some of your packing done.”
Travis kisses Bailey on the cheek and then, before leaving, wraps an arm around Elsie for a brotherly hug. He smells strongly of sandalwood, his deodorant. “We’re here for you,” he says, but then immediately charges down the stairs, taking them two at a time.
“Come on,” Bailey says to Elsie. “Let’s get you inside. I’ll make us tea.”
Shouldering her pack, Elsie follows her sister inside and unlaces her boots on the mat near the door.
When Bailey moved into this house, she got permission from her landlord to paint her kitchen and do some other touch-ups.
She chose to paint it grey. Grey walls, darker grey cupboards. Grey subway tiles behind the sink.
As Elsie sits at the kitchen island, Bailey plugs in the kettle and takes down a grey tea canister that reads A cup of tea solves everything.
Most of the objects in Bailey’s kitchen have inspirational quotes on them.
On the wall over the well-stocked wine rack, one sign reads Life Happens, Wine Helps.
On the cups Bailey puts on the counter: It’s a good day to have a good day and Do what makes your soul happy.
Elsie doubts working at the insurance place is making Bailey’s soul happy.
But hey, who is she to judge her sister’s decor choices?
Elsie doesn’t even have a bed frame. Her mattress sits on a piece of plywood that in turn sits on several milk crates, and she’s strung fairy lights over it.
Besides, Bailey’s obsession with quotes makes it easy to buy gifts for her.
Bailey sets a milk jug that says smile on the counter. She sits. “First off, it’s great to see you getting out again,” she begins. “A hike with Zander. That’s huge.”
Elsie holds her head in her hands, looks down at the lace table cloth under clear plastic. “I made such a fool of myself, Bailey.”
“I doubt that’s true.”
“It is. You know it is.”
Bailey presses her lips together before responding. “Zander said you called out for Mom.”
“It wasn’t—I didn’t—” There’s no way to explain. She’s not going to tell Bailey about how she snapped back in time.
“He also said that you told him an ‘angel’ saved your life the day Mom died.”
Elsie didn’t tell him the rest, that the angel had disappeared, or that in her vision or whatever it was, the angel was her, or that she stopped herself from falling. “I just said the woman saved me.” Elsie fiddles with a placemat that reads Eat until Bailey slides it away.
The kettle whistles. “Okay. Tell me exactly what happened today.”
As Bailey makes their tea, Elsie gives her sister the short version: how she found the atlas on top of the geocache and then, on opening it, only felt like she was reliving her mother’s death.
“It wasn’t like a flashback or anything.
” Even though it was, kind of. She was there.
She leaves out key details—like the old woman in a nightgown, the ghost, who fell backwards into nothingness—to make herself sound saner.
When Elsie is done recounting her disastrous outing with Zander, Bailey sits there for a moment, holding her steaming cup, staring at her Live, Love, Laugh wall hanging, flexing her jaw. A rat scurries across the attic floor above and they both eye the ceiling.
“Should I book you a doctor’s appointment?” Bailey asks.
“I won’t take those antidepressants again,” Elsie says.
As she did for nearly three years. “They made my brain foggy. I couldn’t think.
I couldn’t read. I lost all interest in drawing.
” Or anything else, for that matter. The only thing left to her was gaming and many days that took too much energy, so she slept.
“I’m pretty sure that was the depression, not the meds.”
Elsie leans over the table towards her sister. “Look, today is the fifth anniversary of Mom’s death. It makes sense that going to the lookout triggered a traumatic memory.” What Zander said.
Bailey rotates her mug of tea round and round.
“I ate an entire tub of Nutella for breakfast this morning,” she says.
“Then I cried in the shower. It’s the anniversary effect.
” She looks up at Elsie and nods as if she’s come to a decision.
“Okay, I don’t think this incident warrants a trip to the doctor. But you should find a therapist.”
Elsie sips her tea. “I’ll think about it.”
Bailey puts on her reading glasses. “Now, let’s take a look at that atlas. Zander said it’s full of astrological charts.”
Elsie, relieved to talk about something—anything—else, pulls the book out of her backpack and hands it to her sister.
“The Pocket Atlas of Nostalgia and Longing. Strange.” Bailey flips through it. “You see how each page is titled?” she asks. “First House, Second House, Third House . . . That’s referring to the twelve astrological houses. Each of the houses governs a different aspect of the human experience.”
“What do you mean?”
Bailey shows her the first chart titled “The First House: Self.” “It’s just like the title of this page suggests. The first house is all about you: your personality, how you present yourself, how others see you. First impressions.”
The experience up at the lookout certainly gave her an idea of how her family and probably Zander must see her.
“There’s also a map on every page,” Elsie says. “With coordinates, longitude and latitude, to different places. The first map is for the lookout, where I found this atlas.”
Bailey turns back to the first page. “I’ve never seen a geocache trail set up like this. Do you think that’s what it is?”
“Maybe. I did wonder if Zander planted the atlas in the cache. Or did you?” Maybe the atlas is her sister’s way of throwing her and Zander together, so they become real friends, playing on Elsie’s love of maps and geocaching, Zander’s passion for astrology.
“I mean, did you guys work together on this thing, as some kind of joke or game, to get me out of the house or something?”
“I had nothing to do with this,” Bailey says, turning the page.
Elsie searches her sister’s face for a tell that Bailey is lying to her. But there’s no sign of the nervous smile, the red splotches creeping up her neck.
“Zander might have orchestrated this,” Bailey says. “I mean, he has the skills to put together these charts. Did he act like he was pulling a practical joke?”
“No, not at all. And it rained this morning. When we got there, the atlas was on top of the bin, dry.”
Bailey flips through the whole atlas. “Weird.”
“What?”
“See this inner chart, the first circle around the map? It’s the same on each page, and it’s familiar. I wonder—” Bailey’s hazel eyes are magnified by her lenses. “Where’s the birth chart that Zander did for you?”