The Red Strokes

Chapter 23 - Mia

Mia breaks her habit of looking in the hallway mirror on her way out of the house. She doesn't need a mirror to know her hair looks like a large tumbleweed ready to topple off her head or that the mascara she forgot to remove last night now resembles spiders nesting on her eyes. She pulls the sash of her robe tight as she steps onto the back porch.

She should have stayed the night at the hospital with her son, had wanted to, intended to, but couldn't. She couldn't bring herself to explain to him the scene that erupted between her and his father, and she couldn't spend hours staring at the need-to-know burning in his eyes. Sleep was the coward's way out, but it came with a price. Through fits of panic and the ache of loneliness, she tossed and turned for several hours, the sheets encasing her like a cocoon long before sunup. When she couldn't stand the agony of darkness any longer, she went to the kitchen and sat with a cup of cold coffee anchored between her hands while glancing at the phone every few minutes, willing it to ring. Hope aside, she knew it wouldn't. Her husband is a proud man. She had taken every one of his beliefs, melded them together, and used them as a knife to cut to the core of his pride. As a matter of principle, even if he somehow manages to understand why she chose to live a lie for so long, he'll never come to her first.

The door to the carriage house creaks open with a turn of the knob. Inside, the smell of must and the cold shiver of death hang in the air so heavily they seem to cause a haze made visible by the first rays of light through a parted curtain. The room looks the same as it did the last time she stood in it. No one has been here and nothing has been touched, but as much as it's the same, it's different. She takes in the towering stacks of magazines, boxes of journals stacked between the couch and a wall, Moleskins shoved into every crevice of the sagging bookshelves; cocktail napkins and scraps of paper covered in scribbles strewn like confetti across every surface of the room, and files bursting with a lifetime of genius. She realizes what she's seeing. It's the hard copy of her father's mind, the ideas and artistry that lived within him, the thoughts that were his alone. It's the life he labored over, the life he lived, loved, and left behind. This room, this cluttered space with what appears to be no starting point and no end, represents everything he was.

Sitting in the eye of organized chaos is counter-productive to restoring a positive outlook for her son's sake, but sitting alone in her own house listening to it breathe was ripping out her heart. The lingering scent of Roger's cologne, his work boots dropped at the door, his robe lying across the foot of the bed, those and a hundred other pieces of Roger serve to remind her he's not there and he's not coming back.

How could she have been so stupid? Even without Rowan's condition, there are at least a dozen other ways Roger could have come across the same information. Her reason for lying sounds pathetic while it rumbles around in her head. Only now, seeing what the lie did to him, can she see where the truth might have been the better hand to play. Although she had always justified her actions by telling herself she was protecting him she has to ask herself now, whom was she really protecting?

The endless stacks of clutter seem daunting in her current state of mind, so she decides to begin with something more manageable. She pulls the handle of the center desk drawer and begins pushing items around with one finger. Pens, paper clips, and several empty medicine bottles. She closes it. Next, she opens the top right drawer. Business cards, slips of paper with phone numbers scratched across them, and several pictures. She removes the pictures and flips through them one at a time. The first is of her father, his arm draped around their housekeeper, Heddie Mae. In the next picture, Heddie Mae leans against an iron fence and a young girl stands in front of her, both of them smiling for the camera. In the last picture, her father stands next to the young girl with an arm wrapped around her shoulder, an easy smile on his lips. Across the back of the photo the words 'Avery Alice - 2004' are scrawled in her father's handwriting. Mia studies the snapshots further. A magnolia tree in the background tells her they weren't taken locally. She can't recall her father having ever visited Heddie Mae once she left although the proof is in the pictures. But why? She left in such a hurry and never contacted them once she was gone, so why would he have paid her a visit? And who was the young girl?

Mia lacks the mental fortitude to give much thought to the pictures or the questions they raise. She rummages around in the remaining drawers, but finds nothing of any real interest. Although there are three file cabinets in the room, only one sits in a place of prominence next to the desk. The top drawer doesn't yield with a tug forcing her to sift through the desk drawers once again in the hopes of finding the key.

Unable to find the key to open the locked cabinet and unwilling to tackle the mountains of paper, she decides to force herself to shower and dress. As she reaches across the desk to turn the lamp off, the pictures she had found earlier catch her eye. She picks them up and fans them out in her hands. "Dad, Heddie Mae, and a young girl," she says to herself. Can it be? She lowers her hands and stares through the wall on the other side of the room. No. But what else? That would explain why Heddie Mae ran off the way she did. And the year on the back of the photo, 2004. Mia runs the numbers backward in her head. Assuming she was close on the young girl's age, that would mean she was conceived about the time her own mother died. Dad... and Heddie Mae? Mia loosens her grip and the pictures fall to the desk. That would also explain why Heddie Mae has returned after so many years. She's here to see that her child receives her birthright.

Mia buries her head in her hands. All of those trips, each time he said he was going to the mountains to work, he was in Mississippi. It's the only scenario that makes sense. He had another family she and her sisters knew nothing about. How long before her mother's death had the affair started? Maybe her father's affair was the reason behind all of her mother's breakdowns. All the pieces fit, but what if she's wrong. Could there be another explanation for the pictures, Heddie Mae's return, and her father's peculiar wishes upon his death?

It feels as though her brain has been cordoned off, thoughts of Rowan in one area, thoughts of Roger in another, and now, thoughts of her father in yet another, each trying to dominate her mind. She picks up the phone and does the one thing she can think to do.

Gnawing on her bottom lip with her teeth, she counts the rings until she hears the voice on the other end. "It's me." A few seconds pass before she adds, "I need your help."

MB4