Chapter 8 - Brett Remembered How Eleanor Came Home
Brett had been six that night.
I stopped asking him for chronology.
Instead I asked for pictures.
“What do you remember about Grandma when she came home?”
He thought for a long time.
“Mud.”
“Where?”
“Her shoes.”
Anything else?
“One earring.”
“What about it?”
“She only had one.”
Eleanor wore a pair of long gold earrings constantly back then.
Brett said the right one was missing.
Then he remembered Calvin holding something blue.
“A towel?”
He shook his head.
“A scarf.”
Mara’s blue scarf.
The police inventory from the crash listed Mara’s handbag, coat, phone and jewelry.
No scarf.
“Did Grandma say anything?”
Brett nodded slowly.
“She told Calvin, ‘They made their choice.’”
I felt sick.
“What did she mean?”
“I don’t know.”
Then his face changed.
“There was something else.”
“What?”
“She kept asking Calvin, ‘Did you find it?’”
My eyes went to the recorder.
“She meant this.”
Brett nodded.
“Calvin kept saying no.”
That explained the search after Mara’s death.
Eleanor had believed Mara carried the recorder in the SUV.
She had searched the wreck.
Failed.
Then spent three years searching the house.
I looked at Brett.
“Did she ever ask you about it?”
“All the time.”
“And what did you tell her?”
His eyes filled.
“That I’d never seen it.”
I stared at him.
“But you knew about the loose panel.”
He nodded.
“Aunt Mara showed me once.”
“Then why didn’t you tell Eleanor?”
Brett began crying again.
“Because Aunt Mara told me if Grandma ever asked where she hid things, I should say I forgot.”
Brett had protected the recorder for three years.
Even while Eleanor taught him to repeat her cruelty toward Olivia.
And suddenly the boy who threw soup in Part 1 became much harder to understand as simply “bad.”
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He had been living inside two loyalties at once.
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