Look Closely - Laura Caldwell [16]
I studied the rest of the room, and the cold feeling returned. I remembered so many things all of a sudden—my parent’s king-size bed against the right wall, a bureau of cherrywood with a mirror over it, more flowers, my mother’s yellow sweater hanging over a chair, an armoire to match the dresser, paperbacks and tissue on one nightstand, a lone alarm clock on the other. Recollections poured into my brain with such speed that they startled me. And yet, there was something else about the room that I couldn’t recall.
“Thank you,” I said, interrupting Jan’s remarks. “I have to be going.”
I turned and left the room.
“Is something wrong?” Her voice followed me.
I hurried down the stairs, distantly hearing Jan’s feet pounding behind me, until I made myself stop on the landing. Be calm, I told myself. Be calm. It wouldn’t be good to act crazy when I’d come here seeking answers.
I opened my mouth to say something, but as I gazed down the stairs, I saw my mother again in the powder-blue suit. She was struggling to stand, holding a hand to the back of her head. The doorbell rang once, then again, then pounding came from the door. My mother moved slowly, inching toward the doorway, the white of her hand never leaving her head, holding it gingerly, as if she was keeping her hairstyle in place.
“Is something wrong?” I heard Jan say again.
“No. Nothing at all.” And I turned away, because if I said anything else, I might have told her what I suddenly knew—that my mother, Leah Sutter, died in this house.
4
After leaving the Marker Mansion, formerly the Sutter home—my home—I drove slowly, not sure where I was going, letting the sights of Woodland Dunes fill my head and refresh my memories of the place. I passed the town’s riding stables, matching white barns with green roofs resting on a large field, a white fence surrounding the property. Patsy and I used to ride there on Saturdays, eating brown-bag lunches in the long grass behind the barns when we were done. The town’s championship golf course with its rolling greens and intermittent circles of sand appeared the same as it did years ago, just like the lighthouse at Murphy’s Point.
I turned left on the outskirts of town, then left again toward the lake. And suddenly, there it was. A square plot of land on a hillside dotted with trees and sprinkled with gray and white headstones. The Woodland Dunes Cemetery. I hadn’t realized I was so close. In fact, I didn’t know if I could have found it if I tried.
I pulled into the lot, the tires of the rental car crunching over the gravel. As I got out, I remembered where to go. My dad had brought me here a few times before we moved. I walked toward the far left corner, the heels of my loafers sinking into the damp, spongy ground. I passed an older man in jogging clothes squatting over a small, simple headstone. He pulled stray weeds with a quick hand as if accustomed to the movement.
I stopped when I came to the tall white column made of stone, an angel on either side looking down, protecting the grave. A grayish-green film had made its home in some of the crevices of my mother’s memorial, around the angel’s wings and in the edges of the lettering that read: Leah Rose Sutter, Beloved Wife and Mother, 1942–1982. The rest of the grave site was remarkably clean. No weeds or sand on it like some of the others nearby.
Then I noticed it. A single yellow tulip lying at the base of the monument. I stood completely still, staring at it, my mind latching onto our old house again, wandering the rooms inside, seeing it the way my mother had always kept it. Flowers below the porch, blooms in the vases in the library, and more flowers in her bedroom. In the spring, when the air was new and clean as it was now, those flowers were usually tulips, mostly yellow.
I wrapped my arms