• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1153 0

someone had dumped the contents of a desk and several filing drawers. Here I did find references to Rose, however, who began appearing in the ledgers as having paid for certain expenses, and to whom some of the receipts were made. These accumulated in a low pile, though after the initial excitement of seeing her name, my eagerness slowly faded. What did these bits of paper tell me, after all, that I hadn’t known before? I kept digging and sorting, mindful of the changing light in the room and the ticking of the clock. Near the bottom of the box I came upon a leather binder, tied shut with a ribbon. Another ledger, I thought, or a collection of bills, but when I opened it letters fell out, several of them, all in different sorts of envelopes but written in the same hand, a script I recognized at once from the cupola notes, sharp and slanted: Rose. With trembling hands, I opened the one on top. The paper was coarse, yellowed, the pages filled with her handwriting, the black ink faded to the color of bark. It was dated September 21, 1914.

Dear Iris,

Beautiful girl. I left you this morning. You were in the garden, making a pile from the gravel by the fish pond, wearing the dark yellow dress I made for you. You are only three years old and you are so smart. You pulled the petals from an orange marigold and scattered them on the water. Feeding the fish, you said. I held you very close. Your hair, like dandelion fluff when you were small, lies flat now, so smooth and shiny. You smelled like soap and sunshine. Then Mrs. Elliot arrived and Cora called you inside for lunch. You climbed the steps one by one—they are too tall for your little legs. You turned, laughing, to wave to me. Then you disappeared beyond the door.

Mrs. Elliot called to me to hurry but I could not. I kept looking at the porch, willing you there, but you did not come.

I used yellow ribbons on your dress. I have one tied around my wrist. It flashes beneath my cuff as I write. The other passengers don’t notice, they go on with their business. They seem very ordinary and I wonder if I seem that way myself. It makes me wonder what secrets they carry in their hearts. The old woman across from me, who gazes out the window—what is she remembering? Or the gentleman beside me, adding numbers in his ledger, or the young farmer and his wife exclaiming at the sights—what are their secrets, their dreams?

I am dressed plainly—my one suit, brown, a blouse the color of golden-rod. I sit quietly with my satchel at my feet. What do they see, looking at me? They could never imagine you, turning, laughing, to wave one last time from the stairs.

You did not know I was leaving.

It is better that way. I tell myself again and again.

I promise—I promise—I will come back for you soon.

Meanwhile, I will write every day. Maybe you will never read these letters. Maybe I will be back so quickly that you will not remember I was ever gone. Still, I will write. Someday when you are older you will have these to keep and see how much I loved you, even though today you woke up from your nap, stretching in that patch of sunlight that falls across the bed in the midafternoon, to find me gone.

They will take good care of you, I pray.

Despite the scandal, Joseph loves you, because he loved your father. And Cora, though she does not like me, dotes on children since she has none of her own.

There was a page break, and I paused. Muted voices and laughter floated up from the genealogy class. My hands were shaking a little. The story I’d imagined hadn’t included Rose leaving Iris. The note I’d found in the cupola had been dated 1925, eleven years later, when Iris would have been fourteen. It seemed Rose had never come back. I thought of my mother’s warning, I hope you aren’t disappointed, and realized that I might be, that Rose could turn out to be less heroic and interesting than I’d imagined. The letters fanned out against the polished cherry table. I took a deep breath, turned the page, and read on.

At the station, Mrs. Elliot gave me a poem. She copied it from a magazine. A poem