Jude shone her flashlight along the dirt floor. She wasn’t a reporter. Not in the typical sense anyway, but she noticed things others missed. Through the lens in her camera, Jude learned to study the details. The man standing off to the side of the crime scene, his hands shoved so deep into his pockets his forearms were invisible. Or the doll stuck in a tree after a tornado ripped through town. The little details that turned a story into real life.
Shafts of sunlight filtered through cracks in the old barn wood, but only illuminated strips in the darkness. Jude shivered and pointed her flashlight at the ladder that led to the lofts. Peter liked to play in the lofts as a child and later Hattie did too, but never Jude. Everything about the lofts reminded her of a graveyard. When their father fell to his death from that space, it only confirmed her good sense to stay the hell out of there.
She stuck the flashlight in her mouth and grabbed the rungs. As she climbed, her camera swung against her back, hanging from a leather strap around her neck. She glanced back at the dirt floor and tried not to imagine her father sprawled there, his neck broken.
At the top, more shafts of light lit the barn, and she clicked off her flashlight, lifting her camera up instead. The tiny lens seemed to magnify every object, shadow, and footprint. When she looked through the camera, she no longer viewed the world as Jude, everything fitting into her version of reality, but instead as an all-seeing eye, no biases, no expectations, truly able to see every nuance and texture.
Furniture draped in sheets, cobwebs, sagging cardboard boxes, stacks of yellowing books, mouse poop (ugh!), a tall grimy mirror, stacks of paintings not preserved, a tarnished soup pot-
Jude continued to scan and then paused, shifting back to the soup pot, she had a memory of her mother lazily stirring a pot of chicken soup for a sick Hattie. The handle had been missing. Sure enough the handle on the pot before her was broken off. Jude let the camera rest against her chest and moved toward the pile of stuff concealed behind the pot. She ripped off a dark drape covering the boxes. Dust flew into the air and she pulled her blouse up to keep from inhaling it.
The boxes were haphazard, but Jude recognized her mother’s green suitcase. The clasps stuck and then popped with a loud click. Neatly folded clothes greeted her, and she sighed, disappointed. Stuffing her hands into the clothes, she searched for anything tucked further into the suitcase. Her hand struck something hard, and she wiggled out a small wooden jewelry box. Nestled in the velvet interior, she found a jumble of tangled gold and silver chains, and beneath those a tiny silk pouch. She lifted it and dumped the contents into her hand. A diamond ring landed on her palm, her mother’s wedding ring.
Jude blinked at the ring, frowning. Her father would have buried her mother with her wedding ring. There was no doubt in Jude’s mind that the ring would have gone into the ground with her.
Jude slipped the ring onto her pinkie. Her fingers were thicker than her mothers had been and shorter. Her mother’s fingers were long and slender like Hattie’s.
“Why is it in this suitcase?” she whispered, touching a pink silk nightgown her mother often wore. Something else was bothering her, too. The clothes in the suitcase were perfectly arranged, silk and soft fabrics on top, jeans at the bottom. Her mother had packed the suitcase. Her father would have thrown things in, barely folded. Jude knew the difference. For the first fifteen years of her life, Jude’s mother packed her suitcases and the rare occasion her father did it, her mother laughed at the chaos of their stuff. But how could her mother have packed the suitcase? She died unexpectedly. Obviously, she didn’t have time to pack her things first.
Damien
Damien’s horse, Luna, trotted amiably along. He ran his fingers through her long mane of white hair and watched Hattie riding in front of him. She said she had never ridden but took to the horse naturally. Long and willowy, her body moved and swayed with the animal, the wind, his breath. Her long blonde hair whipped out behind her, caught by the breeze and he imagined running his fingers through the silky strands, turning her face to his and staring into her eyes, blue and bottomless.
He squeezed the leather bridle and blew out a long, hot breath. He couldn’t afford to be thinking of her in those terms, and yet… he couldn’t seem to stop.
They veered off the pasture onto a dirt path that wound through the woods. The path circled an old rock quarry, flooded years ago. Damien’s friend Fiona, who owned the horse stable, had once told him that local teenagers used to swim in the quarry until a girl drowned at one of their parties.
The sun glinted off the flat mirrored surface. Along the water’s edge, huge weeping willows swept over the surface of the water.
Damien trotted up to Hattie and motioned toward one of the willow trees set further back. Beneath the tree an old rock fire pit stood on a hard, sandy ridge.
“Cookie picnic over there?”
“I love weeping willows,” Hattie said dreamily. As they rounded the quarry, she shielded her face against the sun’s sharp reflection.
Her horse, a muscular steed named Halo, nuzzled Damien’s horse playfully. She nipped him, and Damien urged her toward the willow.
He dismounted and helped Hattie from her horse. She seemed weightless, like he could toss her in the air.
“Thank you,” she said breathlessly, massaging Halo’s neck and ears. “They’re so beautiful.”
“Yes, his rider is too.”
Hattie blushed and turned away. Looking across the water, Damien saw her eyes take on the distant gaze that so often formed her features. Lips parted, topaz eyes sparkling, seeing into another world, he thought.
“Where do you go?” he asked her.
She closed her eyes tight and opened them, glancing at him.
“Everywhere, and nowhere.”
Damien had a sudden urge to tell her everything about Dr. Kaiser, Jude, his many untruths. Hattie had a forgiving nature. She would not hate him for his deception, but would it change the way she looked at him?
“How’s your project going?” she asked, smoothing her fingers through the grass.
Damien paused almost thinking she referred to his work with Kaiser and then remembered why he had originally approached her, or why she thought he had.
“Good, I’ve met a couple of guys who have been insightful.” Which was true. Although he’d used his thesis as a ruse to meet Hattie, he intended to write about existentialism in the homeless population. Most of the homeless in Cadillac knew and loved Hattie. She was a familiar face at the food pantry and the overnight shelter.
“They’re good men,” Hattie said. “My Gram Ruth calls me a lover of fools and thieves.” She smiled but didn’t laugh. “She doesn’t know them though. They’re kind, gentle, and their stories will break your heart.”
“Your Grandma raised you?”
Hattie nodded.
“My sister and brother were older when my parents died. But I was only eight.” She paused and stared hard at a field of wildflowers beyond the trees. “I loved Gram. I love her, but…”
Damien waited, wondering about the sorrow in Hattie’s eyes. Dr. Kaiser had told him almost nothing about the girls’ family, but he had implied their mother was dangerous and unstable. Strangely he had not gotten that impression from either of her daughters.
“Gram was unkind to our mother. Jude and Peter still blame her for that. It’s all so confusing.” Hattie closed her eyes and put her face in her hands. She didn’t weep but sat hiding her eyes for a long time.
“Would you like to talk about your mother?” he asked, for his own sake. In his mind he insisted he would tell Kaiser nothing of what Hattie confided to him.