Chapter 3 - Storage 416
The key opened a locker at a self-storage building south of the city, where freight trucks rattled along the road and the elevators smelled of cardboard. I had driven past the place for years. Mom had never mentioned renting a unit.
Elaine came with me, carrying the inventory permission my mother had signed. "We shouldn't be surprised if it's ordinary household things," she said. "People save what they can't bear to throw away."
It wasn't ordinary.
Locker 416 held four plastic tubs, a portable desk fan, and a little wooden crib with one slat repaired in a different color. My crib. I touched the rail and remembered Mom telling me she'd fixed it with a borrowed drill because buying a new one had been impossible.
The first tub held school projects and photographs. The second held letters. Each returned envelope was sealed in a transparent sleeve, dated in Mom's handwriting. My birthdays. My first day of kindergarten. A school award. One envelope contained a photograph of a little girl missing her front teeth. That was me at seven, grinning into bright sunlight.
"She kept sending them," I said.
Elaine touched my shoulder, then let her hand fall. There are moments when comfort feels like somebody trying to cover evidence.
The third tub held carbon copies of employment documents, payroll records, and notebooks. Mom had worked for a freight company before computers became the center of everything, and she loved a paper trail. On a faded spreadsheet she had listed the hours she worked during her last pregnancy, including evenings spent typing company contracts from home.
"These hours were never on the termination record," Elaine said.
"Does that mean they owe her wages?"
"It's too early to say. Older claims can face time limits. But the documents matter to her reputation, and there may be records worth comparing. We won't promise an outcome without checking the law."
The fourth tub contained a cassette recorder and a stack of small tapes. On the lid was a label in my mother's neat lettering: For Gina, if I cannot explain.
I put the first tape in the machine. The speaker crackled. My mother's younger voice came through, soft and impatient.
"December fifth, two thousand four. I went to the office again today. Helen said Anthony was unavailable. She said the decision was final. I asked her to give him the photograph, and she said she would. I want Gina to know that I tried."
A tall man in a gray jacket stood at the far end of the hallway. He had a phone to his ear. When he saw me, he looked away and went toward the elevators.
"Did he follow us?" I asked.
Elaine shook her head. "I don't know. But don't assume you're imagining it. I'll speak to the manager."
When I reached home, there was a bouquet outside my apartment door. White lilies in a glass vase, with a card in an expensive envelope.
I am sorry. I would like to help with the service. Anthony.
Mom hated lilies. Their scent gave her headaches. He couldn't have known that. Still, seeing them on our doormat felt like a stranger taking up space in our home.
I carried them downstairs and left them in the building's communal lobby for anyone who wanted them.
At six, Anthony called. I let it ring three times before answering.
"Why are you looking through my mother's employment file?" I asked.
"Because I don't trust the people who handled it."
"You signed it."
Silence.
"Yes," he said at last. "I did."
The answer caught me off guard. I'd expected the usual excuses, a forged signature, an absent-minded signature, some invisible villain. Instead he sounded exhausted.
"Then why are you searching?"
"I want to know which letters reached me and which didn't."
"Would it change anything if one didn't?"
"It might change what I can tell you."
"It won't change what you did."
"I know that now."
"No. You know I showed up. That's different."
There was a soft knock at my door. I looked through the peephole and saw no one. A folded paper lay on the mat. I picked it up while he was still speaking.
It was a copy of Mom's termination form. Across the bottom someone had written in thick black marker: ASK HIM WHAT HAPPENED ON MAY 14, 2016.
I hadn't seen that date in the storage unit. But I knew it.
It was my twelfth birthday, the year Mom cried at the window long after I'd gone to bed.
"Anthony," I said, "where were you on May fourteenth, twenty sixteen?"
May you like
His breathing changed.
"Gina," he said, "who told you to ask that?"
