Page 4 of Stay Buried

Ash was slipping the skins off the final cooked beets, to then slice them in half and place them in the carefully sterilized jars, which her grandmother would fill with her secret brine recipe: water, vinegar, a good glug of maple syrup, bay leaves, salt, cloves, allspice, and whole peppercorns.

“So are you just going to ignore my question?” Ashley asked, side-eyeing her grandmother. Ashley was nervous, her fingers trembling a little as she dropped the sliced beets into the jars. She could almost feel the folded letter thrumming in the back pocket of her jeans.

“I’m tending to the brine,” Gram said, as she expertly ladled some into the jar of beets Ashley had just packed. Her forehead was damp, her normally tidy gray hair coming undone from the bun she kept it in. “These things take concentration, and you mustn’t disturb an old lady at work,” she added with a mischievous little grin. She’d turned ninety-seven a couple of months ago, yet when she was in the kitchen, she moved like a young woman again, doing a graceful dance between stove and counter, chirping instructions to Ash:Doing good. Almost there. No, Ash, not like that. Cut them a little smaller. That’s it. Good girl.

Gram was the most stubborn person Ashley knew. But Ash could be nearly as stubborn.Tenacity, she preferred to call it—a word her high school chemistry teacher had used to describe her when writing a recommendation letter for college. Ashley had gotten into UVM premed on a full scholarship based on her academics, low income, and sheer tenacity. She was determined to be the first in her family in three generations to go to college, then medical school. “You’ll do well because it’s in your blood,” Gram had told her back then. Gram’s father had been a physician.

Now Ash bit the inside of her cheek and decided to try thequestion again, phrased a little differently this time. “So you’re saying you have no reason to believe Mom might have gone to Boone’s Ferry? You know… back around the time… back then?”

Ashley had been wondering how to bring this up with Gram for days now, ever since she went digging through Gram’s desk looking for stamps and found the letter tucked in a drawer under a pile of old check registers. Ash had decided she couldn’t bear to wait any longer to confront Gram, and figured that today, making the traditional family beets, was the perfect time. Gram was happy, and most of all, she would be focused on the work, so she wouldn’t do what she usually did when Ash tried to bring up what had happened to Mom—just shake her head and wander off, declaring the conversation finished before it even began.

Ash also knew her grandmother didn’t like to talk about Boone’s Ferry, a little town up at the edge of Vermont, nearly in Canada. It was where Gram’s mother and her family were from, where Gram’s parents, Dr. Thomas Endicott and his wife, Margaret, had lived. But despite the fact that it was only four hours away, Gram had never been. She’d grown up with her mother in Boston, then moved to Vermont just after getting married, to a little village in the Connecticut River Valley, and they had their own family.

Growing up, when Ash had pressed her mother as to why Gram didn’t want to talk about Boone’s Ferry, much less visit, her mom explained that it was likely too painful for her. Gram’s father, whom she’d never known, had died, along with most of their isolated rural town, in a terrible outbreak of the Spanish flu.

Gram made a sour face. She set down the ladle, looked hard at Ashley. “What is all this about, really?”

Ash sighed now, leaned against the counter. “It’s been almost two years since Mom—”

Gram cut her off. “I’m well aware. I’m old, not senile.”

Ash laughed, “Christ, Gram, you’re more with it than I am most days.”

Gram opened her mouth to say something, to argue maybe or chide Ashley for swearing, but then snapped it closed. They were both silent a moment.

Two years ago, in mid-October, Mom had gone missing, wouldn’t answer calls or texts. It wasn’t the first time. She would drop out of sight for a few days, but she always turned up with a story—she’d dropped her phone in the toilet at a dive bar in Maryland, or she’d spent all night dancing with a man who claimed to have been stationed at Area 51 and had seen what was being kept in a hangar there.

But this time, both her brother, Mal, and Gram seemed worried. They’d called the police and reported her missing, told them she had a history of depression, of occasional erratic behavior. Ash had insisted her mother would turn up and be fine, that if something were truly wrong, she would have known. They were close, told each other everything.

The state police found her silver Subaru parked at a bridge an hour and a half away. It had been a rainy autumn, and the river was high and raging. Her purse was found in the car, her phone dead inside it. One of her shoes had washed up in a field two miles downstream.

Her body was never found.

Ash had refused to believe her mother had taken her own life, despite the evidence to the contrary. And it was, the doctors later told her, that denial combined with guilt and grief that caused her to have the breakdown that landed her in the hospital.

“Anyway,” Ash went on now, heading to the sink to rinse and dry her hands, “there’s something we need to talk about, Gram. Why don’t we sit for a minute—you could use a rest.”

“Horsefeathers! We’re nearly done here, and you know we can’t let the brine cool too much.”

“I found the letter,” Ash blurted out before she lost the nerve.

“What letter?” Gram eyed her suspiciously, reaching for a stained towel to wipe her own gnarled hands on.

Ash slipped the letter out of her back pocket. “I was looking forstamps and found this in your desk.” She opened the envelope, no return address but her mother’s familiar writing on the front with Gram’s full name and address. Ashley pulled out the letter, unfolded it for Gram to see:

October 14, 2014

Dear Mother,

I am in Boone’s Ferry. I came here to find the truth that you’ve worked so hard to hide from me.

I know everything.

We’ll talk when I get back.

Louise

Gram blinked at the letter, then looked away.