Page 40 of Chasing Home
“I’ve been going there since I was a little girl. No number of gossiping hags are going to chase me away,” she replies stubbornly. I don’t have to look down to know she has her hands planted on her hips and a scowl on her face.
“Alright,” I huff out before slithering my arms up through the hole in the ceiling and pulling myself into the attic.
It’s a tight fit that’s only gotten tighter as the years have gone on, and I’ve grown from a little girl into a woman with boobs as big as two cantaloupes.
“Do you see the chair? I’m thinking of donating it this year!”
“No, I don’t see the chair. I’m not even fully up yet.”
“Okay, watch the attitude!”
“How about you come up here, then?”
I tune out her reply when it comes. I was in a terrible mood when I arrived this morning, and I’m in an even worse one now with my hips rubbed raw from the attic entrance and my fear of spiders flaring to life at the sight of cobwebs all around me.
Pushing to my feet, I brush my hands off on my thighs. There’s so much shit up here that it feels like an impossible feat to find the armchair she’s talking about. Years—no, decades—of family history are tucked away up here. A lifetime of insight that I couldn’t care less about. As far as I’m concerned, my “family” doesn’t extend past my mother.
“You should just sell everything up here this year. There isn’t anything worth keeping,” I shout.
Mom laughs tightly. “You say that because you don’t have anything up there that means much to you.”
“And you do?”
The stacks of boxes along the one wall are lined with dust that’s collected since this time last year. Beside them stands the creepy mirror and a dresser with missing knobs. There’s the typical spooky attic window on the opposite wall that faces out to the busy cul-de-sac and an old easel on its left that’s never seen the light of day. It belonged to my great-great-aunt Juniper, or so I’ve been told. Personally, I think my mom just bought it at one of these stupid garage sales and shoved it up here when she realized she hated painting.
“You don’t have to believe me, Aurora. It makes no difference,” she calls back.
I roll my eyes and make my way toward the stack of boxes. My guess is this chair has been lost behind the mountain of them.
With a steep exhale, I begin moving the boxes. Dust fills the air in puffs and coats my skin and clothes as I lift and then drop each one. Some are labelled, and some aren’t. There’s duct tape across the tops of a few, while the others have been folded to stay shut. It’s the latter ones that start to piss me off.
Cardboard flaps start popping open when I drop the boxes on the ground. More dust fills the air and my lungs as I cough and turn my head in the opposite direction. My eyes water as I blink and kick the box closest to me.
“This place is a death trap!” I shout while using the hem of my shirt to wipe at my eyes.
“What are you doing? There’s glass in some of those boxes!”
“There isn’t anymore!”
“Aurora Jean!”
I ignore her again. Not because I don’t want to reply but because I can’t. Something slimy slithers through my veins as I peer down at the contents of the open box in front of me.
Words like Cherry Peak, Return To Sender, and Unable To Forward bounce in my vision. I drop to a crouch and shove my hand inside the box, feeling the stacks of thick letters and the silk texture of photographs.
With my hand full, I yank it free and drop to sit on my ass on the filthy floor. Intrigue has me laser focused on doing nothing more than examining what I’ve found. The first letter in the stack I grabbed is addressed to a name that has me stiffening with uncertainty.
Lee Rose
125 1st Cherry Street
Cherry Peak, Alberta
Canada
The bold black letters stamped over the address read Return To Sender. My brows knit together as I toss the envelope to the side and grab another. The address is the same. Everything about it is.
I grab another, and another, and another, before digging my fingernail into the next and tearing it open without a care of being tossed into jail for committing mail fraud. The messy scrawl written not only on the centre of the envelope but in the top left corner where the return address sits confirms that it was my mother who sent these letters.