Chapter 2 - Excavating the Past
For the next six months, I didn't launch an overt war. I went deep undercover in my own family.
I started paying attention to the subtext of every family gathering, every holiday dinner, and every casual phone call. I asked innocent, probing questions about our childhood, steering my mother and my aunts down memory lane. I wanted to see how the narrative of our family had been constructed, brick by brick, narrative by narrative. Why was Adrienne always cast as the fragile, precious jewel, while I was treated like the utility worker meant to keep the machinery lubricated?
My mother grew slightly uneasy during my sudden bouts of historical curiosity. Whenever I brought up old photo albums or asked about specific years from before Adrienne was born, her eyes would dart away, shifting the conversation back to Adrienne’s nursery decor, Adrienne’s pregnancy milestones, or some trivial neighborhood gossip.
Then came my grandmother’s birthday.
Nana Bet turned eighty-two in late October. My parents hosted a quiet family dinner at their suburban home in Columbus, Ohio. The air smelled of roasted turkey and old paper—the distinct scent of my grandparents' house, unchanged for thirty years.
After dinner, while the rest of the family was busy arguing over dessert choices in the dining room, I found myself alone in the formal living room with Nana Bet. She was sitting in her high-backed velvet armchair, her hands resting calmly on a knitted shawl, watching the flickering flames in the brick fireplace.
I sat down on the ottoman beside her, pouring her a fresh glass of water.
She turned her head slowly, her faded blue eyes studying my face with a sharpness that defied her years. She reached out and touched my cheek with fingers that felt like dry parchment.
“You have your grandfather’s jawline, Clara,” she murmured, her voice raspy with age. “And his stubbornness. God help you, you inherited his inability to just smile and nod when something doesn't sit right in your gut.”
I smiled softly, resting my hand over hers. “Someone has to keep things level, Nana.”
She let out a dry, wheezing chuckle that turned into a soft cough. She looked toward the dining room doorway, ensuring my mother’s voice was safely lost in the background chatter, before looking back down at me. Her expression shifted, losing its playful warmth and taking on a heavy, almost mournful weight.
“You know,” Nana Bet said softly, her voice dropping to a confidential whisper, “your mother never really expected you.”
I blinked, thrown off balance by the abrupt pivot. “What do you mean? Like... I was a surprise?”
Nana Bet hesitated. She pulled her shawl tighter around her thin shoulders, staring into the dancing flames as if reading old memories in the embers. “No, honey. Not just a surprise. Your mother had her life mapped out down to the millimeter. The house, the country club membership, the perfect firstborn daughter who would mirror all her own lost ambitions. Adrienne fit that script. She was soft, agreeable, easy to mold.”
She paused, swallowing hard.
“When you came along two years later, unplanned, inconvenient, and screaming with a set of lungs that could wake the dead... it threw your mother’s entire design out of whack. She didn't know what to do with a child who didn't fold herself neatly into a pre-approved box. So, she did the only thing her rigid little mind knew how to do: she relegated you to the background.”
The words hung in the chilly air between us like uninsulated wire. My chest tightened, a cold knot forming right behind my sternum.
“What do you mean, Nana?” I pressed gently, leaning closer. “There has to be more to it than just an unplanned pregnancy.”
Nana Bet looked away, her jaw working as if chewing on a bitter pill she’d swallowed decades ago. “Ask your Aunt Patricia,” she whispered, glancing back toward the door. “She was there when your mother was clearing out the old cedar chest in the attic after my stroke last year. Patricia saw what your mother tried to burn before I stopped her.”
“Burn what?”
“Things from before you were born, Clara. Letters. Medical files from the clinic in Chicago. Things your mother swore she’d buried forever.”
The rest of the evening passed in a blur of forced pleasantries and polite goodbyes. But the seed had been planted, deep in the fertile soil of my suspicion.
Two days later, back in Chicago, I picked up my phone and dialed my Aunt Patricia in Arizona. Patricia was my mother’s older sister—the black sheep of the family who had moved across the country thirty years ago and only visited during mandatory Christmases, maintaining a cool, detached distance from my mother’s immaculate suburban kingdom.
When she picked up, I didn't waste time with small talk.
“Aunt Patricia,” I said steadily. “Nana Bet told me to call you. She said something about a cedar chest and papers my mother tried to burn.”
There was a long, suffocating silence on the other end of the line. I could hear the faint hum of an overhead fan and the rustle of paper.
When Patricia finally spoke, her voice was flat, devoid of its usual warmth.
“Clara,” she asked quietly, “how much do you actually want to know?”
“All of it,” I said without hesitation. “Give me the whole blueprint.”
A week later, a heavy, nondescript cardboard package arrived at my front door via certified mail.
May you like
I carried it into my kitchen, set it down on the farmhouse sink, and cut the packing tape with a utility knife. Inside, wrapped in yellowed tissue paper, were two old, leather-bound journals with water-stained covers.
They belonged to Nana Bet.
