Six Left Behind Daughters and One Returned White Box Fifteen Years Later

I looked at my reflection in the small mirror above the sink.

I reached down to my lapels and pulled them straight.

I buttoned my suit jacket with steady, slow fingers.

The church library smelled of dried candle wax and old hymnals that had spent too many summers in the basement. The library shelves were lined with black-bound commentaries and old parish records that had lost their gold lettering. A portrait of the church’s first minister hung above the brick fireplace, the oil paint cracked into a spiderweb of fine lines. I sat on a small oak chair with one short leg that wobbled against the floorboards whenever I shifted my weight. The brass clock on the bookcase behind me clicked to half past three.

On the bottom shelf, behind a stack of green hymnals, was a parish directory from twelve years ago. I pulled it out and turned to the letter M. There was a small, grainy photograph of the two of us standing on the parsonage steps, our faces slightly out of focus because of the cheap printer they used back then. Maya was wearing her yellow linen dress, the one she left in the basement closet because she said it smelled like Ohio coal smoke. I put the directory back behind the hymnals, leaving the dust where it lay.

I opened the leather-bound notebook with the cracked spine. The cover was scarred with a dark water stain from the night the kitchen pipe burst, but the pages inside were still clean and dry. My own handwriting from the early years looked smaller than it did now, the letters crowded together as if I had been trying to save paper.

On the second page, I found the entry from the night the oil tank ran dry in January. We had four blankets between the six girls, and I slept on the floor by the space heater to make sure the extension cord did not get too hot. I had written down the cost of the emergency heating oil, seventy-eight dollars, which was exactly the amount I had saved for Piper’s new winter boots.

I turned the page and read the list of groceries from the spring after Maya left. It was thirty-four dollars for the week, mostly dried beans and discount bread from the outlet store on the highway. There was no mention of Maya’s name in any of the columns, only the numbers that kept us from sliding into the mud.