Between reading the comments about the Broccoli Festival parade video and now this, I think I’ve punished myself enough for one day. I put Hollis’s phone in the empty cup holder and stare out the window as we travel down the highway. Hollis is focused on the road, his exaggerated arch of a frown curving moreseverely as the opening notes of “Sister Golden Hair” come through the speakers. If we weren’t in a completely different car and I didn’t now have a bruised forehead and a thorough mental map of Hollis’s naked body, it would be as if the last two days never happened. But they did, and we’re now twenty-four hours past my original intended arrival time at the nursing facility. We’re not even through South Carolina yet.
“Hey,” I say. “Will you do me a gigantic favor?”
“Depends,” he answers.
“On?”
“If I want to do it.”
I roll my eyes but honestly appreciate this evidence that nothing reallyhaschanged between us.
“What is it?” he asks.
“Would you call the place where Elsie is and check if she... if she’s... Would you see how she’s doing? I can’t seem to make myself do it. I’m too afraid of what they’ll say.”
“Oh,” he says. “Yeah. I can do that. Next time we stop?”
I exhale, relieved. “That’d be great. Thanks.”
We’re silent for a moment, and I can almost hear his brain formulating the question that eventually comes out of his mouth.
“What will you do if—”
“If I’m too late?” I finish.
“Yeah.”
I shrug. “I don’t know. I’ve been trying not to think about it.”
“Will you still go to Key West? Or head home?”
The part of me that will be crushed will want to turn around and go home. But the other part of me, the one that needed to take this trip in the first place, will demand I continue to Key Westanyway. Then I can at least find a place there to lay my three tablespoons of Mrs. Nash to rest. I mean, it’d be silly to take her back to DC after we’ve come so far.
“I’ll still go,” I say. “Just for a few hours. To scatter the ashes, at least.”
“And if Elsie is still around? What’s the plan then?”
“Reunite her and Mrs. Nash, of course. Talk to her, if she’s able and willing. I have so many questions. I want to hear everything about her life. I know the basics from the research I did to find her, but there’s only so much government records and a few newspaper articles can tell you.”
There were US Navy reports about what happened in Korea, though they were too official to go into detail about the situation beyond stating there was an “administrative error.” After that, Elsie Brown popped up in theYale Daily Newsin an article on women students at the medical school, and then in the acknowledgments in a few surgical medicine journal articles. From there, I figured out that she spent most of her career as a trauma surgeon at a hospital near Fort Lauderdale, and that she retired in the early ’80s. I thought that was where the paper trail ended, and it wasn’t exactly easy to find any relatives, with her last name being so common. Then this past Wednesday morning, I came across a brief feature in theKey West Citizenacknowledging her recent 101st birthday, which is how I learned she’s been living at The Palms at Southernmost for the last five years.
Oh my god. I think I’ve found her, I said to the box of ashes sitting beside my laptop when I got to the last line of the article. The Mrs. Nash in my head responded with a beatific smile.
“Right,” Hollis says absently as he changes lanes to pass a slow station wagon in front of us.
“But I’ll probably stay until... until the end if I can. I don’t know if she has any remaining extended family. So I want to make sure she has a friend there with her at least.”
“I’ll need to get back on the road by Saturday,” Hollis says. “I’m teaching a summer writing class that starts the next Monday.”
I can’t understand why he’s telling me this unless... “Oh! Don’t worry about me. I figured you’d keep Ryan’s car, take it back to Gadsley to pick up yours whenever you’re done in Miami. I’m just going to get a rental car, then fly home as originally planned. Easier than trying to align our itineraries, especially since I have no idea when I’m heading back. I wouldn’t ask you to leave Yeva early or hang around extra days waiting for me.”
“Millicent, I’m not—”
“Fuck.” The thought of Hollis with Yeva sends a little pang of jealousy through me that has me wanting to hold my backpack to my chest like a shield. But when I search the floorboard by my feet, it isn’t there. “Fuck,” I repeat. “I lost my backpack. I must’ve—shit. We have to—we have to go back. I have to find it.”
“Are you sure it’s not in the back seat, or in the trunk with the suitcases, or—”
“Yes, I’m sure. I must’ve left it at the B&B. Shit. Shit. What if it’s not there? What if Mrs. Nash is in a dump somewhere or halfway to Canada, along with my phone, my money, my driver’s license... my National Archives researcher card! Oh god, Hollis, this means I don’t have any ID. If we die in this borrowed car there’ll be no way to identify my body except dental records, and I haven’t been to the dentist in so long. What if my teeth have changed too much and my family never knows what happened to me? They’ll search and search for me, thinking I’m just missing, never knowing—”
