Her father had never remarried. He had dated occasionally, though none of the relationships lasted longer than a few months. When relatives suggested he should move on, he usually responded with a shrug and changed the subject.
Audrey had grown up believing that his loneliness was a form of devotion.
She had watched him burn dinner because he was trying to help her finish a school project. She had watched him learn to braid hair from YouTube videos, clumsily at first, until he could produce something respectable enough that she stopped wearing hats to school.
He attended parent-teacher conferences in his work uniform.
He sat through dreadful elementary-school plays.
He taught her to drive in a pickup truck whose passenger door had to be opened from the outside.
Once, when she was thirteen, she found him asleep on the living-room sofa with an old photograph of her mother on his chest.
She hadn’t woken him.
Instead, she had covered him with a blanket.
Now he looked into the box and gave a faint smile.
“Your mom was terrible at paperwork.”
Audrey laughed.
“Apparently.”
He closed the lid.
“The county records office should have it.”
She nodded.
Neither of them understood how much that sentence would cost them.
Audrey remembered very little of her mother’s final day.
She remembered rain on the kitchen windows.
A bowl of cereal becoming soggy while she waited for someone to take her to school.
Her mother wearing a beige raincoat.
The smell of her perfume, something floral and sharp that Audrey had spent years trying to identify in department stores.
And an argument.
Not a loud one.
That was the strangest part.
Her parents were speaking in the kitchen while Audrey sat on the bottom stair, trying to tie her shoes.
Her mother said, “I can’t keep doing this.”
Her father answered something Audrey couldn’t hear.
Then her mother said, “You make it sound so simple.”
Audrey remembered her father’s voice.
“Because it is.”
A cupboard closed.
Her mother appeared in the hallway carrying a leather handbag.
She crouched in front of Audrey.
“Hey, pumpkin.”
Audrey looked up.
“Are you taking me to school?”
“Not today.”
“Why?”
“Your dad will.”
Her mother brushed a strand of hair behind Audrey’s ear.
Her fingers were cold.
“Be good for him, okay?”
Audrey nodded.
Her mother kissed her forehead.
Then she stood and walked out.
That was the last time Audrey saw her.
Three days later, her father told her that her mother had been in a car accident.
He said the police had called.
He said the car had gone off a rural road during heavy rain.
He said the funeral home recommended a closed casket because of the damage.
Audrey remembered screaming when he told her.
She remembered her grandmother holding her so tightly she couldn’t move her arms.
She remembered adults whispering in the kitchen.
And she remembered the funeral.
A polished oak coffin.
White lilies.
Her mother’s sister, Caroline, crying into a tissue.
Her father sitting motionless in the front pew, holding Audrey’s hand so firmly that her fingers ached.
She had believed every part of it.
Children usually do.
At nine, Audrey knew that adults sometimes made mistakes.
She didn’t yet know they could build an entire life around a lie.
The clerk at the county records office was a woman named Patricia Ellis.
She wore rectangular glasses attached to a thin silver chain and had a small plastic fan beside her computer.
When Audrey arrived, Patricia handed her a request form.
“Full legal name of the deceased?”
“Marianne Elise Whitlock. Maiden name Bellamy.”
“Date of death?”
“October nineteenth, 2015.”
“County?”
“Possibly Lancaster. The accident was outside the city.”
Patricia entered the information.
Audrey stood at the counter, checking messages on her phone.
Her roommate wanted to know whether she was coming home for dinner.
Her supervisor had asked if she could cover a Saturday shift at the campus library.
An ordinary morning.
Then Patricia frowned.
“Do you have the exact date?”
“October nineteenth.”
“Are you certain?”
Audrey looked up.
“Yes.”
Patricia typed again.
“What was the maiden name?”
“Bellamy. B-E-L-L-A-M-Y.”
Another search.
Patricia adjusted her glasses.
“That’s strange.”
Audrey smiled politely.
“What is?”
“I’m not finding a death record.”
“Maybe it’s filed somewhere else?”
“That’s possible.”
Patricia searched neighbouring counties.