Because I had to stop twice to throw up—once along the I-55 shoulder, and once in a disgusting Shell gas station bathroom—it took me seven hours to drive from Chicago to my childhood home in southern Illinois. However, the seven-hour drive was nothing compared to the ten years my daughter had been missing from my life. I meant to get her back with me where she belonged. How could I be a good mother to the child growing inside me if I didn’t bring my first child home?

 Just as I parked in front of my old home, my phone rang. The screen showed LUKE, who was in Atlanta for a dental convention. He probably figured that, at that moment, I was sitting in my empty classroom, grading English papers.

Determined to accomplish my mission before it got too dark, I didn’t answer.

Clearly, nobody lived in the house. Plywood boarded its windows, black soot darkened its red roof and gray siding, and the maple tree still dominated the driveway. Though bigger and lusher than I remembered, and its leaves blazed orange.

The surrounding homes all had carved pumpkins on the porches and witches or ghosts dangling from eaves and trees, leftovers from Halloween three days ago. The late-afternoon quiet pervaded the street—kids home from school and probably inside with homework, computers, or TV. At the corner down the block, a girl stood on the sidewalk holding a golden retriever’s leash.

I avoided looking at the mustard yellow Victorian across the street. Perhaps the Krillmanns didn’t live there anymore. Thinking about them now, especially Mrs. Krillmann and her brother Jack, agitated the butterflies in my gut.

I touched my mother’s crystal rosary dangling from the Volkswagen’s rear-view mirror. “Keep me strong, Mama,” I whispered. I opened my purse and removed the only photo I had of my mother and me together. The pretty woman leaned against a Volkswagen Beetle, lime green, the same color as mine. Curly red hair tumbled past her shoulders. A gap-toothed smile dimpled her freckled face.

Her hands cradled her stomach.

Her stomach was huge with me.

I returned the photo to my purse, grabbed the spade and my backpack from the back seat, and exited the car. Down the street, the girl and her dog remained at the corner, their attention on something in a tree instead of on me—the stranger in their neighborhood.

Walking up the driveway of my old house, I smelled wood smoke from the fire that burned the house. Weren’t there toxins in wood smoke? Not just breathing for myself anymore, I held my breath. In the yard, the smell faded. The high privacy fence still surrounded the yard. The weeping willow still filled the far corner. I moved to the tree, pushing aside its cascading branches, and began digging. Between my strong arms and sharp spade, I pierced the soft ground easily.

A dog barked and a girl shouted, “Astrid! Heel! Come back!” The barking crescendoed, and I turned to see the golden retriever charging into the yard, its leash flapping, and then the girl, running and yelling “Astrid!” while trying to grab the leash.

The dog lunged toward me. I thrust the spade like a weapon, but the girl managed to grab the leash and yank Astrid to a standstill. We stared at each other, the dog and girl panting, my heart pounding. She looked about ten years old. “Thanks for saving me,” I said.

The girl gave a sweet, spacious smile. Dimples winked from her freckled face. “She’s a good girl, really,” she said. “I’m sorry if she scared you.”

When I realized I still brandished the spade at them, I lifted it toward the house. “What happened? Looks like there was a fire.”

The girl tugged at her long, curly hair. It was a pretty color, like freshly peeled carrots, brighter than mine. “Lightning struck it. They’re going to knock it down pretty soon.” Astrid strained at the leash, pulling the girl closer to me and the so-far shallow hole. “Sit, Astrid,” she scolded. Obediently, the dog sat, its tail swishing the grass like a windshield wiper, scattering leaves. “Are you with the contractors my parents hired?”

I thought about lying to get her to leave, but instead I said, “I lived in this house when I was a kid. A long time ago. It’s my first time back in ten years.”

“I just turned ten!” she exclaimed. “My birthday was on Monday! Halloween!”

“Really? That’s my daughter’s birthday, too.” The coincidence felt odd, but in a good way. I held out my hand. “I’m Rain.”

After a moment, she held out her own hand. A gold ring with what looked like a genuine ruby winked from her fourth finger. “I’m Tenley,” she said, shaking my hand.

I smiled. “I like that name.

“I like yours.” She smiled, too, the dimple in her right cheek deeper than the one in her left.

“I’m sorry about your house getting struck by lightning,” she said. “But no one’s lived there for a long time. My parents own it. They’re going to tear it down and build a big house for us on the lot. I’ll have my own media room, and my own bathroom with a jacuzzi!”

“Wow, I’ve never had my own bathroom, much less a jacuzzi! You are a lucky young lady.”

She blushed. I liked her for that.

“I watched the firefighters put out the fire,” she said. “I’m sorry it burned before you could visit it again.”

“Well, I don’t care about the house. I wasn’t planning to go inside, but there’s something in the yard that belongs to me. I pointed my spade at the shallow hole. “Have you ever buried treasure in your own yard?”

Her eyes widened. “You buried treasure there? What is it?”

“Something precious, Tenley, but just to me. A long time ago. When I lived here.”

Her eyes sparkled. “That’s so…intriguing.”

I laughed, liking her more and more. Most ten-year-olds would have said, “cool” or “awesome.” Or “weird.”

“I’ll help you dig! Astrid, too! She has powerful paws!”

“I’m sorry, Tenley. I just need to do this by myself.”

She bit her lower lip and sighed. “Okay. It’s your secret treasure. I can, uh, empathize with that.”

I felt another smile relax my face. She was using grown-up words trying to impress me.

“Well,” she went on, “how about if Astrid and me just stand back by the driveway? Just in case you need help or something?”

I resisted my English-teacher urge to correct her grammar. Maybe it’d be good to keep her nearby. Otherwise, she might go home and tell someone, probably a parent, about me. “That’s a great idea, Tenley. I appreciate it.”

Again she blushed, and again that gave me a warm feeling. She pulled Astrid to the driveway, ordered the dog to sit, then stood facing me, her arms folded against her chest.

I resumed digging. Once Astrid barked, but Tenley shushed her. When the hole was about two feet deep, my spade hit something that wasn’t dirt. I stopped digging, crouched, and pawed the dirt with bare hands. My heart raced.

There it was.

Tears blurred my vision, just as they had ten years ago, the last time I’d seen this little, white, plastic coffin. Memories surged. I was sixteen again, waking to the sound of someone crying.

********************

Aunt Thyliss sat crying in the rocker next to my bed, her long face red and wet. Sunlight knifed through closed blinds covering the window behind her head. She gripped my hand. “Don’t blame yourself, honey. It was an accident.”

I sat up. Pinballs of pain ricocheted inside my head, nausea grabbed my stomach, and I felt dizzy. “What?” Confusion scrambled my thoughts. I’d never had a headache like this. Was I sick? Late for school? Had I overslept? One time I’d foolishly swallowed Jack’s pills after he said they’d make me happy, and the result—blackout, nausea, dizziness—struck me now like it had then.

Thyliss released my hand, swiped tears from her eyes and snot from her nose.

My eyes locked on that nose. It jutted from her face, a hatchet between two balloon cheeks. “What time is it?” I reached for the clock on my nightstand, knocked over a white mug.

“Oh!” Thyliss lunged and caught it before it could crash to the floor.

Tea. Hot, harshly sweet tea. I remembered drinking from that mug, my aunt sitting in the rocker, watching me, urging me to drink. That’s all I could remember. But it had been night then. Last night? Why didn’t I know what day it was? What was wrong with me?

“Am I late for school?”

Thyliss frowned. “School? Honey, you haven’t been to school since last March. Mrs. Krillmann has been home schooling you.”

“Home schooling? But…” I closed my eyes, saw my cluttered locker, the hallway filled with students flowing around me like I was a boulder in a river. As usual, no one bothered or noticed me. The fuzzy memory tickled me brain like a faded photograph.

My breasts. They ached. I felt wetness, looked down, saw dark splotches spreading on my gray tee shirt.

Gracie! I remembered. I twisted around, patted the sheets. Where was she? “Auntie Thy, where’s Gracie?”

Her eyes splashed out more tears. The nostrils in her hatchet nose flared. “Don’t blame yourself, sweetheart.”

“What?” It was all I could manage. My teeth rattled. My body trembled. My breasts leaked.

“You rolled over her in your sleep last night. I’ve wrapped her up in a nice soft blanket, tucked her in a special box. I’ll bury her under the tree.”

The room spun. Someone moaned. Someone screamed.

My aunt’s lips flapped and flapped. “Rain, honey,” she said. “We’re going to move far away from here. It’s a good thing we hadn’t filled out the papers for her birth yet. No one will ever know. Except for you and me, no one knows what you did. It was an accident, but they could still put you in jail. They’ll say you’re sixteen, old enough to know you shouldn’t fall asleep with an infant in bed next to you. I won’t let that happen to you, honey.”

“Show me! I want to see her!”

My aunt shook her head. “It’s better you remember her how she was.”

From the kitchen window, I watched my aunt dig a hole under the weeping willow tree. My aunt looked up, saw me, shook her head.

She placed a white plastic box in the hole.

I’d had my Gracie only two days.

What was it about me? My mother died giving birth to me, and my father died before I was born in the same car accident that killed his brother, Thy’s husband.

I cried as I watched my aunt filled the hole with dirt. Thyliss had said no one else knew, but how could we hide my baby’s death from Mrs. Krillmann? My baby’s father was Mrs. Krillmann’s brother, Jack, a college boy who’d lived with her and her husband while he attended the town’s university. They lived in the big mustard colored house across the street and had lots of money. Krillmann Realtors had signs everywhere. I thought Jack loved me. He said he did all those times he snuck me into his apartment in the basement, but when I told him I was pregnant, I never saw him again. Instead, Mrs. Krillmann suddenly became the most important person in my life. She was a nurse who worked part-time at the college health clinic, made sure I took vitamins, and ate healthy. Before I started to show, she and my aunt agreed she would home school me—keep my condition private and my reputation safe.

I asked only once about Jack, but Mrs. Krillmann said he wasn’t living with them anymore. He’d joined a fraternity and lived on campus at the fraternity house.

Mrs. Krillmann was newly pregnant too. Her stomach grew along with mine. We joked about whose belly was bigger. She’d put her hand on my belly and we both smiled when the baby—my baby—kicked.  I touched her belly too, my palm searching for life pulsing beneath the beautiful silk and cotton dresses she always wore.

“Did you feel that?” she sometimes asked. “There was just a spunky kick, right there.” She moved my hand to the right spot, but her baby always quieted under my touch.

Mrs. Krillmann helped me with Gracie. She cut the umbilical cord, cleaned her, returned her to my arms, and applauded when she easily began to nurse. “You’re a natural mama,” she exclaimed. Her voice shook. Two pink spots flared in her cheeks.

I nodded back, a blush heating my face. “Piece of cake,” I couldn’t help bragging. “You’ll see pretty soon, too.”

Mrs. Krillman smiled and wiped away the tears brimming her eyes.

She was due any day. I hoped she’d have a little girl like mine and that our babies would become friends. They were cousins after all. My Gracie made me part of the Krillmanns, and it didn’t matter anymore that Jack had a rich, beautiful, sorority girlfriend majoring in speech, and was too busy becoming an accountant to be a father. My baby and I didn’t need him.

But, oh, how I needed my baby.

A few days after I killed my baby, we left, garbage bags bulging with our stuff filling the van. My aunt found us a condo in Chicago, fully furnished, three blocks from the high school I’d attend.

“The Krillmanns will sell the house for us. The furniture, too,” my aunt said. “They’ll send us the money.”

As my aunt backed the van from our driveway, I looked out the window and across the street. Mrs. Krillmann looked on from an upstairs window, her long blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail, her belly no longer swollen. She didn’t return my wave.

Glad to be moving, I vowed to never return. There was nothing for me here anymore.

Except one thing.

My sophomore year in college, Aunt Thy died in a Vegas hospital from cirrhosis of the liver. Her death brought me both relief and shame. Now, only I knew what happened to my Gracie.

I graduated college and landed a job teaching English to middle schoolers. I met Luke. We fell in love. And now I was expecting. Six weeks pregnant.

Luke didn’t know I’d killed my first baby.

The idea of telling him scared me. He wouldn’t think our baby safe with me. I wasn’t even sure of that, but I could no longer leave my Gracie alone in a plastic box under a weeping willow tree on the other side of the state. I would bring her home and bury her by the rose bush Luke planted when we learned I was pregnant. She belonged with me. Maybe she’d give me the courage to tell Luke, or the wisdom to keep her secret.

Luke hand carved a teak box for me which I told him I wanted it for keepsakes. I wanted it big enough to hold all the special mementos from our journey into parenthood. He made it big, beautiful, and strong.

The size of a newborn.

Kneeling before Gracie’s grave, I removed the teak box from my backpack. I opened the box and removed brand new white cotton gloves. I put them on my dirt-streaked hands and lifted the box from the hole.

It was light.

Too light.

Nothing rattled inside.

My heart pounded. I’d intended to place the box unopened into the teak box, and not open it until I got home. I wanted to add my mother’s crystal rosary and a tiny pink blanket I’d knitted, but something was wrong.

I pried off the lied.

Peered in.

My heart froze.

The box was empty.

The dog barked. Tenley suddenly crouched next to me. “Someone stole your treasure!” she said.

I looked at her. I looked at her. I looked at her. Goose bumps prickled my arms. Her orange hair. My orange hair. Her little upturned nose. My nose, the same lift. Her gap-front teeth. My mother’s gap teeth. She was ten, born on Halloween, like my Gracie.

“You’re right,” I whispered. “Someone stole my treasure.”

Rage warred with joy. Shock with peace. Hate with love. And then confusion. Doubt. Was I just seeing what I wanted to see?

From far away, a voice called, “Tenley! Where are you?”

Astrid began to bark and pull Tenley away. “Mama!” Tenley shouted. She scrambled to her feet. “Here! In the yard behind the burned house!”

Slowly, I too rose, placed myself next to Tenley. I removed the cotton gloves and dropped them to the ground. Astrid kept barking, strained at the leash, broke free from Tenley’s grasp and bounded toward a woman who came running into the yard. She was slim as a pencil, her blonde hair still long, straight, parted down the middle. Her nose, though, was smaller than the last time I saw her ten years ago.

She had my nose now. Tenley’s nose, small, turned up.

She stopped abruptly when she saw me. Stared. Looked at the hole under the weeping willow, the spade laying by the hole, the white plastic box, the lid off, its emptiness open to the sky. She ignored the dog pressing its head into her jean-clad legs. Her face paled to the color of bone. “Rain,” she said.

I placed my hand on Tenley’s shoulder. “I named her Grace.” My throat ached.

“That’s my middle name!” Tenley said. She looked up at me, her eyebrows quivering. She looked at my hand on her shoulder, then at the woman she knew as her mother. I thought she would step away from me, but she didn’t.

“That’s right,” Mrs. Krillmann said. “We gave her that middle name as a tribute to…” Her voice faltered. She gripped Astrid’s leash. Her diamond ring flashed.

“How thoughtful,” I said.

“Honey,” she said to Tenley. “Can you run home, get Dad?”

“He’s in New York, Mama. On a business trip, remember?”

Mrs. Krillman began petting the dog, her hands vigorously rubbing its ears. “Good girl,” she said. “Good girl.”

“You faked it.” My voice shook. “You weren’t really expecting anything, were you. My aunt wouldn’t let me see inside the box, not because she was trying to protect me, but because there was nothing to see.”

Tears spilled from Mrs. Krillmann’s eyes. Her hands left the dog, clenched into fists. “Tenley, please. Go home. Take Astrid home.”

Tenley looked at me. I nodded. “How about you and Astrid just wait for us in the driveway, like you did before? Can you, um, empathize with us needing a bit of private time to talk grown-up stuff?”

Tenley’s lips quivered, but she took the leash and pulled Astrid to the driveway. A breeze lifted her hair from her shoulders and scattered leaves at her feet.

Mrs. Krillman moved so close to me I could smell her perfume, see the pores in her nose, the contact lenses in her eyes. “She’s a beautiful child,” she said. “We love her very much. She takes piano lessons and tennis lessons, and she’s been all over the world with us. Speaks French and Spanish. She’s so bright and popular and…we love her so much.”

“Your brother?” I wouldn’t say his name. He had no name for me anymore.

“Jack’s married. Three kids. Lives in D.C. He…he wasn’t part of a ploy or anything, Rain. He really did like you. When…when the problem happened with you, he got scared. And we suddenly realized what a blessing this could turn out to be. For you, too. Sixteen is too young to be saddled with that kind of responsibility. It was in your best interests, too.”

“How much?” I asked.

Relief washed the fear from Mrs. Krillmann’s eyes. “Name it. Anything.”

“No. How much did you pay my aunt?”

Her shoulders sagged. “We wanted children so much. Went to so many specialists, but nothing worked. We had so much love to offer. So many advantages.”

“How much?” I repeated.

Mrs. Krillmann turned away. “Tenley!” she shouted. “Go home now!”

“No!” I shouted, too. “Tenley, come here!”

Tenley hurried to us, pulling Astrid. “Mama, what’s going on?” Her voice shook and her eyes glistened.

Mrs. Krillmann ruffled Tenley’s hair. “Nothing to worry you, baby.”

“How much?” I repeated, my voice now a blade.

Mrs. Krillmann sighed. “I don’t know. A lot. Plus we bought the condo for you in Chicago, the Lexus for your aunt, and her trips to Vegas every year. We paid for your college and we bought this property from her way above market value.”

I stared at her.

“What…what are you going to do?” she stuttered.

“Right now?” I smiled. “I’m going to see if Tenley Grace would like to go for ice cream with me. We have a lot of catching up to do. Is that all right with you, Mrs. Krillmann?”

Tenley looked back and forth between the two of us. For a few moments, no one spoke. Breeze ruffled leaves down the driveway and the smell of autumn filled the air. No one moved.

Then, Tenley took a step.

Closer.

To me.

The dog whimpered. Tenley looked down at Astrid. “Can I go for ice cream?” she asked, keeping her eyes on the dog. “Can I, Mama?”

She looked up.

Both of us—Mrs. Krillmann and I—nodded.