The Locket I Buried In My Memory
Chapter 02 - The Locket I Buried In My Memory
I had not seen that locket in eight years.
No. That was not true.
I had seen it in dreams. In the corner of old photographs. In the bottom drawer of my vanity, though it was never there when I woke and searched like a madwoman.
Memory can be cruel that way. It keeps the shape of what was stolen and removes every way to prove it.
Noah held the locket toward me, but not close enough to give it up.
"Where did you get that?" I asked.
The words came out too sharp. Ethan turned his head toward me.
"Mom?"
I lowered my voice. "Noah, where did you get it?"
He looked at Ethan first. That hurt me more than it should have. He trusted the child who looked like him more than the woman whose face had gone pale.
"It was in my shirt when I was a baby," Noah said.
My knees weakened.
Ethan reached for my hand, but I did not feel it right away.
"Who told you that?" I asked.
"Mara." His mouth tightened. "She took care of me until she got sick. She said not to lose it. She said if I ever found the lady in the picture, I should show her."
"What lady?"
Noah looked down at the locket. "I don't know. It doesn't open good."
I knew how it opened.
There was a tiny catch on the side, hidden under a dent. My mother had shown me while we sat in her kitchen the summer before she died, my ankles swollen, both hands spread over my stomach.
She had laughed because I could not work the clasp with my swollen fingers. Then she had grown quiet and placed the chain around my neck.
"If the Vale house ever makes those boys feel like property," she said, "you remind them they were loved before anyone counted what they were worth."
I had thought she was being dramatic. Mothers have a way of seeing storms before daughters learn the weather.
"Two babies," she had said, smiling with tears in her eyes. "One space for each little miracle."
My mother never got to meet them.
The Vale family buried her three weeks before I went into labor. I remember Julian's mother, Mrs. Vale, standing beside the grave in black gloves, telling me grief was bad for the children. The children, plural. She still said it then.
Two days later, after the emergency delivery, she stopped.
Only Ethan came home.
Julian had sat beside my hospital bed, handsome and exhausted, his hair still damp from the shower he had taken before facing visitors.
"The second baby didn't make it," he told me.
I had no memory of holding him. No memory of seeing his face. I had only a terrible hollow where a child should have been.
"I want to see him," I said.
Julian looked at the floor.
"Caroline, please. The doctors said it would only make it worse."
Make what worse? I had wondered later. The grief? Or the truth?
On Mason Avenue, Ethan squeezed my fingers.
"Mom, you're hurting me."
I let go at once.
"I'm sorry, baby."
Noah watched the exchange with a stillness that made him seem older than Ethan, though they wore the same face.
"Are you going to call somebody?" he asked.
"No," I said too quickly. "Not to take you away."
"People say that."
"I know."
I crouched, slowly, so I was not standing over him. My beige coat brushed the dirty sidewalk. I did not care.
"May I see the locket? Just for a second. You can keep holding it."
Noah's eyes narrowed.
"Why?"
Because I think you might be my son.
The sentence formed inside me and stayed there, too large to speak on a public sidewalk.
"Because," I said carefully, "I know that locket."
Ethan made a small sound beside me.
Noah's fingers trembled.
At last, he stretched his hand forward, still clutching the chain.
I touched the dent on the side. The little catch gave with a click so soft that only the three of us heard it.
The locket opened.
Inside were two baby photographs, yellowed and tiny.
Two blond infant boys lying side by side in hospital blankets.
One wore a blue thread around his ankle.
One wore a yellow thread.
My hospital used blue and yellow wristbands when the printer broke that week. I remembered arguing about it with a nurse because Ethan's band kept slipping.
The left side of the locket held Ethan's newborn face.
The right side held the face I had been told never lived.
Noah pulled the locket back against his chest.
"Don't take it," he said.
"I won't."
My voice was hardly a voice.
"Mom," Ethan whispered, "is he my brother?"
Noah stared at me.
I looked from one boy to the other. Clean suit. Torn jacket. Polished shoes. Scuffed shoes. Same eyes. Same mouth. Same frightened hope trying not to show.
I wanted to say yes.
I wanted to say no.
I wanted to find Julian, drag him into the street, and make him explain every hour of the last eight years.
Instead I said the only honest thing I could.
"I don't know yet. But I'm going to find out."
Noah leaned back from me.
"Grown-ups say that too."
"Then don't believe my words," I said. "Watch what I do."
A black town car slowed beside the curb. Our driver, Marcus, had been circling the block. He rolled down the window.
"Mrs. Vale? Everything all right?"
I stood, keeping my body between Noah and the car, because I saw the way he tensed at the uniformed driver.
"No," I said. "Everything is not all right."
I looked at Noah.
"Are you hungry?"
His pride flickered. His stomach answered before his mouth did, a small embarrassed sound.
Ethan heard it. His face changed.
He took the paper bag from Bell & Cartwright out of his own hand. Inside was a chocolate croissant he had begged for ten minutes earlier.
He held it out.
Noah did not take it.
"It's not charity," Ethan said. "I don't want it anymore."
Noah looked at the bag, then at Ethan.
"That's charity with different words."
Ethan blinked.
For the first time that day, I almost smiled.
"He's right," I said gently. "Noah, would you come with us to the cafe on the corner? Public place. You sit wherever you want. You keep the locket. You can leave anytime."
Noah studied me so hard I felt judged by a child who owned nothing except the truth.
"And him?" he asked, nodding at Ethan.
"He comes too."
Ethan straightened as if a duty had been given to him.
"I won't let anyone be mean to you," he said.
Noah looked at his polished shoes.
"People are always mean different ways."
Then, slowly, he stood.
He was thinner than Ethan. The same height, but life had taken from him ounce by ounce.
As he rose, the sleeve of his torn jacket slipped back, and I saw a faded hospital bracelet tied around his wrist under a dirty string.
Not paper.
Plastic.
Old enough to be impossible.
Printed with one word I had not heard spoken since the day my second child disappeared from my life.
May you like
VALE.
Read Part 3 to discover why Noah still had a hospital bracelet with the Vale name on it.
