Marlene

2025. She wakes every morning in darkness, heaving arthritic limbs out of bed and placing blue-veined feet on the naked wood floor. “No rugs in here, mom. You’ll trip and you can’t afford to break a hip now,” her cautious daughter stated a little too eagerly. She likes the feel of these smooth pine planks beneath her feet, remembering when she and Kent built the old place. Fifty-five years ago. She was just twenty-three years old. And despite her youth, had lived some hard truths.

But the aches up and down her back, creaking knees and ankles remind her why Sally believes she should consider moving to assisted living . For God’s sake, I’m not that incapacitated.

Sally is a pediatrician and considers her aging mother, a 3rd child. She wishes Sally didn’t live so damn close. She should be grateful and thankful for such a doting daughter, but feels stilted by the constant reminder of her increasing inabilities.

Marlene is 78. So no, she’s not young. She’s got cataracts and stubborn joints. She uses a cane when her daughter visits, like it’s expected. But on her own, she manages without, determined to fight the ticking clock. Her own mother lived 96 years, but spent the last ten in a nursing home, a wilting flower until the light finally went out.

Familial betrayal is far worse than bodily betrayal. Her mother died with all her faculties, acutely aware that her deteriorating body couldn’t keep up with her sharp as a tack mind.

Marlene plays word games and puzzles daily as she sips her morning tea. She reads rabidly, even if the font size is set to twenty on her worn-out Kindle. She enjoys the garden, traipsing around in faded chinos, knees worn thin from kneeling in the dirt. She can’t do that these days but loves the reminder that at one time she could.

This morning she fights the tangled bedsheets to release her. She was always a wild sleeper. Over the years of their marriage Kent migrated to the guest room for a more restful sleep than to risk being pummeled by his wife in the night.

They had a loving marriage, not perfect and not always peaceful… but what can you expect when living with the same person for over fifty years? They raised two daughters and a son. Only Sally stayed nearby.

She lays a hand against the glass pane, winter’s chill creeps up her spine. Throwing on her rumpled raspberry colored cardigan, she tucks her feet into plush fleece-lined slippers with tractor tread soles (last year’s Christmas gift from Sally) and makes her way down the stairs. Sally wants to install a stair-chair but Marlene refuses. In the kitchen she puts the kettle on to boil and digs out a tin of Scottish breakfast loose leaf tea. She finds her glasses on the kitchen counter where she left them the night before and heads to the front door to pick up the newspaper.

A blast of arctic air jars her back in time, blowing wispy white locks into her eyes. The newspaper shakes in her hands as the headline catches her eye.

Body found on the grounds of the McFletcher Mansion is believed to be that of long missing teenager, Carina Hill.

Her best friend’s face swims before her, the two of them thick as thieves. Sixty years have passed since she last saw her. Marlene’s knees crumple as she slides to the floor.

***

1962. Fifteen again, running the backwoods of their small town, blonde hair swinging in a tight ponytail matching her best friend’s. They’d met four years earlier when Carina moved to Mill’s Crossing. Carina and Marlene could have been sisters: same wavy blonde hair and blue eyes, although Marlene’s were a deep marine blue and Carina’s were aquamarine, like the gemstone. Same willowy frame with legs much too long. Same disdain for anything considered conventional.

They rode bikes everywhere, crept into abandoned buildings along the wharf, imaginations lit as they built stories of scandals and crimes. They both tended towards the darker side of human nature, preferring gothic and horror stories to those with happy endings.

Carina was a jolt of electricity to Marlene’s more sedate nature. But they felt bound to each other, that first day of fifth grade, sitting in Mrs. Heinkel’s Language Arts class. Carina hated reading due to crippling dyslexia that kept letters swimming before her in an incomprehensible jumble. But she loved a good story, especially ones told to her aloud.

That was Marlene’s gift. Being the eldest of four siblings, she lulled them to bed each night with stories, as her mother worked late as a weaver at the mill. When she met Carina who didn’t seem to have a care in the world, she longed for a different life. Marlene wished she didn't have brothers and sisters keeping her tethered to so much responsibility. Carina lived like a fluffy cloud, floating, unencumbered. Later Marlene realized her friend’s life was a lot heavier than she let on. But with Carina at her side, she got to experience a bit a magic and mystery in tired old Mill’s Crossing.

As an only child Carina had little supervision, raised by a distant aunt. She never talked about her parents. Marlene heard they’d been killed in a car crash years earlier. Some days Carina would show up with a bruised cheek or the imprint of a hand on her arm. She’d shrug off questions, fired up about the day’s plans.

She infused thrills into every adventure and encouraged Marlene to do the same… that is until April 13th, 1962. Carina arrived later that Saturday morning, with a limp and an angry welt on the small of her back. Marlene only noticed it when Carina bent over to tie her worn out Keds. She knew better than to ask anything. They hopped on their bicycles as usual, and headed for the woods.

They were on a mission: to explore the backwoods behind old Mr. McFletcher’s mansion where rumors told of hidden caves once used during prohibition for stashing jugs of bootleg whiskey. It was also whispered that miserly Mr. McFletcher used the caves to hide mob money. Whether any of these tales were true, didn’t matter a lick to Carina. She wanted to see for herself and dragged Marlene along for the ride.

It was a thirty-minute ride out to the crumbling estate, fenced off by jagged stone walls that stretched for miles. On an earlier foray, the girls discovered a small crumbled stretch where they could sneak through. No one had lived on the property after Mr. McFletcher’s death. The family bickered over ownership and as a result, nothing had been done on the land for years.

A wild jungle of climbing trumpet vines and blackberry brambles greeted them, pricking their arms and legs as they hacked their way through the morass. Marlene never did see the house that day. But bitty paths revealed themselves as they trudged forward, on the hunt for signs of nefarious things rumored to have happened. Carina had thought this escapade through, leaving a trail of ribbons tied to branches to guide them back.

Marlene’s heart hammered in her chest. She couldn’t admit to her adventurous friend that she was terrified. Sometimes she’d lose sight of Carina and panic. That’s how it happened later that afternoon, as they made their way back to the wall entrance.

Carina, poof, just disappeared. One minute Marlene was following her bouncy ponytail and keeping an eye on her limp, wondering what had happened at home. The next moment she’d stopped to stare at a stunning dragonfly, perched on a white cluster of flowers. She couldn’t tear her eyes away. That’s what she told the police later, as if bewitched by the feral jungle-scape.

She cried out, over and over. She stopped and listened for the sounds of her tromping ahead, but the cacophony of birds made it impossible to hear anything. After an hour hunting, sticking to the side of the stone walls, she eventually climbed through to the other side and found their bikes, still hidden in the bushes. She thought Carina was playing a practical joke. But as she waited by the side of the wall, panting and sweating, crying her friend’s name aloud, not caring if anyone found her, she knew something had changed. Things would never be the same again.

***

Sixty-five years later, the kitchen telephone stuns her from her trance. Still gripping the newspaper, she stretches her limbs, disappointed to find herself back in her aged body. Her once toned and tanned legs are now pasty white with crepey skin, sagging. Knobby knees jut from beneath her floral flannel dressing gown. When did I become an antique? The ringing phone drives her out of the past. She pulls herself upward, joints popping as she stumbles to the kitchen.

“Hello?”

“Lena? It’s Sawyer. Have you seen the paper today?”

She’s known Sawyer McLean since grammar school. He’s the only one to call her Lena. They dated a bit in high school but their lives swerved away from each other over the years. They remained friends with their spouses and children, but it’s been a decade since she’s seen or heard from him. His voice brings her back to that day… and the chaos that came after.

“Hi Sawyer, Umm.. yes. I’m looking at it now.” She’s not sure what to ask him as every time she starts to try and read the article, she’s gripped with a bout of acute dyslexia – where the letters and punctuation swim before her eyes… incomprehensible.

“Says they found her a week ago but couldn’t make a positive identification until now. Lena, you were with her… did you know about that place? What went on there?”

She has to sit. Too much jumbles her mind. Moments from the past clash with the present, like she's living two lives at once.

“Lena? You there?”

“Uh huh. Look Saw – I gotta go.”

“Wait, can we meet? Please. I think I know something you might want to hear about.”

She lays the phone in its cradle, cutting him off. The kettle screams. She turns off the burner, unable to decide if she should have tea. The phone rings again. When she picks it up, Sawyer’s voice cuts through the fog. She hangs up and leaves it off its cradle. Staring back at the paper on the kitchen counter, the words settle into place.

Can't go back to that time... at least, not yet. She leaves the paper and drags her tired old body upstairs and into bed