Free Fixing Delilah by Sarah Ockler Page B

searching may be written.
    And my mother and Rachel have no idea that it’s here. That it wasn’t lost or taken with Stephanie to the great beyond. That I have it, and that through her words, I’ve stepped into a piece of my family’s elusive history.
    I slip the diary beneath my clothes in the bottom dresser drawer and head downstairs for a late-night snack, heart racing, mind racing, the air around me crackling with the electric fear and hope that comes with the discovery of something new.
    *         *         *

    “You’re up late,” Mom says. She’s in the kitchen reading the Red Falls’ Bee . She doesn’t look at me at first, and as she turns the pages of the town’s weekly, the edges of my heart ache for her, wanting so much to tell her about the diary. To let her know that upstairs, tucked into the folds of my summer shirts, a part of her sister lives on—a part that she and Rachel can still know, even though she’s not here. But as I watch my mother flip through the Bee, late at night in the kitchen of her childhood home, I lose all the words for it.
    “Can’t sleep?” she asks as I dig through the freezer.
    “Not really. Are there any fudgesicles left?”
    “Check behind the ice trays. Rachel’s trying to hide them so she’s not tempted.”
    I dig out the box. “Where is she?” I ask. “Sleeping?”
    “She went out for a drink with Megan. She should be back soon.”
    “Oh. How was your day?” I ask.
    “Fine. Met with Bob Shane again at the funeral home. Picked up the cremains.”
    “Cremains?” It’s weird to think that someone can live a whole life—falling in love, getting married, having babies and grandkids and family feuds—just to end up “cremained” in a little box at the end of it all.
    “That’s what they’re called,” Mom says as if she’s reading an article from Funeral Directors Monthly . “The cremated remains.”
    “I don’t like that word. Cremains. Sounds like Craisins or something.”
    “Delilah, please.”
    “Sorry. Where is the… I mean, the… where is she?”
    “There’s an urn,” Mom says, making the shape of a cube with her hands. “It’s on the dresser in her bedroom. I guess we’ll just keep it there until we get the permits cleared for the lake ceremony.”
    “You mean, she’s here ? In the house? Upstairs ?” A layer of goose bumps rises on my skin.
    “It’s fine . It’s put away in the bedroom. You don’t need to go in there. Anyway, since you’re here, let’s talk briefly about tomorrow. I have a DKI call first thing, so I’ll need you to be ready when Patrick gets here to clean the gutters at eight. Jack said there are tools in the shed and other supplies in the garage. You’ll also need to—”
    “Mom, do you miss it here?”
    “Do I… what? ”
    “Do you miss it—you know, coming here? Now that we’re back, I mean. Do you regret that we stopped visiting?”
    “Delilah, I don’t really want—”
    “Why?” I push harder, a trail of cold chocolate running onto my hand as I think about the diary hiding upstairs and Aunt Stephanie and how I would trade anything to know my father for even one day, while my mother cut her own family away like the scraps from a paper doll, sweeping her entire childhood into the trash as though it was the least important part of anything.
    I grab a paper towel from the roll. “Why, Mom? How could you act like she was basically dead all this time? How could you do that?”
    Mom is frozen. I can almost see the memories trying to fight their way up her spine and out of her mouth like some dormant alien pod, but she swallows them back again, her eyes opening and closing, lids as wrinkled as pecan shells. Beneath them she regards me, equally repulsed and fascinated, as though I’m some unidentified fungus or gruesome crime scene or challenging crossword puzzle that she could probably figure out if only she had more time.
    But she doesn’t, because: “Del, I’m sorry. I