Chapter 7 - Letters from Cincinnati
The heating system in Grandma June’s 2014 Buick LeSabre didn't work until the car had been running for twenty minutes, and even then, it only blew a faint, tepid breath against the floorboards that smelled of dry leaves and old carpet shampoo.
Wyatt sat in the front passenger seat, the seatbelt pulled taut across his chest, staring through the sweep of the windshield wipers as they shoved heavy ridges of gray slush against the glass. I sat directly behind him in the back, my knees pressed against the vinyl map pocket, clutching the red cardboard box that held my gray socks. I hadn't left it in the diner. I didn't know why, but I couldn't bring myself to leave it behind. It felt like an anchor—the only piece of evidence that proved seven o'clock that morning had actually happened, that I hadn't dreamed the twelve boxes, the silver paper, and the way Brooke had smiled while she told me Christmas wasn't about presents.
Grandma June didn't take the highway. The interstate was already backing up near the Grove City exit, red taillights bleeding into the falling dusk like drops of dye in water. Instead, she turned the Buick south onto State Route 104, running parallel to the frozen Scioto River, where the industrial parks gave way to dark corn stubble poking through the crust of snow.
Her phone sat in the cup holder between the front seats, propped against a roll of paper towels.
My father’s voice filled the cabin of the car, tinny and hollowed-out. He was driving his work van—the white Ford with *Vaughn Mechanical & HVAC* painted on the side—heading south behind us.
"I opened the first one, Mom," Dad said. He wasn't crying anymore; his voice had gone past crying into that dry, hollow rattle people get after they’ve spent hours shouting into an empty room. "From 2024. The postmark was December 18th."
"Read it, Mark," Grandma June said, her hands clamped at ten and two on the steering wheel, her eyes fixed on the black ribbon of road. "Don't summarize. Read it."
In the back seat, I leaned forward, my chin resting on the cold plastic of the front headrest.
"It’s addressed to 'My Little Bird,'" Dad read. His voice hitched slightly on the nickname, the one Mom had used for me when we still lived in the brick duplex on the east side of Cincinnati, back when my knees were always green from grass stains and she’d sit on the porch swing painting my toenails with cheap pink polish. "'My Little Bird. I know your father said it would be better if I didn't come up for the school pageant this year, that it would only confuse things with Brooke and Wyatt moving in. But I wanted you to have this before the break.'"
Dad stopped. The sound of his van’s wipers thudded through the speaker. *Thump-thump. Thump-thump.*
"Go on, Mark," Grandma June said.
"'I'm enclosing a money order for one hundred and fifty dollars,'" Dad read, each syllable falling like lead. "'I know you’ve been wanting those watercolor markers with the brush tips from the art store near the fountain. If Brooke takes you to buy them, make sure she gets the ones in the black case, not the plastic sleeves—the plastic ones dry out too fast. I love you more than all the salt in the sea. Mom.'"
"Did you ever see that money order, Lucy?" Grandma June asked me through the rearview mirror.
"No," I whispered.
"Did you get the markers?"
"Wyatt got them," I said.
The words came out before I could stop them. Wyatt flinched in the passenger seat as if someone had struck him with a wet towel. He didn't turn around, but I could see the side of his neck go scarlet.
"I didn't know, Lucy," Wyatt said, his voice cracking into pieces. "She told me—she told me they were from an office surplus store where she did the books. She said they were extras from the supply closet."
"It's not your fault, Wyatt," I said, though my teeth were chattering so hard the words felt chipped. "You didn't know."
"Read the second one, Mark," Grandma June ordered.
Dad took a breath that sounded like he was dragging air through gravel. "'December 2025. Lucy, my darling girl. Your father told me your phone was broken and that you were taking a break from screen time, which is why my texts haven't been going through. I hope you got the sketchbook I sent for your birthday last month—'"
"I didn't," I said to the back of Grandma’s headrest.
"'—I’m sending two hundred dollars this year,'" Dad continued, his voice trembling so violently that the microphone distorted. "'I got a promotion at the clinic, Lucy. I’m running the reception desk on second shift now, so I have my own office. I’m saving everything I can so we can go to the coast this summer like we planned before the divorce. If your dad doesn't want to drive you down to Wilmington, I will borrow Uncle Gary’s sedan and come get you myself. Just tell Brooke to text me the date your school gets out. She hasn't been answering my emails.'"
"She told me Elena had stopped writing," Dad said, dropping the letter. We could hear the paper rustling over the line. "Mom, I swear on my life, Brooke told me Elena had moved to Kentucky with some guy from the hospital and didn't want to disrupt Lucy’s adjustment. She said it was 'healthier for Lucy to have one primary female influence' while we were blending the household."
"And you believed her," Grandma June said, not looking at the phone. "Because it was easier to believe your ex-wife was negligent than it was to admit you’d married a woman who couldn't stand the sight of another woman’s child breathing her air."
"Mom—"
"Read the third one, Mark. Read the one from this week."
There was a long pause. A semi-truck roared past us in the opposite lane, throwing an explosion of brown, slushy spray across the Buick's windshield that blinded us for three terrifying seconds before the wipers cleared two greasy arcs through the dark.
"There’s no money order in this one," Dad whispered.
"What is in it?"
"A cashier's check," Dad said. "For one thousand two hundred dollars."
Wyatt turned his head slightly, his eyes wide and hollow.
"What does the memo say, Mark?" Grandma June asked, though I think she already knew.
"It says... *Full arrears for Lucy's orthodontic deposit and travel expenses for New Year's visit.*" Dad made a choked, strangled noise. "Elena sold her car, Mom. She sold the Civic. The letter says she was taking the bus to the clinic so she could give me the cash for Lucy’s braces before the end of the tax year, because Brooke told her our insurance wouldn't cover the specialist."
I looked down at my hands. My teeth were slightly crooked in the front—one of the incisors overlapped the other just enough that Brooke always told me to smile with my lips closed whenever we took photos for their annual Christmas card. *'It just looks tidier, Lucy,'* she would say, tapping my chin with her manicured finger. *'We don't need everyone on Facebook thinking we don't look after you.'*
"Mark," Grandma June said, her voice dropping into a register that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. "Did you ever pay Dr. Aronson that deposit?"
"Brooke... Brooke handled the medical bills," Dad whispered. "She said she set up an automatic draw from the joint savings account."
"Check the joint account right now," Grandma June said.
"I can't while I'm driving—"
"Pull the van over to the shoulder, Mark Andrew, and check the balance on your phone."
We listened to the silence of the line, broken only by the rumble of the Buick’s tires on the salted road and the distant whine of Dad’s four-way flashers clicking on. Five seconds passed. Ten. Twenty.
Then, through the speaker, came a sound I had never heard a grown man make before. It wasn't anger, and it wasn't grief. It was the sound of a person who has stepped out onto what they thought was solid ground, only to find they have walked off the edge of a cliff in the dark.
"It’s gone," Dad breathed.
"How much, Mark?"
"Everything," Dad said. "The checking. The emergency savings. The sixty-two hundred dollars from the furnace install I finished on Tuesday. It was all transferred at four o'clock this morning to an account labeled *M-Mercer Consulting LLC*."
Wyatt didn't move. He sat completely rigid, his hands resting flat on his knees, his face illuminated by the green glow of the Buick’s dashboard clock.
"Mercer," Wyatt whispered. "That was my dad’s name. But my dad died in an auto salvage yard in Muncie six years ago."
May you like
Grandma June reached over, switched off the speakerphone, and laid the phone face down on the bench seat between them. She didn't say another word until we crossed the county line into Hocking County, where the hills rose up out of the farmland like dark, hunched shoulders against the falling night.
***
