Page 5 of Stay Buried

“How could you keep this from us?” Ash asked, trying to keep her voice calm, but still it cracked as the words came out.

Gram shook her head, went back to the beets, ladling brine into a fresh jar.

“Mom was in Boone’s Ferry just days before they found her car by the bridge! And you never told us. You never told the police. You said you had no idea where she was!” Her voice was shaking now.

Gram whispered something so quietly Ash couldn’t make it out.

Ash stared down at the letter in her hands: proof. Proof that she hadn’t been wrong in thinking there was more to the story.

Though Ash had been surprised to learn her mother had gone to Boone’s Ferry, it made sense. Mom had been working on a family tree as a surprise for Gram. She was one of those people who jumped from project to project and threw herself into each completely until she burned herself out, lost interest, and moved on. There had been a UFO phase, an unsolved crimes phase, and many others—the latest wasgenealogy. She’d hoped that presenting Gram with a family tree would help connect Gram with family she’d lost touch with. But mostly, it seemed like Mom wanted to understand whereshecame from. They’d talked about it just weeks before Mom’s disappearance. They were in Gram’s kitchen, cleaning up after one of their weekly family dinners. Ash had admitted she just didn’t get the fascination with genealogy.

“In order to understand who we truly are in the present, we have to look at the past,” Mom had insisted, her hands scrubbing a pot in the soapy water of the sink. The ring she always wore, the old carved cameo of a woman’s face, sat on the counter next to the sink, watching them. The ring had belonged to Gram, and before that, her mother, Margaret.

Ash picked up a glass from the rack and began drying it with a towel. “I just don’t see how learning the name and birthplace of your great-great-great-aunt or whoever gives you insight into who you are as a personnow,” she said.

“You’re the doctor,” Mom said.

“Not yet,” Ash said.

“Well, don’t they teach med students about DNA?”

“Sure, but—”

“Just think of it, Ash,” she’d said with a dreamy expression. “We are carrying little pieces of the people who came generations, centuries before us. Doesn’t that amaze you? Our genes and chromosomes, they tell a story of who we are, where we came from—it’s not just one story living inside us, but thousands of stories just waiting to be understood, stories that link us to people who lived generations ago, who couldn’t even imagine our existence. How can that not excite you?”

Ash had shrugged. She was more interested in genetic markers for diseases, inherited mutations. More science, less story.

In fact, the last conversation Ashley had had with her mom was about the damn family tree. Mom had called, sounding excited, a little manic even, and asked Ash if they could meet for coffee, said she wanted to go over something she’d learned while doing research.Ashley was tired of feigning interest in their distant relations—a man who was an assistant barrel-maker on theMayflower, a woman who was one of the first female lawyers in Boston. She’d told her mom she was just too swamped with classes and clinicals, and had a killer exam coming up she really needed to prep for. Her mom had sounded disappointed, strangely distant, but Ash figured it was due to her lack of enthusiasm for hearing more stories about long-ago ancestors who had nothing to do with her. “Maybe next week?” Ashley had said, feeling a little guilty. “We can go to that Thai place you love, the one with the fried coconut ice cream? And you can fill me in on everything you’ve learned.”

Four days later, when Mom didn’t show up for Friday night family dinner, Malcolm had called the police to report her missing.

Ashley tortured herself replaying this conversation in the months to come. If she’d only said yes, maybe things would have turned out differently. Maybe her mother was really reaching out for help under the guise of the family tree. And if only Ashley had realized it, had been more patient, less wrapped up in her own shit, maybe Mom would be here right now, in this kitchen, helping to make the famous family beets. And Ashley might have graduated from medical school, instead of dropping out for a residency in the psych ward. Might have… She stopped the thoughts right there.

She pushed herself away from the beets on the counter now. She knew what she needed to do. If she was ever going to truly understand and accept her mother’s death, she needed answers.

“Gram?”

Her grandmother still wouldn’t make eye contact with her. She was fussing with the lids now.

“I’ve been thinking about it, and I’m going to go up to Boone’s Ferry. See if I can figure out what Mom was up to there. Maybe Mal will come with me. We can show her picture to people, see if—”

“You’ll do no such thing!” Gram said, turning to face her, her voice sharp, clutching a jar of beets. “I’m telling you, there’s nothing to find there, Ash.” Her face was pinched in frustration.

Ash was quiet for a few seconds, looking at her grandmother. Gram was wrong, she felt it in her gut. And it wasn’t just frustration on the old woman’s face.

It was fear.

Ash continued, trying to keep her voice calm and steady.

“But you and everyone else are always telling me I need to find closure. Maybe if I go there, if I try to retrace Mom’s steps—”

“I won’t hear any more talk of it!” Gram’s voice shook. “No one is going to Boone’s Ferry!”

The jar slipped from the old woman’s hand and hit the wood floorboards with an explosion of glass, beets, and hot blood-colored liquid.

THREEFRANKIE

March 9, 1919