The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D Read Free Page B

house and the Martins’, pawning off things that wouldn’t travel well: some houseplants and a propane tank, food from the freezer, the goldfish. After the last load, Elizabeth stood under the porchlight holding a desiccated jade. The plant’s fat teardrop leaves were molting and the aquarium smelled like sewage, but Elizabeth had taken them with the gravity of precious offerings.
    There were finally small signs of normalcy for the Martins. The older two kids were sleeping through the night again, Dave said. People had finally stopped bringing lasagna. Now this, the journals and whatever they contained, agitating the healing. Kate tried to muster some argument, some bolstering thought, but came up with nothing.
    “You know, I never heard her say the slightest thing about being unhappy. God, she loved you guys more than anything.” It was the best she could do under the circumstances.
    He wiped his hands on the dish towel and looked at her with an odd smile, pained with the effort not to be wry. He was too polite for that.
    “Come on now,” he said. “Let’s get your car loaded up with that beautiful family of yours.”

    Kate stood in the driveway looking into the tightly packed car through the open rear hatch door. On top of the suitcases, linens, and beach toys, there had been just enough room for the small antique trunk. Dave was inside corralling his kids to say good-bye. She pulled out the key from the lawyer and slipped it into the brass lock. The aged hardware turned with the solid tumble of fine luggage, and she lifted the lid to find three stacks of thick books, maybe a dozen or more. The spiral-bound notebooks had decorated covers, painted, some of them, or laminated with photos. As she reached in to touch one textured with thick paint, Dave appeared beside her. He glanced inside and then away, as if from something uncouth. She closed the lid, regretting her impatience. To free the key she had to relock the trunk, an excluding click that felt a further insult to him. Then she placed the key in the zippered compartment of her wallet.
    He held a manila notebook with an undecorated cover, and handed it to her without meeting her eye. “Here. It was the one in the nightstand.” She took the plain book and rushed it into her tote like pornography.

    As the car backed out of the driveway, Kate gave one last wave to the four Martins in a row, looking much the same as they had in so many vacation pictures with Elizabeth behind the camera. Dave was still holding the piece of paper she’d given him with their telephone number at the rental house.
In case you need anything, or can come out for a visit
, she’d said.
My cell never works well out there
. He’d made an agreeable sound, but she knew she wouldn’t hear from him. After he’d handed her the last journal, his farewell had had the brisk tone of a person glad to have finished a task and brushing off his hands afterward.
    Chris turned left, up the ramp and onto the interstate. “What was that all about? There in the kitchen.”
    Kate glanced at the children in the rearview mirror. The kids stared back at her reflected eyes, curious. “I’ll tell you after they fall asleep.”
    He clicked the radio on to his favorite news station, and an announcer’s voice filled the car with words—
terrorists, threat levels—
that she did not want the children to hear. She turned off the rear speakers wishing she could turn it off altogether. All her life she’d been a news junkie, but now the flood of information was unwelcome. She fingered the metal spirals of the journal on her lap, then looked back in the mirror to the trunk wedged on top of the air mattress. It was a miniature steamer with a bowed lid, solid and heavily shellacked and who knew how old, perhaps a hundred years or more. The kind of trunk that would outlive all of them. It had already begun to.
    Chris drove north on I-95 parallel to the ocean, past a smallinlet of the Long Island Sound rimmed