Chapter 47

Lana and I went straight to Maria's apartment after school. As soon as we were inside, Lana threw her book bag on the floor and plopped onto Maria's couch, stretching out her long tanned legs. It was already autumn, and Lana refused to wear leggings. I put my bag down on one of the stools tucked underneath her kitchen counter and loosened my uniform tie.

"Water?" Maria asked me. She didn't have class today, and it seemed as if she had spent her whole day in her PJs. She wore light purple leggings and a large white t-shirt. Her feet had socks that were bunched up at her calves. Her thick dark hair was a messy knot at the top of her head.

"Yeah, thanks," I said, making myself comfortable on the floor in front of her coffee table.

"So I found these letters, and guys, they are so cute. I want to do that thing like that movie where they reunite lost lovers."

"María, you have a 10-page paper you need to write," I said, not looking up from my math book.

I had a lot on my plate today and was annoyed that I hadn't finished as much as I had planned before school was over. It would have been fine if I could just work on it at home, but Maria asked us to come over, saying she missed us.

Lana told her we had a lot of homework and Maria suggested we could just do it at her house, that she had a lot as well, but this way we could keep each other company.

"I don't want to do the essay; this is much more entertaining," Maria said, looking at the scrapbook she made with all the letters she found.

"You're going to do the essay anyway, and you're going to end up stressing and pulling your hair out when you have an hour before it's due and only a paragraph is written," I warned her.

"Fine, I just wanted to share these letters with you guys. I'll do my essay; I just need to be in the right mood."

"What mood?" I asked incredulously.

"Last minute panic?" She said, giving me a sheepish smile.

"Fine, suit yourself," I said, looking back at my math book.

"Look at this," she said, pulling out a letter from a box that looked as if it had seen its better days some 20 years ago.

"What is that?" Lana asked, also looking for any excuse not to do her work.

"So I found these old letters, and they are so good. It's like a romance novel. This girl is engaged to this guy; we don't like him," she said, pausing to explain, "he's boring and kind of an asshole. Totally takes her for granted, like he writes her letters using a typewriter. Which would be fine except, I am pretty sure someone even does it for him because god forbid he be bothered to get personal."

Lana and I shared a look.

"Anyway, she moved in with the boring man, and he's always gone to work and leaves her all alone, so she meets this other guy, and they start sending letters or emails to each other. Like that book, you know with, with the lake house, except they aren't time traveling and they meet up every few weeks and have sex."

"Oooh, do they describe the sex to each other?" Lana said as she copied my physics homework.

"No, they just do that in person. Why would they write about it?"

"I don't know, like sexting?"

"It's an email...."

"So? You don't think people did that in emails?"

"Well, they don't, they'll mention it, but they don't get graphic, they call it playing cards, but it's so obvious they are not playing any type of cards."

"What? Playing cards?" Lana asked.

"I don't know. I guess they call it that because she's cheating on her fiancé, and they have to be covert. I think the guys know each other. Anyway, it kinda worked because I seriously thought they were just really into playing bridge, but there's this one letter where she thinks she's pregnant and says it's due to their card game. I was like yeah. Mhm."

"This is what you've been doing instead of your paper?" I asked.

"Well, isn't this exciting?" Maria asked.

"No, that's actually kind of lame; I wanted descriptions," Lana said.

"Not everything is about sex, Lana," Maria shot back.

"Modern media would disagree with you," Lana sang back, "So these people you're creeping on, are they hot?"

"I don't know what they look like. They never send any pictures. I assume they just saw each other in person. Are you even paying attention to me?"

"Is their handwriting hot?" Lana asked. I could tell at this point she was just trying to annoying Maria.

"Lana.." I said, sitting up. She gave me a cheeky smile and went back to do her work.

I tried to block out their conversation and flipped through my math book, trying to find the page where I could check my answers.

"Lia, I thought you would be interested in this. You usually like anything that's like a puzzle," Maria said, sounding disappointed.

"Where did you even find these things, Maria?" Lana asked.

"This property my family is selling. Or getting rid of. It used to belong to a family many years back. I think the wife was like a victim of domestic abuse or something," she said this fact a lot more casually than the matter deserved.

"Really? Because she would send letters to some other guy? Jealous husband?" Lana asked, sitting up.

"No. No, these letters were written by someone else; the people who owned the house were completely different. This place is notorious for having people break in to like do drugs and have sex; I guess this one girl decided to hide her things there."

"Do you know anything other than the wife's husband being a complete shit?" Lana asked. I was surprised she was actually showing interest. Unlike Maria, who could be a hopeless romantic, she never cared for things like this.

"No, I just know she was in an abusive relationship; that's the only thing that my dad told me. I don't think he knew anything else."

"Sad that when she's gone, the only thing people remember is that her husband had loose hands. Woe to be a woman back in the day," Lana said and lay back down.

"Well, the family lived there in the 70s or 80s. My dad said she was a young woman, so then she would be what? In her 60's or 70's. I mean, she might not be gone; no need for dramatics."

"How do you know the letters aren't hers?"

"Well, I'm not a hundred percent; I mean, I am pretty sure they aren't. The family that owned the place before abandoning it lived there until the early 80s, and some of these letters are emails, so the timing doesn't really match. I don't think people emailed until the 90s. Like the letters she writes to her fiancé are handwritten, because she ships them to another country, but then to the guy she's clearly in love with it seems she writes emails, or maybe it's a typewriter," she said, holding one of the papers out to us.

I looked up, "It looks like an email to me," I said.

"Well, it gives you a time frame, right? To know who your lovers are? People would email each other in the 90s or like the early 2000s. After that, you would like just text," Lana said.

I looked up again, "you aren't serious about looking for these people, are you, Maria?" I asked and added, "there are other things you should be looking at, aren't there?" I said and gave her a stern look.

Lana looked at me funny, "okay, mom," she said, giving me a weird look.

"I'm just taking a break; things are really heavy, Lia," Maria said, sounding defensive.

"Your paper is on the marketing of the pop music industry? Why are you both so weird?" Lana asked.

Maria ignored both of us, "well, I have their names. Her name is Elle, although sometimes she signs off as Lima."

"Like the capital of Peru?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah, maybe that's where she's from. Good catch, Lia," Maria said, her voice chipper again, "his name is Romeo. Isn't that fitting for star-crossed lovers? Elle and Romeo are so cute; I ship them."

"Man, you really need to get laid," Lana said, her voice sounding concerned.

Against my strongest effort, I felt my mouth twitch. Lana grinned at me, and Maria narrowed her eyes at us.

"What is this?" Lana asked, holding up a daisy-covered journal.

"A diary, but I can't open the lock, and I don't want to mess it up."

"Elles diary?" Lana asked.

"Yeah. If I ever meet her, I don't want to disrespect her like that. It's one thing to read her letters. It's another to read her diary. Like that's such an invasion of privacy."

"Yeah, totally," Lana said in a mocking tone and pulled hard on the lock. "Oops, my hand twitched."

"LANA!"

"What?" Lana said, feigning innocence, "Carpel tunnel, it makes my wrists go crazy. It's all that time they make teenagers spend in front of electronic devices. Im a victim, María."

Lana opened up the notebook to a random page.

"Lana, we can't read that," Maria said sounding stressed. 

"Maria, you just read her letters and indulged in this woman's affair, but you can't read her diary? Make it make sense, please," Lana countered. 

Maria opened her mouth to say something but seemed at a loss for words.

"February 9th, 1975," Lana started reading.

"Wait. What?" Maria said, looking confused.

"I took the boys to the local diner. I felt they needed to be around people after weeks of keeping them away from everyone," Lana continued.

"The boys?" Maria asked, "Elle doesn't have kids, I'm sure of it; they discuss having kids in one of their letters."

"Maybe you grabbed a diary that did not belong to Elle," I said, "maybe this belonged to that lady your dad was talking about."

"She has pretty handwriting," Lana said, showing me the book, and I grabbed it and continued reading, "by now, I believe our disappearance is old news, and they are back to looking for those three girls that went missing a few years back.

I'm sometimes stricken with terror at night, what with that madman running loose, I keep the radio on for updates, and I keep a shotgun nearby. Davy, the man who shovels the driveway, assured me that he would see someone pass by the mansion he works at before they even got near the barn."

"Geez, lady," I said, "have you heard of commas and punctuation?"

"It's not an SAT essay, Lia; keep reading," Lana said, "this is way better than Elle and Romeo's drama."

I cleared my throat. 

"I like Davy; he doesn't ask a lot of questions. I had been shoveling the driveway by myself when Mr. Olsen, the man who rents us the property, offered Davy's services for a dollar more a month. It's a bit expensive; I don't know how long we will stay; I think the boys are getting restless," I said, my eyes scanning the diary entry as I read. Suddenly something caught my eye; I paused, reading ahead, my jaw slowly opening as I finished and looked up at Maria.

"What?" Maria asked, confused by my hesitancy to continue.

"We should finish reading this later," I said.

Lana snatched the diary from my hands and read out loud, "Bobby is entertained with the woods behind the house, but the baby cries almost nightly, and Allan refuses to speak to me, saying he will only speak to his father. Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe I was too hasty."

Maria looked as if she had seen a ghost. Which, in a way, she had.

"Stop reading that," Maria said softly.

"Why?" Lana said, laughing.

"Because it's her family's," I said, grabbing it from Lana's hands.

"No," Maria said, shaking her head, "it's just a coincidence."

I flipped to the front of the journal; in a very tight, neat script, it said, 'Property of C. Bennett.'

"Yeah, I don't think so," I said, showing it to her.

Maria grabbed it from my hands and threw it on her couch as if it were poisoned and touching it would kill us.

"Who is C. Bennett in your family?" Lana asked.

"Her grandmother," I said, not quite believing what I just read.