Chapter 4 - The Invitation and the Missing Name
For three weeks I left Mom's invitation on my kitchen counter beneath a jar of pencils.
Every morning I saw it before work, and every evening I considered dropping it into the trash.
I did not particularly want to celebrate the marriage that had destroyed my childhood.
Yet part of me still wanted to see my mother happy, even if happiness had made her dangerously obedient.
That contradiction annoyed me more than I could admit.
A week before the party, Mom called to ask whether I needed directions.
I said I hadn't decided.
She told me she had reserved a place for me at the family table.
Then she hesitated.
"Howard doesn't know I invited you personally."
I almost laughed.
After ten years, she still sought permission to behave like a mother.
"If I come," I said, "I won't pretend Rick was a thief."
"I'm not asking you to."
"And I won't apologize for leaving your house."
"I know."
Her voice sounded tired rather than defensive, and that was new.
I eventually agreed to attend for one hour.
I bought a dark blue dress from a consignment shop and chose a simple silver necklace Rick had given me with money from his first paycheck.
He had told me the little star pendant was a promise that I could find my way, even when the sky looked empty.
The clasp had been repaired twice.
I wore it anyway.
On the afternoon of the celebration, I drove past the old neighborhood before heading to the banquet hall.
Our former house had fresh paint and an expensive wooden fence.
The front steps looked smaller than I remembered.
I pulled over across the street, suddenly unable to stop picturing Rick's duffel bag lying in the dirt.
A young boy rode past on a bicycle, laughing at something a friend had shouted.
He looked close to the age I had been when my world came apart.
I wondered whether Rick had ever been allowed to be that carefree at sixteen.
My phone rang while I sat there.
Mom's number appeared.
She said Howard was becoming impatient and wanted to know when everyone would arrive.
I asked if she was nervous.
"A little," she admitted.
Then she said something stranger.
"There are things I should have told you sooner."
I waited.
"Not over the phone," she added.
Before I could ask what she meant, Howard called to her from somewhere in the background.
The line went dead.
At the banquet hall, an attendant directed me toward the main room.
Soft music drifted through white double doors.
Photographs of Mom and Howard stood on easels in the corridor.
One showed them standing beside their wedding cake.
Another featured a recent Caribbean vacation.
There were pictures of Howard's colleagues, cousins, and golf companions.
There was no photograph of Rick.
In fact, there was no photograph of either of Mom's children until I spotted a small frame near the guest book.
It showed me at eighteen, standing stiffly beside Mom on my high school graduation day.
Before leaving my apartment, I opened the old notebook beneath the closet floorboard and reread the first letter I'd written after Rick disappeared.
My childhood handwriting leaned sharply to the right.
I had asked him whether he was cold and whether he still liked chocolate milk.
The questions were so small that they broke my heart.
I added a new note on a blank page, telling him I had learned to drive and had become reasonably good at balancing a budget.
I wrote that Mom still tried to call me every Sunday.
I wrote that I had never believed the theft accusation.
Then I stopped because I did not know what address to put on the envelope.
For a few minutes, I considered bringing the notebook to the anniversary dinner.
I decided not to.
The evening was already full of memories I could barely carry.
As I drove, I passed the hardware store where Rick had once worked.
It had become a pharmacy, but I could still picture him wearing a green apron and carefully stacking boxes near the front window.
He used to let me count change for friendly customers when the manager wasn't busy.
I had felt important simply because he trusted me with a small responsibility.
At the banquet hall I noticed that Howard had hired a professional photographer and arranged a slideshow about the history of his marriage.
The images showed expensive trips, golf tournaments, and business milestones.
They omitted the two children who had lived in that house when the marriage began.
The omission was so complete it almost looked deliberate.
I wondered whether Mom had noticed, or whether she had simply learned to stop looking for things Howard preferred not to see.
When I found Rick's place card, I understood she was finally trying to make one missing person visible.
I only hoped her courage had arrived in time for him to want to be found.
Rick had already been gone two years.
I looked toward the registration table, where a teenager checked names against a printed list.
My name wasn't there.
The teenager apologized and offered to call the organizer.
Before I could reply, Mom appeared and took my arm.
"You're with me," she said.
I followed her inside, but the missing name clung to me.
Howard had invited almost a hundred people to celebrate family while leaving his wife's daughter off the list.
Maybe it was an oversight.
Maybe it was another message.
I had stopped pretending there was much difference.
The room smelled of roasted vegetables and expensive cologne.
Howard stood near a cluster of men who laughed too loudly at his jokes.
When he noticed me, his smile narrowed.
"You made it," he said.
"Mom asked me to come."
"Then let's keep the evening pleasant."
He glanced at the necklace around my throat.
"Still wearing that old thing?"
I touched Rick's silver star.
"It's mine."
Howard turned away, apparently satisfied that the conversation was over.
I found my assigned place near the end of the family table.
Mom's handwritten place card sat between two empty chairs.
I noticed one chair had a second card tucked face down beneath a folded napkin.
When I turned it over, I saw only one name.
Rick.
For several seconds I could not move.
Mom approached behind me, saw the card, and covered her mouth.
May you like
"I was hoping," she whispered.
Before I could ask what she'd done, the room's side doors opened.
