A year and a half later, Avery walked into my garden center.
I recognized her immediately from years of family photos.
She had never seen me.
“I need a dogwood,” she said. “A really good one. It’s for our church’s memorial garden. My boyfriend’s family lost someone. Every Easter, my mom reads the names at sunrise, and I want this to be something she’s proud of.”
I assumed she meant Grandma.
I helped her choose a Cherokee Princess dogwood with a clean graft union.
On the tag, I wrote what I wrote on every tree.
“Graft is good. Water deep the first summer. She’ll bloom.”
At the gate, Avery looked at me strangely.
“You look like someone I should know,” she said.
It was the closest I came to telling her.
Instead, I sold her a tree.
That Christmas, Mitch proposed.
Mom texted me:
“Wedding is June 13th. Keep that weekend free.”
It took me a day to understand that “keep that weekend free” meant I wasn’t invited.
I confronted her.
“It’s not the right time for you to be there.”
I still didn’t know why.
Then the pandemic arrived, and for eight weeks in 2020 everyone was forced to stay home.
For the first time in years, so was I.
One Sunday, Avery called on FaceTime while I was making lunch.
Mom saw me behind her and covered the phone.
“Out of frame,” she mouthed.
I carried my plate to the one corner the camera couldn’t see and ate standing up while Mom chatted with a woman who believed I lived in Atlanta.
The wedding was postponed twice before settling on October 8th, 2022.
Mom texted:
“New date, October 8th, 2022. Keep it free.”
By Easter 2021, my parents had begun attending the Lockhearts’ sunrise service.
“Sunrise service with the Lockheart Sunday, be gone Friday.”
People ask why I didn’t leave sooner.
The answer was insurance.
My medication and therapist were covered by Dad’s employer plan. The garden center offered none.
Mom reminded me whenever I resisted.
“You’re on our insurance until you’re 26. Our house, our rules.”
When I turned twenty-six, I finally bought my own marketplace coverage.
The card had only my name on it.
Still, I stayed.
That Thanksgiving, I returned from Ruth’s and found all my medication moved into my locked bedroom.
“Keep your medicine in your room,” she said. “People use that bathroom.”
People had used that bathroom for seven years.
My newest bottle, dated that October, was now hidden behind a door only Mom could unlock.
I thought she feared the medication.
I couldn’t imagine what else frightened her.
In January 2022, another box of cuttings arrived from Ingred.
Ruth copied Ingred’s number onto a paper towel.
“You call her,” she said. “I’m tired of being the middleman.”
I called.
Ingred skipped the pleasantries.
“So you’re the hands,” she said. “The offer stands. April, bring gloves.”
I told her I would think about it.
Three months later, the Easter text arrived.
“Lock hearts for supper Saturday. Sunrise service Sunday, be gone by 10:00.”
The visits now included Avery’s parents too.
Mom called them:
“Our church friends now.”
On Saturday morning, I left at 9:40.
Tally mark 211.
April 16th, 2022.
That evening at Ruth’s, I opened my pill organizer.
Saturday was empty.
The bottles were inside my locked bedroom.
Ruth watched me.
“Go get what’s yours,” she said. “Then come straight back.”
I drove home near ten.
The Lockhearts’ Suburban was still in the driveway.
I parked down the block and approached the house from the dark side yard.
The hallway window near my bedroom was cracked open.
Suzanne Lockheart stood outside my door.
Mom was beside her holding a tissue.
Avery clung to Mitch.
Dad stood near the kitchen looking at the floor.
Suzanne touched my door.
“May I?”
Mom nodded.
Suzanne laid her palm against the wood and bowed her head.
Mom dabbed at her eyes.
“I still can’t bring myself to open it.”
I stood outside watching a stranger pray over my bedroom door.
You don’t touch a door like that unless you believe whoever belongs behind it will never return.
After they left, I waited until the house went dark.
Near midnight, I entered through the back.
On the dining table sat a framed photograph of a blooming dogwood.
At its base was a granite memorial stone.
In loving memory of Anastasia Dunaway, 1995 2014.
She is not dead but sleepeth.
A card read:
8 We’ll read her name at sunrise. S.
Then I saw the white nursery tag hanging from the tree.
My handwriting.
The same tree I had sold Avery.
Everything rearranged itself at once.
The burned candles.
The obituary that omitted me.
“My boyfriend’s family lost someone.”
“It’s not the right time for you to be there.”
The locked bedroom nobody could supposedly bear to open.
Mom had never told Avery I lived in Atlanta.
She had let her entire family believe I was dead.
And I had personally selected my own memorial tree.
I sat in Mom’s chair until the refrigerator had cycled twice.
Then I stood.
Her keys were beside the coffee maker.
I opened my bedroom and packed one bag.
Medication.
Birth certificate.
Ruth’s grafting knife.
The yellow notebook.
Everything else belonged to the girl they had invented.
I left the bedroom door wide open, lamp burning, key in the lock.
They claimed they couldn’t bear to open it.
I made sure they would have to look inside.
Then I called Ruth.
“Then go see April,” she said.
I drove northwest.
Near Memphis, with dawn beginning to rise, I sent my parents the only message they would receive from me for years.
“I’m alive. Don’t look for me.”
It was the first truthful sentence my family had said about me in eight years.
I drew a line beneath tally mark 211.
While I crossed the Mississippi, my mother was at sunrise service listening to my name among the dead.
I wouldn’t learn that until years later.
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