He looked at the letter on top, seeing immediately it was a relic of a different age, the handwriting not just precise, but also elegant. The gentle sweep of the y, the supple o, the gentle dots above the i, all written by a hand not yet ravaged by age.
October 26, 1951
YUCATAN, MEXICO
I will use what is left of me to write this. This is the time to do it, as I am as numb as a magnolia branch in December, bending but not yet broken by the ice. Do not take me for an unloving mother or wife who is able to methodically dictate the loss of my daughter and husband. My heart has already broken, along with much of my body, and I cannot ever recover. If this exercise assists in determining what’s happening to other families like mine, then so be it. This is for them. It will not help me.
My name is Freda Stanson.
I’d only meant to lay down for a minute the night my daughter disappeared. But the rain was an undeniable lullaby.
The flash was so bright I could see it despite my closed eyes. I sat up to see a section of the woods momentarily illuminate and then go dark. The rain had stopped, long enough for the screen on the window to dry. I must have drifted a bit more, because I only truly woke when I heard Bud’s calls from outside.
Immediately I was on my feet and running down the hall. I pushed through the screened door, spotting my husband on the edge of the woods, his hands cupped around his mouth, calling for Lynn.
He’d answered my question before I could ask it. They’d dozed off, watching the fireflies that our daughter loved so much that she spent nearly every night trapping them and then delighting in letting them go. He’d woken to find her gone. He’d searched the house and the yard. He’d noticed then that the fireflies were heavy in the trees after the rain.
He’d directed me to get the flashlight from the greenhouse. She’ll see the light and come back, he said. She just got turned around. She’s a country girl. She’s not afraid of the woods.
I’d run to the greenhouse and found the silver Rayovac where Bud had left it after trying to chase away a coyote that had wandered too close to the property line a few weeks ago.
I thought of the creature, its eyes reflecting the flashlight. I’d stood on the porch, watching Bud waving his arms to spook it. It had examined him for far too long, in my opinion, before slipping into the dark.
I’d reminded him of the coyote when I hurried back. He ran into the woods.
The light winked between the dark trees as I’d yelled out, telling Lynn to follow the flashlight to Daddy. I could see the other flickerings from the fireflies as well, and felt one dart in front of my face, another bounce off my ear. I anticipated their illumination before me, but none appeared. Even in the night, I could see them zig-zagging, with one or two landing on my neck.
I pulled them off, gentle as I taught Lynn to do if they landed on her. They popped in my hand, and yet as I opened my fingers, no tiny glow emerged.
I felt a few on my legs now, and knew, the way they clung to me without piercing or irritation, that they were Bud’s ladybugs. He’d had them shipped in to eat the aphids in the gardens, but they were supposed to rest at night.
They were everywhere now, and I thought of how I’d have to search through Lynn’s curls later to make sure none got entangled. She would laugh if I brought one from her hair, like a magician pulling a dime from behind her ear.
I kept walking to escape their swarm, following Bud’s light as he went deeper into the woods. I then saw the light stop, and I held my breath, waiting for him to call out that he’d found her.
The light came towards me with a rapid pace. When he at last emerged, I could see he was alone, his face sunken in the harsh light, holding out one of our daughter’s shoes.
I need to take a break now. I will wait for the pain to subside.
William read the letter twice, his hands trembling.
He was not the first of his family to disappear in the woods behind their homes.
Flipping to the next page, he saw distinctly different handwriting, as different from Freda Stanson’s as possible. There was a practicality to it, written without flare.
Nov 1, 1951
Lynn,
This is foreign to me. I am a man who writes only for purpose. Receipts. Plant orders. Bills. I have had no use for it in my life. I barely finished high school, after all. I attempted to write your mother a love letter once. She read it, corrected my spelling, and folded it in her Bible. In the same place she keeps a lock of your hair.
Kept. She kept it there.
It is still hard for me to think of her as gone.
As I write this, I am watching you sleep. You resemble her so much, with your long eyelashes and curls. When you sleep, it is one of the few times when I can get close to you. My heart breaks a bit more every morning when you wake and look at me with confusion. But it is the fear that hurts the most. You do not believe me when I tell you that I am your father.
Dr. Martin isn’t a medical doctor, but he’s a very smart man. He tells me that in time your memory might return. That whatever they did to you could be reversible. I truly, though, just want you to remember your mother.
And that is why, my girl, I write this. Because I want you to know who your mother was and what she did to save you.
When you disappeared that night, we were in such a panic. We looked all night. We were waiting for morning to ask for help, as we didn’t dare leave the trees. Then a truck pulled up in the drive. You have to know how strange that was. We don’t get many visitors out here except for customers.
Your mother ran to the truck, and that’s when the strange man with glasses stepped out. I remember thinking I had misunderstood him. He asked something about if lightning had struck near our house.
This is harder than I thought. The words don’t come easily to me. But I will do this for you. I will do anything for you, my girl. And I will wait as long as it takes for you to call me father.
October 27, 1951
YUCATAN, MEXICO
Terrible pain. The pain medication helps, but today is difficult. Keep writing, Freda, they tell me. It will take your mind off it. I know why they tell me that. They want a record of it, while it’s still fresh in my mind. What they really want is for me to tell it just in case I don’t survive. So be it.
We’d searched all night. Nothing. No trace of her. Only the shoe. Bud had gotten his shotgun and entered the woods while I just stood and cried, calling for her until daylight.
There was nowhere to go for help. We agreed Bud would leave at dawn. We didn’t know our neighbors well, and we were really scattered far apart. But I’d stay here and look while Bud tried to wrangle some people up. That’s when the old Ford pulled into the drive.
I ran over in desperation, begging the man who stepped out to drive to the police or find the county sheriff and report Lynn’s disappearance. I must have sounded insane, saying that our phone lines were crackling so badly that I couldn’t get through last night and we didn’t dare stop searching to go drive for help.
He’d introduced himself as Dr. Rex Martin, and asked us a singular question that I remember stopped me in my tracks: had my daughter vanished after lightning struck?
I’d remembered it, then, the flash of light. I must have stammered that I’d seen it.
He was so calm.
I think I know where your daughter is, he’d said.