William’s brow furrowed. The letter from Nanna’s mother ended suddenly, as if the rest of it had been cut and replaced. The next page was another letter from Nanna’s father. Why had they removed—
Then he remembered what Rudd said, about how they had been placed in chronological order.
The letters obviously came from different sources and were written about a year apart. His great-grandmother’s letters were labeled “classified” with that acronym—SSA. Both Blue and Rudd had mentioned them in correlation with agents in black suits. Her letters even bore an official stamp. His great-grandfather’s letter, however, had no such distinction.
Nov 2, 1951
Lynn,
Not a good day for us, baby. You were especially skittish today. I know it’s so hard for you, not knowing who I am and just the two of us here at this house. I keep showing you the picture of your mother and me on our wedding day. I keep pointing out how much you look like her. I think you see it, too, but you’re still not convinced. If it takes a lifetime, I’ll point it out every day.
It’s especially difficult to see you look so afraid. It’s an almost identical expression to your mother’s on the night you disappeared and that morning afterwards, when that man showed up in the driveway.
He gave us his name, Dr. Rex Martin—a professor from some university in St. Louis. Said he had been fishing up at the Land Between the Lakes in Kentucky when he was listening to radio reports of storms that passed through Nashville and how farmers on the west side of the county said that the lightning continued after the rain had passed. He kept talking about how he broke every speed limit to get here, stopping at every house to see if they’d seen any lightning actually touch down.
Your mama told him that there had been lightning when our daughter disappeared.
I’ll be honest with you, I started getting mad. The man said he needed to make a call, and I’d pointed out that we’d tried to use our phone but the reception was so bad we couldn’t get through. I told him that he needed to get in the car and go for help. He kept saying he had to make a call right now. I said any phone call that worked would be used to find my girl.
He then ran back to his passenger seat and pulled out a map, flattening it out on the hood. He motioned us over, showing us a map of the gulf. He pointed to what looked like the flipped-up tail of Mexico. He said something about a town not on the map, called Olvidar. He said if he was right, that’s where our daughter was.
I’d put my arm in front of your mama, getting her to back up. I suspected, at that moment, that he’d had something to do with your disappearance. I started walking towards him, demanding to know what he’d done with our girl. He held up his hands, talking real fast, repeating that he was a meteorology professor, and that he’d been working with a man in the Yucatan to document cases of people vanishing after lightning strikes when storms are over.
I was about to swing when your mama said something about the girl’s gravestone in the woods.
The letter ended suddenly, and when William flipped to the next, someone had typed at the top of the next page, “Continuation of Freda Stanson’s recollection from October 28, 1951.”
Dr. Martin had explained how he was doing research, with some man in the Yucatan, of all places, about how people disappeared after strange lightning following storms. I know my husband: he was ready to pounce. Bud had always been scrappy, and it was really what first attracted me to him. At that moment, Bud was exhausted, scared, and now very angry at this man who came out of nowhere. But when Dr. Martin mentioned the lightning, I remembered something. About the girl, and her gravestone in the woods.
I must have said it quietly, the name Amelia Shrank.
I’d watched my husband’s face, ruddy from hours of yelling and hurrying through the trees, drain to pale.
Dr. Martin had asked who Amelia Shrank was. Bud hadn’t interrupted me, and that let me know that he must have passed her gravestone in his frantic searches and tried not to think about what it meant for Lynn.
I’d explained that there was a gravestone in the middle of the woods. For a little girl named Amelia. Bud had found it by accident while deer hunting two years ago. I’d asked Martha Jacobs about it. She lived a few farms over, and she told me that the girl’s parents had put it there before they packed up and moved away. Martha said it had been so long since the girl vanished that she didn’t remember the details, something about Amelia going into the woods after her dog when it got loose after a big rain. But Martha did point out she remembered quite clearly how another man, Josh Stone, had died in the woods about ten years ago. He drowned in the creek after a storm, she said. They think he got struck by lightning and fell in. They never found his body.
Dr. Martin had taken a deep breath. He spoke about how his colleague in Mexico said that in the town there, when lightning strikes after a storm, people show up on the beach. People who have no memory. It’s happened for so long that the town actually took its name from it. Olvidar means, “to forget” in Spanish.
I’d looked at Dr. Martin. Call it a mother’s intuition, call it a lack of sleep or quiet desperation, but I’d motioned him for him to follow. Bud looked to me with anger, but I’d held up my hand to him to stop. My husband knows not to push me. And the truth be told, I wanted to see for myself if the phone was back working so I could start making calls for help.
We ran inside, Bud practically right on top of the man. I picked up the phone, and found the static gone. I’d told Dr. Martin that I needed to have the operator call the police, but he’d practically begged me to try to make the call first.
It hadn’t been easy standing there. I quickly grew frustrated at the minutes ticking by as he’d argued with the operator about how to make an international call to Mexico. Bud banged the wall. Just when I’d finally demanded that he give me the phone and stop this nonsense, he held up a finger, saying there was a connection.
Dr. Martin let your mama and me gather close to listen when a man answered, with a thick Mexican accident. Dr. Martin was relieved, and covered up the bottom of the phone for a moment to explain it was his friend in the Yucatan. His name was Antonio.
The man sounded frantic to me. Said he’d been trying to reach Dr. Martin at his house and office for a few hours. That there had been a storm there that morning and he’d found them. He kept saying that: I found them.
I remember Dr. Martin telling him to slow down. Who did he find?
The white people, the man said. On the beach. Three adults, one child. The adults don’t remember anything. They don’t know their names. But the little girl does. She knows who she is.
I don’t think I breathed, baby girl. I was so confused, but even my simple mind started to dare to hope.
Dr. Martin asked what the girl said. His friend said that she’d been up in the sky with scary people and she wanted her Mama and Daddy. That she had blond curly hair and overalls.
She said her name was Lynn.
I just screamed. Over and over again. Asking where was my daughter? Where was my daughter?
The man, Antonio was his name, said he’d gathered them up and told them he was taking them to get help. They were in the other room at the apartment he had been renting.
I demanded to talk to her, and I heard him call out for her, to come to the other room.
I’ve never cried tears before that burned my eyes, but they came, hot and gushing, when I heard my little girl get on the phone and ask for me.