Look Closely by Laura Caldwell Read Free Book Online Page A

because if I said anything else, I might have told her what I suddenly knew—that my mother, Leah Sutter, died in this house.
    4
    After leaving the Marker Mansion, formerly the Sutter home—my home—I drove slowly, not sure where I was going, letting the sights of Woodland Dunes fil my head and refresh my memories of the place. I passed the town’s riding stables, matching white barns with green roofs resting on a large field, a white fence surrounding the property. Patsy and I used to ride there on Saturdays, eating brown-bag lunches in the long grass behind the barns when we were done. The town’s championship golf course with its rol ing greens and intermittent circles of sand appeared the same as it did years ago, just like the lighthouse at Murphy’s Point.
    I turned left on the outskirts of town, then left again toward the lake. And suddenly, there it was. A square plot of land on a hil side dotted with trees and sprinkled with gray and white headstones. The Woodland Dunes Cemetery. I hadn’t realized I was so close. In fact, I didn’t know if I could have found it if I tried.
    I pul ed into the lot, the tires of the rental car crunching over the gravel. As I got out, I remembered where to go. My dad had brought me here a few times before we moved. I walked toward the far left corner, the heels of my loafers sinking into the damp, spongy ground. I passed an older man in jogging clothes squatting over a smal , simple headstone. He pul ed stray weeds with a quick hand as if accustomed to the movement.
    I stopped when I came to the tal white column made of stone, an angel on either side looking down, protecting the grave. A grayish-green film had made its home in some of the crevices of my mother’s memorial, around the angel’s wings and in the edges of the lettering that read: Leah Rose Sutter, Beloved Wife and Mother, 1942–1982. The rest of the grave site was remarkably clean. No weeds or sand on it like some of the others nearby.
    Then I noticed it. A single yel ow tulip lying at the base of the monument. I stood completely stil , staring at it, my mind latching onto our old house again, wandering the rooms inside, seeing it the way my mother had always kept it. Flowers below the porch, blooms in the vases in the library, and more flowers in her bedroom. In the spring, when the air was new and clean as it was now, those flowers were usual y tulips, mostly yel ow.
    Iwrappedmyarmsaroundmyself.Thefactthat mymotherlovedyel owtulips,andthefactthatthis one had been placed by her headstone had to be a coincidence. I wasn’t aware of anyone who visited
    hergrave.Mymother’sownparentshaddiedafew
    years
    after
    her,
    and
    she
    had
    no
    siblings.
    Once
    we
    movedaway,myfatherandIneverreturned.Asfar
    asDanandCarolinewereconcerned,Ididn’tknow
    wheretheywere.Theyhadbothbeensomucholder
    thanme.Aftermymomdied,Carolinehadgoneoff
    toboardingschoolandDantocol ege.Weneverreal y saw them after that. My dad and I moved al overforhisworkatthefirm—SanFrancisco,London, Paris, Long Island—and when I asked about Caroline and Dan, he said that they had their own livesandfamilies.Hegavetheimpressionthatthey didn’t want to be a part of ours any longer.
    Maybe the flower had come loose from a nearby bouquet. I glanced at the other grave sites. Some were untended and nearly overgrown. A few had smal flower arrangements but no tulips.
    When I looked back at my mother’s grave, I had the odd feeling that someone was watching me. A few more glances around told me that I imagined it. The man in the jogging clothes had turned away, walking back to the parking lot.
    I bent down and lifted the bud. It looked fairly new,onlytwoofthepetalsshowingsignsofdroop, probablynomorethanadayortwoold.Ilaiditgently on the cool stone again, wondering who could haveleftithere.Nomatter.Iwasgratefultotheperson for honoring my mother, for remembering her.
    This time, there were two cars parked in Del a’s driveway. As I pul ed in behind them, the front