Audrey’s Door (19 page)

1. Clifton: 12
   
2. Maricopa: 12
   
3. *Yuma: 12
   
4. *Sedona: 12
   
5. Solana Beach: 13
   
6. San Clemente: 13
   
7. Blythe: 13
   
8. Prescott: 13
   
9. Winslow: 13
   
10. *Grand Junction: 14
    
11. *Aspen: 14
    
12. *Lincoln: 15
    
13. *Sioux City: 15
    
14. *Spenser: 15
    
15. *Mason City: 15
    
16. *Rochester: 15
    
17. Hinton: 16
    
18. Cedar Rapids: 16
    
19. Hannibal: 16
    
20. Ashland: 17
    
21. Marshaltown: 17
    
22. Fort Dodge: 17
    
23. ?18–20?
    
24. *Omaha: 21–31
    

It named every place they’d lived for more than a week. It took her a while to figure out the numbers, but eventually, she understood. They represented the age Audrey had been while they’d lived there. The ones with stars denoted the happy occasions, and the ones with frowns, the miserable ones. Funny that Betty had noticed that some had been sad and some happy. She hadn’t guessed her mother could distinguish the difference.

On the next page of the album, she found something she hadn’t seen in a very long time. Her second-grade
class picture. Sloppy bangs she’d cut herself, and a blue dress that Betty had sewn. The glossy corners of the photo were worn to paper, as if Betty had carried it in her wallet every day for the last twenty-seven years.

So Betty hadn’t forgotten that promise they’d made in Wilmette, to cast their lots in together. All this time, these years she’d been alone in this shithole, she’d been thinking of her daughter.

Audrey started to flip another page in the album, but knew that whatever she saw next might start her crying all over again. She snapped it shut and put it back into the box with the rest of the clothes and papers, then looked around the empty room. “Trade,” Saraub said, and handed her Dr. Burckhardt’s papers, then made as if to carry the box and clothes out the door.