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I point at a package on the desk. A UPS midsize box.
“What’s this?” I ask June.
“I don’t know. It came for you last week. How long are you staying, by the way?”
I pick it up, turn it around. “I’m going back tonight. You want to join us for your break? We’d love to have you.”
“Yes, please!” June beams. “I’ve been brushing up on my chess skills. I can’t wait to try them on Matti.”
I laugh. Rob has taught Matti to play and now Matti’s obsessed. And he’s very good. He played all the time with June over Christmas and again when she came over last month, and she only beat him once.
“How are they?” she asks, as I retrieve a pair of scissors from the drawer and cut through the tape.
I stop, tilt my head at her. “You know, last time you were there, I heard Matti laugh for the first time. He sounded the way he used to. It was the most beautiful sound.” She nods, and her eyes water. “And Carla has made some friends and there’s a light returning in her eyes.” I take a breath. “I think they’re going to be okay.”
“And you?” she asks. But it’s a joke between us, because I reply, “I’m okay, and you?” And she’ll say, “I’m okay, and you?” until we laugh. It’s stupid, but it’sourstupid. It’s all part of our way of coping.
It’s taken a lot of therapy for June to be where she is now. She’s only just returned to work, and she’s been promoted to senior administrator in the English department, but she doesn’t know how long she’ll stay. Not very long, is my bet.
It’s taken a lot of therapy for me, too, but I have my kids, and Rob. And I never say this to anyone, but I miss Luis. I miss him so much some nights I cry myself to sleep.
June gets to her feet and brushes her hands. “I should get back to it. Lunch?”
“Yes please.”
“Okay. I’ll come get you around one.”
After she’s gone I finally open the UPS box. Inside is an envelope with my name on it, and below it is another, smaller, cardboard box, but this one is different. It’s old and battered, like something you might have kept in an attic for the last fifty years. It isn’t sealed and I lift the flaps.
It’s the smell that hits me. An image of my old school flashes into my mind and for a surreal moment I am transported to another place and another time.
I pick up the letter and slide my finger inside its flap.
Dear Dr. Sanchez,
You wouldn’t remember me but we met once. My name is Vernon and I used to share Alex’s condo in Tremont. In the chaos of moving out I accidentally packed some of Alex’s things, and everything has been in storage until now, which is why I haven’t returned these to you before. These notebooks belonged to Alex but as they bear your name I am returning them to you.
Sincerely,
Vernon Tuckey
I open the box again. Inside are plain, wire-bound notebooks of varying colors. I know the style well—I used the same when I was at school. But these are old and musty, discolored in places.
I pull out the first notebook from the pile and open the page and there’s a moment when it feels like the room tilts as I read my own name, in my own childish handwriting, on the first page:Anna Miller
I snatch Vernon’s letter from the table and read it again. …but as they bear your name…
This makes no sense. And how would Vernon know my maiden name? I pull all the notebooks out, more frantic now. Twelve of them in total.
The Pentti-Stone conjecture, a solution, by Anna Miller
It’s like reading another girl’s old schoolwork. Pages and pages of mathematical equations in small, dense handwriting that starts neat in the early pages but seems to trip over itself by the last ones. Lines and lines of calculations framed by doodles of flowers, round petals floating over the margins, sometimes Hope’s name with a little heart to it, my mother’s diagonal flick of the pen across the page.
I did this? Yes, I did. I know it, but I don’t. I recognize the sequences, the logic, the rationality, the inferences, but I recognize them from Alex’s notebooks, and I am shocked that, at the time, I didn’t recognize my own work.
Then I see why Vernon returned them to me. Inside the cover page of a number of them is written:Dr. Anna Sanchez, senior lecturer, mathematics department, Locke Weidman University.
I know that handwriting and it’s not mine, it’s Alex’s. I flick through every notebook, every page, more frantic now. They are riddled with his notes, exclamation marks, excited markings.So close! Yes! No! Why?
