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“Books that have writing in them.”
She stares at me for a moment before saying dryly, “Oh, thank God you said that—I’ve never seen a journal before!”
“You asked!”
“I was hoping you had some clue as to which of these boxes they might be in.” She holds her arm out and swishes it around like she’s showing off fabulous prizes on a game show.
“Yeah, this is more of a start-at-the-top-and-work-our-way-down situation.”
She nods.
“To the hunt,” she toasts, raising her glass.
“To the hunt.”
* * *
“I want you to know this is the worst scavenger hunt I’ve ever been on,” Micky declares, lifting another box.
It’s been two hours, and we’ve barely made it through half of the boxes. The little walkway outside the wired-off “room” is filling up. There is so much junk in here. I can donate most of it, though, nobody needs three Flowbee haircutting systems. Shit, nobody needs one Flowbee haircutting system.
These shouldn’t be donated. They should be incinerated.
“I’ve reached the Christmas decorations. Think they could be in here?” she asks.
“Maybe? But I doubt it.”
She pops off the big plastic lid and pushes around the contents of the container.
“Nope, just a big box full of nutcrackers,” she confirms.
“Name of your sex tape,” I mumble, closing another box and pushing it aside.
“Pfft, I wish. How about Halloween decorations?”
“You can give it a shot bu—wait! We didn’t have Halloween decorations. Julianne thought it was a stupid holiday for kids.”
“Wow, that woman must have been a riot at parties.” She grunts as she pries the lid open on the corner. “Oh, shit... Jackpot.”
Ripping off the rest of the lid, she tosses it onto the pile of unopened boxes. She hauls it out of the storage space so the shadows no longer obstruct it.
“These have to be them.”
I crouch down and pull the hardback books from the box. There’s one for every year since 1976. I pull out everything from 1992 to the most recent year and set them aside. I can’t carry more than twenty journals anyhow.
“I’m going to take this box up.”
“Sounds good. You know what this means, right? You have to go.”
“I know.”
We pack up all the other boxes sitting in the walkway and pile them back into the tiny space. There has to be some service that can come and clean this stuff out for me. It takes forty minutes to pack everything back in there like some horrid game ofTetris.
* * *
April 7, 2000
All Elizabeth ever talks about is how pretty Miss Tiffany is. Is that woman even qualified to teach? She isn’t very intelligent. I could do a better job myself. The few times I’ve met that woman, she was nothing special. She’s plain, bordering homely. She’s a preschool teacher. That’s enough to tell you she made poor choices in life. I live in luxury, and she’s wiping noses all day. I have made so many sacrifices in my life for Elizabeth. How does she repay me? By giving her teacher all the attention. If this Tiffany only knew what an ungrateful, difficult child she had in her classroom everyday, maybe she wouldn’t spoil her so much.
