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Buried Beneath

James Hold

“I’m in over my head”

    “Unfortunately, there is no mistake,” said the records department clerk, closing the file.
    “That can’t be.” I leaned across the counter. “I dated him three years while attending university.”
    The woman, with better things to do, regarded me with stony indifference, inviting me to leave. I took the hint.
    Fairy tales seldom come true for quiet girls. I was no exception. In the six years I spent tracking David Addley, it never occurred to me he didn’t exist. But who was it I dated then? I returned from spring break, full of hopes and dreams, only for him to turn up gone. I remembered our final night together. We went as far as the car would take us. After which I let him go as far as he wanted. Come morning we parted, never to meet again.
    It wasn’t so much that he’d dumped me. It happened before. Only this time his promises sounded so sincere. Now to ask around and be told he’d never been there in the first place? It seemed a bit much. I had some stuff of his I wanted to return and needed an address where to send it. Only the college admin said he’d never attended and the guys at his dorm claimed never to have heard of him. It became one of those puzzles I never got over and now, years later, I was still seeking answers.
    Then I got the letter. Carlos discovered a tattered notebook under a pile of shoes in the back of his grandmother’s closet. He’d been cleaning the room prior to an estate sale. Carlos wrote because the book had my name in it and hoped I could provide information about the family. The family’s name was Addley. I wrote back saying I’d come out.
    Fifty miles west of Bloomington lies Hillsboro, a monument to middle-class malaise. I could have said “mayonnaise” as it had that sort of bland flavor to it. I met Carlos at his downtown realtor’s office. It was fairly late. The window was open enough to let in the night air. I felt him staring at my legs as I sat down. Quiet girls don’t appreciate that. I kept my knees together.
    The first thing I asked was why he’d written me. There must have been other names as well. “Funny thing about that,” Carlos said. “Those other names belong to dead people. You were the only one that replied.”
    “The Addley’s,” Carlos went on, “were a prominent, well-to-do family thirty years ago. This was before my time. They were picnicking by the lake and their boat overturned. No one survived except Grandma Addley who’d stayed on shore. The bodies were never recovered.”
    The last thing I asked before leaving was if one of the victims had been named David. Carlos answered: “He was heading to college come fall.”
    That night I checked into a motel. I no longer had any questions. At the same time, I didn’t feel I had any answers either. Such as how I came to be listed in a thirty-five year-old notebook when I hadn’t been born yet? I was twenty-nine (twenty-four when I first met David) and that seemed an awful long gap if reincarnation had taken place. Assuming it had.
    Maybe I should have asked the names of the others who died. In truth though I didn’t want to know.
    *
    By the fifteenth month of the drought, the lake no longer held her secrets. Beneath a rotted hull authorities found six bodies. The boat had been overloaded and an accident was inevitable. Two of the corpses, a man and woman, were holding hands. They were beyond IDing. Police guessed the name of the man. The woman remained unidentified. It’s just as well. It wouldn’t be the easiest thing to explain.

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