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Woolf spoke up: "He got a B+ in physics class this semester. I told you, as long as you work hard, you can get good grades, Jack."
Nath blinked at the door. Jack? B+
There was a rustling sound, and the policeman seemed to be flipping through his notebook, and then asked: "What is your relationship with Lydia?" Hearing the policeman say his sister's name in a businesslike tone, Ness was surprised to realize that under the police In his eyes, she was just a label. Jack seemed a little surprised too, and his tone became sharper than ever.
"We're friends. It's that simple."
"Several people said they saw you two in your car after school."
"I'm teaching her to drive." Hearing this, Nath wanted to see the expression on Jack's face. Couldn't they tell he was lying? However, the police seemed to believe him.
"When was the last time you saw Lydia?" the policeman asked.
"Monday afternoon, before she went missing."
"What were you doing at that time?"
“We sat in my car and smoked.”
The policeman took notes: "Were you in the hospital that day, Mrs. Woolf?"
"Please call me doctor."
The policeman cleared his throat: "Excuse me, Dr. Woolf, were you at work that day?"
"I usually work the night shift. Except Sundays."
"Did Lydia look like she was in a bad mood on Monday?"
Jack paused before answering: "Lydia is always in a bad mood."
It's not because of you, Nath thought. His throat was tight and he couldn't make any sound. The door frame swayed blurry in front of his eyes, like a phantom reflected by the steaming heat waves. He pinched his palms with his nails until the corridor became clear again.
"Why are you in a bad mood?"
"Nothing goes well for her." Jack whispered, almost sighing, "Her grades, her parents, her brother is going to college, there are many worries." He sighed heavily, his tone He became cold again, "How do I know what the specific matter is?"
Nath took a few steps back and climbed down the steps. He didn't need to hear any more. He returned home, not wanting to see anyone, and hid in his room upstairs, mulling over what he had heard.
He didn't have to meet anyone anyway. While Nath fretted under the elm tree, his family had their own concerns. On the way back to the car, Marilyn didn't look at James. Instead, she concentrated on staring at her knuckles, tearing off the skin at the base of her nails, and fiddling with the straps of her satchel. Once inside, Marilyn said she was going to lie down while Hannah walked into her room without saying a word. At first, James wanted to find Marilyn in the bedroom. He wanted to be buried in her body, feel her weight and body temperature, isolate him from everything, want to be close to her, and feel her close to him. Yourselves, comfort each other with your body. But he kept feeling something scratching at his heart, making him uneasy. Finally, he picked up the keys he had just left on the kitchen table. He had to go to the office to solve something. It was very urgent and could not be delayed.
When the police asked him if he wanted the autopsy report, he gave them his office address. It was only when a heavy manila envelope showed up in his mailbox yesterday that he realized he had made a mistake. He didn't want to see it at all, and at the same time, couldn't throw it away. He had no choice but to stuff the envelope into the bottom drawer of his desk and lock it. If I change my mind, I can come and get it, he thought. He didn't expect to change his mind.
It's lunch time, and there's almost no one in the office except Myrna, the department secretary, who is changing ribbons on her typewriter at her desk. The doors of other offices were closed, and the frosted glass windows were dim. James opened the drawer, took a deep breath, and tore open the envelope.
He had never seen an autopsy report before and thought it was some tables and diagrams. But when he opened it, he found that it was similar to a teacher's progress report. The anatomy subject was a well-developed and well-nourished Oriental female. Said something he already knew: she was sixteen, sixty-five inches tall; had black hair and blue eyes. There were other things he didn't know: the size of her head, the length of her limbs, the small crescent-shaped scar on her left knee. There was no poison in the blood and there were no signs of abuse or sexual trauma, but it was not determined whether the death was suicide, murder or an accident. The cause of death was "asphyxiation by drowning."
Then, the text of the report begins with this sentence: A Y-shaped incision is used to open the chest cavity.
He learned the color and size of his daughter's organs, the weight of her brain, the white foam that poured out of her windpipe and covered her nostrils and mouth like a lace handkerchief. There was a thin layer of silt as fine as sugar accumulated in her alveoli. Her lungs were dark red and grayish-yellow due to lack of air; her fingers were soaked like dough when they took her fingerprints; water flowed from her skin when they took a scalpel to slice. Her stomach contained weeds from the lake bottom, sand and 6 ounces of lake water that she had swallowed as she sank. The right side of her heart was enlarged, possibly from being overwhelmed. Because she was floating head down in the water, the skin on her head, neck and shoulders was all red. Due to the low temperature of the water, the body has not yet decomposed, and the skin on the fingertips has just begun to peel off, like taking off gloves.
The air conditioner in the office started with a click, and a cool air rose from the floor. He trembled all over, as if giving a long chill. He raised his toes to close the vent, his hands still shaking. He had no choice but to make fists with both hands and grit his teeth to stop them from chattering. The autopsy report on his lap swayed like a living thing.
He couldn't imagine how Marilyn would react to this report describing the body they once loved. He didn't want her to know at all. It's best left to the police to figure it out: Drowning. No detail was enough to fill the gap in her heart. The air conditioner was turned off, silence expanded in the room, and the entire history department fell silent. Every word he read came crashing down on him, knocking him down in his chair. Too heavy. He couldn't even lift his head.
"Professor Li?"
Louisa stood in the doorway, still wearing the same black dress she had worn at the funeral that morning.
"Oh," she said, "I'm sorry, I didn't know you were coming..."
"It doesn't matter," he said hoarsely.
Louisa came in quietly, leaving the door ajar. "Are you okay?" She saw his red eyes, drooped shoulders, and the manila envelope on her knees, then walked over and gently took the report away from him, "You're not You should come here." She finished and put the report on the table.
James shook his head and reached out a hand for the report.
Louisa looked down at the papers, uncertain.
"Read it," James said—or he tried to. He made no sound, but he thought Louisa could hear it. She nodded, leaned against the table, and leaned over to look at the papers. While reading, her expression did not change, but she became more and more silent. At the end of reading, she raised her head and held James' hand.
"You shouldn't be here," Louisa repeated. This is not a problem. Her other hand was on the small of his back, and he felt her warmth through his shirt. Then she said, "Why don't you come to my apartment and I'll make you some lunch." He nodded.
Her apartment was on the third floor, just six blocks from the school. Walking to the door of the apartment with house number 3A, Luisa hesitated for a moment, then unlocked the door and let the two of them in. She led him directly to the bedroom.
Everything about her seemed different, including the curves of her limbs and the texture of her skin. When their lips and tongues met, he found that her smell had become stronger, like citrus. She knelt over him and unbuttoned his shirt, her face hidden by his hair. James closed his eyes and let out a shuddering sigh. Later, he fell asleep with Louisa still lying on top of him. Lydia had found it—"found" was the only word he dared to use—and could finally rest for a while. In the recent dreams, he was the only one who remembered what happened to Lydia; he was the only one who was sober and understood, and he persuaded Marilyn and Nath, as well as the strangers, over and over again, telling them that his daughter was dead. . "I saw her body. One of her blue eyes was missing." He was wet with sweat and stuck with Louisa, falling into a deep sleep for the first time in days, a dreamless sleep, his mind filled with Happy blank space.
In his bedroom, Marilyn also tried to empty her mind, but failed. She tossed and turned for hours, counting the flowers on the pillowcase—not the big red poppies in the middle, but the blue forget-me-nots on the sides, like backup dancers behind the female singer. She always forgot where to count, so she had to go from eighty-nine back to eighty, and the flowers at the seams had not yet been counted. When she counted to two hundred, she realized that it was impossible to fall asleep. She couldn't keep her eyes closed, even blinking made her uneasy. When she wanted to lie still, her head turned into a spinning top. There was no movement from Hannah upstairs, and there was no sign of Nas downstairs. Finally, while James fell asleep across town, Marilyn got up and went to the place where she had been thinking so much: Lydia's room.
There was still the smell of Lydia there: the pollen of her perfume, the crisp scent of shampoo on the pillow, a hint of cigarette smoke. Once, Marilyn smelled a suspicious cigarette smell. Lydia explained: "Karen smoked, and the smell of cigarette smoke came to my clothes and books." Marilyn sniffed hard, and through several layers of clothes, she Smell the sweat on Lydia's skin. Now she could stay in this room for hours, collecting the smell of her daughter and drinking it like a fine wine.
Deep pain surrounded her, as if there were bruises on her bones. It felt good, though, because everything in this room reminded her of Lydia. A print of Leonardo da Vinci's "Vitruvian Man" and a poster of Marie Curie holding a test tube, which Marilyn bought for Lydia when she was a child, still hang proudly on the wall. Lydia wanted to be a doctor since she was a child, just like her mother. Last summer, she even audited a biology class in college so she could skip a grade and take physics. Hanging on the noteboard is the blue ribbon she got from participating in the science exhibition, a periodic table of elements with pictures and texts, and a real stethoscope—a birthday gift that Marilyn ordered specially for Lydia's thirteenth birthday. The bookshelf is filled with books, some of which are crowded sideways on top of the arranged books. "A Brief History of Medicine," which Lydia read backwards, and "Rosalind Franklin and DNA." Over the years, Marilyn has bought books for her daughter to inspire her and let her know what she can achieve, and her daughter has proven her talent and ambition in every aspect. Things in this room have a layer of dust on them. Every time she came in with the vacuum cleaner to clean, Lydia would kick her out. "I'm busy, Mom," she said, tapping the tip of her pen on the textbook. Marilyn would nod, kiss her daughter's forehead, and go out to close the door. Now, no one is chasing her. She looked at one of Lydia's boots lying on the ground, and recalled the scene when her daughter kicked it off her foot casually, leaving it crooked on the ground.
She believed that somewhere in this room, there were answers to all her questions. At the bottom of the bookshelf, she saw a row of diaries arranged in chronological order. For Christmas when Lydia was five years old, Marilyn gave her her first diary. The cover was decorated with flowers, gold-plated, and hung with a small key that was lighter than a paper clip. Her daughter opened the book and flipped through the pages, then touched the small keyhole, as if she didn't understand the use of the book. "It's for writing down your secrets." Marilyn said with a smile. Lydia also gave her mother a smile and said, "But, Mom, I don't have any secrets."
Marilyn laughed then. After all, what secrets would a daughter have in front of her mother? However, every year she gives Lydia a diary. She thought of the contact list whose names had been crossed out by her. The girls on it said that they were not familiar with Lydia. She thought of the boys in school and the strangers who might suddenly appear from the darkness and abduct the girls. She stretched out a finger and pulled out the last diary. The cover said "1977". It will tell me the truth, she thought. Tell her everything Lydia could never possibly tell again, every person she'd ever met, why she'd lied to them, and why she'd sunk into the lake.
The key to the diary was missing, but Marilyn inserted the tip of her ballpoint pen into the lock and pried open the weak lock. The first page, April 10, is blank. She turned to the page of May 2nd, which was the night Lydia disappeared. It was blank. May 1st, blank. I didn’t remember anything in April, nor in March. Every page is blank. She opened three diaries from 1976, 1975, and 1974, but they were all empty. She took out the diary on top of her head, the one from 1966, and found that there was not a single word in it. Nothing was left, no explanation she wanted.
Across town, James woke up dazed. It was almost evening, and Luisa's apartment was dark. "I have to go," he said, vaguely remembering what he had done. Louisa watched him dress while wrapped in sheets. Under her gaze, he became clumsy and buttoned the wrong shirt buttons twice. When he finally buttoned them correctly, he still felt awkward. His shirt hung strangely on his body, with a ball of fabric under his arm and a bulge on his stomach. This look made him a little embarrassed to say goodbye.
"Goodnight," he finally said, then picked up his bag. Luisa replied simply, "Good night," as if they were saying goodbye at the end of get off work, as if nothing had happened. It wasn't until his stomach growled in the car that he realized he hadn't had lunch at Luisa's apartment. He hadn't gone there for the purpose of eating.
James turned on his headlights and started the car, marveling at how much could happen in one day. His son was hiding in the shadows, staring through his bedroom window at Jack's house. The porch light had just come on and the police car parked there had long since left. In the attic, Hannah huddled on her bed, sifting through the details of the day—her father's grip on the steering wheel so tight that his knuckles turned white; Make a low sound. Her brother crept furtively to Jack's door—she saw it through the west bedroom window—and plodded home, dejectedly. There was a suspicious opening from her mother's bedroom, and then the door to Lydia's room seemed to be pushed open. She stayed there for hours. Hannah held her head tightly, imagining herself comforting her mother and her mother hugging and comforting her.
Marilyn didn't know that her little daughter was listening eagerly to what was going on in the house. She rubbed her eyes and put the diary back on the shelf, swearing to herself that she would find out what happened to Lydia and who was responsible. , she will find out what went wrong.