The Name in the File

The page held a small black footprint, reproduced from the original in ink. Under it, Mom had written, in her graceful, curling handwriting, “Our perfect, beautiful boy. 8 lbs, 2 oz.” A hospital sticker showed at the upper-right edge of the scan. Its logo—a cross beside a dove—belonged to Mercy Hospital in Portland, not the County General near our house. The admission year was partly hidden, but I could still make out the final number: 3.

My stomach tightened. A slow, icy sickness seemed to climb through me, and I kept staring at that little sticker as if it might change if I looked long enough.

It wasn’t only my name she had taken from him. She had joined my life to his, laying my story over the space his had left behind. When Mom opened this book, she wasn’t seeing me as I was. She was seeing the boy who came before me, the baby whose history she had fitted around mine until the two seemed like one.

Then I heard Mom get up. The sound came from somewhere in the house, ordinary and familiar, but it made me move before I could talk myself out of it.

I slid the thick white book into my school backpack and pulled the zipper closed. With the bag over my shoulder, I went down the stairs without calling out. I took my jacket from the mudroom, rolled my bicycle out of the garage, and left.

Outside, the cold air carried the smell of damp ground and fallen oak leaves. I pedaled with all my strength, breathing out clouds that vanished behind me. I passed the entrance to our subdivision and the shopping strip where Mom bought groceries, then followed the long hill down toward Route 9.

Oak Creek Memorial Gardens was a little over three miles from our driveway. We passed its tall iron gates in the car almost every Sunday, headed for church or the hardware store. From the Honda’s back seat, I used to watch the green slopes and the large marble tombs beyond the wall. I had never understood that someone from my family was buried there.

I wheeled my bike through the pedestrian entrance. The cemetery opened around me, hushed except for the steady clatter of a sprinkler somewhere far off. I had studied the deed in the basement until I knew where to go: Plot 114, Section C, the infant section.

I leaned the bike against a broad oak and set off along the gravel track. As I went farther in, the tall monuments gave way to small, plain markers. A line of old cedars bordered Section C, their branches hanging low. Most of the graves there were bronze plates level with the grass.

I followed the rows, checking the numbers stamped at the corners. First came 98, then 104, then 110. My fingers curled against the strap of the backpack.

At 114, I stopped. The grave lay near the roots of a cedar, beneath its dim, drooping branches. There were no plastic flowers or little stone figures, as I had seen on some of the others. Weeds had crept across the bronze edges, and the whole place looked forgotten.

I knelt in the wet grass. The cold had made my fingers clumsy, but I pulled at the crabgrass roots, working them loose from the metal. I brushed aside needles and dried dirt until the letters appeared in the faint morning light.

LUCAS DANIEL HAYES.

AUGUST 12, 2013 — NOVEMBER 28, 2013.

Forever Our Light.

I laid my palm on the bronze. It felt colder than anything I had touched that morning.

A tear slipped down my face. I wasn’t crying only because I was angry, though anger burned inside me, close and hard. I was crying because of how alone this child had been. My brother had lived for one hundred and eight days. He had fought to breathe, and then he had died. Afterward, his own mother had hidden him so completely that she gave his name—and his baby book—to the child who came next.

“I had a feeling this was where you’d end up.”

I jerked back, lifting my hand from the marker. Arthur stood on the gravel path about ten feet away, wearing a heavy canvas coat and a flat cap of tweed. A small trowel rested in one hand; he carried a thermos in the other. He didn’t seem startled by my being there. Instead, he looked worn down, as if eleven years of grief had settled on his shoulders all at once.

I got to my feet and scrubbed my cheeks with my jacket sleeve. No words came. I pointed toward the bronze I had cleared.

Arthur crossed the grass at an unhurried pace and stopped beside me. He looked down at the name. His breath came out long and ragged, the sound of something solid giving way.

“I come here before your mother’s awake,” he said, his voice rough and low. “She believes I’m going to the diner for breakfast.”

I looked from the marker to Arthur. My voice seemed too thin to belong to me. “Does Mom ever come here?”