Home of the Deceased.

As some of you know, I recently came back home to the Oregon Coast because of my mother's death.

Last Thursday I went to her funeral. The service itself was somber and... respectful. My mother had made very few friends in her life. Not that her family had ever mistook her for a friend.

The next day, we got a call from the elderly lawyer who was handling her estate. As I said, apparently I was named for something in her will, even though she had said I would get nothing. That afternoon we met with him in his small office.

"Thanks, gentlemen, for coming in today. I called you in to discuss the last will and testament of the deceased Rachel Smith. Henceforth referred to as 'the deceased.'" What followed was a listing and rather boring conversation about the things that my mother had owned. I sat awkwardly, feeling out of place wearing torn jeans and hoodie in the lawyer's clean, new office. Even worse, was the nagging thought that had my mother not hated me, I might have been the one having this discussion right now instead of my uncle.

"Finally, Mr. Gray." The lawyer said, continuing his drone.

"The deceased has specified that you are to have this." The lawyer pulled a plain, white envelope from his folder and placed it face-down on the table in front of me. "This concludes today's business." He read off of his notes, showing an expression of surprise that it had ended so abruptly, checking the back of the page, as though he had expected to go on quite a bit longer. Then he looked intently at the envelope and at me, then to my uncle. I could be wrong, but I thought he looked nervous at whatever was in the envelope.

Since I wasn't sure what was going to be inside, I stuffed it into my wallet without looking at it. If it was a message from my mother, I didn't need to be getting emotional here, in front of anyone and everyone.

I fell asleep in my uncle's truck on the way back and had a vivid dream. It's a dream I'd had before, when I was young. It starts out with a faceless marionette in one of those little curtained booths. The puppet looks like it's trying to talk to me, only I can't hear, like I'm deaf. It looks over it's shoulder and turns to me like it's pleading, but I can't help it. Then my mother's face lowers from behind the curtain on the top, with a huge smile.

I woke up as my uncle pulled into his driveway.

I waited to open the envelope until after midnight when my uncle went to bed. Inside were four faded pictures of a girl I'd never seen. She looked to be about four years old. The first two pictures were of her walking outside. The third was of the little girl on a stage of some sort. The last picture made my hair stand on end though, because it was the little girl being held by my smiling mother and father inside the first house I ever lived in.

I flipped back to the previous picture, and recognized the stage as being from the church that my father had taken me to as a child. In the background, you could just make out other children standing in a row, their parents behind them.

I focused on her face, her blond hair and blue eyes. She looked so much like my mother. Like me.

In my head, I heard the small voice that had whispered in my ear my first night back home.

"Unwanted."

In the corner of my eye, I saw something move in the shadows. I jumped off the couch and turned to face it. My uncle was standing there frozen.

"Adam." He said. I could tell in his eyes and tone of voice that he knew what I'd seen.

"Who is that?" I asked, the fear and hurt tightening the muscles in my throat.

"Adam, I'm so sorry. Adam, I want you to know... I thought they should have told you. I tried to tell your mom. She wouldn't listen to me though."

"Who is she?" I asked again, louder as I held out the pictures.

"Her name was Marissa. She's your sister."

"What?"

"She died before you were born. Your mother... She threatened everyone so that they wouldn't tell you. She tried to act like it never happened, that Marissa had never been alive."

Hot tears stung my face now. I'd known my mother had been crazy, but to have had a sister, and to have had the whole town cover it up. I looked at my uncle, ready to scream at him, but then I saw that he had tears in his eyes too. His expression was so guilty. So sad. You could tell that he thought he deserved whatever I could do.

I deflated, sitting back down on the couch and dropping the pictures onto the ground. He came and sat next to me, and wrapped his arms around me.

Today I drove to see her grave.

Marissa Gray
1984-1988

The grave site was almost two hours away from the the town we lived in, the graveyard where we'd buried my mother three days ago. It was inside one of the largest graveyards in the county. A simple granite plaque, just one among hundreds. It took me most of an hour to find hers.

I stayed for a while, just staring, wondering what my life would have been like had she not died - wondering whether I would have even been born. I put off getting back in my car. The truth was out now, and eventually I'd have to go back, knowing that everyone in my small hometown had been carrying a secret - keeping it from me. A thousand little uncomfortable silences and awkward stares started to make sense.

A dark cloud moved in front of the low sun and shot a chill down my spine. You know that feeling of being watched, even though you know no one is around?

With that, I figured it was time to leave, and briskly made my way to my car. As soon as I turned the key in the ignition, heavy rain started to pour down.

Oregon, I thought to myself.

On my way back West, the rain got worse as the sun dropped behind the hills ahead of me. One thing about this area, is that it's full of back-roads. One wrong turn and you could end up 40 miles in the wrong direction. Even though I'd driven this road dozens of times, before long everything started to look unfamiliar.

Wherever there weren't trees overhead, I had to slow down to a crawl just to see the road through all the rain. I came around a turn and out of nowhere, I saw something huge in the middle of the road. I slammed on my brakes and turned the wheel, and skidded off into the gravel shoulder. Behind me, in the middle of the road I could just make out a pair of traffic barriers.

I heaved a sigh of relief that I hadn't crashed and reversed out of the ditch. My headlights illuminated a wooden sign on the side of the road that just said, "Welcome to," which stuck me as being really unusual.

I stopped at a bed & breakfast not far up the road from there to ask for directions, but the owner kept smiling and seemed so happy to see me (and was so bad with directions) that I decided to stay the night here instead.

At least they have free Wi-Fi.

Tomorrow I'll go back and try to find out more about Marissa. I don't think this is done yet. How does a person convince a whole town to not tell them about their family? About the people they grew up with?

I tried calling my uncle, but he didn't answer. I think I'll try to get some sleep and head back in the morning.

EDIT: Left the B&B early... The whole place smells like no one's actually stayed there since the 90's. Also, I didn't really feel like eating breakfast with the overly excited caretaker and his I'm-going-to-steal-your-kidneys smile.

I ended up having to take the long way, since the closed road to the south actually leads to the highway. Weird thing is that when I was almost to Veneta, the road was closed on the East side too. Like all of Veneta's been closed off. GPS is jumping to random locations, so I'm going to have to try to find a way around on my own.

Before the sun came up, I kept thinking I was seeing kids on the side of the road, but as soon as I would look at them, they weren't there. I just stopped to write this update when I thought I saw a little girl behind me in my rear-view mirror. Creepy day today.