HOW TO BURY A SHADOW

I walk through the untamed garden, or what is left of it.
It has become a tangled thicket.
Wild flowers—yellow, white, blue—have taken over of what had been a well-tended rose garden, which seems have been uprooted, in an attempt to destroy any evidence that this ever existed.
The stone path to the main door is overgrown with weeds.
As I reach the porch, I remove the key from my bag. It holds the weight of the years and the heaviness I carry within me...
It has been twenty-five years since I left this house, where I lived part of my childhood.
I had happy moments here, despite everything.
I was nine. Mum gone forever.
I was sent to boarding school.
This house was left behind. Father went to live in another place with his new wife—my father’s secretary. Octavia.
This house was too small for her, not enough to accommodate her enormous ego.
Bizarre, for someone who wouldn’t have children.
She claimed it was too old for her liking. She wanted a modern house with a swimming pool.
On my holidays, I remember her on a sun lounger, a glass in her hand—the water glittering and smelling of chlorine, reflected in her sunglasses.
My father must have truly loved her, to give in to her whims. To think what hole she must have crawled out of, to pose as a queen. Ridiculous.
Perhaps he agreed with her in leaving this house because here lived the ghosts of his memories with my mum.
During holidays, I would visit him. Them.
I disliked their new place—its dubious, garish decoration. Never enthusiastic about coming, but having to, out of obligation. I couldn’t stay at the school. I would be summoned by the headmistress: ‘You have family.’
Family...
A father who was distant, apathetic, devoid of morals.
A woman who served as my stepmother—wicked, sarcastic, futile.
Her fox eyes, beautiful but deceitful, that looked at me as if I were prey.
It took me a while to realise this. To understand that the comparisons she made between me and Mum were derogatory.
How I hated everything. Her cynical ‘kind’ treatment. Her hypocrisy and my father’s.
When I was younger, I had no precise notion who my father was, adulthood made me see him through a different lens.
Reminiscences of him—the condescending way he would treat people, and what seemed silly yet filled with sexual intentions, I couldn’t comprehend back there—pats and pinches on the buttocks of maids. He chose them, always the youngest ones. I remember the interviews at closed doors.
What Mum had endured.
Probably one of the many reasons they fought constantly.
He never had any respect for her…
Furthermore, the gossip I heard about him—extortion, illicit money-making. Who knows what he was up to, although he was never caught. He had powerful friends to protect him. All involved in the same scheme, probably.
Now, after all these years of not being in touch, his lawyer found me..
I assume a detective was involved.
The typed, law firm-stamped letter has found my address.
I read it over and over, trying to understand the reason my father has left this house for me.
He had been so clear. ‘I have no more daughter if you pass this threshold,’ and I went away.
My hands tremble as I turn the key in the lock.
A shiver runs through my body, but I’m not sure if it’s from a sudden chill in the air or the terror of encountering the past, since no one is waiting for me here...
Unless there is a ghost, which even then, doesn’t expect my visit.
I push the door slowly. I’m hesitant, as if it is the door to an unknown or haunted place.
But it’s early for that. It’s mid-afternoon, the sun is shining in a clear sky.
In the mirror on the console near the entrance, I am startled by my own reflection; it resembles my mum’s.
I see a woman in her thirties, but at the same time I can see the little girl who would arrive after playing outside, making a fuss in her childish innocence, believing that life was made for having fun and the future is just another day when she could play again.
I no longer have the curly hair of my childhood, but a short, light-brown adult version. Yet, my hazel eyes still possess the vivacity of my youth...
A deep uneasiness settles over me as I walk down the corridor, looking carefully as though danger awaits, despite the fact that the bedroom doors are thrown wide open, exposing the furniture within.
I have the sensation that I am in a museum. It smells musty.
Everything seems as ancient as the house.
Dust covering the surfaces. Broken glass in some windows.
I don’t remember exactly, but I think he rented this house after Mum died.
I never came back here again.
If anyone lived here afterwards, it hasn’t been inhabited for some time now.
It’s neglected, abandoned. As if it had been plundered.
I wouldn’t put it past that Octavia would do that, knowing that I inherited the property.
The quietness of the house does not calm me but rather sharpens my senses; the old feelings are impregnated in the walls, and I can perceive them with every step I take, assaulting my spirit.
A whirlwind of mementos invades my mind, generating a noisy silence that is broken by the beating of my heart, competing with the soft hammering of the soles of my shoes on the worn wooden floor.
The wax, meant to make it shine, is little more than faded make-up, incapable of disguising the scratches, indentations, stains, and impressions that life has accumulated...
The house looks like it has been ransacked. Apart from the remaining old furniture, the works of art and objects of value have disappeared.
At the end of the corridor, where it splits in two, the voices of the past gather round the table in the middle.
I can hear the buzz of dinner guests’ conversations.
The rare times I could hear Mum laugh out loud.
Most of the time, it was my father’s shouts and Mum’s moans and cries.
Me, listening to it all, hiding in my room, or sitting annoyed and sleepless on the top stair.
A noise makes me jump. I listen for tense seconds and realise it’s just the chime of the old clock left behind. I’m surprise it is still working.
It seems, in this moment, to reaffirm that something is kept alive in this house, although not breathing.
The bells sound sombre, a reminder of time passing indifferent to everything, ageing all around it without ageing itself...
My impulse is to leave, but not before I accomplish what I came here to do.
The instructions in the solicitor’s letter guide me.
I enter the office and come to stop before a large canvas.
The letter with the code mentioned the safe would be behind a painting on the wall, but I wasn’t expecting this painting.
A painted portrait of my father that I never seen before.
It looks like it was put here recently.
What immediately comes to mind about this painting—my father’s extreme vanity and Octavia’s utter disregard.
Was father faithful to her? Very likely not.
Perhaps the reason she decided to dump it here—I’m pretty sure it was her— to have nothing that reminded her of him. Only his money, of course.
How stupid you were, father.
Also, to provoke me...
I hope I never come across with her in the future.
In the painting, he exudes a quiet power, commanding attention with ease.
His strong jawline, straight nose, and expressive eyebrows over his deep-set amber eyes seem to shimmer and give the disquieting sense that they are staring me down.
He is dressed with elegance, his sober suit in crisp contrast with the white shirt beneath, accentuating his broad shoulders against a soft, neutral background.
The artist’s skilled hand has captured the essence of my father’s middle age.
Handsome, imposing, and charismatic evil...
He looks frighteningly alive...
I remove the painting and turn the dial on the safe, following the combination. To my surprise, I guess I was expecting to find more, like someone opening a treasure to find money, jewellery, gold...
Silly of me, of course my ‘dear father ‘never would leave something like that for me.
Anything that belonged to my mum, is gone with her. What I found is just a small yellow envelope that looked as old as the furniture and the house.
A handwritten letter with an address on paper so thin that it is almost transparent...

Alyssa,
If you are reading this, you have followed the instructions from the solicitor.
Since you had the petulance to disobey me, I was profoundly upset.
How I said, I preferred to think I had no daughter. That you never existed...
Perhaps you cannot imagine the shame I endured, the scornful whispers behind my back that I had to put up with simply because of your indolent whim.
Although some told me that it was not my fault and that I should forget your impudence, I doubt it ever occurred to your brainless head what I had to deal with.
The shame of inventing a plausible explanation for your would-be husband, Damon’s family was one of the worst things I had to face in my life.
Everyone else was just as furious as I was. All the money I spent on your boarding school, to mould you into a gifted woman, proficient in her duties, an obedient and faithful companion, educated and refined for society, and you threw it away.
I raised you to be a lady, and you chose to run away in the middle of the night with a cheap baker’s son, acting like a low-class woman.
How humiliating for me!
But time has made people forget that vexatious episode.
Damon married a nice woman, the daughter of one of my associates, whom I introduced to him. Thus, I was able to reconcile with his family.
However, life takes turns we do not foresee. A few years ago, I fell ill. The doctors blamed my smoking habit, but I prefer to believe it was simply age.
Whatever the cause, feeling debilitated, I decided to find out about your whereabouts. The man I hired found you quickly.
I could have sold this house, the place you were born, but for reasons I cannot even explain to myself, I did not.
I used to come here sometimes, in my last years, and sit for hours alone.
Just me and my thoughts. Perhaps that is why it remained shuttered, deteriorating over time, as my own life drew to its end.
I shouldn’t be writing this, since I don’t think I owe you anything. You do owe me, and I imagine you hate me. As you wish.
I will not apologise for anything. Everything I did was for your own good, even if you are too blind to see it.
The only one who owes an apology is you, for your ingratitude.
Anyway I don’t need to explain anything else, I just decided to leave this house to you.
But the main reason of this letter is not the property. It is to inform you that Jane, your mum, whom you believed dead, is alive, or perhaps she still is, as you read this.
I had to send her to a distant clinic, what they call a rest home.
I have paid the monthly fee to keep her there all this time, and after my death, for as long as she lives, my lawyer is instructed to continue the payments.
Do not mistake this for sympathy, yet do not think me a monster, either.
I was fond of Jane when I met her, otherwise, I wouldn’t have married her.
But she changed after the wedding, and especially after you were born, which irritated me and made me see her in a different light.
I came to suspect that she had eyes for another men, a transgression I could never forgive...
She began having nervous breakdowns when you were three or four; perhaps you recall...
They became more frequent, unbearable for me, and I saw that it would be harmful to you.
I no longer believed she had the mental capacity to raise a child or be my wife. So, I decided to commit her to a clinic, under sedation.
I thought it was for the best; the clinic for her, boarding school for you.
I lied all these years because it would be a terrible burden for you to have a mad parent. To me, she was already dead.
I wanted you to be aware. Do with this information what you want.
I won’t be here to hear any complaints from you, anymore.
Now you know: in the graveyard, there is no body of Jane, but someone else’s...

P.S.: No one knows this story except Octavia and now you.
The address of the clinic is on the card attached.
Barnaby Pheneut

I read again the lines, unable to believe what I had just read.
You’re worse than I imagined, ‘father’.
I cry out to the picture, and for a split second, I think I see his face form a wry smile, as if mocking me. My whole body shakes with exasperation.
How could he destroy my mum’s life?
What a kind of man separates two people using such a sordid plot?
You really are a monster, even if you don’t consider yourself one. I dare to look at the picture once more. Nothing has changed; he remains unaffected.
In the quietness, I suppose I hear a guffaw.
He planned all of this, so that I would come here.
This s not a redemption or a final act of kindness, it’s a trap. A punishment.
Designed to make me feel exactly as I do now: shocked, devastated, as if the ground had been pulled out from under me.
The house itself fells oppressive. I cannot stand another minute here.
I need to breathe...
I run outside. The warmth of the afternoon sun on my face breaks the spell.
Get a grip, Alyssa! Put yourself together!
On the street, I let my eyes wander in an attempt to calm down my troubled mind.
It works, as I start to pay attention to things long forgotten yet familiar.
The uneven stones that pave the street, the trees whose roots have deformed the footpath, no one has fixed, after all those years.
The stillness of the neighbourhood, as if there were no residents in the other houses. There is no traffic. Everything looks unchangeable, suspended in time.
It’s just me, leaning against my car, lost in my recollections.
I glance back towards the house. It is heartbreaking to see what once full of life, now wasting away, the structure disappearing into the undergrowth like a grave that no one cares for. This image overlaps with the one in my mind: my mum tending to the flowers beds, abstracted in her own world...
Are you still alive, Mum? I hope so...
How are you now? Did you miss me as much as I missed you?
I believe you did, if your mind hasn’t been erased by it all.
What am I going to do with this house?
I can never live here. All the good memories have been destroyed...
I realise the letter is crumpled in my hand, though I don’t recall doing that.
I check the clinic’s address. The city is about three or four hours from here.
I’m already exhausted from the drive here, which took nearly the same amount of time.
I get into the car, leave the letter open on the passenger seat on top of my bag.
My hands are shaking badly. I take a while to start the engine.
The clock on the dashboard reads 4:17 p.m.
What’s next? Go home, tell Cedric the news? It’s the sensible thing to do, but I’m too anxious. I need to find out Mum as soon as possible.
Without another thought, I start the car, stopping minutes later at the first telephone cabin I find, at a gas station, to call my husband’s bakery.
The call to Cedric is brief and fractured. The words ‘clinic’, ‘alive’, and ‘four hours’, cut through his stunned silence.
I can picture his face, the worry etching his features, but his protest is a distant sound.
‘I have to do this.’ I whisper, the finality in my voice quenching any further argument. His resigned sigh travels down the line.
‘Just be safe. Keep in touch,’ says the man I never regretted running away with.
I hang up. I fill the tank.
Now, there is only the road ahead.
The four-hour drive is a blur of tarmac and encroaching nightfall.
I find a simple hotel on the city’s outskirts.
Sleep is intermittent, charged with my mum’s face merging with the decaying house and my father’s mocking smile.
At first light, I’m already awake. I call the clinic from the room to earn about visiting hours. The answer on the other end is polite and efficient.
It’s early afternoon when I arrive...
The name sounds poetic: Sunset Manor. The place is beautiful. It is a well-kept old building, surrounded by greenery, yet it is only a façade that conceals facets of human debility. Material, mental, and psychological decadence.
At the reception, a woman with a neutral expression grows visibly unsettled when I state my name and my relation to Jane.
She consults a file, her brow furrowing.
According to the paperwork, my existence is an impossibility. My mum was entered into the system as having no relatives.
She doesn’t carry my father’s surname, but her maiden name.
The woman scrutinises me, her eyes flicking from my face to the file and back again. I cannot tell the truth, the story is too absurd. She would never believe it.
So, a half-truth...
‘I’m her daughter, Alyssa. We were estranged for many years and only recently I learned she was here.’
She hesitates, her finger resting on a line in the file.
Seeing her uncertainty, I press on. ‘I’m here to discuss her care. There have been some changes in the family situation.’
My resolve proves to be the final key.
I hadn’t endured all that trouble for nothing...
With a curt nod, she picks up the phone and summons someone.
A moment later, a nurse appears and leads me through a courtyard.
It’s sort of like winter garden, a glass-enclosed space where the air is warm and thick with the scent of damp earth and blossoms.
Here, elderly bodies sit motionless in chairs or are supported by walking frames, stationed among plants and flowers as if they are merely part of the scenery, bathing in the faint sun.
I am being probed by eyes. Many are lost in the expanse of time or in some inner void; they look at me but see straight through me.
Others watch with a sharper focus, perhaps clinging to the sad illusion of recognising a familiar someone, a person who left them here and has now returned, weighed down by regret.
Among withered and contorted and ajar mouths, a few offer me a smile of sweet melancholy. Others babble disconnected words.
They are like old children, making their way back to their earliest childhood, chatting with imaginary friends only they can see.
The nurse points to a white-haired woman sitting alone in a corner.
I approach quietly. An unopened book rests on her lap.
At first glance, she is unrecognisable. I settle in the chair beside her side and slowly scan her face, tracing the landscape of years she lived without me.
In her sixties, she carries the weariness of a much older woman.
The grey hair falling to her shoulders is a pale shadow of the rich chestnut I remember.
Here we are. Two victims of a wicked plot, articulated by an evil and loveless man who deliberately shattered our lives and sent us down in separate paths...
We lost each other...
She seems oblivious to my presence, her head bowed.
Her hands are clasped in contemplation, as if in prayer or tracing the patterns of a faded memory.
Her frame is so fragile, so delicate.
This woman beside me is the image which time has stolen all colour and radiance. It has erased her classic beauty, leaving behind only the fingerprints of its relentless assault.
Her skin is like flower pressed in a book, dry, brittle, its vitality long gone.
Finally, she notices me. Her eyes, the colour of umber earth, settle on me.
They are wistful and don’t recognise me.
I couldn’t have expected anything else. The woman in her thirties that I am now is someone she has never met...
In the world Jane lives, I do not exist. If, through lapses of her memory, she recalls anything, it will be the little girl with light brown hair, braided by her own hands in those moments when we played at being mum and daughter.
‘Are you the new nurse?’ she asks.
A pang strikes straight through my heart. I wonder if dementia wasn’t her mind’s final refuge, a way to forget all the pain she had borne.
Her suffering has lasted all these years, perhaps, flaring up in her lucid moments when the past breaks through...
Mine, on the other hand, is just beginning, now that I know the truth...
A lump forms in my throat, and the words come out scratchy.
‘Yes, I’m the new nurse. I’ll look after you.’
She smiles, and for a second, I have the impression she knows who I am, but her attention flutters away, turning to the book. She opens it.
My gaze falls on her long fingers, withered and exposing tendons, the skin as thin as paper.
She turns the pages as if searching for something she has dismissed, despite the marker placed in one of them, and then close it again.
I see that it is a romance novel. The cover shows a couple with their faces close together. Our Love Tomorrow, is the title.
I wonder if Mum always liked this kind of reading or if it just happened to fall into her hands.
She holds the book, talking about it.
‘It such an interesting story. A woman is drugged by her husband, who commits her to a clinic as if she were crazy, and there, the doctor who treats her ends up falling in love with her. They have an affair. Isn’t that beautiful? I would have liked to have had an affair.’
She sighs like a teenager in love and continues. ‘I don’t know why, but there’s something familiar about this story...’
My eyes meet hers. They are empty; there is nothing written in them...
‘Have you experienced love, nurse? You must have, young and beautiful as you are.’
The question hit me with the force of a physical blow. I clench my hand into a fist, so tight, my nails bite into my palm. I look away, my gaze fixing on a crack in the patio paver, fighting to steady my breath.
‘Yes,’ I manage, the word scraping out. ‘I have...’
‘Are you married?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Do you have kids?’
‘No...’ A hollow ache blooms in my chest.
The children I lost to miscarriages. The children I may never have.
‘What’s your name?’
‘I’m Alyssa.’
‘Alyssa?’ She repeats the name over, a spark of curiosity in her voice. ‘Oh, that’s nice. I think I knew someone with that name... but I can’t remember who...’
My eyes burn...
Yes, you know... It’s me, Mum...
She glances at me, perhaps sensing my distress.
A silence settles between us, broken only by the shuffle of walkers and the occasional, unfocused phrases of other patients.
Then, she gestures towards the garden. ‘I like flowers, planting them, caring for them. What a shame I can’t do this anymore.’
For a moment, hope flicks within me.
She remembers. She remembers her garden, and she’ll remember me...
But it lasts only a second before she adds.
‘It’s strange... I know I once had my own garden, but I don’t know where or when...’
I just nod, the flicker of hope extinguished, leaving only disappointment.
What should I tell her?
It’s true, you had your garden. I used to follow you, trying to help. Though I wasn’t much help. You would scold me when I picked the roses you loved, my small hands scattering their petals onto the soil.
You hated to see them wasted. You wanted to save each flower to make beautiful arrangements for the dinner table.
‘Do you like flowers?’ she asks.
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Which ones?’
‘Roses...’
‘Oh, me too,’ she says, and her face softens.
I have the urge to hug her as her gaze remains on me. Deep inside, a voice screams, ‘I’m here, Mum. No one will separate us again...’
It hurts.... All those years I was told she was dead, only to find her alive.
To her, I am just a stranger.
We are so close and yet so distant.
Between us, only the echoes of a past she no longer recognises and I possess only splinters.
A story that was torn from us, like pages ripped from a book and lost, leaving the narrative fractured and the characters adrift in time.
I have to talk to Cedric. I need to make some arrangements. How will we live the rest of our lives?
Nothing can be done to repair the damage...
Dementia is a thief that steals her memories one by one, like precious jewels dropped into the sea of forgetfulness, lost forever.
She tries to get up. I offer my arm, but she refuses.
Carefully, she raises, leaving the book on the chair.
‘Nurse. Sorry, I forgot your name.’
‘Alyssa,’ I reply, standing beside her.
With a gentle grin, she says, ‘Alyssa... a beautiful name. If I had had a daughter, I would have named her Alyssa.’
Unaware of the pain on my face, she invites me to walk with her through the garden, offering her hand.
Her grip is feeble. Her touch is soft.
How I have missed this. The feel of her hand stroking my face, wiping my tears, combing my hair...
The contact of her skin on mine. Her fragrance...
Hand in hand, we walk around.
There is no more damp, soft soil beneath our feet.
The path is paved, dry, and rough...
There is still love, but the joy is gone...
There is no more laughter...
Yet, we are together. We can play our roles once more.
This time, the mum is the child, and the child is the mum.
The future awaits us...