The night after the Volkovs’ wedding, I flew Stella and
me to my hometown.
I hadn’t stepped foot in Santa Luisa, California since my parents died. It’d been two decades, yet the tiny seaside town along the northern coast remained the same.
Quiet streets, a quaint downtown, colorful stucco buildings.
Returning here was like stepping back in time. I had changed, but everything else remained the same.
Stella was quiet as we stopped in front of a warehouse in the town’s desolate industrial quarter. Our car was the only one on the street, and many of the warehouses’ metal doors had rusted with disuse, including the one before us.
I hadn’t told Stella the purpose of our visit, but she knew I grew up here and therefore, the visit must have something to do with my parents.
She was right.
I pressed a button, and the warehouse door clanked open with a groan. A cloud of stale must billowed out before it dissolved in the long-forgotten sunshine.
“Oh my God.” Stella’s stunned whisper echoed through the room when we walked inside and she saw what it contained.
Dozens of art pieces filled the small space, from priceless oil paintings to small modern sculptures. Many of the paintings had withered after twenty years of neglect, but a few resilient pieces remained intact.
“Welcome to my inheritance, my father’s stolen treasure trove,” I said, the words both hollow and self-deprecating. “My mother gave me the location in her note.”
It’d been coded—she knew how much I loved puzzles even as a kid—but I hadn’t tried cracking it until a few weeks ago. It’d taken me less than a minute.
“Have you visited before?” Stella asked softly. “No.”
I’d made virtual arrangements before we arrived, but it was my first time seeing it in person.
I thought the sight of my father’s legacy would make me angry. This was what he’d dedicated his time and energy to instead of his only son. This was what killed him and, by extension, my mother and our family.
I should’ve felt the same rage I’d felt when I first read my mother’s goodbye note.
Instead, I felt nothing except the overwhelming desire to burn it to the ground—not out of spite, but out of exhaustion.
I was tired of whispers from the ghosts of my past.
Stella brushed her fingers over a nearby sculpture. They came away with a thin film of dust.
“What are you going to do with it all?”
“If they’re not savable, destroy them. If they are, donate them or return them to their original owners.”
All done anonymously, of course.
“Except…” I stopped in front of a familiar painting. “This one.”
Its gold frame gleamed in the weak light, and brown and green splashed across it a hideous approximation of art.
“Magda,” Stella surmised. “I recognize it from Dante’s gallery.”
“Yes.”
I’d tucked my mother’s note back inside its frame, then finally had Dante send her back where she belonged.
I stared at the swirls of color until they blurred into a dark kaleidoscope.
In hindsight, she was so inconsequential. A complicated problem of my own design, fabricated to shield me from my past.
Everyone thought she was important because she contained some big business secret or shocking revelation when the truth was so much simpler.
She represented the part of my past I’d never been able to let go of. A wound I’d covered with temporary bandaids to hide the festering disease that’d been eating me alive from the inside out for decades.
We didn’t speak again until I took the painting out to an empty lot near the warehouses.
Other than the buildings, there was nothing around except for metal and concrete. A bird circled overhead, its squawk echoing in the wide-open space, and the hot sun beat down with unusual intensity.
It was the last time I would ever step foot in Santa Luisa. I might as well go out with a bang.
I retrieved a lighter from my pocket and flicked it open. “Afraid of fire, Butterfly?”
Stella shook her head and slid her hand into mine again. “No.”
“Good.”
I held the lighter to the painting. The oils were so combustible flames erupted almost immediately, swallowing the painting and the letter it contained whole.
I watched dispassionately as the fire twisted my mother’s legacy into a blackened, unrecognizable heap, but when Stella squeezed my hand, I gave it a small squeeze back.
I could’ve done this on my own, but I wanted her with me. If it hadn’t been for her, I’d still be holding onto that painting, hating it but unable to leave it at the same time.
But now that I finally had a future worth living for, it was time to let go of the past, once and for all.
