River’s End

her first and made her breath come fast and hard. Cedar, from the lining. Lavender. Her grandfather had a sweep of it planted on the side of the house. But under those, something else. Something both foreign and familiar. Though she couldn’t identify it, the waft of it had her heart beating fast, like a quick, impatient knocking in her chest.
    The tingling in her fingers became intense, making them shake as she reached inside. There were videos, labeled only with dates and stored in plain black dust covers. Three thick photo albums, boxes of varying sizes. She opened one very like the box her grandparents used to store their old-fashioned Christmas balls. There, resting in foam for protection, were half a dozen decorative bottles.
    “The magic bottles,” she whispered. It seemed the attic was suddenly filled with low and beautiful laughter, flickering images, exotic scents.
    On your sixteenth birthday, you can choose the one you like best. But you mustn ‘t play with them, Livvy. They might break. You could cut your hand or step on glass.
    Mama leaned over, her soft hair falling over the side of her face. Laughing, her eyes full of fun, she sprayed a small cloud of perfume on Olivia’s throat. The scent. Mama’s perfume. Scrambling up to her knees again, Olivia leaned into the chest, breathed long and deep. And smelled her mother.
    Setting the box aside, she reached in for the first photo album. It was heavy and awkward, so she laid it across her lap. There were no pictures of her mother in the house. Olivia remembered there had been, but they’d disappeared a long time before. The album was full of them, pictures of her mother when she’d been a young girl, pictures of her with Jamie, and with her parents. Smiling, laughing, making faces at the camera.
    Pictures in front of the house and in the house, at the campground and at the lake. Pictures with Grandpop when his hair had been more gold than silver, and with Grandma in a fancy dress.
    There was one of her mother holding a baby. “That’s me,” Olivia whispered. “
    Mama and me.” She turned the next page and the next, all but devouring each photo, until they abruptly stopped. She could see the marks on the page where they’d been removed.
    Impatient now, she set it aside and reached for the next.
    Not family photos this time but newspaper clippings, magazine articles. Her mother on the cover of People and Newsweek and Glamour. Olivia studied these first, looking deep, absorbing every feature. She had her mother’s eyes. She’d known that, remembered that, but to see it so clearly, to look with her own into them, the color, the shape, the slash of dark eyebrows.
    Excitement, grief, pleasure swirled through her in a tangled mass as she stroked a finger over each glossy image. She’d been so beautiful, so perfect. Then her heart leaped again as she paged through and found a series of pictures of her mother with a dark-haired man. He was handsome, like a poet, she thought as her adolescent heart sighed. There were pictures of them in a garden, and in a big room with dozens of glittering lights, on a sofa with her mother snuggled into his lap with their faces close and their smiles for each other.
    Sam Tanner. It said his name was Sam Tanner. Reading it, she began to shiver. Her stomach cramped, a dozen tight fists that twisted.
    Daddy. It was Daddy. How could she have forgotten? It was Daddy, holding hands with Mama, or with his arm around her shoulders.
    Holding scissors bright with blood.
    No, no, that couldn’t be. It was a dream, a nightmare. Imagination, that was all. She began to rock, pressing her hands to her mouth as the images began to creep in. Panic, burning fingers of it, had her by the throat, squeezing until her breath came in strangled gasps.
    Broken glass sparkling on the floor in the lights. Dying flowers. The warm breeze through the open door.
    It wasn’t real. She wouldn’t let it be real.
    Olivia pushed the book aside and lifted out the last with hands that trembled. There’d be other pictures, she told herself. More pictures of her parents smiling and laughing and holding each other.
    But it was newspapers again, with big headlines that seemed to scream at her.
    JULIE MACBRIDE MURDERED
    SAM TANNER ARRESTED
    FAIRY TALE ENDS IN TRAGEDY
    There were pictures of her father, looking dazed and unkempt. More of her aunt, her grandparents, her uncle. And of her, she saw with a jolt. Of her years before with her eyes wild and blank