All of Us and Everything by Bridget Asher Page B

take Intro to Pysch?”
    “I did.”
    “Well, they didn’t have a perfect little picket-fence life. No one does.”
    “I guess not.”
    Ru unclipped her seat belt.
    “Do you want me to let you know how it goes?” Teddy handed her his business card. “You could call me or I could call you.”
    She shook her head, refusing to take it.
    “You don’t want to know? Wouldn’t it be nice to hear that it was a success? I could call you only if it’s good news, if you want.”
    “Success is overrated.”

After Herc Huckley’s son asked her about The Amateur Assassins Club, she’d told him that she wanted to know what was in the box. “Is it mine? Are you giving it to me or not?” Her tone had become chilly, a voice usually reserved for moments when she had to stick up for herself around pushy salesclerks or know-it-all hairdressers.
    He told her he’d made copies, but these were the originals. “All yours.”
    “I’d like to look at them in private. That’s fair enough, isn’t it?”
    “Of course,” Bill said. “No problem. But…” He reached out and touched the box in a way that declared he still had some ownership. “I’d really love to talk to you about it all, after you’re done. My mother doesn’t know anything about what’s in this box. She met my father years later and now my father’s gone, in a way,” he said, his voice cracking. He coughed and then went on. “This is all I have left of him.”
    She’d told him that maybe the contents of the box would jar loose some memories. He jotted his cell phone number on his business card—his work was related to green technology, whatever the hell that was—and gave it to her. She ushered him to the door. And within moments he was gone. Augusta and Ingmar were alone again in the cool, dark house.
    Augusta walked upstairs, leaving Ingmar—who was mistrustful of stairs—behind. He nose-whined his lonesomeness.
    Using a small step stool, Augusta shoved the box onto the top shelf of her bedroom closet, behind a stack of quilts. She shut the closet door so tightly she imagined she was sealing up the past. The contents of the box would surely jar loose some memories; the question was, could she bear it?
    The Amateur Assassins Club? Yes. Those words meant something to her. They shot through her like fissures across the surface of a frozen lake.
    Nick Flemming abandoned her. Herc Huckley and the other members of the Assassins Club were the unwitting witnesses.
    And then Flemming came back and her life, for a long while, wasn’t hers.
    She sat on the edge of her bed then lay down on it with her shoes still on, and she remembered snow swirling on the other side of the window on the fifth floor of the Commerce Building where she’d once worked, the life she’d lived before her daughters existed. The secretaries gathered by the window, pulling their cardigans in close. They didn’t like Augusta. Women didn’t, in general. Men did. She was odd and yet comfortable with being odd—or, perhaps, unaware—which men sometimes mistook for mysteriousness.
    It was the eve of John F. Kennedy’s inauguration and someone said, “How are dignitaries going to get to all of their parties?”
    “Who cares?” Augusta said. “How are
all of us
going to get home?” She’d left her combative parents in the house on Asbury Avenue as soon as possible—in fact, while still just eighteen and having only completed a short secretarial program. She was living in a small apartment in Arlington that she shared with an older woman who’d never married and who seemed to need no one. Augusta admired her.
    The snow had been drifting down since midday, but now it was really starting to accumulate. As it was, she only had a pair of galoshes that fit tightly over her high heels. They would be of little use. The snow was already ankle-deep where it hadn’t been shoveled from the sidewalks, and the galoshes were bound to become pockets for snow.
    “Do you think they’re going