Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 117574 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 588(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 392(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117574 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 588(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 392(@300wpm)
The couple happily obliges, and the screen fills with the sounds of Clara’s happy giggling from behind the camera as she records her parents cheerily taking her baby girl for a dancing whirl around the small living room.
The scene ends. Suddenly, we’re in a church for Jeannie’s christening. The baby’s mother, Clara, is dressed up and standing next to her husband or partner, a short, squat man with glasses, while a pastor or priest says a blessing over the child.
The scene shifts again. We’re in a restaurant. Clara and her partner are in the same clothes as the christening, so this must be the celebration afterward. At one point, Lloyd behind the camera calls to that same older woman from before, “Mabel, honey, say hello to Jeannie!”
“Hi, Jeannie! We love you!”
Okay, that means we’ve now got confirmation that all three names on the various cassettes, other than Althea, were members of Lloyd Graham’s immediate family. Mabel, Clara, and Jeannie were Lloyd’s wife, daughter, and granddaughter, respectively. Not women recorded without their knowledge through a peephole or otherwise. What a relief.
When the cassette ends, I pop in another one, this one dated from thirty-six years ago and not marked with a name at all. Lloyd’s wife, Mabel, looking much younger than in the prior video, appears on-screen. She’s dancing around in a field of flowers with a little girl who’s clearly a younger version of Clara, the adult daughter from the video with Baby Jeannie.
A male voice from behind the camera, Lloyd’s voice, chuckles as he watches his wife and daughter dancing around in the flowers. Clara picks a bloom and slides it into her mother’s dark hair. “You, too, Daddy!” she calls out. “We all have to wear flowers in our hair today. It’s Flower Day.” Lloyd laughs, and the scene ends.
The next scene features Clara in some sort of school play. The one after that is Mabel showing Clara how to make something in the kitchen. I watch the rest of the cassette at double speed, confirming it’s filled with nothing but scenes from a happy family life.
I take the cassette out and replace it with one marked “Jeannie” from almost fifteen years ago. It’s Jeannie’s fifth birthday party, which I know because there’s a banner hanging in Lloyd and Mabel’s living room—my living room—that reads, “Happy 5th Birthday, Jeannie!” Once again, the condo I’m now sitting in is neat as a pin. A bright and happy place. I watch on double speed until Lloyd Graham appears on-screen, at which point I return to normal speed and watch him waltzing around his living room—my living room—with his wife, Mabel, in the midst of their granddaughter’s fifth birthday party.
Jesus Christ.
I can’t reconcile the mere existence of that peephole with all these lovely scenes. When did Lloyd drill that hole? Did his wife, Mabel, ever find out about it? Who lived in Auggie’s grandma’s condo when he first created it? When I purchased the condo, the auction company said the former owner had died without heirs. Did Lloyd’s family find out about his pervy extracurricular activities and ditch his creepy ass? Are they out there somewhere, unaware of his death—and if they found out about it, they’d come back and try to claim an ownership right in my condo?
I grab my computer and search “Lloyd Graham, Seattle,” along with the address of my condo, and a report on a people-finder website immediately pops up. The fee to purchase the information is cheap, so I pay it and download the report . . . and immediately stop breathing when I scan the document. At the bottom, the list of “known relations” of Lloyd Graham states the following:
Mabel Graham, wife, deceased.
Clara Graham Rodgers, daughter, deceased.
Gary Rodgers, son-in-law, deceased.
Jeannie Rodgers, granddaughter, deceased.
“No,” I whisper. I look down at Lucky in my lap through tears. “What happened to all of them?” I open a new tab on my computer and search for several minutes; and soon, I’ve got my answer: they all died together in a head-on collision. The accident happened while the family was headed to the airport—on their way to catch a weeklong Caribbean cruise in celebration of Lloyd Graham and Mabel’s golden anniversary.
Lloyd, who was sitting in the far back row of the minivan, was the sole survivor of the crash. His son-in-law, Gary, Clara’s husband, drove the van with his mother-in-law, Mabel, in the front passenger seat, and his wife and daughter in the middle row. Both Gary and Mabel died instantly. Clara and Jeannie died soon after arriving at the hospital. And at the time of the article, Lloyd was at the hospital in a medically induced coma in critical condition.
Tears flow down my cheeks as I try to imagine what poor Lloyd was told when he woke up from that coma and asked about his family members. He lived another fourteen years after that. Surely, he spent every minute of those years wishing he could rewind the clock to that fateful day and somehow keep his family safe. No wonder the happy, bright home he shared with Mabel devolved into utter chaos after the accident. Surely, the poor old man felt he had nothing to live for after waking up from that coma, and his physical surroundings reflected that fact.