ThomasLitchford

ABOUT LITHIUM

On the day Mark Roth is supposed to graduate from the University of Washington, he learns that his mother, whom he’s never known, has been found dead, the victim of an apparent murder-suicide. What is more, his mother—the writer Marianne Caxton—has appointed him as literary executor of her estate. Mark moves to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where Marianne spent her final days as a University of Michigan writer-in-residence. In the course of investigating her affairs, Mark uncovers a story of manic depression, fraud, embezzlement, and literary pranksterism.

CHAPTER 1
PAGE 1

I woke up in my old bedroom at the top of Quentin’s house. Though the window was open just an inch or two the room was full of the iron smell of rain. Quentin had taken down the old posters of Sonic Youth and the Pixies, bands I had listened to in high school to distinguish myself, but it was still indelibly my room. I had moved out of my apartment in the U District the day before to spend the week at my father’s house in Queen Anne before Samantha and I left for Davis. I looked out the window and could see it had in fact rained over night. The streets were spotted with dark wet splotches and water droplets were visible on the cars parked in the street, but now the clouds were wispy and blown out and the sun was shining just over the horizon.

It was the Saturday morning of my commencement ceremony, which I was planning to skip.

I remember the morning unusually well, every detail up to the moment I received the news about Marianne. It was 6:04 a.m. when I awoke. I remember I stepped down the stairway that wound down to the second floor and I crept down the hallway over the creaking pine boards past Quentin’s bedroom where he snored, still. I looked in as I passed and saw him sprawled on his stomach across his California king bed; he was alone (thankfully). Quentin kept a picture of Marianne on his dresser. In the picture she’s wearing shorts and a tank top and her blond hair is pulled back in a pony tail. She’s somewhere in the Cascades from the look of the rocky terrain beneath her feet. She holds one calloused hand up to shield her eyes, and she smiles. I’ve spent hours, maybe days of my life staring at that photograph, memorizing every detail, every curve of her long oval face, the crow’s feet around her eyes as she squints against the sun, the wave of her uncared-for hair, the few unruly strands that catch the sunlight: just so. Just a glimpse of that picture—that omen—as I walked by, was enough to get my mind going.

I continued down the hall and down the stairs to the less claustrophobic first floor and out the front door. Outside I breathed in cool air and walked down the short driveway, and I tried unsuccessfully to not think about her. My hands shook with nervous energy as I started to run.