The Good Daughter: A gripping, suspenseful, page-turning thriller

I love the car. All my toys are in the car.

Chapter 2

Dahlia

The ER waiting room is quiet but for the hypnotic tick of an old plastic clock hanging on the wall. A whiff of latex and disinfectant hangs in the air.

Bobby’s uniform is tidy, his blue button-down shirt and navy-colored slacks pressed immaculately. His hair is short, his face freshly shaven. A lifetime ago Bobby and I went to high school together, but he stuck around and I left Aurora days after graduation. We haven’t spoken since I’ve been back in town.

“I can’t believe this,” I say and struggle to line up the events. My clothes are wet; so is my hair.

Bobby smiles at me. “You’ve been back in town for what … a few months, and I see you’re still the same old troublemaker.”

For a split second I’m a teenager again, remembering how we’d roam through town, wandering around in abandoned buildings, acquiring cuts and bruises and sprained ankles along the way. “Seems that way, doesn’t it?” I finally say.

“I waved at you the other day, at the gas station. I was going to follow you and pull you over.”

I feel some sort of way about his words. That’s how we met a long time ago; his father pulled my mother over by the side of the road. Bobby sat in the backseat of his father’s cruiser, I was in the backseat of my mother’s car, and we stared at each other.

I ignored Bobby at the gas station because of the way I’d left fifteen years ago. That and the fact that my life is nothing to be proud of. I have been dreading having to make small talk with him, catch up, swap stories about our lives.

“How long has it been?” Bobby asks. “Just about fifteen years?” he says as if he’s kept track of time.

I do the math. I arrived in Aurora just shy of thirteen. I did one year in middle school, then went to high school. In high school, I saved every dollar I made; I bagged groceries, worked at the car wash, even put away my allowance. There wasn’t any money for college, and I didn’t have any motivation or big dreams short of getting out of town—but Bobby was going through something then. His mother had cancer, had been well for years, but then it returned. There seemed to be something else; he was preoccupied with things I knew nothing about, things he was reluctant to share. I left Aurora at eighteen. Fifteen years exactly.

The last time we spoke was the night I left.

“If you think about it, why not go to Colorado, or California? If we’re going to leave, might as well go far,” I had said but he had remained quiet. We had talked about leaving Aurora for years, leaving Texas altogether; we had imagined it many times.

“You want to hear what I think?” he finally asked.

I sensed sarcasm. He started talking about having a different perspective and maybe I should be thankful for what I have instead of griping about what I don’t. That night, he made his way through a six-pack in no time, and by the time he was on the last beer, he didn’t make a whole lot of sense. He went on and on about choices some people have that others don’t. Had we not talked about leaving Aurora since tenth grade, had we not imagined what life could be like somewhere else?—but suddenly there was no more I vent and you listen. He was judgmental and mean and not what I needed that night. We parted ways then; he was drunk and I was angry.

At home, I saw my mother hadn’t lifted a finger to fill out the paperwork I needed to apply for financial aid. I threw my clothes and a few books in a duffel bag, waited for the sun to come up. When I heard my mother rummage around in the kitchen, I went downstairs.

“You still haven’t filled out the forms.” It came out sharply, just as I intended. All my life there had been missing paperwork and incomplete forms. “Are we still doing this? We still don’t have the right paperwork?” I asked. There were the missing papers when I was a kid—what I now know to be shot records and residency documentation—and school was the mother of all wounds. She would never let me leave, wanted to attach an eternal tether to me, to make sure I’d never be more than she was.

We argued. I told her I’d leave. She said she’d pay for a community college close by. I told her I wanted to go out of state. We argued some more. Eventually she turned silent and ignored me.

I left that night. I drove down the highway, leaving Aurora behind me. I had about five hundred dollars, a fifteen-year-old car, and my high school diploma—a pretty meek start for a life on my own. There were regrets about that night: I had fought with my mother, and I had never said good-bye to Bobby.

I felt panic rise up. The streets felt alien to me, yet I drove on until I reached Amarillo. The city was depressing, with nothing but dust and yellow grass, far away from everywhere and close to nowhere. I found work the very next day and a place to stay. Help Wanted signs at motels were plenty along the two major highways running through town, and my mother had taught me well: the right motel and the right owner, and you can offer free work for a week in exchange for a room. One week’s worth of work for the room each month, cash for the next three weeks of work. I knew that many employers didn’t mind turning a blind eye to the fact that I insisted on getting paid under the table.

I got a second job at a nearby motel, and after a year of saving every penny, I felt confident I was in a good place. One day, on my way to my second job, a tapping and slapping sound under the hood made me pull over. The car, by then sixteen years old, was no longer fixable. The next day I went to apply for a car loan, for a used older model Subaru—though it was still better than what I had—but I needed my social security number.

“I’m sorry we can’t process the application,” the car salesman said. “Do you have your card on you?”

“I think I lost it,” I lied.

He scrambled through the papers. “You might want to go to the social security administration office downtown.”

“How about I pay you cash for the car?” I hated to use every penny I had saved up, but I needed transportation. I haggled some, paid for the car. I never went to the local social security office. It was just like it had always been, the old and familiar hurdle that was paperwork.

I worked more jobs to save more money and eventually moved out of the motel. I knew better than to try to rent an apartment, but I waited for a sublet to come available—there’d be no credit checks, no paperwork, and no contracts to fill out. I lived in a three-bedroom apartment with two other women: a flight attendant and a pharmacy student from Ecuador.

I thought about starting my own residential cleaning business, but I knew the business license would never happen. Again, there’d be paperwork. There were better jobs I qualified for over the years—cruise ships taking off from Galveston—but I needed a passport. I kept my head down, never forming lasting friendships or getting seriously involved with anyone. Fifteen years passed, and I saw myself going nowhere but down a lonely, dead-end road of minimum wage jobs and double shifts.

I thought about returning to Aurora, but those moments passed. I thought about my childhood, and those thoughts lingered. My early years remained sketchy at best; I couldn’t name my favorite childhood food, stuffed animal, board game, friend, place, or person. Glimpses emerged, yet none of them could be verified; there was no attic stuffed with trunks and boxes holding dolls and toys and old bicycles. When my mother and I did move, we started completely from scratch; no phone calls to left-behind friends, no letters, no Christmas cards. Everything was final, never to be revisited.

I imagined myself twenty years from now and I panicked. I needed a social security number, a birth certificate, and proper documentation so I could emerge from the shadows of my bleak existence.

With those thoughts, I got on the same highway that had led me to Amarillo and I went back to Aurora. The trunk was filled with hardly more than I had left with fifteen years before. On the highway, I folded the visor down, and in the mirror I saw my reddened face. I was going to appear back in my mother’s life the same way I had left; one minute there, then gone, then back again.

I had questions. The kind of questions that, once raised, demanded answers.

Sitting in the ER, I want to apologize to Bobby for ignoring him all these months.

“You okay?” His words pull me out of my lulled state.

I attempt to speak, but my voice fades into unintelligible croaks.

I hear a gurgling sound from the water dispenser and he holds my hand steady as he places a cup of cold water in it.

“Drink this.” He raises his hand and brushes my wet hair out of my face.

Water spills over my hands. I remember the creek. There’s that odor, the one I smelled in the woods. Sweet and pungent—roadkill is what comes to mind, a recollection of hiking and coming across a deer cadaver, weeks old, dissolving in the heat. All blood leaves my face and I grip the paper cup so tight that I nearly crush it.

“Maybe you should spend the night in the hospital? You look horrible. You don’t seem well at all.”

“I’m fine. Really, I am. How’s your dad?” I ask to change the subject. I wish I looked more put together, hair done, makeup, a shower.

“You know, he’s old.” Bobby pauses for a moment, and a shadow falls over his face. “He’s not the man he used to be.”

A nurse behind the counter turns up the volume of the TV mounted to the wall. Bobby and I both look up, glad to be distracted.

There’s mention of breaking news about the girl from the woods coming up and immediately a vision of the tree line appears out of nowhere and my mind pops like an overheated lightbulb. The hand of a dead woman with red fingernails. There’s no sense in fighting the image of her fingers prodding through soil layers, a hand stealing a glimpse of the underworld.

“You’re shaking.” Bobby waves his hand in front of me as if to fan me some air. “You look like you’re about to pass out.”

“Is she alive?” I haven’t dared ask but I must know.

“Yes, barely. She’s in a coma.”

I’m back in the woods, bent over her body. Someone dug a hole and shoveled dirt on top of her. Buried her alive. How long ago? A day? Hours? Minutes, even? The possibility that someone watched me discover her—stood behind a nearby tree, his boots covered in soil, his heart beating in his chest, sweat on his brow, watching me—is mind-boggling. I manage to wipe the thought away like a determined hand removing fog from a bathroom mirror.

“You’re right, I look awful,” I say. My reflection in the glass doors that lead into the emergency room speaks for itself.

“How are you supposed to look after falling into a creek and busting your nose?”

“I need to call my mother,” I say. It’s been hours since I took off running; she must be frantic by now.

“They sent an officer over. She was a bit … well, a bit feisty about the police coming to the house. Took a lot of convincing to get her to open the door. What’s that all about?”

I ignore his question. I imagine the doorbell ringing, a suspicious Who are you looking for? through the closed door, an insistent Are you Memphis Waller?, her silence on the other side, the officer attempting to convince her to open up. Did This is about your daughter prompt her to let her guard down? Did the entire conversation happen through a bolted door, or did she reluctantly allow the officer inside, just to regret her lack of vigilance?

“Do you know who the woman is?” I ask.

“She’s still unconscious. We can’t interview her,” Bobby says. “We haven’t IDed her yet either.” Bobby hesitates ever so slightly and leans forward in the chair. “Did you see anyone?” Every muscle in his face communicates tension.

“I was running the trails. My leg started hurting and I needed to stretch. I went into the woods. It was just one of those things, I guess. I just happened to be there.”

“So you don’t remember anyone? Other joggers? Trucks? Hikers? Even just cars passing by? Anything?” His voice sounds breathless, but then he seems to compose himself. “What are the odds, huh?” He checks his wristwatch. “You’ll have to give an official statement once you feel better. So … someone will check you out before you leave. I’ll come back and give you a ride home. They’ll let me know when you’re ready to go, okay?”

I nod. My head pounds and I have lead in my veins, my limbs heavy and saturated with exhaustion. I watch Bobby push the square stainless steel elevator button and the large doors swallow him as if he is a ghost of times past.

After the doctor looks me over and concludes that I’m just a bit beat up and bruised, a nurse helps me take off my wet clothes and change into a pair of gray scrubs. In the waiting room, with my wet clothes in a plastic bag on my lap, I sit and wait for Bobby.

The TV is still tuned to the local news. First, the reporter focuses on the closing of the road, detours, and forensics being done out in the woods. Then, with one hand tight around the microphone, a piece of paper in the other: “According to an anonymous hospital source, the woman was in the woods for a very short time before she was discovered.” An anonymous source? It sounds clandestine, but someone probably knows a nurse who’s overheard a comment or read a file. In small towns like Aurora it’s really as simple as that.

The reporter smiles and promises to keep the viewers updated. KDPN has told me nothing more than I already know.

I feel an odd sense of kinship with the woman I found in the woods and figure there is no public plea for her identity because law enforcement expects her to wake up and tell them her name at any moment.

Suddenly the screen switches to a black-and-white sketch of a woman. I catch a few words here and there—similar case … mystery woman … almost thirty years ago … sketch artist … cold case. The woman was reported missing by a man who had no photo of her, hence the sketch. It is an image drawn with pencil on paper, facial features created by a forensic artist to identify unknown victims or suspects at large. Old-fashioned wanted posters far from present-day digital images created by computer programs. The reporting then turns to high school football scores.

A nurse appears and informs me Officer de la Vega is waiting for me at the ER entrance. When I stand up, the world around me spins, then stills.

Instead of departing through the two large sliding glass doors, I take the stairway. Holding on to the railing, I walk up two stories. I have one more place to go before I leave the hospital.

The third floor lies abandoned but for a security guard whose silhouette I see strolling down the hallway. He then disappears around the corner. A board on the first door on the right says Jane Doe, scribbled with a dry erase marker. My Jane, I say quietly to myself, as if the fact that I found her gives me the right to claim her.

I enter the room. I shut the door behind me, and as I part the curtain, the plastic gliders gently purr in their tracks.

I approach Jane in a very pragmatic way, partly to calm my nerves, partly not to miss anything. First, I take in the visuals; her weight, height, and skin color: five seven, one hundred and forty pounds, plus or minus five pounds, pale complexion with a gray undertone. Her hair is ashy blond, medium brown maybe, slicked back, hard to tell.

The monitor above her bed is busy; Jane’s heartbeat is rushing along in one neon green jagged line, unsteady like the jittery crayon stroke of a child. There are two other lines, one red and one yellow. Measuring blood pressure and oxygen saturation, I assume, but I can’t be sure. But it seems that’s what those machines ought to track. A body needs circulation, oxygen, a heartbeat.

There are three tubes in all. One in her left arm, one leading from under the blanket to a urine collection bag. The third is a breathing tube. With a rhythmic hissing sound that raises and lowers as the machine cycles, a ventilator blows air into her lungs. Jane’s chest is rising and falling in a steady wave. The side rails of the bed are pulled up as if there is a conceivable chance she might spontaneously get up and make an attempt to get away.

I’m taken aback by the measures required to keep her alive. I feel the desperate energy her body radiates in its lulled state of unconsciousness, compensatory for some unknown act of violence inflicted upon her. I spot Jane’s likeness in the reflection of the large window, her ethereal body an apparition, and beyond that lies the town of Aurora, a faraway carpet of glitter, like an otherworldly background of sorts.

I step closer and I allow my hand to hover over Jane’s hands. They are now scrubbed clean, but some dirt remains under her nails. They are jagged, as if she tried to claw her way out of the grave someone had put her in. I lower my hand and feel her skin; it’s warm to the touch, alive, prickly almost.

An odd scent fills the air. I tilt my head back and sniff at it like a dog. Is that cinnamon? My mind slips like feet losing ground on a slick floor, then the pressure behind my eyes becomes unbearable. I can’t quite interpret what message is coming from her, but I know she’s trying to communicate with me. That’s it—how else can I explain the tremor in my hand that slowly works itself up to my shoulder? It then rushes through my body and a metallic taste develops in my mouth. I plunge into what feels like madness in the making; images of trees, branches clawing at me. Someone has turned a switch, making reality hard to identify; it’s blending with visions of Jane in the woods, digging a hole with her own bare hands. I can smell dank creek water, feel it seep into my nostrils. Is that what my Jane went through or am I reliving falling into the creek and losing consciousness? Suddenly we are one and I am inside Jane’s body, I am the one in the woods, not her.

I’m not sure when I fall, but I hit the floor, knees first, then my body folds in on itself. Cold linoleum seeping through the thin scrubs snaps me back into reality. There’s a voice coming from above, almost as if I’m at the bottom of a well and someone is talking down to me. A pinpoint-sized speck of light seems to appear out of nowhere. The speck turns into a beam, then the beam turns into something brighter than the sun, so bright that it sears my eyes, hot and sharp like a blade.

“Are you okay?”

I know the voice. Dahlia. Dahlia. Dahlia. Over and over. I want to answer but I can’t. The pungent cinnamon scent is trapped in my nostrils, bitter and sharp. There’s pressure under my arms and then around my waist. I’m nothing but dead weight, yet Bobby manages to place my body onto something rather soft and comfortable.

All that is left of what’s happened is a pounding headache and aching joints. I’m beyond hungry. Famished.

“What happened? No one is allowed in here. Did you pass out?”

I find my voice: “I think she just tried to communicate with me.”

Bobby cocks his head to the left; his eyes go soft. “Look at her,” he says. “Does she look like someone trying to communicate?”

I have taken a long hard look at her. I know it sounds nuts.

“You smell that?” I ask.

“Smell what?”

“Cinnamon,” I say.

“I don’t smell anything. Let’s go,” Bobby says.

How can he not smell that? It’s all over the room, pungent, sharp, biting its way up my nostrils.

“Wait. You really don’t smell that?” I ask and resist when he tries to push toward the door. “Just breathe in.”

“I don’t smell any cinnamon, Dahlia. But we’re about to be in a shitload of trouble if they find us in here. I’m taking you home. Now.”

The scent remains with me as we depart through the sliding glass doors and even when I fasten the seatbelt in Bobby’s police cruiser. I stare straight ahead, my head against the headrest. Something feels different, as if a part of me went AWOL in Jane’s room. What that missing part has been replaced with I can’t tell.

The police radio squelches and splats until Bobby turns the volume down, the communication now white background noise.

“It’ll be okay. Just try to relax,” he says and rests his hand on top of mine, which are shaking in my lap.

His hands are familiar, sinewy, with short fingers and large palms. I roll down the window, close my eyes, and allow my hair to blow in the breeze. The silence between us is natural, soothing. We used to be that way, comfort for each other. I feel myself calm down, almost as if hardly any time has passed between us at all.

Fifteen minutes later my mother’s house appears on Linden Street, a road ironically lined with Mulberry trees. The scent remains, yet watered down, the pungent part now in need of detection, no longer presenting itself without any effort. The sweetness, now replaced by an earthy, nutty scent, reminding me of something pure and uncontaminated, not the syrupy and artificial kind drifting through the mall when you pass the Cinnabon counter in the food court.

“She’s in a coma?” I ask Bobby one more time as I reach for the car door. “You know that for a fact?”

Bobby nods. “It’s all over the news.”

I try to tell myself I just went through a lot—finding Jane, hitting my head, falling in a creek, seeing her comatose and hooked up to machines—and that I have the right to feel out of sorts and that it’s really no surprise that I’m beside myself.

I nod and as we shuffle along the driveway, I see the front door is ajar, my mother kneeling on the porch. She sees us, stands, and goes inside, slamming the door shut.

“It’ll be okay,” Bobby says. I’m not sure if he’s talking about me or my mother. “Get some rest and call me when you wake up, okay?”

I trust Bobby. Trust him with my life. And so I just come out and say it again. “She tried to tell me something.” Just like that. I don’t know of any other way to communicate what just happened to me in that room.

He doesn’t acknowledge the comment, but doesn’t tear at it either.

“Don’t come inside,” I say. “She’s in a mood.” There is no such thing as rest in my mother’s house, there is no resting from my mother’s moods. She is unpredictable at best.

Bobby looks at me as if he is going to argue, but then his shoulders drop. My eyes follow his cruiser lights as he drives off. He taps the horn three times and I smile. It’s something he used to do a lifetime ago.

I catch another whiff of the cinnamon scent. I turn my head, expecting to see its origin, but I know better. What if this is it? This is how it starts. Soon there will be crickets in my world too. Have I been a sitting duck, a sure victim of my mother’s faulty and mentally deranged DNA?

At the threshold I sidestep a cricket that looks like a miniature black raven on its back. But there are others I can’t avoid, and as the tip of my shoe crushes the carcasses to dust, I hear my mother’s voice.

“Where’ve you been?” She appears calm but her voice is higher pitched than usual. She wears makeup and a dress; her hair is a couple of shades lighter than it was this morning. She is barefoot as if somehow she forgot to complete the illusion of having it together.

“You’ve heard what happened?” I ask.

She turns the kitchen faucet on full blast. The microwave stops running, then beeps. The scents of burnt popcorn and cigarette smoke sting my nostrils. The cigarette between her fingers is short enough to burn her. She leans forward and crushes it out in an already overflowing ashtray.

“Have you heard what happened?” I repeat, my voice louder than I want it to be.

“You had some sort of an accident. They wouldn’t tell me anything else,” she says.

“I found a body in the woods. A woman. She’s alive but in a coma.” I shudder at the mental image of my Jane covered in forest debris.