Secrets She Left Behind

Mom looked older than I remembered. I hadn’t noticed it during her visits, but now I could see that the skin above her eyes sagged a little. She’d cut her dark hair short, though, and it looked good. Actually kind of cool. Our hair was the same color, but mine was much thicker and wilder, like Daddy’s had been. I had it in a long ponytail, which is how I wore it the whole year in prison.

“I don’t think it’ll ever be the same between Sara and me,” Mom said. “I’ve let it go, though. My end of it.” I knew she meant the part about Sara having an affair with my father while he was married to Mom. It turned out that my father was also Keith’s father. Surprise, surprise. Andy didn’t know that, though.

“But she’s still upset,” Mom said. “You know.”

Yeah, I knew. Upset about Keith getting burned in the fire. I didn’t blame her. I cried every time I thought about how I’d hurt him. “I won’t go in when we stop there. Okay?” I didn’t want to see Sara and I sure didn’t want to see Keith.

“That’s fine.” Mom sounded relieved, or maybe it was just my imagination.

We drove over the swing bridge that crossed the Intracoastal Waterway.

“Oh, the ocean!” I said, looking toward the horizon. The water was a blue-gray, the sky a bit overcast, but it was beautiful. I’d never take living on the island for granted again.

We were practically the only car on the bridge. Although I usually liked September on Topsail, when most of the tourists were gone and it felt more like home, the lack of cars—of people—suddenly made me realize I would stand out. If the summer crowds had still been there, I could blend in with them. Now, I would know everyone and everyone would know me. I felt sick thinking about the girl I’d been a year ago. The girl who hid out in the Sea Tender and who did crazy things for love. Who led a secret life.

“Mom?” I said.

She rested her hand on mine. “What, sweetie?”

“I’m going to drive you nuts at first,” I said. “I mean, I’m going to tell you everything that I think, okay? I need someone to tell me if I start thinking like a crazy person again.”

“You can tell me anything you like,” she said.

“Remember—” Uncle Marcus looked at me in the rearview mirror “—you’ll have a counselor, too, Mags. You can be completely open with her.”

We pulled into the trailer park and I scrunched down in the seat when Uncle Marcus stopped in front of the Westons’ faded gold double-wide.

“I’ll stay here with Mags,” Uncle Marcus said.

“I’ll just be a minute,” Mom said as she got out of the car.

Uncle Marcus turned in his seat to smile at me. “It’s going to be all right,” he said. His brown hair was really short. Shorter than I’d ever seen it, and he had amazing blue eyes that I’d loved my whole life. He was one of the best people I knew. I could always trust him to be in my corner no matter how I screwed up, and that thought made my eyes prickle.

I bit my lip. “I hope so,” I said.

“Here he comes.”

I sat up to see my brother fly down the steps from the trailer’s small deck and run across the sand. He pulled open the back door and flung himself toward me. I caught him, laughing.

“You’re free!” he said.

“Yup, Panda Bear,” I said. He seemed so much bigger. I brushed his thick hair off his forehead. “Now you’re stuck with me.”

Mom got back in the car, this time in the front passenger seat. “Everything okay with Sara?” Uncle Marcus asked her.

“She wasn’t there,” Mom said.

“She had to go to the store,” Andy said.

“I left a note, thanking her,” Mom said.

No one said it, but I knew why Sara wasn’t there: she didn’t want to see me any more than I wanted to see her.

Chapter Three

Keith

BRIDGET HAMMETT WAS SITTING NEXT TO ME IN ALGEBRA. TO my left. That mattered. I didn’t like anybody sitting on my left side. In most of my classes, I made sure to get the seat next to the window so nobody was on my left, but the first day of algebra, I was late to sixth period and all those seats were taken. So now, Bridget, who was the hottest junior—maybe the hottest girl in all of Douglas High School—was sitting on my left side and texting Sophie Tapper who sat on my right. I knew the text message was about me. It was like I could feel when people were talking about me.

My left arm was killing me and I needed another Percocet. Ten minutes till the bell rang. I needed to get out of there. Not just out of algebra—out of the whole damn school. I came in early today to do this stupid makeup exam, and now I was wiped. I used to leave after seventh period. These days, it was after sixth. Soon it would probably be after fifth. I couldn’t stand being there. Being a fucking junior again. A seventeen-year-old junior. The guy everybody pretended not to stare at. Before the fire, girls were always staring at me. I liked it back then, feeling them watch me in class, knowing they were texting their friends about me. I’d get these e-mails about how they wanted to do it with me. Lots of details in them. Now it was different. I got, like, no e-mails at all. I knew what the girls were saying about me now. How if they looked at me from the right side—as long as they didn’t see my hands and arms—I looked hot. If they looked at me from the left side, I was like something out of a horror flick. There was only so much of that kind of staring I could take before I wanted to toss all the desks out the windows.

The bell finally rang and I was outta there without looking back. I walked straight to my car and got in. Some dealership in Jacksonville donated the car to me after I got out of the hospital. It was a total dork of a car and I wanted to sell it and get a motorcycle, but my mother said that would be an insult and I needed to be grateful and blah blah blah.

I took a Percocet with what was left in a can of Dr Pepper I had stuck in my cup holder that morning. Then I laid rubber pulling out of the parking lot, heading toward the bridge and the beach. I wasn’t going home, though. First, because Mom would be there and I never let her know I was cutting. I didn’t want any grief from her. Second, today, for some total crap reason, Andy was at our house. Today! The day Maggie was getting sprung. The day I’d really like to forget the Lockwood family existed. Mom left a message on my cell about Andy being there, but said he’d be gone by the time I got home. She also said I should come straight home from school, probably because she knew I’d be freaking about Maggie getting out. “If you see any reporters,” she said, “walk right past them. Don’t engage them. You owe them nothing.” Reporters? Shit. They’d better just stay out of my way.

No way was I going home until I was sure Andy was outta there. I wasn’t taking any chances of seeing any Lockwood. Not Andy or Laurel or the bitch who burned my face. It was for her own sake. I might kill her if I saw her. Money could buy you anything, including a get-out-of-jail-free card. She visited me in the hospital before she went to jail and I swear, if I’d known then what I knew now, I would’ve found a way to kill her even with my arms bandaged up to my shoulders. I had this really tasty fantasy of setting her on fire—only someone else would have to light the match. I wasn’t big on flames of any kind these days. But I liked to imagine her getting burned at a stake, like they used to do to witches. She was a witch all right. It was a sick fantasy, but not as sick as burning a church full of kids.

I parked by the pier where the surfers hung out, though the surf was so lame only three other guys were there. I didn’t really know them. The cool thing about surfing was you could be with other people but not really have to be with them. Like talk to them or be close enough so they could stare at your face. The water was still warm enough that I really didn’t need my wet suit, but I put on the top half anyway because I wasn’t supposed to get sun on my arms. I spread sunscreen over my screwed-up face. Then I paddled out and waited for a wave worth riding in. My physical therapist thought surfing was good for me, as long as I could “do it safely.” He meant, as long as I could manage the board with my screwed-up left hand and had enough flexibility in my arms. We worked on that in PT. Talk about pain! But if I skipped the exercises for even one day, I paid big-time.

From the water, I could see our trailer park, though I couldn’t get a good look at our double-wide. It was three back from the road and I could just make out one pale yellow corner of it. Was Andy still there? My half brother? Not that I’d ever let anyone know I was related to that loser.

The three other surfers started talking to each other. Their voices bounced around on the water, but I couldn’t really hear what they said. Then they started paddling toward shore, so I guessed they’d had enough of waiting for a decent wave. I wondered if they’d go somewhere together. Maybe get a burger. Talk about girls. While I just sat alone in the water paddling in place, looking at the corner of our trailer, wishing I had someplace to go myself.

Chapter Four

Sara

The Free Seekers Chapel

1988

THE FIRST THING I NOTICED WAS THE SIMPLE BEAUTY OF THE small, pentagonal building. The scent of wood was so strong, it made me woozy. I felt grounded by it, connected to the earth, as if the smell triggered a primitive memory in me. Through the huge, panoramic windows, I saw the sea surrounding the tiny chapel and I felt as if I were on a five-sided ship, bonded together with twelve fellow sailors.

The second thing I noticed was the man in jeans and a leather jacket. Even though he hadn’t said a word, I could tell he was in charge. Physically, he was imposing in both height and mass, but it was more than that. He was a sorcerer. A magician. Even now, writing about him all these years later, my heart is pounding harder. Without so much as a glance in my direction, he cast a spell over me that was both mystical and intoxicating and—if I’m being completely honest—sexual. In that moment, I realized I’d been missing two things for a long time: I had nothing in the way of a spiritual life, and nearly as empty a sensual life. And really, when those two things are taken away, what’s left?

I sat with the others in an awed silence; then the man got to his feet. Morning sun spilled from the long window nearest the ocean, pooling on his face and in his dark, gentle eyes. He looked around the room, his gaze moving from person to person, until it landed on me. I couldn’t look away. I didn’t want to. He looked inside me to the vast emptiness of my soul. Fill it for me, I was thinking. Help me.

After a moment, he shifted his gaze away from me and back to the others in the chapel. “Where did you experience God this week?” he asked.

Nowhere, I thought. I wasn’t even sure what he meant. All I knew was that I felt at home for the first time since Steve dragged me from Michigan to Camp Lejeune. I didn’t belong in this little Southern enclave, with its hundreds of churches and its thousands of churchgoers with whom I had nothing in common. I didn’t know a grit from a tomato, a moon pie from a potato chip. I felt completely lost when I tried to connect with the other military wives. They missed their husbands who were on temporary duty assignment, while I guiltily looked forward to Steve’s absences. Many of the women were my age—twenty-one—yet I couldn’t seem to breach the gulf between myself and them as they gushed about their men while shopping for groceries at the commissary. I felt as though something was terribly wrong with me. Terribly lacking. Suddenly, though, there I was in an actual church—of sorts—and I felt at home.

There was a long silence after the man asked the question about God, but it wasn’t at all uncomfortable, at least not to me. Finally, the woman next to him stood up. I saw the glitter of the ring on her left hand and thought: his very lucky wife.

“I was lying on the beach last night,” she said, “and I suddenly felt a sense of peace come over me.”

She was pretty. Not beautiful. There is a difference. She was thin in a reedy way. Her hair was incredible in that wash of sunlight. It hung well past her shoulders, and had the slightest wave to it—just enough to keep it from being straight. It was very dark and nearly Asian in its shininess, the polar opposite of my short blond cap of hair. She was fair-skinned with plain brown eyes—nothing like her husband’s—and her face was the shape of a heart. When she looked at the man, though, her eyes lit up. I was jealous. Not of the woman, specifically, but of any woman who could feel what she clearly felt. Total love. An adoration a man like that would return ten times over.

I tried to picture Steve standing up like the man had done, asking about God. Caring so passionately about something. Creating that tiny masterpiece of a building. I assumed, correctly, that the man was the one everyone talked about—the crazy, motorcycle-riding guy who’d built his own chapel. I couldn’t imagine Steve doing anything like that. I couldn’t picture him smiling at me the way the man smiled at his wife as she sat down again. Frankly, I had no idea what went on inside Steve’s mind. I’d married a near stranger because I felt like I had no choice. When you’re young, you have more choices than you’ll ever again have in your life, yet sometimes you can’t see them. I’d truly been blind.

Steve had been so handsome in his uniform on the day of our wedding. I’d convinced myself he was a fine man for offering to marry me when I told him about the baby. I’d accepted his offer, although neither of us talked about love, only about responsibility. I told myself that love would come later.

But that morning, the man with the sun in his eyes made me doubt that loving Steve would ever be possible. Maybe if I’d never set foot in the chapel, everything would have turned out okay. I would have learned to be satisfied with what I had. As I got to my feet after the service, though, I knew it was already too late. The seed was planted for everything that would follow. The damage was already done.

Chapter Five

Maggie

WHEN WE TURNED ONTO OUR SHORT STREET THAT DEAD-ended at the sound, I saw the news vans parked all over the place and people running around, and I suddenly knew what my life was going to be like for the next few days. Or maybe forever.

“Oh, no,” Mom said.

Uncle Marcus let out a noisy, angry breath. “Don’t worry, Mags,” he said. “We’ll pull right into the garage. You won’t have to talk to anyone.”

I scrunched low in my seat, thinking of the prisoners I’d seen on TV hiding their faces with jackets as they walked past the reporters. I always thought they were trying to protect their privacy. Now I understood. It was humiliation that made them want to hide.

Inside the house, I walked from room to room, smoothing my hand over the sofa, the china cabinet, the dining-room table. I loved how familiar everything was. Andy followed me around, talking constantly, like he was trying to make up for all our lost conversations.

In the kitchen, I recognized Uncle Marcus’s Crock-Pot on the counter. I could tell by the smell that Mom was cooking chili. I was glad they weren’t making a big deal out of me coming home. No party or anything like that, where I’d have to see a lot of people. I was totally overjoyed to be home, but it didn’t seem like something we should celebrate.

My room was exactly as I’d left it, with the blue-and-green-striped bedspread on the double bed and framed photographs of Daddy and Andy and some—former—friends on my dresser. There was a white teddy bear I’d never seen before on my pillow, and I picked it up. It was the softest thing! It held a little card that read, Welcome Home! Love, Uncle Marcus. The label on its leg said it was made of angora. A teddy bear might have seemed like a silly present for a nineteen-year-old, but it was totally perfect. How did Uncle Marcus know I needed something exactly like the bear? Something I could hold on to that made me feel kind of innocent, like a little kid who hadn’t meant to do something so wrong.

I carried the bear around with me as I walked through the rest of the house.

Mom’s room was a little different, mostly because of Uncle Marcus. His slippers were on the floor next to the bed. In her bathroom, his shaving stuff and toothbrush and deodorant and everything had taken over the counter around one of the sinks. While I was in her room, the doorbell rang a couple of times. I heard Uncle Marcus talking to whoever it was. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but I figured he was telling them to get lost. Leave us alone.

Andy’s room was exactly the same in every way except one: it smelled different. The air seemed thicker or something. I’d been in the bedrooms of my male friends before I hooked up with Ben, and Andy’s room smelled like theirs did. No longer a little-boy smell. Slightly dirty socks. A little sweat. A little aftershave. It felt weird to be in there.

“Do you want to see pictures?” Andy asked, sitting down at his computer.

“Sure.” I pulled his desk chair next to him and hugged my arms across the teddy bear. “Do you have one of Kimmie?”

“Yeah,” he said, clicking his mouse. He pulled up a bunch of pictures. “This is my Special Olympics team,” he said.

There were ten of them, six boys and four girls, lined up in their bathing suits against a wall. At least seven of them looked like they had Down syndrome. Two of the boys looked totally normal. Then there was Andy. Cute, but much tinier than the rest.

“That’s Matt.” Andy pointed to one of the boys with Down syndrome. “He’s Kimmie’s brother.”

It was coming back to me. Mom had told me Kimmie was one of five kids, all adopted, all special needs. Kimmie wasn’t on the swim team herself, though. Just her brother.

“And this is me and Kimmie.” Andy clicked on another picture.

“She’s so cute!” I said. Kimmie stood a couple of inches taller than Andy. Her dark hair was coming loose from a long ponytail. Ethnically, I couldn’t even guess. Her eyes were sort of Asian. Her skin was nearly as dark as Letitia’s, but she didn’t really look African-American. She wore rectangular glasses and behind them, her eyes were very green. She was beyond cute, actually. She was beautiful. I wondered what her special needs were.

“One of her legs is short,” Andy said as if he knew what I was thinking, which I knew he didn’t. “She was born with a funny foot. They did an operation but it made her limp.”

“Are you in love?” I grinned.

The tops of Andy’s ears turned red and I put my arm around him, hugging him with a giggle.

“Yes,” he said.

“Does she love you back?” She’d better.

“Yes. She helps me. She keeps my stuff in her calendar in case I forget.”

Mom had told me Kimmie’d taken on a sort of second-mother role with Andy, keeping track of his schedule, making sure he remembered things. That used to be my job.

“I can’t wait to meet her, Panda,” I said.

“Don’t call me Panda anymore,” he said. “It’s a baby name.”

For a second, I felt like he was stealing something from me. But I got it. Panda was a baby name.

“Okay, Andrew,” I said, and he laughed.

Suddenly, there was a loud crash from downstairs, followed by a thud. Andy and I looked at each other, frozen like statues.

“Laurel!” Uncle Marcus shouted from somewhere downstairs. “Call the police!”

Andy raced out of the room before I could stop him. I followed him into the hallway, trying to grab his arm.

“Don’t go down!” I said. He was too fast for me, though, and he went flying down the stairs.

“Stay out of there!” I heard Mom yell at him. “There’s glass everywhere.”

“Mom?” I called from the top of the stairs. “What happened?”

“Stay up there, Maggie.” Mom came into view in the downstairs foyer. She was holding the phone to her ear and looking toward the family room. “Someone threw a…I don’t know what it is. A rock, Marcus?”

Uncle Marcus answered her, but I couldn’t hear what he said.

“A chunk of concrete or something,” Mom said. “Someone threw…Yes. Hello?” She spoke into the phone, and her voice was shaking. “This is Laurel Lockwood,” she said. “Someone just threw a piece of concrete through our front window.”

I walked into my bedroom, the teddy bear clutched in my arms. Maybe I should have gone downstairs to help clean up, but I was too freaked out. Things like this didn’t happen on Topsail Island, and I knew it wasn’t any random act of violence. It was me they were after, but it was my family getting hurt.

From my bedroom window after dinner, I could see two of the news vans still outside. What were they going to do, sit there all night? All week? I bet they loved seeing the cops arrive and watching Uncle Marcus put the storm shutters over the broken window.

I closed my blinds. After a while, I got up the courage to turn on my TV and put on the news. Then I sat on my bed, waiting, my chin resting on the teddy bear in my arms. I didn’t have to wait long. Suddenly the screen was full of the people outside the prison, the ones shouting and holding signs.

“Amid protests,” a woman reporter who looked no older than me said, “Maggie Lockwood was released from Kawatchee Women’s Correctional Institution today after serving a twelve-month sentence for the attempted burning of Drury Memorial Church in Surf City.” She went on for a minute about who I was and what I’d done. Then she started interviewing people in the crowd. The first was a dark-haired man who was so angry, little bits of spit flew out of his mouth when he spoke.

“She gets twelve short months in prison and then goes on with her life like nothing happened!” he said.

“I wish,” I said out loud.

“My uncle is dead,” a young woman said. Her face was twisted into a mask of hatred. For me. “He was such a good man. And that girl just scoots out of here with her slick lawyer and everything,” she said. She had to be Mr. Eggles’s niece, since he was the only adult killed in the fire. I thought of my own uncle. Imagined him dead, the victim of someone like me. No! I shuddered, waving my hand in front of my face to erase the thought.

Reverend Bill was on the screen then. I gasped. I so didn’t want to have to look at him! He stood in front of a brick church. The new Drury Memorial? Wow. Totally different. “Many people are angry,” he said. “We’ve managed to rebuild Drury Memorial. We’re nearly finished. But we can’t rebuild those lives that were lost or shattered, and that’s hard for a lot of people. I hope, though, that this can be an opportunity to practice forgiveness.”

Forgiveness? Reverend Bill? What a hypocrite. He hated me. Hated my whole family.

Someone knocked on my bedroom door.

“Come in,” I said.

Mom poked her head inside, glanced at the TV.

“Oh, Maggie. Don’t watch that.”

“It’s all right,” I said.

“Come downstairs and have some ice cream with us. Chocolate-chip mint.”

I shook my head. My stomach hurt. “Stay away from the windows down there,” I said. I was afraid that first chunk of concrete wouldn’t be the last.

“Come on,” Mom insisted. “We want to be with you tonight.”

It was weird in the family room with all the draperies pulled shut. We never closed those draperies, but we didn’t want anyone to be able to look at us while we sat—away from the windows—eating ice cream. At least everyone else was eating, while I pushed the melting green stuff around in my bowl. The phone rang, and Mom picked it up. She looked at the caller ID and shrugged as she handed the phone to Uncle Marcus. I guessed he was the family spokesperson.

“Hello?” he said, then, “Hey. Is everything okay?” I watched a line appear between his eyebrows and wondered who he was talking to. “Okay,” he said. “She’s right here.”