Secrets She Left Behind

“I guess the Food Lion in Hampstead. I mean, I guess she meant food shopping. I don’t know where else she’d go.”

He had his eyes on his notepad even though he wasn’t writing, and I figured he’d had enough of looking at my face.

“Can you tell me the names of her other friends?”

“She didn’t have a lot,” I said. I didn’t want her to seem totally pathetic, so I named some ladies she used to be in a book club with.

“What church does she go to?”

“She doesn’t.”

“How about men? Was she dating anyone?”

“No.” My mother didn’t date. I couldn’t even imagine it. I couldn’t even imagine her getting close enough to Jamie Lockwood to get pregnant with me.

“Are you sure? Did you ever suspect she was—”

“Trust me,” I said. “Especially this year. I’ve been her date. She made me her full-time job.”

“You angry about that?” he asked. “You sound angry about it.”

“Not angry,” I said. “Just…I don’t want to be babysat.” I noticed him looking into the living room, where the chair that had fallen on me was still on its side. I realized he might suspect me of something. Foul play. Whatever. Like if I was angry at her, maybe I’d hurt her. That pissed me off even more.

“Have you looked around to see if anything’s missing?” he asked.

“You mean, like someone broke in and stole something and she caught them and—”

“It’s just a general question.” He stopped me. “Did she have a suitcase?”

I didn’t know the answer. “She never went anywhere,” I said.

“Well, everyone has a suitcase.”

Actually, I didn’t have one. But, I supposed with all that time my mother spent in Chapel Hill when I was in the hospital, she must have owned a suitcase.

“Can we take a look in her room?” he asked, getting to his feet.

“Sure.” I tried to sound more cooperative, now that I thought he might be suspicious of me.

We had to walk through the living room to get to her bedroom, and he whipped out a camera and took a picture of the chair on its side.

“I was trying to do my exercises,” I said, reaching for the red exercise band I’d tossed on the sofa.

“Leave that there,” he said. I dropped my hand and he snapped a picture of the band.

“Like I said, she always helped me with the exercises, so I put the band around the leg of the chair and when I pulled on it, the chair fell over.”

“Uh-huh.”

We reached my mother’s room. It was small and neat. The bed was made—she was one of those people who made their bed the second they got up in the morning. She tried to get me to do the same, but gave up a long time ago.

The cop stood in the doorway and looked around. My mother would’ve known if I’d moved my comb from one side of my bathroom counter to the other. But in her room, I was totally lost. I never went in there. I had no reason to.

Officer Pryor opened her closet door. “Does this look like more or fewer clothes than she usually has in here?” he asked me.

I leaned around him to look in the closet. “No clue,” I said. “I never…I don’t pay attention to her clothes.”

He walked into her bathroom. “Toothbrush is here,” he said. “Did she have more than one?”

“I don’t know.” Why would she have more than one toothbrush?

“I don’t see any makeup bag,” he said.

Makeup bag? “She didn’t wear much.”

“How about a hair dryer?” he asked. “Did she have one?”

“Nah. Her hair was really short.”

He took a few pictures while I stood in the doorway, then he walked back in her bedroom and started opening the drawers of her dresser, one after the other.

“Really not a lot in here,” he said. “Most women, especially if they live in a small space like your double-wide, have their dresser drawers so full you can’t get them open.”

It bothered me that I was letting this guy paw through her stuff. Through her underwear drawer, for Christ’s sake. I was making way too much out of this. I expected her to come home any minute and say, “What are you doing? I told you I’d be out late tonight.”

“I don’t see a suitcase anywhere.” He was still going through her dresser, like he might find a suitcase in there.

“Maybe she told me she was going away for the night and I forgot or something,” I said. Though, where would she go?

He headed back toward the living room and I followed him. He was looking all around the room while he walked. Taking everything in. “You’re what?” he said. “Eighteen?”

“Yeah,” I said, though I wouldn’t be eighteen for a few months.

“So, she didn’t abandon a minor.” He stood between the kitchen and the living room, his arms folded over his chest. He was staring at the couch. At the red exercise band. Did he think I tried to choke her with it or what? “It looks to me like she left of her own volition,” he said, “since there’s no suitcase—”

“I told you. I’m not even sure she had one.” And she wouldn’t leave me! Did I have to club him over the head with it?

“Look.” He reached into his pocket. Handed me a card. “I’m going to get someone out here to do a more thorough search. Don’t touch anything, all right? Don’t move that chair back upright.”

“The chair doesn’t have anything to do with—”

“Just don’t touch anything,” he said. “Do yourself a favor. Meanwhile, we’ll put a BOLO on her car.”

“What’s a BOLO?”

“A ‘Be on the Lookout’ bulletin. That’ll get authorities to keep an eye out for her. We’ll get Pender County to check the Food Lion parking lot and contact the hospitals.”

“I already checked the Food Lion parking lot.”

“You did? When?”

“A while ago.”

“We’ll be checking it, too,” he said. “We’ll subpoena her phone records and put a tracer on her car, but most likely, she’s out with a friend and lost track of time and forgot to turn her cell on. By the time I get an officer back out here, she’ll be home safe and sound.”

“Right,” I said, trying to calm myself down. I was making a mountain out of a molehill.

I watched him get into his cruiser and drive out to the main road. Then I looked next to my car, to where her car should have been. Where her car always was. And I knew something was very, very wrong.

Chapter Seven

Andy

I WAS STILL IN BED WHEN MY CELL PHONE RANG. KIMMIE! I got out of bed quick and ran over to my desk to get my phone.

“Hi!” I said, probably too loud.

“You better be up,” she said.

“I’m up.” I smiled even though she couldn’t see me.

“Just checking.” She checked on me every morning. “Do you feel better today?”

I had to think. I almost forgot I was sick yesterday. “It was only a twenty-four-hour bug.” That’s what Mom called it. I felt pretty good now.

“I’ll text you later,” she said. “Or you can text me.”

“Okay!”

I hung up and went into the bathroom to take my shower. That was what the chart on my corkboard said for me to do first, but I didn’t need to look at it for every little thing anymore. I was getting smarter.

I met Kimmie at a Special Olympics party. We started out just friends. She was pretty, but not the kind of pretty of any other girl I knew. We danced at the party. Special Olympics people dance really good and are nice. We played games and ate cake and things. The next time I saw Kimmie was at a swim-team practice. She came with her mother and father to watch my friend Matt swim. Her mother was a white lady with yellow hair and her father had brown hair like mine. After swim practice me and Kimmie went in the corner and talked. I made sure to stand four shoe lengths away, which was hard because I had bare feet. And she kept moving closer to me. I didn’t care, though.

“How come you’re America Africa and your parents are white?” I asked her.

“I’m adopted,” she said. “My birth mother is black and I don’t know about my birth father, except they think he was probably part Caucasian and part Japanese or maybe Indian.”

“What does birth mother mean?”

“The woman who gave birth to me. You know, had me. Like your mother had you.” She pointed to Mom, who was talking to my coach.

“Who’s that lady, then?” I pointed to her mother.

“She’s my adoptive mother,” she said. “And the man is my adoptive father.”

“You’re complicated!” I smiled to let her know that wasn’t a bad thing.

“I know.” She smiled back at me.

I knew a lot about Indians. Like she shouldn’t really have said Indian. She should have said “Native American.” “Is your Indian part Cherokee?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “Indian. Like from the country India. But they don’t really know exactly where my birth father was from. I just am who I am.”

“I am who I am, too,” I said.

“I think you’re cute,” she said.

I got an instant hard-on. That happened sometimes. I wrapped my towel over my bathing suit so Kimmie couldn’t see how it poked up. I started thinking maybe I didn’t like her as just a friend anymore.

Now, she’s almost the only thing I think about.

After I got all ready, I went downstairs. I hoped Maggie was up. I was so happy she was home!

When I got to the bottom stair, I saw Mom talking to a policeman in the family room. No, no, no! Not again! I didn’t know if I should run back upstairs or what to do. It was like this: first I was a hero, then I wasn’t a hero, then I was a hero again. Sometimes I couldn’t remember which I really was. That’s why I freaked. I decided to sneak into the kitchen so I could get cereal, but Mom saw me.

“Andy, come here, sweetie.”

I didn’t want to turn around. I stayed where I was, looking at the kitchen door.

“It’s okay, Andy,” Mom said. “Remember Officer Cates? He just wants to ask you a few questions about Miss Sara.”

I turned around real slow. I recognized him. He was nice. But I answered three hundred questions after the fire. I knew over a whole year had went by, but I was tired of questions. “I don’t know anything,” I said.

“Hi, Andy,” Officer Cates said. I all of a sudden remembered his first name was Flip. Funny.

“Come sit down,” Mom said.

Her voice told me I had to do it. I sat down on the couch near her. She put her hand on my forehead.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Fine.”

“He had a stomach virus yesterday,” she said to Officer Cates, who made an icky face. “Do you want to stay home again today?” Mom asked me. “It might be good to take it easy.”

“I’m okay,” I said. “Is Maggie up yet?”

“Not yet,” she said. “Listen, Andy. I’m very worried. No one’s seen Miss Sara since she left while she was watching you yesterday.”

“Maybe Keith saw her,” I said.

“No, he hasn’t,” Mom said.

“Can you help me out, Andy?” Officer Cates asked. He had a pad and a pen. Police always had them.

“I don’t want to go to jail,” I said. Jail had a little room with a window in the door and mean boys. I would never forget it.

“You won’t be going to jail,” Mom said. “This has nothing to do with you.”

She didn’t think I was going to jail that other time either.

“Tell me exactly what Mrs. Weston said when she left the trailer yesterday,” Officer Cates asked. Mrs. Weston was Miss Sara.

“She was going shopping.” I wasn’t sure about the “exactly” part, but she said something like that.

“Did she say when she’d be back?” he asked.

Mostly what I remembered was the Mega Warriors.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Did she say where she was going shopping?”

I shook my head.

“Did she say grocery shopping or some other kind of store?”

“Grocery shopping, maybe.” Maybe not. I should’ve paid better attention. My leg started jiggling up and down. Officer Cates wrote something on his pad.

“Did you see Keith yesterday?” he asked.

“At his house?”

“Yes.”

“He wasn’t there.”

“Not at all?”

I shook my head. I was sure I didn’t see Keith there.

“What was Mrs. Weston doing while you were there?”

“I don’t know. She was in another room mostly. I was asleep part of the time.”

“Did you see her do anything at all?”

“She got me soda and crackers.”

Mom put her hand on my knee to stop the jiggling.

“Did she talk to anyone on the phone?” Officer Cates asked.

I shook my head. “Oh. Mom,” I remembered. “Mom called.”

He looked at Mom. She nodded. “I called to tell her we’d be late picking Andy up,” she said.

“How did she sound?”

“Annoyed, actually,” Mom said. “I didn’t blame her. She probably wanted to go shopping and was worried about leaving Andy alone. We were three hours later than we thought we’d be.”

“Do you remember exactly what she said?” I liked that he was asking Mom questions and not me.

Mom shook her head. “Something like, ‘you said you’d be home by one-thirty.’ Something like that. I felt terrible. She…we haven’t been close this year and I know it was a big favor to ask her to watch Andy.”

“I could’ve stayed home alone okay,” I said.

“Did she seem angry to you, Andy?” Officer Cates asked.

“No.”

“When she got off the phone with your mom?”

I waited for him to finish the question. He looked at me funny.

“I mean, did she seem angry at all?” he asked. “About anything?”

I shook my head. “She was happy.”

“Happy?” He and Mom both said it at the same time, and I laughed.

“Happy Maggie was coming home,” I said.

“She was?” Mom asked.

“Like how you cried yesterday morning ’cause Maggie was coming home,” I explained. “She kind of did that, too.”

“She was crying?” Officer Cates asked.

“Not exactly.” I knew I had to be very truthful talking to the police. “I didn’t see her cry, but her eyes were red like they get when you cry.” I suddenly remembered the box. “I remember something else she did,” I said.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“She carried a box with a pot on it outside.”

“A pot in a box or on top of a box?” Mom asked.

“No. A picture of a pot. The box had a picture of a pot on it.”

Officer Cates wrote something down. Then he chewed the end of his pen.

“Maybe she was going to return a pot she bought,” Mom said to him. “That’s what she meant when she said she was going to the store.”

Officer Cates nodded. “Possibly,” he said. “So where did she usually shop?”

“She liked the Wal-Mart in Jacksonville, but it could’ve been just about anywhere. I can’t imagine she’d leave Andy that long, though.”

All of a sudden, I heard a brake-screech sound at the end of our street. I jumped up.

“Mom!” I said. “The bus!”

She looked at her watch. “Oh, no. We made you late.” She put her hand around my wrist. “I think we’re done here for now, aren’t we?” She looked at Officer Cates.

He closed his little pad. “For now,” he said.

“You go get some breakfast.” Mom let go of me. “Then I’ll drive you to school.”

I ran into the kitchen and stuck some cinnamon-swirl bread in the toaster. I couldn’t wait to tell Kimmie I was late to school and it wasn’t even my fault.

Chapter Eight

Sara

Stepping into Jamie’s World

1989

I HELD STEVE’S HAND AS WE SLIPPED INTO ONE OF THE PEWS at the Free Seekers Chapel. With Steve home and not interested in going to the chapel, months had passed since my last visit, and the congregation had swollen to thirty people. I spotted Jamie sitting in his usual pew, but Laurel wasn’t with him.

Steve let out one of his long, weary sighs that told me he was already bored, and my chest tightened up at the sound. I’d struggled to explain to him why I wanted to return to the chapel. It was the sense of community, I told him. Being part of something.

“What are you talking about?” he’d asked. “You’re surrounded by military wives. You have a built-in community.”

“This is a spiritual community.”

He stared at me with those steel-gray eyes. “One of the things we had in common is that we weren’t into religion,” he said.

“This is different,” I said. “You’ll see. Please come with me. Otherwise, I’ll go alone.” I felt nervous talking to him that way. Steve wasn’t a mean man, but sometimes I remembered how it felt when he pried my legs apart in the backseat of his car. It hurt, and the animal that took him over didn’t seem to care. I remembered that, and I was always a little afraid to stand up to him. But I needed what I’d found at the chapel. Was it the pull of the beautiful setting or the pull of Jamie Lockwood? I didn’t even want to think about that question.

Steve finally said he would go to the chapel with me, just one time. I felt intimidated by his presence, though, so I didn’t stand up to say where I’d experienced God that week. It would embarrass him. Or maybe I was afraid he’d think I’d been brainwashed. He kept up with the sighing. A few times he shifted in the pew as if longing to get up and stretch his legs. It wasn’t working out as I’d hoped. He wasn’t getting it at all.

After the service was over, Jamie greeted people as he usually did by the exit of the chapel.

“Is there any other way out of here?” Steve whispered as we moved toward the front door.

“I don’t know.” I didn’t care, either. I was already smiling at Jamie, stretching my hand out to shake his.

“It’s good to see you back, Sara,” he said.

“This is my husband, Steve,” I said. “Steve, this is Jamie Lockwood.”

Steve shook his hand. “Nice building,” he said, and I was grateful to him for making the effort to be sociable.

“You have a new baby by now, don’t you?” I asked. The last time I came to the chapel, many months earlier, Laurel had announced her pregnancy. Saying the word baby out loud made my breasts ache.

“I do.” Jamie glowed. “She’s a month old. Her name’s Maggie.”

“Congratulations!” I said. “How’s Laurel?”

He hesitated just long enough to let me know that all was not well with his wife, and I wished I hadn’t asked.

“She’s doing okay,” he said finally. “We’re both a little overwhelmed right now, but I guess that’s to be expected.”

“Let me know if I can help somehow,” I said. “I have plenty of free time.”

Steve nudged me, so I walked forward, making way for the people behind us to talk to Jamie. My offer to help was genuine. I longed to get out of the house, but Steve didn’t want me to work. “None of the guys’ wives work,” he’d said. Anyway, jobs were few, especially for a military wife who might have to move at a moment’s notice.

Jamie caught up to us in the small, sandy parking lot in front of the chapel.

“Were you serious, Sara?” He shaded his eyes from the sun. “About wanting to help?”

“Oh, yes,” I said.

“We can really use it,” he said. “I’ll pay you, of course.”

“No! Please. Let me just help out. Like I said, I have loads of free time.”

I gave him our number, and he wrote it on a small notepad he pulled from the pocket of his jeans.

I felt so happy as I got into the car. I could do something useful for a change. I could help Jamie, touching his life in a positive way, the way he’d touched mine by building his chapel.

Steve and I were nearly to the high-rise bridge before either of us spoke.

“You think that’s a wise thing for you to do?” he asked.

“What do you mean?” I asked, although I knew.

“You know. Taking care of a baby.”

“I want to,” I said.

It was the closest we’d ever come to discussing Sam. I bit my lip, feeling anxious. Finally, Steve was giving me an invitation to talk about him.

“Do you ever think about him?” I asked.

“Who?” he replied.

“Sam.”

He was quiet for so long I thought he was going to ignore the question.

“Doesn’t do any good to think about him,” he said. Then he pointed to a speed-limit sign. Thirty-five miles per hour. “Is that new?” he asked. “I thought it was forty-five along this stretch.”

Jamie suggested I come to the real-estate office where he worked. I supposed he wanted to interview me before accepting my offer of help, but when I walked into his small office, I found him holding the baby. I sat down and he walked around his desk to hand the infant to me.

Every baby looked beautiful to me, even those with cone-shaped heads and scrunched-up faces and homely features. All of them, staggeringly beautiful. Yet Maggie Lockwood was extraordinary even at a month old. She had Jamie’s enormous brown eyes, and they were wide open, already taking in her world. She had a thick crop of dark curls and tiny features carved in pale, flawless porcelain.

“She’s a little colicky,” Jamie said. “But she’s a good baby.”

It was like holding feathers, she was so light. Like holding a miracle. Experiencing God. The thought slipped into my mind, and tears filled my eyes. Could I bear it? Helping to care for this child?

“Are you all right?” Jamie asked.

“She’s just so beautiful.” I felt one tear slip down my cheek, but managed to stop the rest. He’d think I was deranged. Maybe the sort of woman who would steal a baby. I looked up at him, clearing my throat as I grounded myself again in my surroundings. “Is this her first visit to your office?” I asked. “Your coworkers must have flipped over her.”

He tapped his fingers on his desk, not answering right away. “Actually,” he said, “I’ve brought her here all this week.” Leaning forward, he studied his new daughter where she rested quietly in my arms. “Laurel’s having a hard time.”

Was he confiding in me? “I’m so sorry to hear that,” I said.

“She had a very rough start,” he said. “She hemorrhaged during the delivery and is anemic and I think she feels isolated and…unsure of herself.”

“Oh. Poor thing.” I felt sympathy for the woman I’d met only a couple of times. How hard to have a new baby and not feel up to taking care of her. “I hope she feels better soon.”

“Thanks. Me, too.”

I looked at the stack of real-estate brochures on Jamie’s desk. “It’s strange, seeing you here in an office,” I said. “Seeing you look human.”

He laughed. “I’m very human,” he said. “That’s all I am. All I want to be. A good human.”

“I…” I wanted to tell him what my few visits to the chapel had meant to me. I knew I would be going back, with or without Steve. I looked down at Maggie, whose long-lashed eyes were now closed, the lids twitching a little as if she was dreaming. “I don’t know how to explain to you how I feel in your chapel,” I said, raising my gaze to him again. “I’m not religious, so it’s strange. It’s hard to put into words.”

“It’s bigger than words?” he suggested.

I nodded.

“Oh, Sara,” he said. “Welcome to my world.”

Jamie and Laurel lived in a round cottage called the Sea Tender, right on the beach. I didn’t want to feel envy when I walked inside the cottage and took in the ocean view from the living-room windows, yet how could I help it? Clearly, the Lockwoods had money, something I doubted I’d ever have myself.

“Oh, this is fabulous!” I said as Jamie led me through the room to the sofa, Maggie sleeping against his chest. He’d asked me to stop by to “reconnect with Laurel,” since I’d be helping out with the baby. “Have a seat,” he said. He handed Maggie to me. “I’ll let Laurel know you’re here.”

I settled down on the sofa, the sleeping baby on my knees. A few minutes later, Laurel walked into the room. She moved slowly, as though her legs were made of concrete, and I honestly wasn’t certain I would have recognized her. Her hair was long and stringy and dull, her eyes lifeless. Her face was not pale as much as jaundiced, like a tan that was fading in uneven patches. She wore a yellow robe that needed a good washing.