Secrets She Left Behind

Inside, we walked to the place where the pots and pans were. The police lady told me to look at all the boxes to see if any of them looked like the one Miss Sara carried. I thought I remembered it perfect. It was red with a big silver pot on it. But when I saw all the different boxes, I got confused.

“Maybe it was blue.” I pointed to a blue box. Then I saw a yellowy one with a funny pan on it, and my memory said that was it. “I think it was this one,” I said.

“That’s an electric wok,” the police lady said. “I thought you said it was a big pot?”

“What’s an electric rock?” I asked Mom.

“Wok,” she said. “It’s a kind of pan. Is that what it looked like?”

I moved my mouth back and forth like I did when I was thinking hard. I felt so mixed up with all those boxes. Maybe it wasn’t even a pot at all. I pointed to a red box that had a white square bowl thing on it. “Maybe it was that one,” I said.

“A casserole?” Mom asked.

I shook my head, because casseroles had lots of different food in them. I didn’t like them. I didn’t like food to touch.

“Memories can play tricks on you sometimes, can’t they?” Mom said. It was her patient voice.

“Can you narrow it down, Andy?” the police lady asked.

I wasn’t sure what “narrow it down” meant.

“Are there any you’re absolutely sure were not the box she was carrying?” Mom asked.

“The little ones,” I said. “It wasn’t little.”

The police lady’s cell phone rang. Mom and me waited while she talked. Mom winked at me.

“Are you excited about Kimmie coming to dinner?” She used a quiet voice because of the police lady talking on the phone.

“Yes!”

Mom put her finger on her lips.

“Yes,” I whispered. I wanted Maggie to meet Kimmie. Maggie wouldn’t come to swim practice because she didn’t like seeing people yet. That was why Mom said Kimmie could come to dinner.

Kimmie told me, “I used to hate going to Matt’s swim practices, but now I can’t wait so I can see you.”

When she said that, I hugged her. I wasn’t supposed to hug people besides my family, but I had to hug Kimmie then. She didn’t mind. She really didn’t. But she said I smelled like cigarettes. She said, “Please don’t smoke.” I threw my cigarettes away.

“Mom?” I said now. She was looking at a can-opener thing.

“What?”

“Me and Kimmie hug sometimes, but she doesn’t mind so it’s okay. Right?”

Mom kept looking at the can opener. It had a handle and she made it go up and down.

“Where are you when you hug?” she asked.

“The pool and her house and our house.”

“In your room?” She looked at me in a way that told me I better say no, even though we did hug in my room once.

“No,” I said. We were allowed in my room with the door open.

“Hugging’s nice,” Mom said. “And Kimmie’s your girlfriend, right?”

I nodded.

“It’s okay to hug your girlfriend.”

The police lady turned off her phone. “That was the manager,” she said. “No pots or pans have been returned in the last few days.”

“So maybe it wasn’t from this store?” Mom asked.

“Right. Or it wasn’t a pot or pan.” She tipped her head funny and looked at me. “Maybe it was actually a wok or a casserole or a potato peeler,” she said.

“What?” I laughed. She was making a joke.

“Or she never made it to the store,” she said.

“Oh, don’t even say that.” Mom had on her worried look. She had it on a lot since Miss Sara went missing.

Everybody was worried about Miss Sara. I got asked a lot of questions by the police and Mom and Uncle Marcus. Even Maggie asked me questions on account of the Web site thing she’s making. Everybody wanted to know what clothes Miss Sara had on. Things like that. I kept telling them I was too sick that day to remember.

I told my friend Max about the questions and he said it was ’cause I was the last person who saw her. He said the police maybe thought I killed her and cut her up in bags. Like her head in a bag and her arm in a different bag. That was stupid. I told Uncle Marcus what Max said and he said, “Max is just yankin’ your chain.”

The police lady looked at her watch. “I’m out of time,” she said. “Can you two go to some more stores on your own? Maybe the Bed Bath and Beyond and the Target?”

Mom nodded. “Of course,” she said. I wished she said no so we could go home and wait for Kimmie.

But we left the Wal-Mart and went to some more stores. I got more confused in every one of them.

“I can’t do this anymore,” I told Mom when we walked outside from the Bed and Beyond store. It wasn’t just because I wanted to go home. My head hurt. Maybe I never even saw a box. Maybe I dreamed I saw it.

“Okay,” she said. “You’ve been a good sport.”

“You be the one to drive home,” I said. I didn’t feel like driving. I felt bad I messed up about the box.

“Okay,” Mom said.

We got in the car. Mom was an excellent driver. She could go real fast in the parking lot around all the cars and everything.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” I said when we got to the road. “I lost the picture of the box in my head. You know my brain.”

Mom smiled at me. “I love your brain, Andy,” she said. “Don’t worry about it.”

But I was worried. Miss Sara could be chopped up in bags and I couldn’t even remember if she was carrying a pot or a pan.

Chapter Twelve

Keith

I PARKED IN THE LOT OF THE HARRIS TEETER IN OGDEN. stupid to go all the way there with gas prices like they were, but I couldn’t face seeing people in the Food Lion. People would know me there. Want to talk. They’d ask if I knew any more about my mother’s disappearance, because now it was all over the news. All the time they’d be staring at me. It wasn’t like the people in Ogden wouldn’t recognize me—I wore my ID on my face. But at least there, they wouldn’t try to talk to me.

I got out of the car, grabbed a cart and pushed it into the store, which was pretty crowded. I didn’t have a plan. No list. My mother always had a list and she stuck to it like it was the law. Man, I hated this. I bet it’d been five years since I’d been in a grocery store, and then only because I had to tag along with my mother. If I needed to pick up a snack or something, I did it at the gas station. But our refrigerator was almost empty now, and I was finally starting to get hungry even though thinking about that plate of food at Laurel’s still made me gag.

That was another reason the cops thought my mother left on purpose. “Looks like your mom cleaned out the fridge before she disappeared,” one of them said to me. Screw him. I told him we never had much in the fridge to begin with, but I got the feeling he didn’t believe me.

“She cleans out the fridge, but not her bank account?” I’d asked him. If I needed proof something terrible had happened to my mother, that was it. She never used credit cards, so she wouldn’t take off on purpose without cash. When I started thinking about that, the breathing-tube sort of panic would start again.

The cops had a couple of new theories they were playing with now. First theory: She left on purpose because she couldn’t handle the burden of me anymore. Gimme a break. I was less of a burden now than I’d ever been in my life. I’d had all the fight taken out of me. I knew that wasn’t it, and Dawn and Laurel and Marcus all told them that was crazy. They said how much my mother loved me and how devoted she was to me and all that, which made me feel like a shit for how I treated her sometimes, like she was my maid. I’d be different when she came back.

Second theory: I had something to do with her going missing. They didn’t say that, but I didn’t have to be a genius to know what was going through their heads. A couple of them—a guy named Detective Wiley, and I couldn’t remember the other dude’s name—came to the trailer this morning and went through it again, looking for the diary or memoir or whatever. I’d already looked everywhere I could think of. After they tore the place apart, they talked to me for a couple more hours. Their questions started in one spot and then spun out like a spiderweb, looping all over the place until they had me good and confused. I got angry and told them they were wasting their time, and Wiley said, “Settle down, Keith,” which pissed me off more. Like he could settle down if his mother went missing.

They asked me where I was the afternoon she disappeared.

“In school,” I said. Stupid. I knew the minute I said it, I’d screwed up.

Right in front of me, Wiley called over to Douglas High to check the attendance records. “Uh-huh,” he said into the phone, but he was looking at me with these half-closed, suspicious eyes. “Uh-huh. Right. Thanks.” He turned off his phone and talked to the other guy like I wasn’t even there. “She says he left after sixth period,” he said, and they both looked at me, like, what d’you have to say for yourself now, kid?

“All right,” I said. “I went surfing. By the pier. You can ask anybody.” But I knew the dudes who hung out there wouldn’t be able to say if I was there or not. You could be invisible out in the water. That’s why I liked going there in the first place.

The cops finally left, and I spent the next few hours waiting for them to come back with handcuffs—or worse, with a social worker. I couldn’t believe they still hadn’t figured out I was only seventeen. No one at Laurel’s meeting had ratted on me about it, either. Maybe no one knew? Or cared? That was all right with me. The last thing I needed was to end up in a foster home or something. If the cops thought I was eighteen, I’d be eighteen.

I’d managed to get one of those grocery carts with a squeaky wheel, just so the other shoppers would be sure to notice the burned guy. The wheel made the cart tough to push and probably would have killed my shoulder if I hadn’t doubled up on the Perc again that afternoon. The good news was that, even though I was out of food, I had plenty of Percocet. I got them through the mail and my mother must have just re-upped before she disappeared, because three beautiful bottles arrived that afternoon. When it came to pain meds, at least, I was golden.

I lowered my head as I raced through the store, tossing stuff in the cart, not looking at anybody. I just wanted to make it fast, but I didn’t know where anything was. I found the bread and then got some of those packages of ham and cheese. The cart was getting to me, so I traded it in for a smoother ride. Then I got some toilet paper. Some Coke. I pulled one of the cans from the carton, popped it open and drank it warm as I tooled around the store. I passed the cold beer. Oh, man, what I wouldn’t give for a six-pack! I knew this guy at the gas station who’d buy some for me. He got burned in Iraq, so he knew what it was like. I found the cereal and threw a couple boxes in the cart. Then I noticed the price on the shelf below the Honey Nut Cheerios: $4.49? No way. I put the boxes back on the shelf and started looking through the other stuff I’d stuck in the cart. No prices on anything. How were you supposed to figure this out? I’d planned to get out of there for ten bucks. If everything was as expensive as the cereal, I was screwed. How did my mother do it? She was always cutting coupons, so maybe that was the secret to getting by on the crappy money she made at Jabeen’s. I didn’t want to think about her while I was in the store or I’d end up with another crying fit like I’d had in Laurel’s bathroom. That’d be really smooth in the middle of Harris Teeter.

I stared at the meat counter for a long time. I’d had steak maybe four times in my life, and my mouth actually watered, staring at it. I wasn’t even sure how you cooked it. We had this old charcoal grill, but you needed lighter fluid to grill stuff. Just the thought of spraying the coals with lighter fluid and tossing a match on them made me hyperventilate. I was never going to be one of those guys who got his rocks off cooking things on a grill.

I looked up from the meat counter to see this old lady. She was holding a package of ground beef, and she was staring at me. At my face. I’d let down my guard while I was salivating over the steak.

“What are you lookin’ at?” I asked, shoving my cart past her. I had to get out of there.

I whipped down the first aisle I came to. Canned chili was on sale and I tossed four cans in my cart. Then I saw some rice, which was cheap and had directions on the back, so I couldn’t screw it up. That was enough. I headed for the checkout, wishing I could just steal the stuff and not have to face a checker and count out money and everything. I had twenty dollars in my pocket. What if I had more than twenty dollars’ worth in the cart? Crap.

I spotted boxes of chocolate-covered doughnuts at the end of the cereal aisle for half price. A lot cheaper than cereal. My mother never bought doughnuts, but they looked good. I reached toward one of the boxes.

“I can’t resist them either.”

I looked up to see this totally, totally hot girl smiling at me.

I lowered my head again, fast. “’ Scuse me,” I said, trying to push my cart past her, but her cart sort of had me blocked in. Shit. I started moving backward to get around her.

“Aren’t you going to get the doughnuts?” she asked. Like, what the hell did she care?

“Oh. Right.” I grabbed one of the boxes.

“They’re so yummy,” she said.

I turned my head so the right side of my face was toward her. “Yeah,” I said. I hoped it seemed natural for me to talk to her with my head turned, but it probably just made me look weird. Whatever.

“I totally love Entenmann’s,” she said, and it took me a minute to realize she was talking about the brand. “You put those doughnuts and chocolate together, and I’m powerless.” She looked like she’d never eat a speck of chocolate or anything else that could pack on the pounds, but she was skinny in a good way. Not like one of those anorexic actresses. She had small breasts, the way I liked them, and an inch of flat stomach between her white top and brown pants. Those pants fit her like the chocolate coated the doughnuts. She still had a tan and I could picture her on the beach in a string bikini. Her hair was nearly black and her eyes blue and—Oh, shit! I’d let down my guard again. Turned my head toward her while I was salivating over her. She was still smiling, though. I slipped my bad left hand into my pocket.

“You don’t look like you indulge.” That was out of my mouth before I thought about it. It was the kind of thing I would’ve said to a girl before the fire.

“Well, like I said, chocolate’s my weakness.”

I took my hand out of my pocket long enough to flip open the doughnut box and offer her one. “Your only weakness?” I asked. Whoa. All the way, dude. I felt my smile freeze on my face, waiting for the rejection.

She laughed. Reached for a doughnut. “I’ve got others,” she said. “How about you?”

Was she blind? “Too many to count,” I said.

“So.” She nibbled the doughnut. Licked the chocolate from her lips. “What’re you buying today?” She leaned on my cart to peer inside. Her top wasn’t all that low-cut, but I liked what I could see.

“Shopping cheap,” I said.

“I’m the queen of shopping cheap.” She picked up one of the cans of chili. “Need a little nutrition here, though,” she said.

“That’s good protein,” I said.

“Need some veggies. And fruit.”

“Too expensive.”

“Uh-uh,” she said. “Come with me.”

I followed her, both of us pushing our carts, back to the place where all the fresh stuff was. Her ass was perfectamundo. I had her undressed, legs wrapped around me in a death grip, by the time we reached the apples.

“What do you like?” she asked.

I looked at the stacks of vegetables. “Asparagus,” I said.

“Okay, that is too expensive. How about spinach?”

“I don’t know how to cook it.”

“Just zap it in a little water in the microwave. Covered. Not with plastic, though. That’s toxic. Just stick a paper towel over it. But wash it real well first.” She wrinkled her nose. “It’s gritty.”

It sounded like too much work, but I didn’t complain when she picked up a bag of spinach and handed it to me.

We went through the stacks of fruit and she put a few things in my cart, a few in hers. I started feeling weird. She was being way too sweet, like Dawn or somebody hired her to be nice to me. Something felt off about the whole thing.

“So where do you live?” she asked.

“Surf City.”

“Really? I’m staying in Topsail Beach.”

We were practically neighbors. “Why are you shopping way out here?”

“On my way from an appointment,” she said. “How about you?”

“Same,” I lied.

“Listen—” she suddenly stopped her cart in front of the eggs “—I’m from Asheville and I don’t know people around here. How about I cook you something tonight? Make you dinner?”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “I don’t have many friends here,” she said. “Like none, really.”

“I don’t think so, thanks.” The old me would have given anything for a few hours with a babe like her.

“Oh, come on. Please?” she said. “I don’t usually have to beg guys to spend time with me.”

She didn’t have friends in Topsail, so I’d do for now. Then she’d meet some good-lookin’ dude and sayonara Keith. I could skip the pain. I had bigger things on my mind, anyhow.

“Thanks. I’m just not in a great place right now.”

She tipped her head to one side. “Excuse me for prying,” she said, “but were you one of the people in that fire I heard about?”

I looked away. “Depends on what fire you heard about.” I sounded mean.

“Sorry,” she said. “That was way too personal.”

“No, it’s okay. Yeah. The lock-in fire.”

“You’re still really good-looking,” she said. “I don’t think you know that, but I mean it.”

Oh, man, did I want to believe her, but I had a mirror in the trailer. I knew the truth. What the hell was her game?

“Going through something like that…like a fire and all the recovery and stuff. It’s got to be hard.”

“I really gotta check out.” I started to push my cart past hers.

“I did this all wrong,” she said.

I stopped walking. Couldn’t help myself. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“I came on too strong. Made you feel uncomfortable.”

“I’m not uncomfortable.”

“See? I did it again.”

“Don’t give yourself so much credit.” I started pushing my cart again. “You’re not all that powerful.”

She grabbed the corner of my cart. “I’ve been hurt, too.” She had the kind of blue eyes you could go swimming in. “Only difference is my scars are on the inside,” she said. “But I know what it’s like.”

“You don’t have a fucking clue.”

Her cheeks turned red. “All right,” she said. “Sorry I upset you.” She let go of my cart and began pushing her own away. Why was I being such a prick? She scared me. She could look right at my face and not freak, and that just seemed too damn weird.

“Wait,” I said.

She turned around. Her hair swept through the air like she was in a shampoo commercial. “Sorry,” I said. “You can cook me something. Not tonight, though. I feel like crap today.” Not really the truth. I was nicely medicated, but I needed some time to adjust to a girl like her being interested in me.

“Soon?” she asked. “Can I have your cell number?”

She pulled a scrap of paper from a tiny purse and wrote down my number. She wrote hers down, too, then tore the sheet in two pieces and gave me the half with her number on it.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Keith.”

“Well, hey, Keith,” she said, sticking her hand out toward me. “I’m Jen.”

Chapter Thirteen

Sara

Angel’s Wings

1990

SOMETIME DURING THE FIRST YEAR THAT I BABYSAT MAGGIE, I began leading my double life. It crept up on me gradually until, before I knew it, it had me by the throat. By then it was too late for me to change a thing.

I hadn’t given up trying to help Laurel, despite being so rudely kicked out of the house the first time I visited. Or, I supposed, it was really Jamie I was trying to help. I’d pick up groceries for the Lockwoods when I went to the commissary and I brought over the occasional meal. Laurel tolerated me. She was nearly always on the couch when I arrived, her expression flat as she watched TV. If Maggie was with me, Laurel barely seemed to notice her. I sometimes felt as though I was Maggie’s mother instead of Laurel.

In early January, Jamie’s father was hospitalized with pneumonia. Since Steve was in Monterey studying Arabic, I kept Maggie at our small rental house outside Camp Lejeune while Jamie spent most of his time at the hospital in Wilmington. Jamie called often, ostensibly to check on Maggie, but the conversations quickly began to shift to something deeper. He told me how afraid he was that his father might die. I had lost my father when I was sixteen and it was easy for me to sympathize with him.

“I can’t talk to Laurel about any of this,” he said at the end of one of our phone conversations. “I…It’s not her fault. She loves my father, and I know she’s worried about him, but it’s as though she can’t really see outside herself right now. It’s like she has nothing to give me anymore.” He hesitated. “Or Maggie. Or anyone.”

“I know.” I was sitting in a rattan rocker in the third tiny bedroom of my house—the room that had become Maggie’s nursery away from home. Jamie’d furnished it with a crib, the rocker and a changing table. “It must be so hard for you,” I said.

“I keep reminding myself that she’s sick,” Jamie said. “If she had a physical illness, I’d take care of her, so this shouldn’t be any different. But you’re right. It is hard. I sometimes feel like I’m losing my ability to empathize with people.”

“Oh, no, Jamie,” I said. “I watch what happens when you’re in the chapel on Sundays.” People would file into the small five-sided building, talking quietly among themselves as though the morning was nothing special. Then Jamie would walk into the chapel, and the atmosphere would shift to a higher plane. I could see the change in the faces of the people. I could feel it happening inside my own skin. “Think of how many lives you touch there.”

“Yeah. The lives of strangers.” He sounded annoyed with himself. “Yet Marcus pisses me off, and now I’m scared I’m losing it with Laurel. She doesn’t take care of herself. We have…no physical life anymore. I look at her sometimes and don’t even know who she is.”

I decided to take him into my confidence, the way he was taking me into his.

“It’s not great with Steve and me either,” I admitted.

Jamie hesitated. “I haven’t gotten to know Steve,” he said finally, “but you two do seem like a mismatch. You’re friendly and warm and positive and he’s very…reserved.”

That was putting it mildly. “I’m not sure I’ve ever been in love with him,” I said.

“But you married him,” Jamie said. “There must have been something there.”

I looked over at the crib where Maggie was sleeping. “There was a baby there,” I said finally.

“A baby…?”

“It was so stupid,” I said. “I got pregnant on our second date. We barely knew each other. I was so naive.” And a virgin, I thought, but I was already saying more than I should. “I let things go too far and then it was too late for him to stop.”

“It’s never too late to stop,” Jamie said.

“I let it go too far,” I repeated, remembering the sudden pressure of Steve’s penis pushing against me. Into me. “I asked him to stop, but he was…you know. He was so far gone he couldn’t hear me.”

“He heard you,” Jamie said. “Don’t make excuses for him.”

“He said he didn’t. I believe him. He was—”

“You were date-raped.”

“No.” That was too extreme a description of what had happened. “It was my fault.”