Shadows on the Sand (30 page)

She’d brought some snacks with her—chips, a six-pack of Sprite, a small box of Cheez-Its, a couple of Hershey’s chocolate bars—but they were all gone. She couldn’t leave to get more until she was sure
he
was gone. Trouble was, how could she know he was gone if she stayed here? She wiped angrily at the tears.

No crying, Andi. No more crying! Just suck it up
.

She had to use the bathroom, but that meant walking out into the bedroom. Sure, it was shadowy there since she’d closed the curtains, but compared to the comforting dimness of the closet, it looked like high noon on a sunny summer day.

From where she sat, she had the company of the flickering light of the muted television. It was sort of interesting trying to figure out what people were saying when she didn’t dare allow any volume for fear someone might hear and come to investigate.

Watching it was what had kept her from going nuts. She’d bitten off her nails and jumped at every little sound. The rumble of her stomach was the loudest noise by far. Sometimes she slept huddled on the closet floor. It made the time pass and kept her from thinking about how hungry she was.

But now her bladder was sending
very full
signals to her brain.

You can go to the bathroom, stupid! It’s safe. No one knows you’re here
.

She moved to the closet door and peeked out. No one was there. She knew that before she looked. She also knew she didn’t have to stay in the closet. She just felt safer in there. The darkness and the small space were sort of like curling under the covers at night after a bad dream.

It was all Becca’s fault, the whole awful mess. Andi struggled hard not to hate her sister, but at times like this it was a losing battle. If Becca hadn’t found that stuff about The Pathway online and then been dumb enough to fall for it, they’d all be safe in their own house in the old neighborhood. She’d be sleeping in her old bed, going to school with her old friends, maybe dating.

Instead she was hiding in a closet and Becca was a mom twice over. Who knows, maybe three times by now, and she wasn’t even twenty-two yet.

When the family had been driving from Philadelphia to The Pathway’s compound not much more than three years ago, Andi’d still fought her parents’ decision.

“Mom, this is a polygamous group! Dad’s going to take other wives.”

Her mother laughed. “Oh, Andi, don’t be foolish. Of course he’s not. I’ve told him that if he takes other wives, I’ll take other husbands.”

“That’s not the way it works.” Andi felt as if she alone could see past the reflection in a pane of one-way glass to perceive The Pathway for the warped and corrupt religion it was. The others saw the image Michael wanted them to see. “It’s the men who have multiple partners, Mom, not the women.”

Her mother and father had grinned at each other like the idea of multiple partners was ridiculous. But Andi was seated behind her father and saw his face in the rearview mirror when he looked forward. There was something in his expression, a slyness maybe, that made her know he planned to enjoy all the perks at The Pathway.

And he had. Three young wives at last count. Maybe more by now. And her mother had been devastated by his perfidy.

With each new wife, she grew paler and more despondent. By the time she was sent to the tiny infirmary where Andi worked, helping the one woman in the compound who was a registered nurse, Mom had lost her will to live.

“Mom, there’s nothing wrong with you physically.” Andi held her mother’s limp hand and stared in disbelief at this wan creature she’d become. “You’re giving up. Don’t do that! Don’t let them win. Don’t let
him
win.”

Mom gave a weak smile.

Andi took that for encouragement and leaned close so her words weren’t overheard. “We’ll leave here, you and me, Mom. We’ll go home. We’ll—”

Mom shook her head. “It’s too late for me.”

“Don’t say that.” Suppressed tears made Andi’s throat ache. “Please don’t say that!”

Mom patted her hand. “You were right about this place, Andi. It’s evil here. It’s about domination and control.” She sighed. “But I’m too tired to fight it any longer.” Her eyes fluttered closed as if keeping them open was too demanding a task.

“You have to fight!” How did you reach someone who was quietly but with determination committing suicide? “You have people who love you. Fight for them. For me!”

An expression of great distress contorted Mom’s face. “No one loves me, Andi. I lost your father the day we drove through the gate.”

The veracity of that statement made Andi want to hurt her father and hurt him badly. How dare he! She ran a gentle hand over her mother’s hair.

“I lost you that day too, honey.”

Andi kissed her mother’s pale cheek. “You didn’t lose me. You could never lose me. I love you. I always will.”

Mom kept on as if she hadn’t felt the kiss or heard Andi’s words of affection. “Becca might live in the dorm where I live, but she’s busy with her children and those of the others. I don’t see her very much. I think she avoids me. I embarrass her.”

“Oh, Mom.” Andi’s heart broke for the pain she heard, the pain of shattered dreams, of unexpected and undeserved rejection.

They sat for a few minutes, the only sound Mom’s labored breathing.

“She fits here.” Despair and sorrow limned Mom’s words.

“I don’t,” Andi said fiercely.

Again that weak smile. “You don’t, thank God. And I don’t either. I don’t do well with being alone.”

“With being betrayed, you mean. Being forsaken.”

Mom didn’t disagree.

“Get well, Mom, and we’ll figure out a way to escape. We’ll go back home.”

Mom shook her head. “No money. Your father gave everything we had to Michael—the money from the sale of the house, Becca’s and your college funds, his 401(k). We didn’t have lots, but what we did have is gone.”

Andi listened in horror, not to the recitation of the money issues, which she’d figured out long ago, but to the desperate little gasps her mother made as she spoke, small little panting huffs as though even talking was too much effort.

“You though.” Mom clasped Andi’s hand in both her pale, cold ones. Her nails were cyanotic, as were her lips. “You’re strong, honey. You can do it. You can escape.”

“We,” Andi said, tears now falling. “
We
can escape.”

Mom shook her head again and turned to the wall. Two days later she was dead.

Now Andi rested against the back of the closet. She’d escaped, and if
she hadn’t tried to be so clever and taken what wasn’t hers, no one would care. They’d never miss her, and no one would come looking. They’d be glad to be rid of her.

But she had stolen, and she knew they’d never stop looking.

She tensed. She heard voices, faint, but at a time of day when everyone should be out of the building. She leaned out of the closet door so she could hear better.

Someone bumped against the front door, then spoke. She recognized Greg’s voice. With a feeling of alarm she understood that he was going to enter the apartment. Surely if she just hunkered down here in the closet, she’d be okay. Why would he look in a closet?

But what if he was showing the place to potential renters? They’d want to check out the closet. Alarm bloomed into pure panic.

Under the bed! She could hide there. No one looked under a bed. She stood, ready to charge across the room and dive into the dust and dirty socks Chaz had left there.

She’d taken one step when the door opened and Greg’s clear voice floated down the short hall.

“I know the clothing is all yours, Chaz. Get it and leave.”

“What? You don’t trust me?” Chaz’s whiny voice chilled her.

Greg gave a snort in answer, and a third voice said something. All she caught was the word
bed
, but it was more than enough. The rental company guy was here to reclaim his furniture. He’d take the bed apart, and if she was beneath it, there she’d be, vulnerable and exposed, as helpless as a beached whale, only skinnier.

The bathtub! No one could take that apart. It was attached to the walls.

She moved as quickly and quietly as she could, pushing the remote on the television to kill the picture as she passed. Greg wouldn’t hurt her, and
he wouldn’t let Chaz hurt her, but he’d tell Clooney where she was. He was a straight arrow that way.

And Clooney would try something. She didn’t know what, but she knew he would. She’d seen the guns he had, and it scared her to think of him going after Michael or Harl. He might still see himself as a soldier, but he was old now. Michael would hurt him, maybe kill him. Or Harl would. And then where would she be? Back at the compound under house arrest was where—if she wasn’t dead too.

The shower curtain, an ugly opaque green with black mold growing halfway up it, had just settled in place when Chaz walked into the bedroom.

“Who closed the curtains?” he called. “It’s like nighttime in here.” She heard him pulling the cord that opened them and held her breath, waiting for him to say someone had been or was in the place.

“What?” Greg called from the living room. She heard his footfalls as he approached the bedroom.

“Nothing,” Chaz mumbled, and she wilted with relief.

She could hear the drawers being wrenched open and slammed shut. She heard the hangers rattle as he pulled his few shirts free. Would someone notice that the television was warm from use? It sat on top of the bureau, and maybe Chaz would feel the heat coming off it as he grabbed the few items he had there.

She shivered and tried to think about something besides her full bladder and her overwhelming fear.

“Okay, you’ve got it all,” Greg said. “Let’s go.”

“Don’t rush me,” Chaz answered, all smarmy and snarly. “I’ve gotta get my stuff in the bathroom.”

Andi slapped a hand over her mouth to hold in the cry of distress that
struggled to break free. She stood frozen like a monkey-speak-no-evil caricature as Chaz yanked open the medicine cabinet so hard it slammed back against the wall. She heard him slide things across the glass shelves as he pulled them out.

What if he had stuff in the tub? She kept her shampoo and her body soap and scrubber in one of the corners of the tub at Clooney’s. She looked, and there sat a bottle of Pert on the back corner, the acid green bottle a sharp contrast to the dingy white of Chaz’s never-washed tub. She watched, trapped, as his skinny hand with the dirty, ragged nails reached for it. She watched, paralyzed, as he scanned the tub for other stuff and his gaze settled on her. His eyes widened, then narrowed.

“Well, well, well,” he said with soft menace. “Look who we have here.”

She put her finger to her lips and looked at him in despair, not expecting a rotten person like him to do as she wanted but unable to resist asking. Sometimes miracles happened, didn’t they? “Please,” she mouthed. “Don’t tell.”

His nasty grin made her think of a hungry wolf, and she knew she was the helpless lamb.

He surprised her when he backed away and walked out of the bathroom. “I got it all. Can I go now?”

Her knees gave way.

I
felt trapped behind the register as I looked at my mother and her husband standing just inside the café door. I held my breath and hoped I was up to whatever happened.

I’d watched too many movies. There was no “Carrie, I can’t believe I’ve finally found you!” There were no eager hugs, no signs of recognition as Mom’s gaze brushed over me.

She did look at my sling and say, “Oh my, I bet that hurt.”

I managed a nod and the word, “Jetty,” but she was already scanning the room for her new best friend, Mary Prudence.

Luke smiled at me. “Breakfast for two,” he said. I couldn’t get my mind around the idea of his being my stepfather.

Of course he didn’t know me. Why would he? I doubted Mom had a picture of me at any age to show him. Even if she did, I looked different. Back then my hair, an unappealing dishwater blond that I hacked at every so often, was pulled straight back in a ponytail. Now it was a glossy highlighted blond cut shoulder length with feathered bangs that made my eyes pop, or so my beautician told me. I had developed a figure, lost the acne and the slouch, but most important, I’d learned confidence I hadn’t had as the kid everyone pitied.

I slid off my stool and picked up two menus. As I walked from behind the register counter, I had a chance to study Mom.

Her curls, a permanent I knew, were an artful chestnut, flipped back and up with the visual effect of a facelift. The puffiness that had been her chronic look courtesy of the booze was gone, replaced by a healthy glow.
Her makeup was subtle and expertly applied, a far cry from the runny mascara and heavy eyeliner that used to cake and bleed under her eyes and run down her cheeks. She wore a collared red shirt under a textured royal blue sweater flecked with the red of her blouse. She wore a loose denim jacket over the sweater. Her black jeans looked comfortable, as did her white walking shoes.

In spite of myself I wondered about her story. How had she gone from my drunk and unfit mother to this sleek, sophisticated woman I resented with an antipathy that shook me? What right did she have to this man and his money and position after what she’d put Lindsay and me through?