Finding Me (25 page)

“It’s a pretty pickle you find yourself in, that’s for sure.”

“Kenmore, why do you think he took me?”

“He loved you kids. He was always complaining that it was useless to be a father if he never had time to spend with his children. Between work and his mother and all his other obligations, he felt like he was missing everything about your growing up. Beth
and Max were both too old for it to work, but you . . . with you he could start over and do it right.”

“I’m not sure I’d call what he did ‘doing it right,’ but I understand what you mean.” She paused, working up her nerve for the next question. “Were he and Alison planning to get divorced before everything happened?”

“Never came up, to my knowledge.”

“My grand— Suze’s mother gave me some of her old letters. She was under the impression they were getting divorced.”

“Sounds like a married man telling his girlfriend what he thinks she wants to hear.”

“That’s kind of what I thought, too.” Kelli wiped at her eyes, then looked Kenmore full in the face. “Do you think Alison had any clue?”

“I’m sure she knows things weren’t as perfect as Beth remembers, but no, I don’t think she had any inkling that David was thinking of doing what he did, or even capable of such a thing.” He shook his head. “How long have you known?”

“A few weeks. I was going through Daddy’s things after the wreck, and I found some old papers. I couldn’t believe it.”

“What were you told, as far as your past?”

“That my family was killed in a fire in Louisiana. A fire that destroyed all their pictures and everything. I’ve never known what they looked like.”

Kenmore whistled. “I’m sorry for you, kiddo. I’d be lying if I didn’t say it.”

Kelli shook her head. “I’m sorry for all the damage he left behind. You included.” She took a deep breath, and didn’t continue until she was certain she could do so without getting choked up. “Is there anything I can do to help Alison while I’m here? Or more that I can do for Beth or you?”

“Still planning to make amends?”

“Yes, I guess so. I need to get some sort of peace out of all this before I go back.”

“You’re helping me now, just by being at the store. And you’ll be helping me more than plenty after I have my surgery next week. But you might as well quit looking up this tree, it’s one you’ll never be able to climb.”

“You mean Daddy did so much damage I can never make up for it?”

“I mean, there’s only one person who can pay for someone else’s sins, and you’re not Him. He died on a cross a couple thousand years ago.”

“Well, I’ve got to try.”

“Can’t fault you for that, just telling you that you’re looking in the wrong place.”

The crunching of leaves behind them told Kelli this conversation was over. At this point, she was glad.

Kelli arrived home at noon. The morning had not gone as she’d planned in many ways, yet there was some relief in Kenmore knowing the truth.

She pulled the box of letters from the back of the closet, in spite of the fact that she kept promising herself she was going to quit reading them. She chose a letter from the second stack, when things were a little further along. Maybe then she wouldn’t have to read so much about how “in love” Mimi was with the married man who was also Kelli’s father. The man who seemed so little concerned about the family he was leaving behind.

Dear Mom,

Well, I’ve done something so awful I just can’t keep from crying. It is truly the most terrible thing I’ve ever done, but I just don’t know how I could have done it any differently.

The tryouts for the junior high musical were this week. They are doing Bye Bye Birdie, and Kelli wanted the role of Kim so bad. She’s been practicing and practicing. Mom, let me tell you that kid has an AMAZING voice. Don came home yesterday and heard her, turned about three shades of pale, and told her she was not allowed to audition, that theater was a waste of time and energy. He even went and called Mrs. Ross and told her to mark her off the tryout roster.

A little later, I found Kelli crying in her room about it. She was so hurt, and she was confused because her friends had heard her practicing too, and they were all telling her how fabulous she was. I knew there was only one way to convince her to give it up.

I did it. I did what I had to do, but I am so ashamed of myself I can hardly stand it. I told her that her father thought she sounded terrible, and it embarrassed him. Oh Mom, you should have seen that poor girl’s face. I crushed her. But it was the only thing I could do to keep us all safe.

I have never felt so awful in my entire life.

Suze

Kelli crumpled the letter and threw it across the room. She, too, had vivid memories of that day—the last time she’d ever sung in public.

She remembered seeing her father at her bedroom door, and she remembered the rough edge to his voice. “Enough of this musical stuff. You need to be focusing on your schoolwork.”

“Daddy, I’ve got A’s in every single class.” She hadn’t thought he was serious at first.

“And it needs to stay that way. You are entirely too preoccupied with all this show stuff. You need to be focusing on things that matter, not wasting all your time on silly things like plays.”

The tears ran down her face in earnest. She had wanted to be in that show so badly, and all her friends had told her she was good enough. She had believed them. Until an hour later, when Mimi came into her room and said—

Now that Kelli knew why it had all happened, it only made it hurt that much more. She went to her journal, thinking she’d maybe pour out some of her pain. Instead she looked at the title,
Finding Kelli
, she’d written across the cover. Kelli wasn’t even her real name. She picked up a Sharpie and marked a big X across it. Just above it, she wrote the word
Me.

Finding Me.
“That’s what I’ve got to do.” She said the words aloud to no one, then picked up the phone and called Denice. “I think I hate my father.”

29

W
ow. That is awful. In your father’s defense, he likely had no idea Mimi said that to you. He probably thought his own words were enough, and that you’d get over them.”

Kelli didn’t care about what details her father did or didn’t know. “Maybe, maybe not, but it was still his idea to shut me down.” Kelli wiped at her eyes. “I have spent my entire adult life too embarrassed to sing around people. It has been a wound and a feeling that I wasn’t good enough, and now I find out that maybe I actually am good enough—was in fact, a little
too
good, so my father and his wife decided to kill every bit of my self-esteem to keep themselves safe.”

Denice was silent for a moment, and Kelli knew some kind of psychoanalysis was about to be bestowed. “I think we both know that I think—and have thought all along—that you are not ready to deal with all of this right now. Why don’t you come home?”

“No! If I come home now, then he wins. And Mimi wins. I’ve got to stay here until . . . I’m not sure until what, exactly, but until I can leave here feeling as if I’ve done enough.”

“Okay, if that’s how you feel, we’re going to have to work our way through it as best we can. Let’s try to focus on some positive, shall we?”

“I’d love to hear this one.”

“Your father, like every other human on the planet, is like a giant gemstone—there are many facets to each of us, and when we are focused on a particular facet in a person, many others are hidden on the back side of the gem. Thankfully for you, the facet of your father you saw most was his love for you and his kindness. However, there was another side, dark and hidden, that he did his best to protect you from. That doesn’t make him a completely bad man, it just makes him human.”

“Facets maybe, but this is more like complete forgery.”

“Admittedly, there are some very dark facets to your father, some that we’ve never seen before now. We all have some dark facets of our own—that is not to say I excuse your father one bit, or Mimi either, although in Mimi’s defense, she was fighting for her life, or at least she believed she was.”

“Yeah, she was fighting to keep the fact that she’d run away with a married man and his daughter a secret, so she decided to say something so hurtful to that daughter that she would never be the same again, all in the name of protecting herself.”

“Mimi has always had more than her share of self-interested facets, and we both know it. We also both know that Opal wasn’t exactly the warmest of mothers, and Mimi never had a father. Wounded people tend to create more wounded people. Baby, you’re wounded to the point of wrecked now, so you’re going to have to make conscious decisions with everything you do and say from here on out not to continue the cycle on those around you.”

“You mean my mother and sister?”

“Partly. And anyone you might love in the future.”

“Assuming that’s even possible for me now. How can I trust anyone ever again?”

Mimi woke me up on Saturday, which was something she’d never done before. Mimi appreciated sleeping late on weekends. She was positively
giddy about the whole thing, though. She kept saying “Out
of bed, sleepyhead,” and then she’d giggle at her
little rhyme and say something to the effect of, “It’s going to be a big day. We’ve got
to get moving.”

Today was the day she was taking me shopping for prom dresses. It was my senior year,
and Ken Bastion had already asked me to prom. There
were a couple of stores in Santa Barbara and then another couple about thirty miles away that carried nice dresses, but Mimi had been insistent from the beginning. “This is
one of your most important high school memories, and we are going to do this right.”

I rolled out of bed and took a quick shower. I stumbled downstairs to
the kitchen and found that she’d scrambled some egg whites and cooked some meatless “sausage” patties. She was so
excited, and kept talking about us needing our protein to keep our energy up.

It was pouring rain, so the usual two-hour drive to Los Angeles ended up taking
more like three. I can still remember how fast her
windshield wipers were moving, trying to keep up with one of the heaviest downpours I’ve ever seen. I told
her that we could turn back, but she wouldn’t even talk about it.

We finally arrived at this place.
Mimi had apparently made an appointment several weeks ago (I’d had no idea until we arrived). They hurried me
back to this really nice dressing room and put Mimi in a chair in the area just outside—complete with
a pedestal and full-length three-way mirror. The sales
lady asked me all about colors and styles, and then
she brought me dress after dress.

“I want to see,
I want to see,” Mimi would say with each new
arrival.