Full Ride (27 page)

Except I was a victim of Daddy's crime,
I think.
Me and Mom and all those other people. Daddy didn't take anybody's life; he just ruined people's lives and tortured them by leaving them to go on and on in pain. Leaving Mom and me to go on and on in pain. . . .

Would it be better to be dead?

My feet evidently don't think so, because I veer away from this dark, dangerous alley.

I turn corners blindly, because it is dark everywhere now, not just in old alleyways. I am hungry and thirsty and cold, and the only reason I'm not crying anymore is because it seems as useless as everything else.

Then I turn a corner and there's light ahead of me, crazy-colored light: purple and green and blue and orange and red. . . .

It's stained glass.

I blink and realize I know exactly where I am: I'm standing outside the church Mom goes to, the one I've resolutely refused to enter for the past three years.

And there's Mom's car in the parking lot, not ten feet away from me.

I remember: It's Tuesday night. And on most Tuesday nights, if Mom doesn't have to work, she goes to this church program where they have a soup supper and a service for all their members.

I'm torn between relief, because she wasn't running away from me, after all, and disgust: How could she
not
be searching
for me? Isn't she worried? Doesn't she care? How could she just sit in church, wasting time, when we should be planning what to do to keep the news I told Mr. Court from traveling all the way to Excellerand?

But is what I've done any better?
I wonder.

A soft drone of voices comes from inside the church, and I recognize it as some kind of responsive reading. Then that ends. It's replaced by organ chords, the start of a song I also recognize.

It's “Amazing Grace.”

I haven't stepped foot in any sort of religious service in three years, but I remember what grace is. It's being saved—and forgiven for everything, even when you don't deserve it.
Especially
when you don't deserve it.

And I want grace. I want to be forgiven for messing up and telling Mr. Court our secret, for running away from Mom, for yelling at her, for hating Daddy so much, for turning away from him when he wished me happy birthday that day in the courtroom all those years ago. And for never, ever, ever writing back to him over the past three years.

But if I get grace and forgiveness, does that mean Daddy gets it too? Daddy, with all the horrible things he did? The horrible things that could even lead to someone killing Mom and me?

“I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see,” the people in the church sing.

And I know I am still lost and I can't see anything clearly, but I stand there listening, because I've got nowhere else to run to. I can remember singing this song myself when I was a little girl in a beautiful frilly dress, sitting in church knowing I was pretty and good, and my life was pretty and good, and God and everybody else loved me. Once something bad has happened to you and you've done bad things yourself, how do you ever get that feeling back?

The song ends, and now the people in the church start reciting something together again. I catch the words “who art in heaven . . .” so it must be the Lord's Prayer.

I slump against the side of the church, my scraped, sore back cooled by a metal doorframe. I don't know what I should do next, but at least I've got some time before I have to decide. Nobody will come out of the church until the Lord's Prayer is over, until the rest of the service is over.

Just as I think that, the door behind me swings open, knocking me out of the way. The person in the doorway grabs me before I fall, and I see who it is.

It's Mom.

She gasps, but doesn't say anything. She just throws her arms around my shoulders and hugs me tight. And I hold on to her just as hard. We both clutch each other and sob into each other's shoulders. And there are so many things we need to talk about that I can't sort them out. I just say the first thing that pops into my mind.

“Why were you walking out in the middle of the Lord's Prayer?” I ask. “You would have killed me if I'd done that when I was a little kid.”

Mom is still holding on to me, but she pulls back enough that she's staring me straight in the eye. Is there laughter mixed in with her sobs? A glint of humor in her eyes, along with the tears?

No,
I decide.
It's all tears.

“I haven't been able to get through the whole Lord's Prayer since your father was arrested,” she says.

I stare back at her. Even with all her fear, I'd thought my mom was so smug and holy and self-righteous. But she can't even pray right anymore? She's that much like me?

“But . . . you go to church,” I say numbly. “All the time.”

“I'm
trying,
” Mom says. “I'm trying to get things right, to trust God again. . . . Usually I just sit there in silence during the Lord's Prayer. But tonight I was having more trouble than usual. There's one line I can never bring myself to say.”

I study her face, tinted by the red and blue and purple light from the stained glass. It looks like a bruise. I know exactly which line she means.

“ ‘Forgive us our trespasses,' ” I quote. “ ‘As we forgive those who trespass against us.' You haven't forgiven Daddy either!”

Why does this make me happy?

Mom nods, her face a study in shame.

“Sometimes that's the reason,” she says. “Sometimes it's more like . . . I don't
want
to be forgiven. Because I can't forgive myself.”

“Yourself?” I squint at her. “Why?”

She shifts to having only one arm around my shoulder, and we start walking together toward the car.

“I'm a grown-up,” she says. “A
mother.
I should have understood what was going on. I should have stopped him. I never should have let him ruin our lives . . . especially not
your
life.”

These are things I've thought, but I didn't know she felt that way too. Her voice practically throbs with guilt. It hurts to listen.

“No, Mom, it's not your fault,” I say, and for once I feel the truth of this; for once I don't blame her at all. I snort disgustedly. “You could say it's more my fault. Remember what Daddy said? ‘How else would someone like me ever be able to send his own kid to college?' He told
everyone
he was stealing that money for me!”

Mom stops so abruptly in the middle of the parking lot that her arm around my shoulder jerks me up short. She turns to face
me directly. We are standing under a light pole, so the two of us are bathed in light.

“Becca, you don't actually believe that, do you?” she asks.

I don't answer. Mom lets go of me to clutch her head in her hands.

“I thought I was protecting you, not telling you everything,” she murmurs. “But I was hurting you worse.”

“Wait—is there something
else
you didn't want me to know because then I might think my father was a scumbag?” I ask.

How could there be anything else? How could my father's crimes be such a bottomless pit?

Mom pushes her hands back into her hair. It's a despairing gesture, and there's nothing but anguish on her face.

“If your father had
really
been stealing any of that money for you for college,” she says, “he would have put it in some designated fund—a five twenty-nine, a Coverdell . . . I thought he
was
doing that with his legal earnings. I thought he
had.
I was so happy when the attorney told me one of the things the government wouldn't seize—one of the things we were allowed to keep along with the house and the car—was college savings. Except . . . there weren't any. He hadn't saved anything for you.”

I wait for the anger to surge over me again—anger at Daddy for yet another lie, yet another failing, anger at Mom for yet another secret. And anger because this is just one more reminder that I don't have the slightest idea how I'm going to pay for college, if I ever get to go. This is another door slammed in my face.

But somehow, this time, the anger doesn't come. I don't know if I found some tiny crumb of forgiveness as I stood under the glow of the stained glass, listening to “Amazing Grace.” Or maybe I'm just tired of being angry all the time.

“If it helps, I know your father thought none of this would be a problem,” Mom says. “He thought he could go on making—
stealing—money hand over fist, so he wouldn't have any trouble paying for your college or anything else. I don't think he ever expected to get caught.”

It doesn't even make me mad that Mom is still making excuses for Daddy.

“Is there anything else you're waiting to spring on me?” I ask dejectedly. “Anything else you think you're protecting me from, that's really just another booby trap to destroy me?”

Mom studies my face. I can tell it's on the tip of her tongue to say, “No, honey, that's the last secret I was keeping from you. You know everything important now. Honest.”

But that isn't what she says.

“I don't know,” she admits. “That's everything I can think of right now, but it's been three years and I'm still figuring things out. I'm stumbling around in the dark here, too.”

There's something different about how she says this—the pain she lets into her voice? The agony splayed across her face? The helplessness she openly reveals? It's like she's been unmasked.

She isn't trying to protect me anymore,
I think.
She isn't trying to hide anything from me. She isn't pretending she has all the answers just because she's the mother, the grown-up.

And that's when I understand: In that one instant, she switched over to treating me like a grown-up, too.

This time it's me who puts my arm around her shoulder.

“Come on,” I say. “Let's go home.”

And it's not that I think we will truly be safe there; it's not that I think we've solved anything.

But neither one of us is alone in looking for answers anymore.

We talk all the way home. We take a short break only to tiptoe into the apartment and check behind all the furniture and double-check and triple-check the locks. We're being foolish and superstitious and paranoid—surely we've got some time before Excellerand could find us because of what I told Mr. Court. And anyhow, what difference would any of our precautions make if there were assassins nearby? It'd be so easy to break in through a window; it'd be so easy to put a silencer on a gun and take two quick shots at shadows that can't be hidden by our flimsy blinds.

Still, I feel like we're being bold and fearless just turning on the lights, just sitting down to eat leftover chili at our kitchen table.

Maybe the past three years when all I saw was Mom acting terrified, she felt like she was being bold and fearless just letting me go to school every day, just heading to work herself, just barely managing not to fall apart completely?

We go back to talking endlessly. I tell Mom everything about the Court scholarship, from the very beginning. I tell her how I
thought Whitney was dead and how I found out that she wasn't. I tell her about the conclusion I jumped to about the scholarship, and how much I wanted to believe that Daddy, from prison, had brilliantly worked out a scam to funnel money to me for college. I tell her about the mistakes I made: writing that furious screed to Daddy, accidentally turning it in as my scholarship essay, then trying to use truth as my defense when the Courts assumed my problem was the same as Whitney's.

Mom sighs a lot during my story. More than once, tears well up in her eyes. But she doesn't interrupt except for a few questions now and then, and these are minor, inconsequential, just to get me to explain more clearly.

When I finish, we sit in silence for a moment, our empty chili bowls in front of us. I can hear the tick of Mom's alarm clock from her bedroom. Gently I tap Mom's hand.

“Your turn,” I say.

Mom startles.

“I . . . I don't have any answers,” she says. “I'm sorry, but I don't know what we can do to be sure what you said won't get back to Excellerand. I don't know how we can stay safe until your daddy's accusations against them come out. . . .”

I feel a pang of guilt, answered by a defensive,
Well, how was I supposed to know this was a matter of life and death, when Mom never told me . . .
The cycle of anger and accusation is starting again.

No, it just wants to start again,
I think.
I can stop it.

I put on a rueful smile for Mom. And it's not fake, not hiding anything. It just holds kindness, too. And understanding.

“I just meant, can we figure things out together?” I ask. It's strange how shy I feel even saying this, suggesting we might actually function as a team. Or . . . a family. “Just tell me what you're thinking.”

Mom makes a wry face, wrinkling up her nose.

“Honestly? I'm thinking this is why I like the jobs everyone else hates at the hospital,” she says. “When a patient vomits, or someone's adult diaper leaks—I know how to deal with that. This? Where do we even start?”

“Ugh, Mom, that's disgusting,” I say, pretending to gag.

But I can understand. Maybe part of the reason I've studied so hard the past three years was that it was such a relief to know
some
right answers. Give me a fill-in-the-blank Spanish quiz, give me a multiple-choice chemistry test, give me an AP lit essay exam, even, if you have to. But don't expect me to know how to deal with real life.