Secrets She Left Behind (35 page)

Maggie

M
ONDAY MORNING, I WAS LOADING A MOVIE IN THE DVD PLAYER
for the little boy sitting at the table, when Mr. Jim walked into the playroom.

“Can you come in the hall with me for a second, Miss Maggie?” he asked.

I started the movie and followed Mr. Jim into the hall.

“Madison’s back,” he said when we’d walked a little bit away from the playroom.

“Oh, no,” I said. She’d been home for more than a week, and I’d hoped she’d had some kind of miracle.

“They think this is it,” Mr. Jim said.

“You mean…she’s dying?”

He nodded. “Her mother said that while they were driving in, Madison asked if you’d be here.”

“She did?” I was so touched by that.

“I don’t know if you want to see her or not,” he said, “but I thought I’d tell you and let you decide. I know you felt a special…a connection to her.”

Yes,
I wanted to see her. Of course I did.

“Okay,” I said.

He touched my arm. “You don’t have to, honey. She may not even know you’re there, so if you don’t want to, you—”

“I want to,” I said. “Can you watch the playroom?”

He nodded. “Taffy’s her nurse today,” he said.

I found Taffy, and we walked together toward the little girl’s room. I had a lot of questions I wanted answered before I saw her.

“What about her father?” I asked. I didn’t want to run into him again.

“I think he’s locked up,” Taffy said. “At least he was. Drunk and disorderly and a few other things.”

“Is she awake?”

Taffy shook her head. “She’s getting a lot of morphine to keep her comfortable. Her mama’s in there with her and I know she’s completely wiped,” she said. “Would you be okay sitting with Madison for fifteen minutes or so to let her mother take a break?”

I nodded, but inside, my anxiety kicked up a notch. “What if she dies when I’m with her?”

“Well, I don’t expect that to happen,” she said. “But the truth is, sometimes kids—and adults—seem to wait until their relatives are out of the room to go. It’s like they don’t want to distress them more than they have to.”

Oh, right, I thought. “Do you really believe that?”

She smiled. “I’ve seen lots stranger things than that happen, Maggie,” she said.

Madison’s mother, Joanna, her face ashy gray and her eyes red, sat in the recliner with the little girl on her lap. She handed her over to me as if Madison was a delicate flower. Silently, we sorted out all the leads and the clear plastic tubes that ran to this bag and that. Then Joanna smoothed her hand over Madison’s head, and without a word to me, walked out of the room.

The recliner rocked, something I hadn’t noticed the day I’d read to her in her room. I rocked her gently, knowing the motion was to soothe myself more than to soothe her. She was so medicated, I doubted she had much of a sense of anything going on around her.

I shut my eyes and rocked and rocked, and I didn’t even open my eyes when I sensed Daddy in the room.

“I wanted a miracle for her,” I whispered to him.

I know you did.

“She’s too young.”

She’ll be fine.

I pressed my cheek to the warm skin of Madison’s temple. Against my chest, she slept, barely breathing. She wasn’t struggling, though. She didn’t seem to be suffering at all. I wasn’t kidding myself that
I
had anything to do with how calm she seemed. Anyone could have been holding her at that moment, and she would have seemed just as peaceful. But it wasn’t just anyone. It was
me.
And I felt strangely lucky to be able to hold her life in my arms that way.

She’d felt light the last time I’d held her here in her room. Now she seemed to become lighter by the second, and it took me a moment to understand the reason: circled by my arms, she was already turning to dust.

Keith

I’
D BEEN BACK TO THE TRAILER TWICE IN THE WEEK AND A HALF
since I moved to Marcus’s tower. The first time, I needed to dig up the name of the doctor who prescribed my Percocet. This second time, I needed to find the textbooks I’d never returned to the school. They were after me for them. Not only that, Marcus had it in his brain that he was going to get a tutor for me so I could try to get a GED since I refused to go back to school. I told him I didn’t care if I finished high school or not, but he just kept saying “we’ll see.” That was what Marcus always said when he figured he’d get his way eventually. I was onto him. Jen was on his side. Though they still hadn’t met each other, they were coming at me from different angles, pushing that damn GED. I knew I’d have to cave or else DSS would start making noise about foster care again, and that was the last thing I wanted.

I pulled up in front of the trailer and climbed the steps to the deck. A month had passed since my mother disappeared, and she was quickly dragging Mister Johnson’s eighty percent success rate down toward seventy-nine. Even after all these weeks, it still felt weird to walk into the trailer and know she wasn’t going to be there. Rationally, I knew it, but that didn’t stop me from calling “Mom?” when I walked in the door.

Of course there was no answer, though I thought I heard a sound coming from her bedroom. I pulled a knife from the knife block and went into the room. Nobody there. Nobody in the whole double-wide except me. And somewhere, those damn textbooks.

I started hunting for them and found two of them—chemistry and this book of short stories—sticking out from under the sofa. I was pawing through the pile of stuff on the end table when I saw the blinking light on our answering machine. I dropped the books I was carrying and hit the play button, my finger jumping all over the place. The mechanical female voice said, “One message.”

Mom, Mom, Mom.

I didn’t even realize how hard I was hoping the message would be from her until I heard a stranger’s voice on the tape. Disappointment raced through me so fast I felt like I was going to pass out.

“This is Barbara McCarty,” the woman said, “and I’m trying to reach Sara Larkin.”

Huh? Larkin was my mother’s maiden name. I had no idea who Barbara McCarty was, and I thought that was all she was going to say, but then she kept going.

“Ms. Larkin, we have a three-bedroom available on the first in case you’re still interested. I’ll need to verify your employment at Western Carolina Bank, though, so if you can get back to me ASAP, that’d be great.”

My brain was numb as I listened to the woman give her number, twice. I started dialing it on our landline, but my hand was shaking like crazy. What was going on? I unplugged the answering machine and carried it out to my car. The textbooks could wait.

Keith

I
CARRIED THE MACHINE INTO THE FIRE STATION.

“Where’s Marcus?” I asked the first person I saw, a new volunteer whose name I didn’t know.

“In the garage,” he said.

I put the machine down on the desk in Marcus’s office, then went out to the huge garage where three of Surf City’s fire trucks were parked side by side.

“Marcus?”

“Yeah!” His voice came from somewhere in the middle of the garage.

I walked around the first truck and saw him up on the second, doing who-knew-what with a piece of equipment.

“Gotta talk to you,” I said.

He stood up on top of the truck and wiped his hands on a rag. “Can it wait?”

I shook my head, my voice suddenly stuck somewhere in my throat.

“Okay,” he said. “Go in my office. I’ll be right in.”

In his office, I sat in the chair in front of his desk and stared at the machine like it might get up and walk out of there. He showed up a few minutes later with two bottles of Coke. He pulled a couple of tubes of peanuts out of his desk drawer and held one toward me.

“Want some?”

“No, man.” I plugged the answering machine into his wall outlet. “This is from the trailer. You’ve gotta hear this.” My hand looked like I had one of those shaking diseases as I pressed the play button again.

He was pouring the peanuts into his Coke, but when the woman started talking, his hand froze in midair.

“What the…?” he said.

“Exactly.”

“Larkin?”

“Her maiden name.”

Marcus frowned at the answering machine. “It’s got to be the wrong Sara Larkin.”

“Oh, right. And it’s just a coincidence that this lady called our number.”

“Good point.” He let the peanuts fall, fizzling, into the Coke. “Does this make any sense at all to you?”

“Hell, no. And what’s this employment-at-a-bank crap?”
And why was she keeping everything from me?

“Was that area code 704?” Marcus asked.

“I think so.” I could hardly remember my name.

He picked up the phone.

“You going to call the lady?” I asked.

He shook his head. “We need to get Flip over here.” He held the phone between his chin and shoulder as he typed something into his computer. “Charlotte,” he said.

“Charlotte what? The area code is
Charlotte?
”

“Did she ever talk about Charlotte?”

“Hell, no!”

“Hey, Flip? It’s Marcus. Come over here, okay?”

Flip showed up in about three minutes. I must’ve said “I don’t get it” about a hundred times by then.

“What’s up?” he asked when he walked into Marcus’s office. He saw me. “You okay, Keith?”

“Just listen.” Marcus hit the play button, and Flip looked as weirded out as I felt.

“You wrote this down?” he asked Marcus when the McCarty woman gave her number again. I was starting to hate her voice.

“Got it.” Marcus clicked off the machine.

“Let’s do this on speakerphone,” Flip said.

Marcus hit a button on his desk phone. “Ready for me to dial?” he asked Flip, who nodded. It was me who wasn’t quite ready. My mother had a secret—one, at least—and I didn’t know if it meant she was still alive or not. If we didn’t talk to this woman, at least I could hang on to a little bit of hope.

The phone rang on the other end. Flip checked his watch.

“Failey Hill Apartments,” a woman answered.

“Barbara McCarty, please,” Flip said. “This is Philip Cates of the Surf City Police Department in North Carolina.”

I rested my head on my arms on the top of Marcus’s desk. The room spun, and I shut my eyes.

After a minute, that now-familiar voice came on the line. “This is Barbara McCarty.”

“Hello, Ms. McCarty,” Flip said. “I’d like to talk with you about the message you left for Sara Weston—Sarah Larkin—today.”

“You’re with the police?”

“Surf City. Yes, ma’am.”

“What do the police have to do with this?”

“Ms. Larkin’s been missing for four weeks, and we’re investigating her disappearance.”

The woman was quiet at first. “I don’t know anything about that,” she said finally.

“She was interested in renting an apartment?”

“Yes. But it’s been months now. She…I’d have to check, but I believe she e-mailed us at least six months ago, looking for a three-bedroom. She must have asked to be put on our waiting list, which is why I called her.”

I lifted my head. “What the…” Maybe it
was
the wrong Sara Larkin. This just didn’t make sense.

“You said in your voice mail that you needed to check with Western Carolina Bank regarding her employment,” Flip said.

“That’s right. We always need to verify an applicant’s employment.”

“Why did you think she was working there?”

“She’s not? She must have said so on her application.”

“Can you fax or e-mail me a copy of her application?” Flip asked.

“It’ll take me a few minutes to get my hands on it, but yes. Sure.”

Flip gave her his e-mail address, while Marcus jotted something on a piece of paper and slid it across the desk to him.

Flip glanced at the paper. “And can you tell me how much the rent would be on a three-bedroom?”

“The one coming open is twelve hundred.”

I let out a laugh. “Right,” I said, and Marcus shut me up with a finger to his lips.

“All right,” Flip said. “I’ll watch for your e-mail.”

Marcus clicked the button on his phone.

“It’s gotta be the wrong Sara Larkin,” I said. “Maybe Mom…for some weird reason…changed our phone listing to her maiden name and this lady looked it up and…” I shrugged.

“Why would she do that this long after divorcing your…Steve Weston?” Marcus asked.

I shook my head. “I feel like I don’t know her right now,” I said.

Flip looked at me. “What money did she have besides the thousand or so in her savings account?” he asked.

“Zilch,” I said. We’d already been over this. Over and over. “She’d cash her check from Jabeen’s and we’d live off that. She didn’t even pay rent on the trailer.”

“She didn’t?” Flip raised his eyebrows. “For how long? Is there a chance the two of you were getting evicted?”

I laughed. “No way.”

Marcus shook his head. “Long story short,” he said to Flip. “Laurel owns the trailer park and she let Sara and Keith stay there rent-free.”

“So there was no way she could pay this twelve hundred a month without a new job,” Flip said. “Even then, that’s a chunk of change for someone with only a thousand dollars in the bank.”

I suddenly thought of my college fund. I looked at Marcus. “Could she have gotten into the money you gave her somehow?”

Flip turned to Marcus. “You gave her money?”

Marcus sighed. Looked at me. “You okay with Flip knowing?”

I nodded. “Why not? The whole world knows how fucked up we are now.”

“Jamie was actually Keith’s father,” Marcus said.

“Jamie…” Flip looked totally confused. “Your
brother?
”

Marcus nodded. “So when Jamie died, I started a trust fund—a college fund—for Keith. It had forty thousand dollars in it at the time. I don’t know how much it has in it now. Sara was the trustee, but she couldn’t…can’t…touch the money until Keith goes to college.”

“We’ll check on that and make sure it’s still there,” Flip said. “Keith, think hard. Did your mother talk about moving to Charlotte or applying for a job in Charlotte or anything like that?”

I tried to think back to conversations my mother and I’d had over the last year. The thing was, I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to what she talked about. I had two burned arms and one burned face and they’d occupied most of my time. I sure as hell would have remembered if she said she was planning to move to Charlotte, though. “So, do you think that’s where she is?” I asked. “Maybe she
did
get a job there and found a different apartment.” Maybe she’d deserted me after all. I watched Marcus take a swig of his Coke and peanuts and thought I might barf.

“None of this makes sense right now, Keith,” Marcus said. “But it gives the police a bit more to go on.”

“Right,” Flip said, like everything was now fine and dandy. “We need to bring the P.I. into the loop. Let him know about this.”

I leaned back and looked at the ceiling. “This is so lame,” I said, getting to my feet. “I’m outta here.”

“Hold on, Keith,” Flip said. “We’re going to have to go through the house again.”

“You mean the trailer, don’t you? The pile of rust she left me with while she moved into—”

“Why do you think she was looking at a three-bedroom apartment?” Marcus interrupted me. “Just for herself? I doubt it. I imagine you were in her plans.”

I stared at him. “Then why didn’t she let
me
in on those plans?” My brain was fried, trying to figure it all out.

I wanted to tell Jen. I wanted to crawl into bed with her and tell her everything. Lay it out. She wouldn’t ask me a thousand questions. She’d just listen and then she’d hold me that way she did, like
I wasn’t damaged goods. We could have sex, but I didn’t even care about that right then. And that was really saying something.

I just needed to matter to somebody.