Summer Shadows (11 page)

“But she told me she wanted to, Ms. Fitzmeyer,” the woman had said. “Karlee likes to help.”

Help, schmelp. A four-year-old needed closer supervision. Celia needed to find another baby-sitter by Monday at the latest. Her headache intensified.

A knock roused her, and she blinked as a slim woman in black jeans, a red shirt, and a black blazer came hesitantly into the room.

“Ms. Fitzmeyer?”

Celia nodded. “Yes?”

“I’m Abby Patterson.” The woman’s eyes settled on the bed. Her face crumpled as she saw Karlee.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Celia hastened to say. “Brush burns. Bruises. They’ll hurt for a while, but they aren’t serious. She’ll probably go home tomorrow.”

“Really?” Abby turned a hopeful face to her. “I’m so glad! I couldn’t sleep without seeing for myself that she was all right.”

Abby Patterson. Why did that name sound familiar? “Ah. You’re the eyewitness.”

Abby looked pained. “So they tell me. I’m afraid I don’t remember. It’s like this curtain of gray gauze is strung across that part of my memory.”

Celia stood, Jess a dead weight in her arms. “Come on, let’s pull that other chair over here so you can sit down.”

Abby looked uncertainly at Celia. “I don’t want to impose. I—” She hesitated. “I was afraid I might upset you.”

“Why?”

“Because I can’t tell the police who the driver was.”

Celia saw Abby’s anguish. She made her smile gentle. “Neither can I.”

Abby gave a little bark of laughter at the unexpected answer. “But you weren’t there.”

“But God was. When He wants you to remember, you will.”

Abby visibly relaxed, her shoulders lowering, her mouth softening. “Thank you. That was a kind thing to say.”

“But true.”

Abby nodded. “I agree. But I have to tell you, this waiting for His time is terrible.”

Celia decided that she liked this woman who had cared
enough to come see Karlee, even if it was—she checked the clock on the wall—eleven-thirty at night. Curiosity struck. “How did you get up here? Visiting hours are long over.”

“I checked the hospital map in the lobby and came right to this floor. There was only one nurse at the nurses’ station, and she was busy doing something on the computer. I just walked down the hall like I belonged here.” Abby grinned. “It worked.”

“Now that you’re here, stay a while. Keep me company. It’s going to be a long night.”

Abby looked at Celia as if she was trying to decipher whether the words were merely polite or truly meant.

“Please. Stay. We have no family, and I’ve been alone all evening.”

Abby gave a single nod and walked to the other padded chair in the room. She slid it across the floor, coming to a stop not far from Celia’s own chair. Abby sat stiffly, slowly, like she was in pain, like she was the one who had been hit by the car.

Celia moved to Karlee’s bed, lowering Jess over the bed rails until she was lying beside her little sister. She pulled at the covers to get them out from under Jess, but they wouldn’t budge.

“Here,” Abby came to the bed. “You lift her. I’ll pull the blanket and sheet free.”

Celia lifted Jess, straining under the combination of dead weight and odd angle. “She’s getting too big for this.”

Abby gave a hesitant smile and pulled the covers free. When Celia put Jess down, Abby tucked her in, turning the top of the sheet over the blanket and smoothing both until all the wrinkles were gone. Celia leaned over and kissed Jess on the forehead. She did the same to Karlee. When she turned from the bed, she was surprised to see tears in Abby’s eyes. Uncertain what to say, she took her seat, and the two sat in silence in the dimly lit room.

“I had a daughter,” Abby said suddenly.

Had?
Celia felt her heart contract. She had come too close to
had
this very day. How did one stand it when
had
came true?

“Her name was Maddy, Madeleine. She would have been five.”

“Karlee’s four.”

Abby looked at Celia, desperation in her face. “I had to see for myself that she was okay.” She lowered her face into her hands. “Oh, Celia, why can’t I remember?”

T
HE BACK ROADS
worked well, just as he’d known they would. All those little black lines on a map were relatively empty even on a Friday night, and the traffic he did meet was headed south and east to the shore while he was headed north and west. Again he counted the one piece of good fortune he’d had: The damage to the car was on the right, away from oncoming traffic.

He bypassed Hammonton and turned onto 206 and followed it across Wharton State Park. The closer he got to Atsion, the more the memories crowded him. He drove past a ramshackle trailer and in his mind saw the filthy blue-and-white one he’d lived in for too many years. It was parked by itself well outside town, surrounded by pinelands. His mother had tried to keep it clean, but she was so obese that she was physically unable to do the work. It was all she could do to punch the cash register at the Food Fair.

He’d decided when he was five that he wasn’t remaining in that poor excuse for a home a minute longer than necessary. He was going to have a house like the one that flashed on the screen at the beginning of
Dallas
. Big and white with lots of pillars. It took him longer to figure out how he’d get that house, but he’d always been a smart kid.

His present house didn’t look like Southfork, but
only because it didn’t sit in the middle of a ranch. Instead its pillared porch and brick drive were surrounded by two acres of oaks and pines, azaleas and rhododendrons, flowering cherries and Bradford pears. Inside the place was worthy of
Architectural Digest
with its Scalamandré fabrics and costly antiques.

He forced himself to concentrate on today’s mansion instead of yesterday’s trailer. Gone also were the ratty pants and holey T-shirts from Goodwill. He looked down at the well-tailored slacks and hundred-dollar knit shirt he was wearing. He rubbed his hand over the car’s leather interior again and shuddered at the memory of walking miles and miles because there was no other way to get somewhere, not even a rusty old bike like McCoy had.

His temper soared. He couldn’t lose what he’d worked so hard for. He couldn’t. Not because of a little girl in pink who was foolish enough to stand in the middle of the street. It simply wasn’t fair!

He turned off at the old iron forge and drove deep into the Pines, back where even the Pineys didn’t go. He took the dirt road to Quaker Bridge, then on beyond that, following the barely passable sand roads that snaked ever deeper into the heart of the Pines. The forest pressed in on the car, rubbing against its shiny black paint, and the scraping and scratching chilled his blood. Not that it actually mattered. He was abandoning the car.

He drove off the sand track into a dense clump of scrub. He leaned over and emptied the glove compartment of the maps, registration, insurance information, and miscellaneous papers, careful not to leave even the smallest scrap that might provide a clue to his identity. Pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, he wiped down the interior, then climbed out. Immediately his trousers caught on a broken branch. Swearing, he disentangled himself, moved to the rear of the car, and popped the trunk. He pulled out his gym bag. As he shrugged out of his good clothes, he studied the snag in the slacks before he put them, neatly folded, into the bag. A total loss.

He pushed his legs into his sweatpants, his arms into the matching jacket. He pulled the zipper up all the way, bringing the collar to his ears. He’d be too hot, but the mosquitoes would feast on any skin he left uncovered. He already had a bite between his shoulder blades. To keep the bloodsuckers out of his eyes, he put his sunglasses on, making the already dim forest dimmer still. He
traded his high-gloss leather loafers with their tassels for his New Balance sneakers.

Taking his tire iron, he pried the license plates off the front and back of the car. It was hot, sweaty work, and what he really needed was a screwdriver. Finally they came free. Again using the tire iron, he dug a hole several inches deep in the sandy soil. He laid the plates in it and covered them.

He heard one of the countless streams that laced the Pines gurgling nearby. He forced his way through the underbrush to its edge. The water ran a clear brown. Cedar water, turned tea-colored by organic compounds leached from the soil. He knew that for all its strange color, it was some of the purest water to be found anywhere. He lowered himself and drank. He rinsed out an old Gatorade bottle he found in his gym bag and filled it.

The mosquitoes buzzed him in dark, undulating clouds. Grimacing, he reached into the water, drew out some mud, and plastered it all over his face and neck. Anything to keep the biting marauders at bay.

He collected some more mud and carefully coated all the chrome on his car. The last thing he needed was for some adventurous hiker to see a reflection and investigate.

He arranged the undergrowth carefully to camouflage the vehicle. Then he walked ten feet away and looked back. He could see nothing, and he knew it was there. For the first time since the accident, he felt a rush of genuine hope. No one would find the car for years, if ever.

Gym bag in hand, he began the long walk back to 206. He hadn’t remembered how dark it got under the pines and oaks. And there were the noises of the night creatures. He found himself looking over his shoulder at each rustling of leaves, each crunch of ground cover. He knew there were timber rattlers in the Pines, slithering across the floor of pine needles and fallen oak leaves. Did they slither around at night? Some people said there were cougars too, though no one had seen any for years.

A blood-chilling scream ripped the air. He felt his heart drop to his shoes. The cougar? A woman being murdered? The Jersey Devil itself? He and McCoy and every other kid in the area had scared themselves silly with tales of midnight encounters with the famed Jersey Devil, meetings from which no one ever returned.

Reason told him it was only a screech owl, but still the hairs on his arms stood up straight and his heart, returned to his chest cavity, pounded wildly.

When he finally got to 206, he was hot, sweaty, and in a foul humor. He had several mosquito bites on the back of his neck, and one on his left calf in spite of the elastic on the leg of his pants. It was driving him nuts, but every time he bent to scratch, his jacket separated from his pants and the mosquitoes attacked him.

He began to thumb a ride. If he could get out to Route 30, he could get back to Seaside easily. He should be home in plenty of time to do all he needed to do tonight. He couldn’t deviate from habit. It would raise too many questions.

He hadn’t had to depend on the kindness of strangers for years. Now he remembered why: Lots of strangers weren’t very kind. They zoomed by, kicking sand and cinders into his face. Finally a fat man in an old blue Ford pickup stopped.

“If you don’t mind riding in the back, I’ll take you.”

If it weren’t for the Doberman chained to the truck bed with a chain that reached to within four feet of where he was plastered against the tailgate, he might have enjoyed the ride in the soft night air. With relief he slid to the ground when they reached 30 and watched the dog and his fangs disappear.

It was Friday night, and everyone was heading down the shore. A carful of guys from South Philly picked him up within five minutes of sticking out his thumb. They shared their beer with him, and for once he didn’t care that all of them, including the driver or maybe especially the driver, were crocked. He nursed one bottle and made believe he was looped. They were too far gone to recognize his playacting for what it was. The good thing was that they’d never remember him. In fact, with their fried brains they’d be lucky if they remembered their own names.

But he made it. Home, invincible, and still possessed of the finest reputation. He grinned as he showered quickly and slid into his classy clothes. He was beyond touching.

C
ELIA REACHED OUT
and grasped Abby’s hand. “It’s all right. Really. When God wants you to remember, you will.”

Abby turned her hand over and gripped Celia’s hard. “That’s what I keep telling myself. But what if I never remember? What if he gets away?”

“I don’t know.” Celia looked at Karlee. “I’ve been so consumed with making certain that she’s going to be all right and that Jess isn’t too upset that I haven’t given much thought to the driver. I guess I figured the police would catch him.”

“But what if they don’t? What if I could help and I can’t?”

Celia didn’t know how to answer the despair in Abby’s voice. “It’s not your fault, Abby. It’s not. You had nothing to do with what happened.”

“In theory I know that, but I still feel responsible.”

“Yeah.” Celia sighed. “Me too.”

“You? But you were at work. I was there.”

“Yeah, I was at work. A
good
mother would have been home taking care of her kids. A
good
mother would have known where they were at all times. A
good
mother would have seen to it that her little girl didn’t try to cross a busy street like Central.”

Abby sat up straight. “Are you saying that no
children of good mothers get hurt? That the only good mothers are ones who are at home all the time?”

Celia felt as if a basset hound with a sad, droopy face had turned pit bull and bitten her. The despairing woman of a minute ago had transmogrified into a forceful asker of hard questions.

“Well,” Abby continued, “I was a mother who was home all the time, and my daughter died.” She spoke like she dared Celia to challenge her mothering credentials.

Celia didn’t. “How did she die?” she whispered.

Abby leaned her head back, staring at the ceiling. “Automobile accident.” She must have heard Celia’s exhalation of sympathy, but she kept her eyes on the crack that wandered aimlessly over Karlee’s bed.

“No wonder today upset you so much.” Celia knew that was stating the obvious, but she didn’t know what else to say. “I mean, anyone would be upset, but you have all your own memories to deal with too.”