The Girl I Used to Be (6 page)

“Mmm-hmm,” Nora says, but it sounds as though she's really disagreeing with me.

Back at her house, I park and help her out. As she goes up her walk, I stand in front of the rental sign and dial the number for Lee Realty.

The phone rings three times before a woman answers. I take a breath, but then I realize it's just a recording. After the beep, I say, “My name is Olivia Reinhart, and I'd like to talk to you about renting the property at 1707 Terrace Drive.” I end with my cell phone number.

If the rental company isn't open on a Saturday afternoon, it's surely not going to be open tomorrow. Now what? Maybe I can find a quiet road and lock the car doors and sleep there the next two nights. I don't want to waste money on a motel.

Nora speaks, and I realize she hasn't gone inside. “Can't get hold of them?”

“The office is closed.”

“Then you should stay with me until Monday.”

I shake my head. “That's okay. I'll find a motel or something.”

“Nonsense. I have a guest room, and you'll be my guest.” She turns as if it's already decided. Without looking to see if I'm following, she goes inside. After a moment, I follow her.

Until today, I didn't even remember Nora. And if you had asked me what the inside of Nora's house looked like, I would have said I had no idea. It turns out I do and I don't.

It's like I'm in one of those snow globes. Somebody's picked me up and shaken all my memories loose. Now they float around me, flickering in the corners of my eyes.

Just inside the door sits a blue flowered couch topped with a nest of afghans. An old wingback chair, upholstered in gold brocade, stands at a right angle to it. I don't need to look to know its feet are carved wooden talons gripping balls.

Nora's house is crammed with books, colored bottles, baskets, and hanging plants. The walls are covered with things in frames: photos, little paintings, shells, and a tiny ivory elephant, as well as an old silver-backed brush, a carved walnut on a miniature hook, and a brass clock that ticks in the hot stillness. Everything's a little dusty, a little chipped. Stuffed with so many knickknacks, Nora's house should be suffocating, but instead it's like a mosaic, all the pieces coming together in a pleasing whole.

While I'm taking it all in, Nora sits down in a dining room chair and toes off her shoes, then gets up and puts them in a closet. Moving slowly, she walks to the couch. When she sits, it's more like a well-cushioned fall. She pulls fake UGG sheepskin-lined boots over her socks and then arranges the afghans over her lap.

It's got to be at least ninety degrees in here. But I remember what she said about her heart, how cold her hands were.

I take the brocade chair. “I was wondering, if Terry's buried at that cemetery, is Naomi there, too?” I want to visit my mother's grave.

“Naomi and Sharon are in Odd Fellows. The other cemetery.”

“Medford has more than one?” The city seems so small.

“Odd Fellows was here first. It's just around the corner. Sharon always liked it better. People have picnics there, and it's where every teenager learns to drive.” Nora's eyes crinkle when she smiles. “You can't kill anyone in a cemetery. They're already dead.”

The word
dead
leads me right back to my parents. “Who do you think really did it?” I ask her. “Everyone there seemed to know you. You must have some ideas.”

“People in this town hold their secrets pretty close.”

“You don't think it was a stranger, then?”

Nora looks at me for a long moment. “No.” But she doesn't say anything more.

We watch the news together. For dinner, she has me heat up canned tomato soup and warm frozen rolls in the oven. She says she used to like to bake but doesn't have the energy anymore.
I remember,
I want to say, but I keep the words stoppered tight.

We watch a documentary about birds of paradise. They're like no birds I've ever seen, with crazy-colored feathers, beaks, and even feet. When the show ends at nine, Nora goes to bed, and so do I. I'm sure I'll be awake for hours, but my eyelids are so heavy they close by themselves.

 

CHAPTER 11

WICKED POINT

It's cold. Next to me, someone is muttering under their breath, but I don't look. I won't. I'm curled on my side away from them, my eyes closed, my thumb in my mouth. I'm too old to suck my thumb. But it feels good. I like how it fits into the roof of my mouth like it belongs there, like the space was made special just to fit it.

I pull it out with a
pop
. When I open my eyes, my thumb is all wrinkled and wet. And past it, I see a knife lying on the carpet. It has a wooden handle and a blade that curves down to a wicked point. But it's not the knife that makes me scream.

It's the blood drying on the blade.

“Olivia!”

I have to get away. I scramble back until my shoulders hit a wall.

“Olivia!” Nora says again. Her silver hair brushes my face. “Olivia! You're having a nightmare.”

My whole body is slick with sweat. My breath comes in gasps.

The knife. The knife, the blood, the muttering.

The knife.

I was dreaming about being in the killer's car.

Or was it a memory, not a dream?

“Sorry,” I groan. I pull the sheet over my bare legs. I must have kicked it off.

“What were you dreaming about?”

Something about her gaze makes me tell the truth. At least part of it. “About that guy Terry and his girlfriend. It would be so awful to be murdered. To know that you're dying and that the last thing you see will be your killer.”

Nora sits on the edge of the bed. She's so thin the mattress doesn't even dip.

She pats my knee through the sheet. “Oh, honey, I'm sorry if I made a mistake asking you to take me to the funeral. And as much as I would love to have you as a neighbor, maybe you shouldn't rent that house. After all, Naomi lived there. I don't want you waking up screaming every night.”

“It's not like she would be haunting it.” Although, could some part of her spirit still linger? I would love to be able to talk to my mother, even her ghost. To have her answer, even in my dreams. “Besides, you said that house has lots of good memories.”

“Oh, it does. It does.” Her forehead is still furrowed. “Still, I'm sorry I exposed you to the evil in this world, Olivia. You should stay ignorant of that as long as you can.”

“I'm not a little kid. I already know about evil.” Nineteen stab wounds, a jawbone, blood drying on a knife. I know a lot about evil.

Nora gives me a long look. “Yes, I suppose you do.” She bows her head, and I realize that she's saying a prayer. “Lord, help Olivia to have a restful sleep tonight.”

She's on her feet before I can decide whether to say “amen.”

But I can't go back to sleep. Not when my mind might finally be beginning to shake loose what really happened. Maybe there are other clues from my dream besides the knife. Like the carpet it was lying on. What color was it? That might be important. Tan? Blue? But each possibility seems as real as any other.

What about the person I heard muttering? Was it a man or a woman?

I don't know. All I remember is they sounded crazy.

This is the second snippet of memory I've had since I got here. First the snowy woods and now this. I guess if they're real, they're flashbacks. But they haven't shown me anything I could go to the police about. For that, I need facts.

And maybe I'm just making the whole thing up. Filling in the blanks. My subconscious telling me what I've already been thinking: that to kill two people, you have to be some sort of crazy. That stabbing someone so many times does not go hand in hand with sanity.

I don't know whether to trust this memory or my overactive imagination or whatever it is. I'm still thinking this when I fall into a deep and, thankfully, dreamless sleep.

*   *   *

Is there anything better than the smell of bacon? I wake with a damp spot on the pillow. I've been drooling in my sleep.

I straighten the bed, put on clean clothes, and then find Nora in the kitchen. She turns when I walk in. “Good morning,
sweat
heart.” She grins at her own joke. Her hair is pinned back, and she's wearing a navy polyester tunic and pants. Around her throat is a necklace made of what at first I think are beads. When I take a closer look, I see they are buttons in all different shades of blue, from sea to midnight.

“Oh, that's beautiful!”

She touches the necklace with one of her age-spotted hands. “You like it?”

“It's gorgeous.”

Before I realize what she's doing, she's pulled it over her head and is holding it out to me. “Then it's yours.”

I take a step back. “That's okay.”

Nora keeps holding out the necklace. “It didn't really cost me anything. I buy old buttons at garage sales and string them while I'm watching the news.” She presses the necklace into my hand.

“I can't take it,” I say, but I don't let go. The buttons are cool and smooth, knotted onto what looks like dental floss. “You've already done too much for me.”

“Nonsense. If you weren't here, I would be talking to myself. It's not easy living alone.”

“Do you have kids or anything?” I slip on the necklace.

“A boy and a girl. But they both grew up and moved away a long time ago. My daughter lives in Bozeman, Montana, with her husband and my twelve-year-old granddaughter. My son lives in Seattle with his boyfriend. They both call a lot, but it's not like having someone in the house. And my husband died almost ten years ago. Which is why I talk to myself.” A rueful smile flits across her face. “It's when you start answering back that you know you're in trouble.” She changes the subject. “Would you like to go to church with me this morning? And it's okay to say no.”

I haven't been to church in years, not since I was living with foster parents who made us all go twice on Sundays and on Wednesday nights as well. “Maybe not today?” My voice rises at the end, making it a question.

Nora smiles. “Then I guess it's time for bacon and coffee.”

My cheeks feel hot. “That sounds good.”

She pulls a red jar from the fridge, then dumps some brown crystals into a coffee cup. From the old brass kettle on the stove, she adds hot water. Instant coffee. I resolve to drink it down fast. Meanwhile, Nora takes a plate from the microwave and peels back a layer of paper towels to reveal strips of bacon. She puts six crisp strips on a plate and hands it to me, then takes a carton of eggs from the fridge. “Scrambled okay?”

“That would be great. Can I help?”

“Could you read me the headlines instead?” She points at a rolled-up newspaper sitting on the counter. “And then I'll tell you which stories to read all the way through.”

It turns out Nora's interested in everything except sports. I read her stories in between bites of bacon. The six strips, which seemed like far too much, are gone in a few bites.

A fifty-five-year-old woman was found dead at her house, and the police want to talk to her ex-husband. Fire danger is extremely high, and hikers are being warned not to light campfires. A burglar hit a half dozen businesses on East Main Street. A couple has started a business making casseroles to go.

Between the woman's murder and the burglaries, it sounds like the police chief has his hands full. With no new clues, how hard will he work to figure out who killed my parents?

Nora mounds eggs on my plate. It's a weird feeling, being waited on. In most of the foster homes I was in, we either poured our own cereal or ate the free breakfast at school. If my family had lived, would I be used to this? After I finish eating, Nora allows me to wash the dishes.

“If I go on a walk while you're at church, how should I lock the door?” I ask as I put the last dish in the drainer.

Nora shrugs. “Don't worry about it. There's nothing here worth stealing. I never lock up during the day.”

Medford's small, but it's not that small. She's living in some olden time that doesn't exist, and hasn't for decades. But then again, she's right. Her huge old TV, her heaps of afghans, her dining room chairs that aren't quite steady on their legs—who would want them?

To me, Nora's house is full of things I long for. But none of them are tangible.

 

CHAPTER 12

STANDING ON YOUR BONES

I push open the cemetery's metal gate. The three vertical bars are decorated with two oversize oak leaves made of copper. A sign says it's a designated historic site.

This cemetery is more hilly than the other one. The roads are unpaved, just two tracks of gravel. Instead of well-manicured grass, there are only weeds and wildflowers.

Ahead, the road splits in two. The section on the right holds only a few graves and slopes gently to a wooden fence.

Us kids used to ride our sleds down that hill. This is a real memory from when I was six or seven, not a dream or my imagination. My grandma leaning over to give me a push. Me laughing and gasping, joy and fear mixed together, my fingers curled tight around the wooden edge of the sled, the snow only inches from my face. Running back to her, shouting, “Again! Again!”

Now the same ground is being mowed by an old man wearing sunglasses and a battered straw cowboy hat. He raises a leather-gloved hand from the tractor's steering wheel. I return the gesture.

No wonder my grandmother chose this place for my mom instead of the sterile flat grass where my father is buried. This jumble of weathered stones of all shapes and sizes makes the other one look as appealing as a filing cabinet.

I don't remember where my mom's grave is, so I let my feet choose which way to walk, which turns out to be up the hill toward a big stucco building with stained-glass windows. Along the way, I pause to read gravestones. Now that I'm here, I'm in no hurry to be confronted with the chiseled words that will permanently underline the truth.