The Girl I Used to Be (7 page)

One small white marble marker says just the word
Baby
and the dates of its birth and death, which are the same: May 7, 1904. At one point, a lamb must have decorated the top, but the head's been broken off.

The air is filled with the trills and chirps of birds, punctuated with the occasional caw of a blue jay. And then I hear the sad, distinctive call of a mourning dove rise and fall:
ooooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
. When I was a kid, I thought it was
morning
, not
mourning
, but then Grandma set me straight, explaining what the word meant.

Mourning
. It's such an old-fashioned word, but so is
grief
. Both as heavy and solid as tombstones.

Each of these stones marks a person who was loved and missed. How many tears has this ground soaked up? Four children from the same family all died in July 1899. In 1936, a young woman died the same day as her newborn son. Here's Silas Hawk, who was twenty-one—the same age as my dad—when he died in 1919. Did he have a sweetheart? A child?

A few plots are surrounded by black wrought-iron fences complete with little gates. Small, plain gravestones stand next to those with elaborately carved birds and flowers, crowns and candles, doves and angels. One concrete monument is shaped like a tree shading a bench, and I maneuver closer to see the inscription. The weeds are as high as my ankle, and my foot slips into a small, crumbling hole. With a muffled cry, I yank it out. I know it's some animal's burrow, that no bony hand is going to come reaching out. That I can't thrust my arm down to touch moldering flesh. I know that.

This part of the cemetery hasn't yet been visited by the man with the tractor. Scattered among the graves are blue bachelor's buttons, orange poppies, white clumps of yarrow, yellow buttercups. In my head, I hear Grandma's voice as she names the wildflowers. Others are just plain weeds, full of thorns and stickers, not worthy of being remembered by name.

My eye is drawn by a flash of orange. It's not a spectacular wildflower but an unopened bag of Cheetos. I know even before I get close enough to see that the marker belongs to my mom. Memories flood me, of how I would visit with already-drooping flowers picked from Grandma's yard. Sometimes my mother's friends had been there before us, and we would find a full bottle of beer or another offering. Once it was a rhinestone tiara, which Grandma allowed me to wear home.

Who brought the Cheetos? Who still remembers she liked them? I've read that Chinese people sometimes burn play paper money, food, and clothing at the graves of their loved ones, believing the essence of the needed thing wafts to the afterlife.

I stand in front of the tombstones for my mother and my grandmother. They are nearly identical, even though they died four years apart.

Mommy, I am standing on your bones
. Under my feet, she lies in a slowly rotting casket, with all the weight of the earth on her.

A cry is torn from my throat.
Mommy, mommy, mommy
, and then I'm on the dry, stony ground, pricker bushes scratching my face, but I don't care, tears hot on my cheeks. My words are jumbled, some in my head and some torn from my mouth.
Why did you have to leave me, why did they take you from me, why did they take everything, I miss you, I wish you were here, I love you, I'm so sorry I couldn't save you.

I cry for a long time, at first so hard I can't catch my breath, and then slower and softer. Until finally I'm cried out, silent, stretched flat on her grave. My arms spread as if they might tunnel through the earth and pull her to me, reclaim her bones and put flesh on them.

And then I'm rewarded. No, I don't hear her voice in my ear. I don't feel her soft touch on my back. What I'm given is a memory. Of sitting on her lap and turning the pages of a book. “‘Brown bear, brown bear what do you see?'” Her cheek against mine and her soft breath in my ear and her smell, a certain sweet smell, in my nose.

And for a moment I know without question I was loved.

But that doesn't make it any better. Because I was loved and someone took that from me. I cry again, more softly, the anger and rage bleeding away, leaving behind only a grief like a stone. I sleep then, without meaning to.

And wake to a rough hand on my shoulder.

 

CHAPTER 13

WHO'S GOING TO FIGURE OUT THE TRUTH?

“Honey,” a man's voice says hesitantly. “Are you okay?”

It's the second time today I've been awakened by an old person. This time, it's the guy in the battered straw cowboy hat. His riding mower, now silent, stands in the road behind him.

“I'm fine.” I sit up, blinking in the bright sunshine. The dream I was having slips away. A man's voice, urging me forward. A hand on the back of my head.

“I could have mowed you down.” He offers me a hand. “Here, get up. It can't be comfortable down there.” Although he must be close to eighty, he has the strong grip of a workingman. His jeans sit high on his waist and end a couple of inches above his Velcro-closed tennis shoes.

I know him. It's Frank. Nora's friend. He was at my dad's—

“You were at the funeral,” I say after he pulls me to my feet. Will he put two and two together? Can he tell I've been crying? Maybe he'll just think I'm a weird teenager.

“That's right. I knew Terry. I also knew his girlfriend, Naomi.” He looks down at the graves. “Naomi and her mom, Sharon.”

“I'm thinking of renting their old house.” I lean down to brush prickers off my pants, giving me an excuse not to look him in the face. “Nora told me they were buried here, so I thought I'd come visit the graves. But it's just so hot. I started feeling sleepy. I must have dozed off.”

His face expressionless, Frank says, “Around this place, when we say someone's taking a dirt nap, it means they're dead and buried.”

I stare at him for a second before I realize he's making a joke.

“Well, I'm not dead. Not yet.”

He looks at the two graves again, and his mouth turns down at the corners. “Naomi—she wasn't much older than you.” He shakes his head. “Sometimes it's hard to understand why someone so young dies but an old codger like me keeps going.”

“What was she like?” I ask. “Naomi, I mean?”

“Young. She and Terry were too young to have a baby, but they did. Sharon wasn't happy about that.”

I look down at my flat stomach, try to imagine a baby curled up under my skin. How did my mom feel? Scared? Happy? Both?

“She was a high-spirited gal,” Frank continues. “Beautiful, like her mother.”

I realize he means Grandma. I do the math. Grandma was only fifty-six when she died. If she were alive, she'd still be younger than him. “Were you working here when Naomi was murdered?” All those people who left things on her grave—could her killer have been one of them?

“I'd just started volunteering. For the first year after she died, people came here all the time. Sometimes they'd leave bottles of beer. Candy, snacks, Christmas ornaments.”

“I found those Cheetos.” I point at the bag.

He nods. “Every now and then I'll find just one red rose. I used to think it might be Terry sneaking back into town, but obviously not.”

I'd always thought my mom belonged to my dad and vice versa, even if they weren't married. But now there's this Sam person who loved my dad, and some mystery man who still thinks about my mom. Could the rose be from her killer?

“So people still come?”

“I've seen a few. Naomi's best friend, this redheaded gal named Heather, she still comes around. There's a homeless guy who likes to sleep here. Sometimes I've seen him talking to Naomi's gravestone. And the police chief—he comes by sometimes, too. He was here last week, right after they figured out it was Terry's jawbone.” Frank sighs. “Before she died, Sharon used to come here with her granddaughter. Naomi's kid, Ariel. Sometimes they had picnics right on top of the grave.”

I will my expression not to change. “What do you think happened to Naomi and Terry?”

His lips fold in on themselves. His face is a mass of wrinkles, like a piece of paper that's been balled up and smoothed out a hundred times. “Maybe they took someone with them that day.”

I hadn't thought of that. That would mean it had to be a friend. Who's going to figure out the truth of what happened all these years later? I think of the police chief, his voice choked with tears. Apologizing for not finding my dad fourteen years ago. But it's clear from the articles in the paper that he has his hands full.

Frank leans down and picks up the Cheetos.

“What are you going to do with them?”

“Throw them away. They'll just attract varmints.”

“Wait a second.” I grab the bag and check the date. The Cheetos won't expire for three more weeks.

Frank cocks his head. “What are you looking at?”

“I'm just trying to figure out how long this has been here. Before or after people knew the truth about that Terry guy.”

“Oh, it was after. I pick up stuff like this as soon as I notice it. Leaving food out here is just a bad idea. But people do it all the time.”

Only now do I wonder if there were fingerprints on the bag, fingerprints we must have just destroyed. Although who's to say who put the bag here? It could just be one of my mom's friends. It probably wasn't the killer.

“I guess I'd better be getting back.” I act as if there's somewhere I have to be. “It was nice talking to you.”

He nods. “Same here.”

Before I go, Frank reaches into his pocket and scatters a handful of yellow birdseed on my mother's and grandmother's gravestones. A blue jay lights on a branch above us, and then another and another. They bob lightly in the breeze, too scared—or maybe too smart—to take the chance of eating while we're so close. They watch and wait for us to go away.

Just waiting until our backs are turned, our attention diverted.

 

CHAPTER 14

DOUBT A GIRL

When I step inside Fred Meyer on Monday, the store is both familiar and not. It's like when I look at Nora and see the old Nora just underneath. This Fred Meyer has the same typeface on the signs as the store where I work, the same store-brand groceries sitting next to the name brand, but the pharmacy is in a different corner, the electronics section is bigger, and there are two more aisles of toys. It's like when you dream about a familiar place, but the dream version isn't the same.

“Where can I find the PIC?” I ask the guy behind the electronics counter. He has a few strands of gray hair swirled around his mostly bare scalp.

His brows draw together at the sound of store lingo coming out of the mouth of someone he doesn't know.
PIC
means “person in charge.” He points. “His office is down that hall, past the restrooms.”

The hall smells like bleach. Shallow plastic bins mounted on the walls hold job applications, workers' comp forms, and vacation request forms. A sign between the restrooms warns against taking merchandise inside. At the end of the hall is an unmarked door, and after a moment's hesitation, I knock on it.

“Come in,” a voice barks. I open the door. The man behind the desk is stocky, with a shaved head and pale blue eyes.

With what I hope is a professional and friendly smile, I put out my hand. If I'm going to stay in Medford, I need to find a job before I do anything else. “I'm Olivia Reinhart. I wanted to ask if you have any openings.”

“Chuck Tobart.” He barely squeezes my hand before releasing it, his eyes already going back to the paperwork on his desk. “Forms are out in the hall.”

“I'm hoping to transfer. I work at the Burlingame Freddy's.”

He looks at me again. “Up in Portland?”

“Yeah. In the deli.” I slice cheese and meats and encourage people to try samples. It isn't a bad job. Our manager, Bill, always lets me have day-old stuff for free. And when he found out that I got off work five minutes after the bus left and that it didn't come again for another hour, he shifted my schedule back without my asking.

“How long have you worked there?”

“Seven months.”

“I don't have an opening in the deli.” He says it like the conversation is already at an end.

“I'll do anything. Even be a cart jockey.” Pushing carts is the worst job. Your shins and hips are bruised from bucking carts together or apart, from shoving them in huge clumps across the parking lot. “I'm moving down here, and I need a job. I'll work as many hours as you give me, and I'll work hard.”

He cocks his head. “Aren't you still in school?”

I let Duncan think I was a year older, but there's no point in lying to the manager about my age, because the other store will give it to him. “I've got my GED.”

“The only opening I have is in produce.” His lips twist. “And I doubt a girl your size could lift fifty pounds.”

Not only is fifty pounds a lot, but produce boxes are usually big, making it hard to use your legs instead of your arms and back.

“I'm really strong.” I'm stretching the truth and worried it sounds more like a flat-out lie.

He grunts, unconvinced. “Fill out the form, and I'll talk to your manager up in Portland.”

My manager. Crap.
The first thing I need to do is call Bill and give him a heads-up. I know Bill likes me—but will that change when he learns I'm planning on leaving him in the lurch?

It's possible I could end up with no job at all.

 

CHAPTER 15

DON'T TELL ME

In front of Lee Realty, a billboard-size sign says
LET RICHARD LEE LEAD YOU HOME.
A smiling headshot of the Asian guy at my dad's funeral is superimposed on a collage of beautiful homes. Even though Richard Lee grew up with my parents, I can't imagine they were headed for anything like his success. I get out of my car, trying not to think about how my gas gauge is hovering near
E
.