The Year We Hid Away (5 page)

I was ready for the question. “The same,” I said. Although it was a lie twice over. Because things had gone
very
far South over the summer. Her drug addiction and her creepy friends had pushed me into taking Lucy off her hands. These days, I didn’t even
know
how she was faring. I hadn’t seen her in a few weeks.

And neither had Lucy.

Hartley studied me. “Do you have Lucy a lot?” he asked.

“Not usually,” I lied. “She’s in an after school program on Wednesdays, and it was canceled today for some reason. I told Mom she could hang with me at the coffee shop. So how’s the lineup this year, anyway?” That’s how desperate I was to get off the subject of Lucy — I was even willing to bring up hockey. This was precisely why I’d been avoiding my friends for a month. With me, there were only painful topics.

It was Hartley’s turn to flinch. “The team looks damned good, honestly. Wish you were there. The frosh don’t get my jokes. And half of them don’t speak English.”

“Ouch.”

“I know. Coach wooed a handful of Canadians who were tired of riding the bench in the semipros. Twenty-one year-old French speakers. I don’t know how they’ll pass their classes until the tutoring kicks in. But they sure can skate.”

I put my elbows on the counter. “So that’s it for us Connecticut kids, isn’t it? If the Ivy League can pull in the ringers like that.”

Hartley shrugged, putting two dollars down on the counter. “Maybe you and I already got the best of it.”

“Maybe. But your final season could be pretty exciting.” Hartley was a year ahead of me.

“We’ll see.”

“How’s Callahan?” Hartley’s girlfriend was another good friend of mine. Christ, I really missed hanging out with the two of them.

“She’s good. Did I tell you that she’s a student manager for the women’s team this year?”

“No shit? That’s bad-ass.” Callahan used to play hockey, too. Until an injury put her on crutches for life.

Hartley shrugged. “She seems happy. The women’s team looks really good this year, too. Except they lost a goalie recruit over the summer.”

“Bummer. That’s not an easy position to fill.”

“I know. The girl was J.P. Ellison’s daughter. You know, that coach who was arrested for…?” Hartley zipped his lip just in time, with a guilty glance over his shoulder toward Lucy. But Lucy was reading her book, oblivious.

“Yeah. Nasty story. I didn’t know he had a daughter.”

“She was supposed to mind the net this year. But she didn’t turn up. Speaking of which…” Hartley checked his watch. It was time for him to go to practice. Shit, I wished I was going with him. He reached across the counter and punched me in the arm. “Call me, would you? Or I’m going to hunt you down, and drag you to a party.”

Good luck with that
. “I will.”

Another lie.

Friday morning I blew off my neuro bio lecture to do an errand I’d been avoiding. I biked off campus, past Lucy’s elementary school. She was in there somewhere, learning fractions and spelling rules. (Since I was the one who checked her homework these days, I was quite the third grade curriculum expert.) The further I traveled from campus, the smaller the houses became. On my childhood street, I coasted to a stop before I reached our ranch house. An unfamiliar car sat in the driveway. And the front door was standing open.

I pulled my bike under the bus shelter with me and watched the house.

A few minutes later, a scrawny man emerged, a box in his arms. He wore a loose-fitting denim jacket, and his hair had not been washed any time recently. He put the box in the back seat of the car. Then he walked back up on our small stoop and spoke to someone inside.

My mother shuffled into view, and the sight made my chest tight.

He led her by the arm. But even so, her gait was shaky. She wore rumpled, baggy clothes, lank hair and a completely blank expression.

Shit
.

My mother was tucked by the greasy asshole into the passenger seat of the car. And then they drove away together. When the car passed me, I made myself look away, studying the bus schedule as if the secrets of the universe were written there.

They weren’t.

Even after the car had gone, I didn’t move for a couple of minutes. I watched our house, wondering who else might be inside. But I only had an hour, and things looked quiet over there. So I walked my bike up the drive, leaning it against the side of the house where it couldn’t be seen from the street. I dug my keys out of my pocket, only to spot a new lock glinting on the back door.
What the fuck?
I tried the knob. Locked.

A cold dread expanded in my gut as I forced open the kitchen window. This had been my means of entry many times during high school, if I’d left my keys at home by mistake. The sill was chest height, since it was over the sink. But I still had it, ladies and gentlemen. I could still boost my ass up there without too much trouble.

It was the smell that hit me first.

God, the kitchen
reeked
. There was garbage on the counter tops, and abandoned dishes in the sink. I put my foot down on the counter and leapt to the floor. The sight of something moving just about stopped my heart.

A rat. Only a rat.

I stood there for a moment, heart pounding. It wasn’t long ago that this kitchen was spotless. I used to sneak through here after curfew on Saturday nights. The worst smell back then was maybe a little cigarette smoke — a habit my father never managed to break. But the surfaces used to shine in the moonlight as I tiptoed towards my room. I would hear my dad sawing logs from his side of the bed. Sometimes my mother fell asleep in the living room, the TV watching her instead of the other way around. I’d put my hand on her shoulder until she woke up — Mom wasn’t much of a stickler about curfew. At my urging, she’d rouse herself enough to go to bed.

Lucy was little then, still sleeping in a crib when I was fifteen, her red hair looking like a lion’s mane when she woke up in the morning. My father was still alive, his van parked in the driveway.
McCaulley Plumbing and Heating
was painted on the side.

The ghosts of happier times were all around me. I took a deep breath to try to force them back. But all that did was to pull more of the stench into my lungs.

Fuck.

I moved from the kitchen into the dining room. The smell was less here, but that didn’t make it better. Because the dining room table was covered with strange accoutrements. There was a stash of glass jars lined up in a row, and two small propane tanks. On the floor was a stack of crushed boxes that had once contained blister packs of an over-the-counter allergy medicine.

Somebody had been busy here, making something both illegal and dangerous. My first impulse was to pull out my phone and take a photo. But then I thought better of the idea. I wanted no part in this.

Leaving that shit behind, I walked toward the bedrooms. I already knew that there was nothing of value left in mine. There were some sentimental things, though. In fact, when I got there I saw that my treasure box — a big shoebox I’d begun keeping in my closet when I was nine — had been raided by some opportunistic shithead. But I found a handful of photographs scattered inside. I shoved these into the front pocket of my hockey hoodie and left the room.

Lucy’s room hadn’t fared much better. It smelled as if someone had been sleeping in there. There were still a lot of books and toys on the shelves. But I couldn’t carry much back to campus. I tucked the box set of Harry Potter books under my arm. Then I went into her closet and grabbed a stack of sweaters off the shelf. I’d brought a plastic shopping bag, which I pulled from my jeans pocket. I crammed five sweaters into it, until it was so full that the loops would barely fit over my hand.

For winter, she’d need a coat and boots. What else? Long pants. Warm socks. We would just have to buy those things. Last year’s probably wouldn’t fit anyway.

Fuck it. I had to get out of here.

Thirty seconds later, I walked out the back door, leaving it unlocked. Then I was back on my bike, pedaling down the street with a box of books under one arm and a bag around my wrist. I made it almost all the way back home before it really hit me. And then the wave of sadness was so strong that I stopped in front of the hospital, dismounted and put my hands on my knees.

I
knew
it would be bad. Six weeks ago, I wheeled Lucy’s bike out of the garage and told her to just come home with me. We’d put some of her things into her backpack and mine. And we pedaled away from there together. By taking Lucy, I’d basically given my mother permission to fall all the way apart. And she’d taken me up on it.

Six weeks. Not one phone call from her to ask if Lucy was okay. What kind of mother does that? So I’d already known that shit was hopeless. But…
Christ
. That house. That
smell
.

My brain began to spool through the usual What Ifs. What if I’d staged some kind of intervention? What if I just called the police right now? I’d thought through it all before, so this time it didn’t take very long to arrive at the only answer.

No way
.

Because anything I did to save my mom would put Lucy into the system. Even if I spent another night Googling “addiction treatment Connecticut,” we didn’t have any other family. If my mom was in rehab — or jail — Lucy would go to foster care. And I wasn’t going to let that happen.

You can’t save everybody,
I reminded myself. The trouble was that I wasn’t sure I could save anyone at all. Not even myself.

I straightened up, forcing a few deep breaths into my lungs. It was Friday. I had a bio lab in forty minutes. I had a shift at the coffee shop. And I had to pick Lucy up from her after school program by five. Her schedule was different every day of the week, and so was mine. I’d written a spreadsheet to track everything. I could do this.

So long as nothing ever went wrong.

Shoving off again, I pedaled toward campus. This weekend I’d take Lucy to her soccer game in the park, and then we’d go out for pizza together. We’d both do homework. And then the week would start again, with its schedules and deadlines.

And on Tuesday I could see Scarlet. She was my happy thought — with those perfect cheekbones and thoughtful, hazel eyes. I blew out another big breath and tried to pump the stress out of my lungs. It almost worked.

Chapter Four:
If You Want God to Laugh

—
Scarlet

On a busy October morning, the phone rang at a most inconvenient time. And — stupid me — I answered it.

“Shannon,” my mother’s voice hissed into my ear.

My old name already sounded foreign to me. “What is it, mom? I’m so late for class.” I had overslept, and already statistics was beginning without me. Pinning my phone under my ear, I raked my hair with the brush.

“Whatever you’re late for, Shannon, it isn’t nearly as important as the things I need to say.”

With a sigh, I sat down on my bed. “Then say them.”

“There’s no need to be rude. Your father’s lawyers need to interview you.”

“No,” I said immediately. “I won’t do it.”

My mother’s anger was audible. “Honey, you
will
. We’re not even asking you to drive up here for the meeting. They’ll come down to meet you in a conference room somewhere. It will take only a couple of hours. You’ll answer their questions, and that will be the end of it.”

“I’m not answering anyone’s questions,” I insisted. “The trial has nothing to do with me.”

“Shannon! This is a small thing you can do for the father who raised you! There is no reason on
God’s green earth
for you not to help him.” My mother’s voice reached its familiar shrill pitch.

“Mom, if it’s so important, why doesn’t Dad ask me himself?”

Her sigh could have burned the paint off of walls. “He shouldn’t have to ask his only child for help. We are family and this is what families do. You should be sitting here in the kitchen,
volunteering
your time. Instead, you changed your name and left the state. How do you think that looks?”

It
looked
like something a person would do when she was desperate. But I couldn’t say that to my mother, because she really didn’t give a damn. She didn’t care that my teammates had turned their backs on me. She didn’t care that my textbooks had been defaced, that my gym locker had been filled with… with things that were supposed to be flushed down toilets. Just at the memory of it, I tasted bile in my throat.

But that was my mother — always concerned with the way things looked. She didn’t care if my life was intolerable, as long as we held up the facade.

“You will answer their questions,” my mother repeated.

“My answers won’t be useful.”

“That’s not for you to decide.”

“Mom,” I said, and my voice shook. There was nobody on earth who had the capacity to make me angry quite like she could. “I can’t be part of this process. I need to study, and get good grades, and move on.”