What Happened to My Sister: A Novel (24 page)

I sigh and reach around to collect the used tissues, the backpack Cricket forgot, a crumpled up Big Mac container, and the two empty Coke cans that’ve been clanking underneath the seat for days because I keep forgetting to clear out all this mess. It’s a miracle I manage to make it up the walk, through the front door, and into the kitchen without anything falling off the pyramid of trash teetering in my arms.

And then the universe speaks.

I’ve barely emptied everything onto the kitchen counter and said “hey” to my mother when damned if Edsil Ford isn’t rattling into the driveway. I’d recognize the sound of that old pickup truck anywhere.

“Knock, knock!” he calls out as he lets himself in the front door. “Anybody home?”

Mother looks at me defensively, eyes wide, mouthing
“I don’t know anything about it,”
but lately she’s been on a kick to get us back together, so that, coupled with her love of Nora Ephron movies, means I can’t rule out a setup. Until Cricket flies down the stairs and into her father’s arms, and then it’s all clear.

“Daddy-O!” she says, as he swings her in a circle before putting her down and letting her out of his embrace. “Lemme go, Dad, jeez! Okay, okay, wait right here. I have something incredible to show you.”

He laughs and watches her hurry back up the stairs, pleased too to see her so full of life for the first time in a long time.

“Hey,” I say. I come into the front hall to prepare him, warn him, I don’t know—I guess maybe even to protect him. I feel worried about his reaction but if I’m going to be honest, part of me is also curious to see what, if any, emotion he’ll show. When he sees her. Carrie. Caroline.

“Hey, baby.” He smiles when he sees me and I pretend to be bugged by it but secretly I’m glad he still calls me
baby
sometimes.

“I take it she called you over here?” I smile and glance up the stairs at the invisible wake Cricket left behind.

To build in a little time before he’s hit with the shock, I hustle us both out the door, explaining I need to talk to him in private. He opens the passenger door of the truck and I clamber in, smiling for a moment at the familiar smell of McDonald’s and diesel.

“Sorry it’s so messy,” he says, brushing trash off the armrest between us, then starting the engine. “Let me get the AC going. Man, it’s hot. Speaking of which, what’s our girl all hot and bothered about? She called me yesterday and said I had to come over right away but she said it wasn’t life or death and I was pulling a double shift so—”

“Shhh, we don’t have much time,” I say, hushing him. “Okay, first of all, Mother had a foreclosure notice tacked up to the door yesterday. That’s number one.”

“What?” He turns in his seat to face me. “You’re kidding me.”

“No, unfortunately, I’m not. Apparently she’s been handing all her money over to Hunter, though of course she won’t admit it. But there’s something else. I just want to prepare you. Cricket has
a new friend. A little girl. We don’t know much of anything about her yet—she’s new to town, staying with her mother at the Loveless of all places.”

“What’s that got to do with the foreclosure?” he asks. “And what’re they doing in
that
dump?”

“Well, that’s the thing,” I say, nodding. “They’re barely making ends meet from the sound of it, but that’s a whole other story. This girl, she looks—”

Before I can finish, Cricket knocks on his window and points to little Carrie standing next to her in the burning sun. I hadn’t seen them come out. Ed is now plunged into the shock of recognition Cricket, Mother, and I had. He feels for the door handle and robotically opens his door without for a second taking his eyes off Carrie.

“I tried to warn you.” I mutter the words as I hop out onto the driveway, but he doesn’t hear me and what does it matter anyway?

“Dad, this is my friend.” Cricket gently holds Carrie by the shoulders. It’s unclear what other than monumental shock is going on in Eddie’s mind.

“Caroline,” he whispers the name.

“You can call me Carrie, sir,” she says, searching my face to see if Ed hearing that name would count against her, poor thing.

I never would have predicted what comes next. Never in a million years. Edsil Ford, my stoic husband who barely showed a flicker of emotion after Caroline’s passing, drops to his knees in front of Carrie. His knees!

“Your name is
Caroline
?” he asks her in an almost-whisper.

She nods.

Cricket comes to stand beside me, I put my arm around her, and together we watch in total amazement as her father bursts into tears. Tears!

Carrie looks at us panicked, but before I can reassure her or explain or even just smile, Eddie pulls her into him, hugging her,
still sobbing like a newborn. After a minute or so Cricket stands on her tiptoes to whisper, “Mom,
do
something” in my ear, breaking my reverie. I clear my throat because, well, because I want to give Eddie a chance to regain his composure on his own. He’s a proud man, Eddie. But throat clearing doesn’t get through. He’s that broken up.

“Um, Carrie honey, I’m sorry,” I say, stepping forward to rest a hand on Eddie’s back, feeling an ache of love and sadness and grief rush in at the contact. “Mr. Ford’s just surprised at the likeness we talked about.”

I lean down to quietly comfort Ed, who is still holding on to Carrie as if for dear life.

“Eddie, let’s let poor Carrie here catch her breath, m’kay? Ed? Baby, I know. I know.”

He releases Carrie and struggles to his feet.

“Of course, of course.” He sniffs and mops his face with a red bandanna he’s pulled from his back pocket. “Sorry. Jeez.”

“Cricket, take Carrie on inside while Dad and I catch up, will you?” I smile to let her know he’ll be okay, but will he? I don’t know.

“Come on, Carrie,” Cricket says.

Then I get the wish I’d thought of only a few minutes ago. This time, though, Cricket reaches for Carrie’s hand and, with Eddie and me looking on, mouths hanging open, they skitter up the walk, up the steps, and into the house. The door closes behind them. We turn to face one another and once again, this man I’m so dang confused about stuns me. Now it’s me he’s pulling into him, burying his head in my hair, his words tumbling into my ear.

“I prayed to God for Him to give me more time with her.” He chokes back sobs. “I swore I’d keep holding myself together, be a better husband and father, if I could just have more time. You fell apart—you did, and that’s fine, Honor, you have every right. We couldn’t both crumble, and anyway I’m the man. I’m supposed to
be rock steady. But you want to know the truth? The truth is I’ve been holding out for a miracle. All this time, I’ve been waiting. I still pray for Him to let me see her again, just one more time. I pray so hard, baby, I pray so hard I’ve been worried I’m losing my mind.”

I hold him, stroke his back, and whisper, “Shhh …”

“You just don’t know,” he’s sobbing. “You just don’t know.”

But I do know.

Because I do the same thing.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Carrie

Things I Now Know About Momma

    
1. She had a best friend named Suzy Bridges. They got caught smoking cigarettes on school property. More than once
.

    
2. She wasn’t in any clubs in high school and she didn’t play sports
.

    
3. Momma was prom queen
.

    
4. Mr. White was prom king. And he had hair back then
.

    
5. Momma was voted Most Beautiful
.

Things I Now Know About Daddy

    
1. His nickname in high school was Hef
.

    
2. He drove real fast but never got speeding tickets
.

    
3. He was captain of the football team
.

    
4. He was good at getting free beer
.

    
5. He was voted Most Likely to Be Found Dead in a Ditch
.

Cricket’s computer really does have the answer to any question you ask it. I’ve never seen a school picture of Momma—and I’m her flesh and blood!—but the computer has, and all Cricket had to do was push a few buttons to find it. Momma was about a million times prettier back then and she’s real pretty now. Her yearbook shows her smiling, her hair almost reaching her elbow, curly at the ends. She didn’t wear as much makeup as some of the other girls in her class—we could see their pictures too. The whole yearbook was there waiting for us. Momma wore a cross around her neck and a pretty pink button-down shirt that looked ironed. And from what some of the writing underneath the pictures said, she and Suzy Bridges did ever-thing together. They were
inseparable
, the
Panther’s Paw
said. It also said my daddy had to do a
detention
for unscrewing all the tops of the saltshakers in the school cafeteria. It said
yet another
detention but it didn’t say what else he got in trouble for. Oh, and it listed Mr. White as senior class president.

If it were up to me, I would ask Cricket’s computer questions all day long. We spent days looking at all kinds of things on it—my favorite stuff is about Toast and Momma and Daddy but that gets boring to Cricket after a while so yesterday when she said I couldn’t come over today after she got out of school I worried it was on account of me not being fun and not because she had a doctor’s appointment like she said. If you could see the fuss they all still make over me you’d swear Cricket’s telling the truth but that doesn’t stop me from being scared I’ll do something that’ll make her stop liking me. These past days have been the best days of my entire life. I’d do anything not to lose her.

Momma won’t say what her job is but they sure have her working lots. On her first day they got her a new dress but if you ask me I don’t think it fits right on her. It’s real tight and kind of embarrassing to see her in on account of her bosoms showing as if she was just wearing a bra. She wears it to work every night along with
more makeup than I ever saw her put on. The only thing that’s the same is her black pair of high-heel shoes I color in with Magic Marker when they get scratched up. They hurt Momma’s feet because her boss makes her stand up and walk around in them all night but since I only know whatever bits and pieces Momma lets slip, I don’t know why. All Momma said when she came in wearing her new dress was that she’s finally getting paid for what she used to give away for free but Momma doesn’t give anything away for free so I cain’t figure it out. Plus, even though she was real nervous about job interviewing, she never looks that nervous about the actual job. From day one she looked sad about it. Like she was being punished. When I asked her why she wasn’t happy about finally finding work, all she said was “This isn’t the kind of work a decent woman would be happy doing.”

Her boss pays her in cash and once she even came home with the first grocery sack we’ve had since Hendersonville, full of chips and soda and a carton of cigarettes and ready-made biscuits and sliced “deli meat.” It felt like a feast but in a few days it was all gone and we haven’t had another grocery sack in room 217 since. The good thing about Momma’s job is she’s away more so it’s easier for me to come and go. Not first thing in the morning, though. Momma doesn’t have to go to work until she feels like it (
not till I’m good and goddamn ready
is how she puts it) which is usually in the afternoon but when she leaves I know I won’t see her for a long time. Once she didn’t come home until noon the next day! Lucky for me I got Mrs. Ford and Miss Chaplin pushing food on me all the time. They pack up “goody bags” for me to take home, and I can make food last. Anyway, today I’m not going over there on account of Cricket’s maybe-fake-maybe-not doctor appointment, so after Momma leaves for her secret job I decide I’m going to walk farther than I ever did before so I can make the time pass until it’s tomorrow and I can see Cricket and them again.

I had no idea there were stores so huge you could fit five of our
motels in them easy! And grocery stores with big baskets of fruit and vegetables
on special
right outside where anyone could walk by and steal them! Right out in plain view! And no one’s taking anything. Oh, and people buy dirt here in Hartsville. Hand to God they do. Great big plastic bags of it. Sealed tight so the dirt won’t mess up their cars. And the cars, they’re all shiny clean. All prim and proper like they pick their way around mud puddles after the rain.

In Hart’s Corner Shopping Center every single thing you lay eyes on is humongous. It’s a clump of stores huddled together around a parking lot like they’re warming themselves by a fire. If these huge stores were alive they’d be like the Godzilla movie Cricket and me watched a couple of days ago, they’d be able to step on motels and filling stations and even some office buildings—they’d kill ever-thing in sight. Instead they sit here with their mouths opening wide to swallow up anyone looking for TVs, food, books that are
20% off
. I’m walking to a store called Books Galore, passing Bedding Superstore, then Best Electronics to get there. In front of Best Electronics, out of nowhere, the doors fly open like they were expecting me, a cold blast of air comes out, and I have no earthly idea what in the world is going on. I walk back and forth a few times on account of me not ever seeing anything like what the doors are doing (how do they know to open?) until a man in a yellow collar shirt with a name tag reading billy comes out and tells me to
stop tripping the sensors
. I never heard of a grown-up with the name of a kid. How come he doesn’t call himself Bill? Something more his age.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?” Billy says. “Will you please—and I’m asking nicely here—please stop messing with the sensors. You kids are driving me crazy. We’re not in the business of cooling off the whole town, you know.”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

He fixes his squinty eyes on me and says, “You got nice manners.
That or you’re a smart aleck. You a smart aleck? You got friends out here waiting to cause trouble?”