The Girl Death Left Behind

by Lurlene McDaniel

  Terri had kept her promise to Beth, and for that Beth was grateful. She didn’t want her cousin to get into any more hot water than she was in already. “Don’t be mad at Terri. I made her promise to wait until you came home from your weekend. Was the seminar all right?”

  “Yes, it was worthwhile, and I’m glad we went,” Camille said. “But that doesn’t excuse what you did. Our going away for the weekend was no license for you to run off.”

  “I wasn’t running away. I just wanted to come home, and I knew Teddy’s folks would let me stay with them. I’ve been perfectly safe, you know.”

  “I know that,” Camille said. “It’s just that you had no right to take off that way.”

  “If I’d asked permission to go with Sloane and Carl, would you have let me come?”

  Camille’s face reddened. “That’s not the point.”

  “You wouldn’t have.” Answering her own question, Beth shook her head for emphasis. “I wanted to come home, Aunt Camille. Is that so hard to understand?”

  “But your home is with us now. I don’t want to lose you too, Beth.” Camille sighed. “Did coming here, seeing the house, make it better for you?”

  Torn, Beth hugged her arms to herself. “When I went through the house, I thought I’d be close to my family again, but I wasn’t. It was freaky to see the rooms and remember where all the furniture had been. I could still hear Mom’s and Dad’s voices. I could still see Allison and Doug running down the halls. Except, not really. It was only make-believe. The renters had changed some things. I know they had every right to, but I felt like they were intruders, like they didn’t belong in our space.”

  “Beth—I’m so sorry about the house. Really, if there was anything I could do—”

  Beth shook her head. “No, it’s okay. The house isn’t really important to me. Not anymore. I came to see it, and I did. But I know I don’t belong there. Not without them.”

  Camille’s eyes glistened with tears. “We’ll stay a few days, I promise. We’ll let you visit with your friends. We’ll do anything you want to do. No rush.”

  “There’s school.” Beth remembered that school would be starting up the first of the week, and she had a paper due in English and a big test in algebra. And she wondered how Jared was doing, and if he missed her.

  “You and Terri both can take a few days off from school. It’s no big deal. This is more important.”

  “Thank you,” Beth said. But the victory felt hollow because it wasn’t really about staying or leaving her old house and old friends and old city. It was about saying goodbye to herself in this place. It was about finding a new Beth inside the old one.

  * * *

  Teddy had gone off to his part-time job at McDonald’s, Camille was in the kitchen with Faye, and Beth was shooting baskets when Terri came outside that evening.

  “You’re pretty good,” Terri said.

  “I’m pretty rusty,” Beth said, watching the ball sail through the bent hoop.

  “You should go out for basketball next year. Bet you’d be on the team in a flash. I’m not very good at sports myself.”

  Beth caught the ball and held it. Turning to Terri, she said, “Thanks for keeping quiet about me going off. That couple of days’ head start was a good thing. I know you got into trouble because you covered for me, and I appreciate it.”

  Terri shrugged. “Mom and Dad got over it once they realized you were all right. They’ve just grounded me for a few weeks.”

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  “I was pretty scared that first night all alone by myself. I locked all the doors and stuck a baseball bat under the covers with me. I’ll bet I didn’t sleep half an hour.”

  This information surprised Beth. She hadn’t even considered that her going when she did would leave Terri feeling frightened. “I’m sorry—”

  “It’s okay. No boogeyman came to get me.” Terri smiled shyly. “And on Saturday I had the whole place to myself. I raided the fridge, watched TV till my eyes crossed, talked on the phone whenever I felt like it. But I didn’t tell a soul I was by myself.” Terri looked proud of that. “I—I didn’t realize how much your being down the hall had come to mean to me until you weren’t there.”

  “I thought you hated me living there.”

  Terri poked at the ground with the toe of her sneaker. “Some days I did. At first I felt really sorry for you. And I thought I was going to be your best friend. I thought I’d introduce you around to all my friends and we’d all hang out together. I thought … well, a lot of things. But you didn’t like my friends. You didn’t want to be around them. Or me.”

  Beth felt her cheeks grow warm. Everything Terri was saying was true.

  “It’s all right,” Terri added hastily. “It’s just that things didn’t go the way I expected. And Mom and Dad kept bending over backward to make sure you were happy. And you kept ignoring me. You made friends with Sloane, the toughest girl in the school. A girl who hated me. And then Jared liked you and not me.”

  “I—I didn’t mean to—”

  “That’s okay too.” Terri’s eyes were diamond bright with tears. “I know I’ll never win the Miss Popularity contest at Westwood. Thinking I could get Jared to like me was dumb from the start. But of everything that happened, the very worst part is that nobody seemed to care that I lost Aunt Carol and Uncle Paul just like everyone else did. And you and Allison and Doug are the only cousins I’ll ever have. My family’s never been close like yours, you know. You did everything together. Dad worked all the time, and Mom and I usually argue and fight.” She shrugged. “I’m not sure why.”

  Beth had never honestly seen the situation through Terri’s eyes. She’d never once considered the impact of her tragedy on Terri’s life. All at once, Terri’s brattiness and hostility made more sense. “Well, you’re right—I didn’t think much about anything, or anybody, for a long time.”

  “I thought you hated me,” Terri said. “And I didn’t know how to fix myself so that you’d like me.”

  “It irked me that you had a mother you didn’t treat very nicely, while I had no mother at all,” Beth confessed. “I know we’re related, but I didn’t feel close to you.”

  A wry smile crossed Terri’s mouth. “Well, you know what they say: ‘You can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your relatives.’ ”

  Emotion clogged Beth’s throat as she heard her mother’s words from Terri. “My mom used to tell me that.”

  “Yeah, me too. When I asked her why you didn’t like me, that’s what she’d say.”

  “You talked to my mom about us?”

  “Aunt Carol was the best listener in the whole world. I talked to her every chance I got.”

  More information Beth had never heard.

  Twilight had gathered, and Faye called out to them to come in for ice-cream sundaes. Beth put the ball down. “Guess we’d better go in.”

  Terri started after her. Beth stopped and caught her cousin’s arm. “Will you promise me something?”

  “What?”

  “Be nicer to your mother, Terri. Not so snippy. I’m not being bossy, just letting you know you sound mean when you talk to her sometimes. That makes me crazy.”

  Terri nodded. “And will you promise that you’ll stop ignoring me? That you’ll stop treating me like I’m a nobody, and like the things I like are stupid and childish?”

  Beth studied her cousin’s face. Her eyes were brown, like Uncle Jack’s, but she had her mother’s high cheekbones. It was a trait Beth had shared with her mother too—high cheekbones and deep-set eyes. In the pale purple light, she saw the faintest traces of her mother’s smile on her cousin’s face. The recognition was startling, yet oddly comforting. “All right,” Beth told Terri, trembling. “We’ll make a pact about it. We’ll both try harder to think of the other’s feelings.”

  “Fair enough,” Terri said.

  “Fair enough,” Beth echoed.

  22

  The next morning Beth got her wish a
nd returned to the cemetery. Aunt Camille drove, and Terri came along.

  She made her way between the long aisles of neatly manicured grass as the sun warmed her shoulders. In the distance a caretaker trimmed hedges, while another planted rows of impatiens along a footpath. She walked quickly, her heart tight in her chest, reading the small metal plaques as she passed among those buried.

  PAUL HAXTON. She stopped. She’d almost missed it. On the day of the funeral, there had been a canopy, a crowd, a hole in the ground, covered by a tarpaulin. But the grass had done its work; now the ground looked lush and green. No scars remained, no telltale signs of that terrible day last summer.

  Beth sank to her knees. Beside her father’s marker, her mother’s rested. CAROL TALBERT HAXTON. Next to hers were Allison’s and Doug’s. In a neat little row they lay. Side by side. Together beneath the ground. She struggled to see their faces as they had been that last morning. The images weren’t there! Why? It had been so easy for so many months to recapture their faces. But suddenly it was as if there were a rip in her memory and all the pictures had leaked out. Panic filled Beth. Why couldn’t she see their faces?

  She heard Terri and her aunt come up and stoop down beside her. She didn’t want them to suspect that her memory had failed. They’d think she was callous, uncaring. “I should have gone with them that day,” she said. “I should have.”

  “Then you would be dead too,” Camille said. “And we would have none of you with us.”

  “I should have made them stay home with me. Mom said she would, but I told her no. I watched them drive away. I could have stopped them.”

  “We can’t keep the people we love safe, no matter how hard we try.”

  Terri patted the grass over her aunt’s grave. “I miss you, Aunt Carol.”

  In a rush the images of Beth’s family returned, tumbling through her mind like scattered leaves. With great relief, Beth sat back on her haunches. “I don’t want to forget them.”

  “You won’t,” Camille assured her. “Their memory will grow dimmer, but it’s a light that will never go out.”

  Death had forgotten Beth. It had left her behind. She had been spared. For what? “Why?” she asked. “Why them and not me?”

  “I think that’s what life’s journey is all about. Discovering the whys, the reasons we’ve been put here on earth. Some people never know. The lucky ones find work to do that makes them whole and gives them value.”

  Beth wanted things to be normal again. She wanted to go home and find her mother fixing lunch and Allison and Doug watching TV. She wanted to see her father mowing the lawn. “Do you think they can see us? Up in heaven, when they look down. Can they see us?”

  “I’m sure of it,” Camille said.

  “Allison and Doug never got to grow up.” Beth wondered if angels would kiss them.

  “True,” Camille said. “But how many children get to walk into heaven holding their mother’s and father’s hands?”

  “Not many,” Beth admitted. The image comforted her. Still, she saw the vacant spot where she should have been. “Will they remember me? When I get to heaven? Will they know who I am?”

  Camille traced her sister’s name on the brass plate with the tip of her finger. “When you die an old woman and walk up to heaven’s gate, Allison and Doug will run to meet you. They’ll take your hand and show you off to everyone.”

  Beth was separated from her family. For a while. For the span of her lifetime. She would go on, and when her time was over, she would be with them. In the meantime, it was up to her to spin the straw of her life into gold.

  She looked at her aunt, and then at her cousin. She and Terri would grow up together. Side by side. They would adjust, compromise, change, accept. They would learn to get along—just like sisters. Beth took Terri’s hand and then Aunt Camille’s. They were family. She had no other. And they wanted her. “I’m ready to go home,” she said.

  Together they walked out of the cemetery. And this time it was Beth who left death behind.