Two words hung in her chest and she held them like a fist, then let them fly. “Sophia Rose,” she said, surprised by the evenness of her release. She watched his face for a reaction, a stiffening of the muscles in his neck or a flicker behind his eyelids, but there was nothing.
He pushed his chair away from the desk and crossed his study in three quick strides. Standing in the doorway, he flicked a nervous glance up and down the hallway, then closed the door.
“Last time I saw Christine, she was on the back deck. She started smoking again,” Brandy said, stunned to realize her stepmother, her father’s supposed confidant, didn’t know any of this. “The investigators suspected arson from the beginning. Two days later, the police arrested my mother. She was arraigned and charged. That’s a lot to happen to a dead woman.”
The room seemed to hold its breath. Her dad didn’t speak, but his blue eyes were so open Brandy believed for an instant she saw his soul.
He kept looking at her, his mouth ajar as if he’d forgotten how to make words. “Brandy, listen. Just let me explain,” he said finally. “I can explain everything.” He paced in front of his desk, face rigid, every muscle tight.
“My father, the great explainer. I’m beginning to understand. And I hope you’ll save me some work and tell me the rest.”
“What precisely are you asking?”
“Try the truth for a change. Is my mother dead, or is she still alive?”
“Your mother is dead. She died from cancer in 1988.”
“You told me she died in 1984 when I was three. Where was she during those four years? Why didn’t you take me to see her?”
“People are never what they seem. Everyone has secrets.”
“Maybe. But keeping a mother’s life a secret from her only daughter? That’s frickin’ over the top, even for you.”
He pressed the fingertips of both hands into his temples, then sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said, as if he really meant it. “Though I’m certain it doesn’t feel that way to you, Cookie, I did what I thought best.”
His use of her childhood name caught her off guard.
“I also did what your mother wanted.”
He sat beside her on the loveseat and took her hands.
She pulled them away.
“We did it for you. Honest to God, honey. You were just a little girl, barely more than a baby. And you’d already been through so much.” He stopped and looked at her.
“I have a right to the truth,” she said.
“What you discovered isn’t the truth. It only looks like it.”
Something inside her snapped. “Cut the crap, Dad. Did she do it, or didn’t she?” Her fingernails bit into her palms. He’d clam up if she lost control. She couldn’t let that happen. Not now. Not when she was so close to the truth.
He tried to speak, but his voice splintered and seemed to snag on his words. “The judge acquitted your mother.”
Brandy’s eyes brimmed. “She didn’t do it? They found her innocent?”
Her dad hesitated.
She felt the pressure of all the words he’d rather leave unspoken. “Please.”
He cleared his throat and tried again. “Rose was innocent. She loved her parents, and never would have intentionally done something to hurt them.” His fingers danced nervously on the loveseat. “I know it’s hard to understand, but your mother thought what she did would save them. She wanted—” His tears surfaced.
Brandy had never shared a moment with her dad as exposed and intimate as this one, never once seen him cry. When she looked at him again, reality spread through her as inevitably as ink along the threads of a linen napkin. “Oh my God. I had a crazy woman for a mother.”
“Don’t say that. Mental illness is a terrible thing.”
Her dad held his hand suspended in midair for an instant before he reached for her arm. “I’ve researched this. It isn’t passed down to the children. I mean it can be, but you, you’re okay.”
The impact of his words hit hard. “Are you saying this could happen to me? I could be like my mother? I could be crazy, too?”
He grabbed her shoulders. “Don’t worry. The signs would be here by now. What you did to your mirror—it was nothing. I overreacted and I’m sorry. You were just frustrated and angry about Emily.”
“Oh my God. I think I finally understand. She isn’t dead. My mother’s locked up in a nut house somewhere, isn’t she?”
He tightened his grip on her shoulders. “No. How many times have I taken you to her grave?”
She jerked herself away. “A grave with a fake date of death on it.” She closed her eyes in an attempt to regain some control. She could almost feel it, that huge echoing space. Her mother had been dead to Brandy for nearly three-quarters of her life. And yet, she still felt so sad.
“I’m caught in an impossible situation,” he said. “No matter what I do, I can’t make it right. I received a letter from a law firm stating she’d died in Bayview Hospital and asking what arrangements I wanted to make. I had the ashes shipped to Ashland, bought a cemetery plot, and buried them so you’d have a place to visit.”
Brandy said nothing.
His eyes flashed. “Do you think this is easy for me? Think I can hide from myself? Hide from the way I felt about your mother…” His voice cracked. “You, Christine, and Emily are the most important things in the world to me now.”
She turned and glared at him. “No, we’re not. Hiding from the past is.”
“How many times do I have to say it? I wanted to protect you. Surely you know that!” he said, so fiercely that she grew quiet.
He tried to say something more, but his voice cracked again. It took him a moment to recover. “Maybe you don’t know. Maybe Emily didn’t either. And that tears me apart.”
Behind the image of that fire, other mysterious things lurked—a dark bulging sack of them. Brandy feared those things almost as much as she wanted to let them out. “She was schizophrenic, wasn’t she?”
“Yes. And bi-polar. When we first met, she was happy and bubbly, a friend to everyone. She believed in a beautiful world and that the two of us were part of that beauty. I was captivated. And then one day, the love of my life vanished. But it doesn’t mean anything about you.”
Brandy licked her dry lips. “I want to know about the night of my accident. Did my mother scream when she saw the doctor stitching my face?”
“Yes.”
She swallowed, but the nervous tightening inside her throat didn’t go down. At last, her dad was telling the truth.
“She took you to the mall that night,” he said. “I stayed home grading papers. When the call came, I met the ambulance at the emergency room. Your mother wasn’t in it.”
“What do you mean? You just told me—”
“She came later. She stayed at the store for a little while.”
What kind of a lousy mother would finish her shopping while an ambulance carted off her bleeding three-year-old? Maybe her father had told her the truth. Maybe her mother had never wanted children.
“It’s not like it sounds. She wouldn’t let them restart the escalator until…” He paused, thought for a second, then continued. “The store manager told the police she knelt in front of the bottom stair with a…”
A quick glance at her dad’s face caught his horror. “With a what, Dad?”
He watched her, but remained silent.
She tried again. “My mother knelt with a what? You’ve gone this far. You might as well tell me everything.”
“Oh, Cookie, are you really sure you want to hear this?”
She nodded.
The muscles in his throat tightened as he swallowed. “A pair of tweezers. When she got to the hospital, she handed the doctor a blood-smeared envelope. Tiny pieces of your skin. Rose insisted the surgeon could…” Again, her dad stopped and stared at Brandy. “The nurse called for a psychiatric consult. They admitted your mother that night.” Her father’s last sentence came out in a whisper.
&n
bsp; As another part of her past reassembled itself, Brandy saw the scene clearly. A frantic woman, gathering the missing pieces of her child’s face. A mother who had loved her daughter beyond measure.
“Your mother was inconsolable,” her dad said. “She blamed herself.”
“So, my accident started her mental illness?”
“No. There were other signs, but I missed them.”
“Christine said she had a drinking problem.”
“People often self medicate. It wasn’t her fault.”
“Maybe I’m really dense, but I don’t get it. Why would you blame yourself all these years?”
“I thought it would be hard enough for you to grow up without her.”
Brandy sat, motionless, slowly coming to terms with this new truth about her dad. “Did she ever come home from the hospital?”
“They stabilized her on medications. And she came home, but she hated the drugs. She stopped taking them.”
“Why would she do that?”
“She said they made her feel as if she were sleepwalking. Your mother was dynamic and creative, a great singer—just like you.” He paused, swallowed.
“Then why did you claim I was nothing like her?”
He remained silent for a few moments. “After the trial, she knew she’d probably never be released from Bayview. She begged me to divorce her, to take full custody of you and move away. She wanted us to start over in a new place where you wouldn’t have to live with the stigma of what she’d done. I was—”
“If you loved her, how could you just leave her like that?”
He cocked his eyebrow. “You think I left her. You may be too young to understand this. But the people who matter the most stay inside. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen your mother’s face in my classroom, spotted her in the produce aisle at the Safeway. On the swing in Lithia Park.”
To her surprise, Brandy felt a lump in her throat. At this moment, the past was more alive than the present. She swallowed, pushed it down.
“I tried to honor her wishes,” he said.
“What about my wishes?” Her voice was soft, barely more than a whisper.
“When do you think I should have told you? When you were five? Ten? It was stupid, I see that now, but I thought if I didn’t talk about her, you’d stop asking.”
Brandy shook her head, unable to respond.
“Your mother wanted me to wait until you were old enough to comprehend. She wanted me to give you the wedding album for your eighteenth birthday so you’d have those pictures of the two of you together before—”
“Before I found out she set fire to my grandparents’ home and vineyard?”
“Yes. We only wanted you to have a normal life.”
She touched her cheek. Ordinarily, she would have reacted to his ridiculous use of the word, normal, and repeated it back to him. But she couldn’t. “I’ve already seen the album.”
He cupped his head in his hands. “I know,” he said, without looking up. “Radhauser found me in the park. We went to his office, and he showed me the photo of your mother wearing the heart pendant I’d given her for our first Valentine’s Day.”
“Do you think it could be the necklace Emily had?”
“I can’t imagine it’s anything more than a coincidence. After your mother was institutionalized, most of her clothes and jewelry were sold at an estate sale and the proceeds put into a college fund for you.”
She stared at him for a moment in which she saw the weight of the years on him. Maybe there was always more than one truth, different perspectives, all going on at the same time—contradicting and getting in the way of each other, but true nonetheless. She touched his arm. Her dad had always been so unknowable. But there were times when she had sensed both the terrible darkness inside him and his attempts to shield her from it.
Chapter Twenty-Five
While her dad and Christine argued in the kitchen, Brandy curled up on her bed. It was 4a.m. Narrow bands of moonlight leaked past the edges of her closed blinds. And Sunday morning when she had awakened and looked around the familiar bedroom, realizing again that Emily was gone, seemed like a lifetime ago.
She clamped the pillow over her ears in a useless attempt to muffle their voices. Her mother had been mentally ill. Who could say it would never happen to Brandy? She’d been reading the statistics in Christine’s psychology book. Maybe something abnormal waited in Brandy’s DNA, some gene perched inside her brain, something that could make her set fire to someone or something she loved.
“I don’t get it, Professor Michaelson,” Christine shouted. “Was there some maturity test I had to pass before you could confide in me?” A fist banged on the table.
Her dad said something so softly Brandy couldn’t distinguish the words.
“What she overhears is not my problem,” Christine said. “You never should have lied to her. Or me. You think you’re the big authority on everything. You have no idea how much I hate you right now.”
Brandy heard their bedroom door slam.
Sometime after 5a.m., the loneliness became too much for Brandy. She tiptoed down the hallway and into the kitchen to discover her dad was gone. Thinking he’d finally surrendered to sleep, she turned and headed back toward her own room. Her eyes lingered on the thread of light still spilling beneath his study door.
She inched it open.
Her dad lay fully clothed on the love seat, his gaze focused on the ceiling. Tears oozed from the corners of his eyes.
Brandy stumbled back. Some strange force seemed to press her against the wall. She’d gone eighteen years without seeing her dad cry and now, in the course of hours, the unthinkable had happened twice. The sight frightened her and she didn’t know what to do. After a moment, she slipped into her own room and closed the door.
The second long night without Emily had already begun its slow tilt toward morning. She tried to imagine a happy ending for all of them—conjured up images of Emily running down the hallway after her bath, her dark curls bouncing against her back, shoulder blades sticking out like wings. Of Christine finding a way to forgive Brandy for both the lie about the necklace and her carelessness in leaving Emily unattended. Forgive her father for his lies about Brandy’s mother.
She returned to his study and knocked on the door.
He didn’t respond.
She tried again. “Okay if I come in?”
“It’s not a good time.”
Brandy heard the whisper of a tissue as he pulled it out of the box. The sound of him blowing his nose, then rearranging himself. Finally, he cleared his throat.
“Please, Dad. I need to tell you something.”
“Try to get some sleep, honey. Things will look better in daylight.” There was no trace of conviction in his voice.
She opened the door.
He sat with his elbows on his desk, eyes puffy and red.
Brandy watched him in silence—saw the vulnerable bald spot on the top of his head he’d failed to comb over.
He took a swipe at the wetness under his eyes, so hard that it seemed like a slap. “Christine needs her rest.” His gaze skated across his daughter’s face and then off into the darkened hallway behind her.
Brandy swallowed and took a tentative step toward him. “Christine doesn’t want you in the bedroom, does she?”
He looked at her, then shook his head. “She’s focusing her fear and rage about Emily on me. Four solid years of grievances.” He passed a quick finger across his tear-mottled cheekbone.
Brandy reeled, a sick, dizzy feeling in her stomach. She hung her head.
“None of this is your fault,” he said. “I lied to Christine about your mother from the beginning, and now she thinks everything I tell her is a lie.” He paused and thought for a second. “Let’s face it. I’ve made a shit-load of mistakes with both of you.” He was silent for a moment. “I’m not sure Christine will ever forgive me.” Again, he stopped talking, but a small involuntary sound emerged from his throat
.
“I lied about the necklace because Christine was spanking her, hard. Emily was sobbing. I just wanted to make it stop. I wanted to be loyal to my sister.”
He gave her a sad smile. “I know that.”
Brandy stepped across the study and around the desk, until she was standing beside him. “I believe your lies were about loyalty, too. You were trying to protect me and whatever good memories I had of my mother.” She leaned down and into his shoulder. “You wanted to honor my mother’s wishes.”
He wrapped his arms around her. “I’m forty-seven years old and still stupid.” He shuddered, then shook his head. “And I’ll be forty-eight tomorrow.”
* * *
At 7a.m. on Monday morning, Brandy sat at the kitchen table eating a bowl of cereal with her dad. Neither of them spoke. Christine appeared in the doorway, quiet as a shadow.
Brandy didn’t breathe.
Christine pressed her lips together, moved into the room and stood near the table, silently staring at Brandy’s father. Christine crouched beside his chair and pushed her face directly in front of his. “It’s Monday morning. Emily has been missing for two days. But you’re not going to let something like a simple kidnapping, a child you didn’t want in the first place, keep you from your classroom, are you?”
He blinked, then drew back to absorb the pain of what she’d said. “Please, don’t do this. Not now. I can assure you I won’t be going anywhere until we find Emily.”
When Christine moved away, he pushed his chair back from the table, but remained seated. “You haven’t eaten. Let me make you some breakfast.”
A hopeless feeling passed over Brandy. The air inside the kitchen seemed to change density and she could tell something was about to happen. Lowering her head, she stared into her cereal bowl and counted the raisins beneath the milky surface.
Again, her stepmother bent at the waist, thrust her face close to Brandy’s dad. “Won’t the world come to an end if you miss one of your precious obligations?”
He grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward him in an attempt to make her stop. “That’s enough.”
Christine yanked back, her fingers caught in the pocket of his shirt, ripping it away from his chest. She stood upright and planted her hands on her hipbones. “Breakfast. Yes, that would be lovely. Or why don’t we do a brunch? Eggs Benedict would be nice. Oh, and don’t forget the muffins.” Her face twisted and her pitch escalated. “A little orange marmalade while some pervert does unspeakable things to my—”
When Time Is a River Page 25