The Good Daughter

by Alexandra Burt

  Shut up, I want to say. Don’t say another word. You’ve done enough. Shut up Shut up Shut up Shut up Shut up Shut up Shut up Shut up Shut up Shut up.

  “No,” is all I can get out, croaky and hoarse. This can’t be echoes in my mind. I’m not sure if I’m just thinking it or if I say it out loud. All those spaces, dark and deep, now the light floods in.

  I am the baby, I am Tain’s baby. The baby Quinn always wanted.

  My mother—the woman who I thought was my mother—was violently raped. Those were the sins committed against her. I can’t deny that. But she killed Nolan, my father, she took Tain’s baby, and then sent Tain away. She sent my mother away.

  She killed my father and stole me from my mother.

  I feel a surge of hate, strong and sure. It quickly fades to sadness for these confessions, these crimes committed by a dark and haunted woman named Quinn. Quinn is Memphis. Is her.

  It hurts. Not like accidentally slicing your finger with a knife, no, not a sudden jolt of pain that turns into a burn, but more like a knife in your back that remains. With every breath I take, the knife drives in deeper yet I’m required to live and go on. My mother is a knife lodged in my back and I see her as the lunatic she is: a crazy person who has raised me in hiding. She took me and tried to sustain me with her perverted mind, attempted to make me an accomplice in her twisted games. I’m an experiment.

  I look at her, really look at her. Consider her. Every single movement of hers, her shaking hands, the tears in her eyes, all of it just a reminder that she is a con. A criminal. A psychopath. I was unkempt, neglected, deprived, dragged about, and suffered because of her. She is the root of all evil.

  I get up, stumble blaringly into the cabinets. Tallulah wakes from all the noise I’m making, runs up to me. She raises on her hind legs, pawing at me, groping my thigh over and over and over as if to say, It’s okay, I’m here. I’m here. I ignore her and she retreats to the corner, her tail tucked underneath her.

  I run to my car, as fast as I can possibly get away from my mother, putting distance in between us. The cypress stops me in my tracks with its bright feathery appearance, mocking me. All those weeks I’ve lived here close to graves my mother dug. And behind me, in that farmhouse, is a woman who is no relation to me whatsoever. None. There are more dots I connect: Ramón de la Vega is Benito. Everybody is someone else, except Bobby. He’s safe. He’s just Bobby.

  The woman who raised me is a criminal, and I am her biggest crime. I am the epitome of all the crimes she’s committed.

  I jump in the car and speed off. As I drive, as clear as day, a memory: that afternoon at the diner. Like a jack-in-the-box lid bursting open, the jester pops up.

  Dahlia. Memphis. Crimes that shook the world.

  Pick a number, she’d said, and on page seven she found the article “Crimes That Shook the World.” By picking a number, she made me pick those names. The Memphis Three. The Black Dahlia. We are newspaper headlines. The woman who took me from my mother made me pick names from a newspaper. Not just random names from articles, no, names of people who have either committed crimes or were victims of crimes. Guilt and blame tied together forever.

  She made me her accomplice. She is to blame for everything. A life spent in squalor and in hiding. My mind upturns and then the blame shifts—she too is a victim; there’s an accumulation of moments, definitions of words, a collection of adjectives that define me, decades of patterns and habits. I feel the walls closing in on me, the riddles I can’t seem to solve test me, and denying myself revenge magnifies the crimes that she has committed.

  The sadness turns back to hate and the hate intensifies. I feel wrath. I long for revenge as if turning her in is going to deliver the ultimate blow for the years of suffering she’s put me through.

  —

  Bobby, as always, is parked by the gas station. When I pull up next to the cruiser, he looks up, surprised. I roll down my window.

  “Follow me,” I say but he doesn’t move. “Go. Just go,” I say, now with a sharp voice.

  Bobby starts the engine.

  “To the warehouses,” I add.

  He turns the key in the ignition, pulls out, and we are on our way.

  —

  The warehouses still sit abandoned after all these years. The bottom of the chain-link fence around the perimeter is full of leaves and debris and paper that has been blown about.

  Bobby stops by the gate with a large lock on a heavy chain. The No Trespassing sign is weathered and hard to read. Locals know not to go in; even today’s high schoolers have probably found other hangouts around town that don’t threaten to collapse on top of you.

  “What are we doing here?”

  My mind is clouded by my mother’s confession and I don’t know where to start but I know if I wait any longer I won’t be able to get it out at all.

  “My mother’s stories, about the people and the farm, they are all true.” I take in a deep breath. “Not only are they true but they are about her.”

  “I don’t understand,” he says.

  I tell him everything, I start off with Quinn’s rape, and I end with Memphis and Dahlia and the day at the diner. The day we met. I tell him Ramón de la Vega, his dad, is Benito. I don’t mention that the mounds at the farm are graves, not yet, but I tell him about the deed and that his father helped Memphis start a new life.

  “I can’t even begin to understand. My father knew your mother. I don’t know what to say. When did you find that out? Just now?” Bobby is less surprised than I expected—maybe it’s not a matter of surprise, but a puzzle that has been longing to be solved. “I had a hunch they might know each other but I had no idea.”

  “She told me and I ran, just took off.” I choke back the tears, then I mumble, hear myself—She killed my father and she’s not my mother—and it sounds too outrageous to be true, so shocking, so extreme. The rape she talked about, the rape she revisited in her stories over and over, that was her. There’s something growing inside of me, a hint of compassion, and I’m not comfortable with that. “I have to tell you something else.”

  Bobby’s eyes have grown dark and I know he’s thinking about his dad. He wraps his arms around me and when he lets go, while he’s still close to me, I want to hold on, want to remain there with him.

  “I just don’t know what to say, Dahlia. I’m so sorry.”

  “There’s more.” I want to tell him that the mounds, those peculiar rises of earth underneath the cypress tree, are graves. I want to call Memphis a murderer and I want Bobby to tell me to go to the authorities, I want him to urge me to turn her in, but before I do that, I must tell him about the briefcase. The bracelets.

  “More?” Bobby asks.

  “I went into the storage room at the Lark the other day,” I say as I unwrap myself from him. “I took a book to the lost and found bins, but that day I didn’t really go inside, it’s old and dusty. Anyway.” I take a deep breath and then I go on. “I went back, just out of curiosity, I went through the lost and found items. I found a briefcase that someone left behind, probably someone passing through years ago. A briefcase, with salesman samples, something like that. They have different themes but anyway”—I’m trying to sound matter-of-fact but the words come out breathless, without pauses and commas, just a long stream of breathy incoherent ramblings—“it was full of charm bracelets.” I pause and watch his face. He’s stoic. “Jane wore a charm bracelet, remember?”

  Bobby remains silent and stares straight ahead. He shuts off the radio that had been hissing and breaking in and out the entire time.

  “Where’s the briefcase?”

  “I took it and I counted the boxes. I put everything back the very next day. In the same spot.”

  “And they have your fingerprints all over them?”

  I feel myself getting impatient. “So what? I wouldn’t know if I hadn’t gone through the
m.”

  “Dahlia, you realize that you are the one who found Jane in the woods. And you work at the Lark, and your fingerprints—”

  “So I’m the suspect now?”

  “No, but as far as evidence goes, it might be worthless now. Why didn’t you tell me you found the briefcase?”

  Nothing is lost. Nothing. I hate the fact that Bobby gives up so quickly, how being straight and narrow is more important to him. I feel something settle inside of me, a seed attempting to take hold in fertile ground. This is Bobby, Bobby who would never lie, never betray me, the boy I knew would never . . . But the biggest things that happened to him—his mother dying of cancer, the promise to his father to keep an eye on Bordeaux—he never spoke about. He’s a vault, like my mother. “Why didn’t you tell me about Bordeaux back then, about your father’s suspicions? We were friends, we were so close.”

  A voice from afar, Bobby’s voice. “I need you to trust me now.”

  “I trust you,” I say and know immediately that’s a lie. I’m still processing. We are so good together. But then, it’s always good until it goes bad. “Did you know about the charm bracelets at the Lark? And you never told me about that either?”

  He remains silent.

  The sun is beaming on the roof and even though it’s hot in the car, I’m shaking.

  “Dahlia, listen to me,” Bobby says and grabs my hands and holds them in his. “You must stop this now, this must end today. I’m sorry about your mother, and what you just told me is huge. I can’t even imagine how you feel. But Bordeaux is something else altogether. That’s police work, evidence. Don’t get obsessed with that. You need to take a step back and—”

  “You’re calling me obsessed? What about you?”

  “What about me? I thought I was doing the right thing. I became a cop. I watched Bordeaux Sr. until the day he died. I kept an eye on him. For years, Dahlia, years. In a span of ten, fifteen years, you get married, have children. There are holidays and vacations and birthdays. A lot of life happens in fifteen years. Imagine, all those years you were gone, all that time. And you know what I did for fifteen years? I lost my marriage, the life I was trying to build, because I couldn’t leave this damn town.”

  “I’m not judging you.” I want to say that I know what he went through but that’s just one of those empty expressions. I don’t know, just as he doesn’t know what my life has been like.

  “We make promises, Dahlia. I promised my dad to keep an eye on Bordeaux. To be vigilant. I kept my promise. Not only did I keep my promise but I became a cop because of it. And now look at me, I have less power than anyone else. You barge in and find briefcases and bracelets and I just sit in this car, day in and day out, looking at that damn motel.”

  Bobby grabs me by my shoulders and squeezes. “Do you not see what this does to people? Your mother, look what happened to her, to both of you. What happens when you’re stuck, not really making your own choices even when you think you are. No chance of a normal life, not even a remote chance. We both know something about that. And your mother, she lived it all her life. Hiding, trying not to get caught.” He turns around and takes off his holster. “I’m not doing this another day.” With the last word, his voice cracks.

  “What are you saying?”

  “Keep my gun for me, okay? Leave it at the farm, hide it somewhere, but don’t leave it in your car. I’ll get it later.”

  He hands me his gun and I take it. I’m not sure why—is he worried of what he might do with it, will he confront Bordeaux and is afraid he might shoot him? Maybe he doesn’t want to show up as a cop, maybe there are legal reasons to this and all he wants are answers—and so I grab the gun and toss it on my backseat. By the time I turn around, he’s in his cruiser.

  “Did you hear what I told you? The briefcase . . .” I call after him.

  But then I stop. I have to let him go. I sit in my car and I remain there for what seems like hours. My mind is racing and then I realize Memphis and I are not even remotely at the end of her story, our story. Earlier that morning, when I left, I passed by the mounds and now, even though much of her story still seems like an impossible maze, one path begins to shine brighter than all the others. Three graves, I just saw them with my own eyes, and I know that my mother, Tain, is the third grave. Memphis hasn’t told me that part yet.

  I know with every fiber of my being that Memphis is guilty of one more crime. And I will demand she tell me why and how she killed my mother.

  —

  At the farm, I shove Bobby’s gun in the back of the small cabinet above the fridge. Memphis sits on the back porch, smoking, watching my every move. I sit next to her.

  When the silence becomes unbearable, I ask the question. “How did my mother die?” I hold her gaze. “That’s her out there, isn’t it?” I say and nod toward the mounds.

  Memphis doesn’t blink. She takes a drag from the cigarette to buy time to think about her answer.

  “She couldn’t care for you,” she says. “You must believe me.”

  I fight back the tears. I’m torn; I want to take into consideration Tain and her limited mental capacity, her inability to care for me, something that Memphis thought she had to do for her.

  “I know this is difficult for you,” Memphis says and gets up. “Come with me,” she adds, “I want to show you something.” She points toward the graves and in the blink of an eye I see the future: yellow police tape, white tents propped up, crime scene investigators with paper coats and booties turning this place upside down. I follow her past the two graves, past the cypress, to the third grave.

  “When they came,” Memphis says. “I should have never opened the door.”

  Forty-one

  MEMPHIS

  AUTUMN forced the end of sunny days upon the woman and the child. All through the summer they’d strolled around the property, picked flowers in the vast meadow, played hide-and-seek between the sheets flapping in the wind, fed the chickens, and shucked corn on the front porch. By the time winter asserted its grip, the sun went down early and all that was left was to go to bed. Even the child felt out of sorts and refused to nap and if she did, she’d only sleep for a few minutes and then she’d jerk awake.

  A cold front came and the skies seemed to be darker than any winter the woman had ever experienced. A sudden steep drop in temperature brought dark and angry clouds with a bluish tint. At the same time heavy precipitation had moved across the land, making the approaching front seem even more threatening.

  The woman explained to the child that there’d be long periods of harsh loneliness and frost forcing them to stay indoors and they’d huddle up by the fireplace. We just read books and play games, the woman explained, and the child smiled. She often wondered if the child recalled Tain and their time together, even though she had probably been too young to remember anything. Tain hadn’t cared for her more than a nanny would during infancy, and the child had never asked a single question about her. For a while Quinn had felt guilt for how she had sent Tain away—yet whichever way she twisted and turned it, she didn’t look at it as having deserted her. She had done what she had to do to keep the baby safe. She tried to forget about Tain altogether, and there were other concerns.

  Frightening things happened every day. She had seen a shadow out by the shed. It was the shadow of a man walking with a limp, hunched over, hurrying and dragging one leg behind, rushing to get to the shed. Nolan, she wanted to call out to him, wanted him to stop and talk to her. At first she felt as if there were things left unsaid during all those years of marriage—how he’d taken her for granted, had never made any attempt to make her happy, had never listened to her, had betrayed her, had taken her best friend from her—all those things she didn’t get to say while he was alive—but by the time his ghost appeared daily, she had changed her mind. The winter was long and by then she had given in to some sort of guilt, wanted to ask his forgiveness, wante
d to know what else she could have done, wanted to maybe just acknowledge him, thinking the dark clouds might evaporate if she did. She had been feeling nothing but dread all winter long, and if it wasn’t for the child, her bubbly personality and her joyous laughter—who knows what she would have done?

  Quinn had used the salve Aella had given her. She had taken the balm—remembered Aella said it was poisonous and to use it sparingly—but the only reason she didn’t just rub it all over her body was the fact that it might kill her and the child would find her and once that image had manifested in her mind she knew she could never leave her. She rubbed a tiny dab over her feet where the veins ran across like angry rivers. All it did was make Quinn wake up in the middle of the night, gasping for air, her brain misfiring with random images. She didn’t understand why the pressure on her chest was so real when it was all just a dream, but then she saw Nolan’s ghost sitting on the other side of the bed. He had returned, getting ready to pull off his boots and climb in the bed with her. She’d jerk then, not because she was afraid, but for the simple fact that ghosts usually have some sort of business with the living. But every time she addressed him, he vaporized, disappeared in front of her eyes, his likeness dissolved and vanished, turning into tiny droplets like the soap bubbles she made for the child with dish detergent and glycerin. Quinn wasn’t afraid of ghosts, not even as a child, had been one herself since that morning in the woods, knew that they didn’t mean any harm. Yet things had been left unsaid and regardless how hard she tried, she couldn’t stop dwelling on it.

  During the day she didn’t see Nolan’s ghost, not in the house at least. The child was three then, and Quinn felt as if the raw isolation of living on this farm was going to swallow her at any moment. Every day, when dusk came, her sanity seemed to slip through her frozen fingers. The fire in the fireplace barely heated the room, and when she fetched a cup of chamomile tea, she’d allow the girl to warm her hands on the earthenware mug, and by the time she drank the tea it was almost cold.