Secrets She Left Behind

by Diane Chamberlain

  “A question for you,” he said.

  The way he held my hand and the easy tone of his voice told me I would like his question very much.

  “Yes?” I asked.

  “You and I have been saints, haven’t we?”

  I laughed. “You’re not kidding.”

  “How would you feel about stopping the sainthood routine?” he asked. “Maybe going on the pill?”

  “Yes!” I let go of his hand and nearly leaped on top of him, straddling him.

  Jamie laughed at how out of character I was suddenly acting.

  I leaned back to smile at him. “I’ll make an appointment with my OB tomorrow,” I said.

  Jamie rubbed his palms over my thighs. “You’ve been so damn patient, Sara,” he said. He tucked my hair behind my ear. “I love you, and I love our son.”

  I lowered my head, and for the first time since the night Keith was conceived, I kissed Jamie on the mouth. I loved how he groaned. I loved the way he tightened his hands on my thighs. But although I wanted to make love to him, this time I needed more. I leaned away from him again.

  “Will you divorce Laurel?” I asked.

  He hesitated long enough to let me know that was not necessarily a part of his plan.

  “I’m still struggling with it, Sara,” he said. “She’s not well. And she’s Maggie’s mother.”

  I climbed off his lap. “And I’m Keith’s, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  Jamie grabbed my hand. “I know,” he said. “I’m moving in that direction. It’s just…I worry about her getting even worse than she is.”

  “You still love her,” I said.

  He looked down at where our hands were knotted together, his silence giving me his answer.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “The past. The person she used to be.”

  I wanted to feel anger. I was ready to feel anger. Instead, I remembered seeing Laurel in the chapel long ago, looking up at Jamie with complete adoration. I could imagine how it felt for him to lose that. I rested my head on his shoulder.

  “That person’s dead, Jamie,” I said. “She’s been dead a long time.”

  We became lovers again, and I helped him formulate the words to tell Laurel he wanted a divorce. I knew, though, that he was still troubled about it. I’d find him in the living room late at night, studying financial statements, punching numbers into a calculator as he tried to figure out the best way to divvy up their assets so that Laurel would be taken care of. He read books about child custody, wanting to find a way to gain custody of Maggie without dragging Laurel through the mud.

  Finally, he went to see Laurel, armed with his notes and determination. I waited anxiously at home with the children, trying my best not to think about the conversation taking place in the Sea Tender. I didn’t want to think about Laurel being upset and Jamie comforting her.

  He said he’d be home by dinnertime, but that hour came and went. Seven o’clock ticked by. Eight. I grew worried, remembering the chest pains he’d suffered in my hospital room after the confrontational scene with Steve. Could that have happened again? How would I ever know what was going on? I could hardly call the Sea Tender to find out.

  I was standing in the kitchen heating a bottle for Keith, who was screaming in the nursery, when I finally heard the car door slam in the driveway. A moment later, Jamie came in the back door.

  “Jamie!” I turned off the burner on the stove. “I’ve been so worried!”

  He looked too tired to speak. He stood in the doorway, shaking his head.

  “What?” I asked. “What’s going on?”

  “She’s pregnant,” he said. “Seven months.”

  My mouth fell open. “How exactly can she be pregnant?” No, I thought. No, no, no!

  “The week I was there after Keith was born.”

  “You slept with her?” I never imagined he would do that. “I thought she was so drunk and repulsive!”

  Jamie ran both hands through his hair. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s…a terrible situation. Maggie and I are going to need to move back to the Sea Tender, Sara,” he said. “She needs my help.”

  “No, Jamie! Please.” There was so much hurt inside me that my heart felt like a knot in my chest.

  “I know it’s not fair to you,” he said. “I know that. But I don’t feel like I have a choice.”

  I thought of Keith—our baby—crying in the nursery. Of Maggie, the little girl who felt like mine, asleep in the third bedroom. The little girl he wanted with him. More important to him than our son.

  Before I could stop myself, I lifted the bottle from the water on the stove and threw it at him. He didn’t even bother to duck.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Andy

  I MOVED THE POPCORN BOWL THING IN FRONT OF KIMMIE and she took some. We got the second-to-largest bowl of it, and it was almost gone even though the movie practically only started. We had sodas, too. I always got a soda at the movies because I liked putting it in that holder thing like you could in Mom’s car.

  “This popcorn is so much better than the popcorn my mother makes,” Kimmie said.

  “Shh!” somebody said, because you weren’t supposed to talk at the movies.

  “Shh, yourself!” Kimmie said back.

  I laughed because Kimmie always did things like that. Mom said Kimmie didn’t care what other people thought. She said that like it was a good thing, but when I did stuff she didn’t like, Mom always told me, “Don’t do that, Andy! People will think you weren’t raised right!”

  This was our third date at the movies. Her mom dropped us off and my mom was going to pick us up when it was over. In another year, I’d be able to drive us to the movies myself, although Uncle Marcus said “we’ll see about that” when I told him.

  The movie was named Kit Kribbage, and I knew right away it was a girl movie because the main person was a girl. Kimmie picked it out. I wanted to see Star Wars and the Clone People or some other name like that, but I didn’t care that much. I just liked being at the movies with Kimmie.

  The movies were crowded because it was Saturday night and we couldn’t sit right in the middle where we liked. We had to sit in the side part, which was okay with me, but Kimmie said it wasn’t as good as being in the middle. The movie was okay until they got to the hobo-jungle part. I didn’t understand how a lady could be a hobo. I started not concentrating on the movie then. All I kept thinking about was that Kimmie smelled good. The smell came from her hair, which was always so long and fluffy and pretty. I thought about putting my arm around her like boys were supposed to do at the movies. That was kind of like a hug and she was my girlfriend, so when I got bored with all the hobo parts, I put my arm around her. I could tell she liked that I did it because she moved closer to me. She was so close, her hair tickled my nose and the corner of her glasses pressed on my cheek but it didn’t hurt.

  The girl in the movie was named Kit, which I kept thinking was too short. When somebody said her name, I wanted to say “meow,” but knew that wasn’t an appropriate thing. Kimmie laughed at something the Kit girl did, but I didn’t laugh because I didn’t know what she did because I wasn’t paying any attention at all anymore. I was thinking about kissing Kimmie instead of watching the movie. My friend Max always made out with a girlfriend at the movies. He had a lot of girlfriends. “Made out” meant kissing and hugging and touching a girl’s breasts, only Max called them hooters, which I wasn’t supposed to do. Max said, “You been to the movies twice with Kimmie and you haven’t even kissed her yet?” I told him I did, too, kiss her, but it was a lie.

  I decided I would do it right now. I ate some more popcorn first, though, and drank some more soda. Then I was ready. One, two, three. I turned my head and did it. I kissed her! I sort of missed her mouth, or the whole part of her mouth at least, but I got some of her lips. It was cool.

  I looked at her to see if she liked it. The movie light was on her face and the Kit girl walked around in Kimmie’s glasses, but Kimmi
e was looking right at me and she smiled. Then all of a sudden, she kissed me back. This time our lips totally touched. We were getting better at it.

  Kimmie stopped concentrating on the movie, too. We kept kissing and Kimmie stuck her tongue in my mouth, but only a little. That was a French kiss. I got a hard-on so fast. I put my tongue in her mouth, too. Our tongues slid around together and Kimmie started to giggle.

  “Shh!” somebody in back of us said.

  Kimmie stopped giggling but she didn’t stop kissing me. My arm around her shoulder was going to sleep. I didn’t care, though. Kimmie took my hand from where I was holding the popcorn bowl thing and put it right on her breast. It felt like a little pillow under my hand, only there was a hard thing that I thought was the nipple part. Girls’ nipples poked up when they were hot, Max said. Hot like turned-on kind of hot. Not like weather hot. So I guessed Kimmie felt exactly like I did.

  The popcorn thing suddenly fell off my lap and that made Kimmie laugh again even though my tongue was in her mouth.

  I stopped kissing her just long enough to say “It’s okay. It’s practically empty.”

  “God, you two,” a guy I couldn’t see said, “get a room!”

  “Seriously,” some girl said.

  A whole lot of people said “shh!” to us now. Then a man with a flashlight came and told us we had to leave.

  “We paid!” I said. I didn’t think he could make us leave if we paid.

  “Shh!” he said. “You’re disturbing the other viewers. You’ll have to go.”

  Kimmie grabbed my hand. “Come on,” she said. “We don’t need this ol’ movie.”

  We got up and started walking to the door that said Exit. I felt strange. My arm that I’d put around Kimmie’s shoulders felt all rubbery, like it wasn’t really my arm, and my legs shook like after I rode the upside-down roller coaster at the state fair.

  In the lobby, we sat down on a bench because my mother wasn’t there yet.

  “I’d like to still kiss you, but there’s too many lights out here,” I said.

  “I know.” She sat really close to me. She still held my hand. If my arm wasn’t rubbery, I would’ve put it around her shoulders again.

  “Andy?” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you want to have sex with me?”

  Did she mean right here? With the lights and people around?

  “I don’t mean right now,” she said. “But sometime. Do you want to?”

  “Definitely!” I said. “Do you?”

  “Yes. But I never did it before.”

  “Me neither. But I know how.”

  “Well, I know how, too.”

  “My condom is too old, though. I have to get a new one.”

  “What’s a condom?”

  I liked that I knew something she didn’t. “Like a balloon for a penis,” I said.

  She laughed. “No!”

  “Really.”

  “Why do you need a balloon?”

  “The boy wears it so the girl doesn’t get pregnant and so nobody gets a disease.”

  “Oh, you mean a rubber!”

  That’s what Max called condoms, too.

  “Right.”

  “Where do you get a new one?”

  “The store, I guess.” I saw condoms at the Food Lion, but there were a lot of different kinds. When there were a lot of different kinds of a thing, I never knew which one to get.

  Kimmie made a big long sighing noise. “Well,” she said, “I sure hope my mom doesn’t ask me how the movie was.”

  My arm felt normal again, so I put it back around her shoulders. “I’ll just tell my mom it was the best movie I ever went to,” I said. And I wouldn’t be lying.

  Chapter Thirty

  Keith

  JEN AND I WERE LYING IN MY BED THE MORNING AFTER ONE of the best nights of my life. Maybe it was terrible to feel that way, with my mother missing and everything, but damn, what a night! Jen was like an acrobat in bed. We were both wiped out now, naked and all twisted up in the sheets, with her head resting on my chest. My arm was killing me, the way we were lying, but there was this cost-benefit thing going on in my brain, and I liked having her lie like that more than I hated the pain. I was definitely falling for this chick. Except for my mother, she was all I thought about. I’d put up with the pain for now and pop some pills when I got up. I was going through the Percs faster than I was supposed to. I didn’t want to think about what I’d do when they were gone.

  She came over with Chinese food the night before. I was embarrassed about having her spend the night in my shoddy tin can, but she didn’t seem to care. She reminded me she didn’t own the beach house she was in. “It’s not like I’m rich, either,” she said while we were changing the sheets on my bed. I’d thought about us spending the night in my mother’s double bed. That would have made sense, but the thought creeped me out. It just seemed wrong somehow, and I was glad Jen didn’t suggest it. She understood me better than I understood myself.

  The sunlight from the window above my bed was right on her hair, and I saw the skinniest stripe of roots showing. I thought maybe it was just her scalp, but it was too wide for that. The light wasn’t perfect, but I could’ve sworn the roots of her hair were gray. Gray! I’d seen plenty of blond chicks with dark roots showing, and ladies my mother’s age with gray roots coming in, but Jen was nineteen. How could she have gray hair? Was she really nineteen? I didn’t want to have questions about her in my mind. She’d been perfect up till two minutes ago. I wanted her to stay perfect.

  She shifted her head a little and rolled off me, leaving the scent of oranges in the air. I couldn’t smell an orange these days without thinking of her. When she opened her eyes, she smiled at me.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  The light was in her face now. In her crystal-clear blue eyes. I ran my fingers over her cheek.

  “Very good morning,” I said.

  Her skin was still mostly golden. A little blotchy where her tan was starting to fade. But wrinkles? No way. She was nineteen, like she said. Maybe I could stretch it to twenty-one or-two. Even if her hair was totally gray, which I couldn’t picture at all, she wouldn’t look old. She said she had scars inside. People could go gray overnight when terrible things happened to them. I hadn’t asked what she’d meant by those scars. I figured she’d tell me if she wanted to. Probably molested or something. That happened to girls all the time.

  “I’m gonna make you breakfast.” She sat up. Her breasts were small and totally perfect. Man, she was fine, and not one of those chicks who covered herself over with the sheet right away. My woody was back again. I’d lost track of how many times we did it last night. She finally said she wouldn’t be able to walk today if we did it one more time. Last thing I wanted was to hurt her. Otherwise, I would’ve grabbed her again right then. “Do you have eggs?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” Only because they were part of the food Laurel’d left with me the other day. Yesterday, while I was racing around trying to clean up the trailer for Jen to come over, the P.I. Laurel hired showed up. Black dude named Mister Johnson. Seriously, his first name was Mister and he looked like that James Earl Jones guy. He went through the trailer like the police did, poking his nose in my mother’s closet and drawers. He asked a lot more questions than the cops, though, mostly about my mother’s so-called “personal life,” which I realized I knew zilch about. I told him her life revolved around me, myself and I. He said there was probably a lot about her I didn’t know, so I sent him to Dawn for that info. I had the feeling he was just covering the same territory as the police, and Laurel was wasting her piles of dough on him.

  Jen leaned over to kiss me, then sat on the side of the bed and started pulling on her clothes. I watched her get dressed and walk out of the room. After a few minutes, I got up myself and that sinking feeling came over me again like it always did when reality hit. My mother was gone. I was just about out of money. Bills were showing up in the mail. My body was fucked
up. And I needed a couple of Percocet.

  I walked to the kitchen, gave Jen a little bite on her shoulder, popped open the bottle of pills, then took a beer from the refrigerator.

  “How do you get beer?” Jen asked as she moved the frying pan from the dish drainer to the stove.

  “Dude at the gas station buys it for me,” I said, twisting off the top. I’d made a run the night before to stock up. “How d’you get the booze you have at your house?” Are you really only nineteen?

  “Came with the property,” she said. “I don’t think they’ll miss it. They have plenty, but I hope I’m not drinking wine from some special, exotic vineyard.” She laughed. “Maybe they’ve been saving it for their fiftieth anniversary all these years.” She pried the bottle from my hand and took a long pull on it. Then she tipped her head to the side and smiled at me. “Oh, hell,” she said, wrapping her arms around my neck. “Let’s skip breakfast and just go back to bed.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  “For sure.” She led me through the living room to my bedroom, dropping articles of clothing along the way.

  Nineteen. Ninety. I really didn’t care.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Maggie

  IT TURNED OUT THAT BRIER GLEN HOSPITAL HAD ALMOST doubled in size, which is why they were desperate for volunteers. They had to be desperate to let Maggie Lockwood work for them. That’s what I kept thinking on my first day.

  The pediatric unit, which is where I asked to volunteer, had expanded from eight beds to fifteen, and they were nearly all full. I spent my first day with a longtime volunteer named Helen Rogers—Miss Helen to me and the patients—who had to be at least eighty. She had one of those extremely thick, mouth-full-of-marbles accents that made me think she was from someplace a lot deeper south than North Carolina. She was such a sweet-grandma type, and she practically led me around by the hand, introducing me to everyone as “the little girl who’ll be helpin’ us out from now on.” She obviously didn’t have a clue who I really was.