“So where is he?” I wondered what he was like, the man who had nothing at all to do with me coming into the world.
“In Minnesota,” Mister said. “He remarried and has three daughters. He was sorry to hear that your mother’s missing, but said he hasn’t heard from her since they split up when you were a baby. Does that fit what you all know?”
The three of us nodded.
“He’s paid no child support, but he said that your mother agreed to that arrangement, and I did find that to be the case when I read their divorce records.”
“That’s why I live in a tin can,” I said.
Mister nodded. “It was an unusual arrangement,” he said, “but I’ve seen stranger.”
He put his hands on the table and got to his feet. “Well, I wanted you to see the interview.” He starting doling out his business cards, like we didn’t have them already. “Give me a call if you think of anything that might help later.”
When I got back to Marcus’s tower, the front door was locked. Marcus was really a pain in the butt when it came to locking the door. Three-quarters of the time, he didn’t bother, so I got in the habit of not taking a key with me when I went out. Then he’d lock it, for no reason I could figure out. When I complained, he told me to put the key on my key ring, but I kept forgetting. So now I was locked out.
I didn’t think he was at the fire station, which meant he was probably over at Laurel’s, and you couldn’t pay me enough to go over there with Maggie and the gang. I was about to call him to come home and let me in, when I remembered that there was a ladder attached to the side of the tower. It was a skinny little thing that ran straight up to the roof, maybe a foot across with rungs the diameter of my thumb. It stuck out a few inches from the wall, just enough to get a toehold. I asked Marcus about it and he said it was there when he bought the tower. Probably supposed to be a fire escape.
I walked around the side of the building and looked at the ladder. The moon was full, and the narrow ladder cast long sharp shadows against the side of the tower. No way, Jose. Even if I could get up that ladder, it would just put me on the flat roof that had no railing around it. But there was a door up there. A short, slanted door that I didn’t think Marcus ever locked and that led to the circular metal stairway inside the tower.
I leaned against the building with a sigh. Looked at my watch: 9:07. I could call him, but it’d piss him off. He told me ten times about taking a key.
I grabbed the ladder and started to climb. Fast. If I did it fast, I wouldn’t have to think about it. The ladder shook like it was going to peel off the wall any second. The rails were as thin as cigars beneath my hands, and my toes hit the side of the building with each step. Don’t look down, I told myself. Don’t think about how this is screwing up your shoulder. Don’t think, period. Just keep moving.
I did. I climbed higher. Higher. And I was okay until maybe two-thirds of the way up. Suddenly, I froze. My body went stiff as a corpse, my hands locked around the cigar rails. I couldn’t unclench my fingers to move my hands either up or down. I couldn’t make my feet go up to the next rung or down to the one below it. I was fucking trapped on the side of the building, and not only couldn’t I move a muscle, my head was starting to spin. I pressed my forehead against the ladder, keeping my eyes closed. I was gonna hurl any second.
Could I just jump? I thought of how I’d wrecked my ankle jumping the eight feet from the back door of the trailer. I had to be up at least twenty by now. I’d die. That’s why heights are scary, you asshole.
I must have stood like that for five minutes. Finally, I unkinked my right hand. I forced it open, and slid it jerkily down the rail. Moved my right foot down a rung. Did the same with my left side. I felt uncoordinated, but I was moving and when I got about six feet off the ground, I let go and jumped to the sand.
By then, my body was made of Jell-O and I was ready to swallow my pride. No, I wouldn’t go over to the house on the sound, but I would call Marcus to come save me again. He was probably getting used to it.
Chapter Fifty-One
Andy
I NEEDED TO TALK TO A GIRL ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED WITH me and Kimmie. Mom was a girl, but she’d say, “Where did this happen?” Then I’d say about the tower and she’d tell Uncle Marcus and I’d be in trouble. So I asked Maggie to come into my room. I closed the door and went, “Shh.”
“What’s up, Panda? Andy?” she whispered.
I didn’t yell at her about calling me Panda because she fixed it.
“You can’t tell anybody,” I said.
She shook her head. “Okay.” She sat down on my bed, cross-legged, like she always did.
I sat in my swivelly desk chair. “Me and Kimmie tried to have sex but it didn’t work,” I said.
Maggie didn’t look mad or upset or anything. “What happened?” she asked.
“Don’t tell anyone. Promise?”
“I promise. As long as nobody got…you know…Is Kimmie all right? Did she get hurt?”
“No!” I said. I forgot we were whispering. Mom was home, but she was downstairs so it was probably okay. “No. I wouldn’t hurt anybody.”
“I know that. Where were you?”
“At Uncle Marcus’s. He wasn’t home.”
I waited for her to yell at me, but she didn’t.
“Okay,” she said. “And what happened?”
“We planned it all out. I had my condom and we went to that room I sleep in with the blue bedspread.”
She nodded. She knew which room I meant.
“And…” I started feeling embarrassed. Maggie’s someone easy to talk to. She’s so nice. But I remembered how Uncle Marcus said you never talked to anybody about it. It was private. “This is private,” I said. “But I don’t know what to do.”
“It’s okay, Andy,” she said. “You know you can trust me.”
“I was ready to do it,” I said, “but Kimmie started crying and wouldn’t open up her legs.”
“Oh.” Maggie bit her lip. “What did you do?”
“I said okay. We didn’t have to do it. And she was worried I wouldn’t still be her boyfriend, but I will be.”
Maggie smiled. “I love you, Panda Bear,” she said.
That was a dumb thing to say that had nothing to do with what I was talking about! “Did you understand what I said?” I asked.
“Yes, I did. You really wanted to have sex, but Kimmie got scared at the last minute and changed her mind. You cared enough about her to not try to force her. And you’re mature enough to know that sex isn’t the most important part of a relationship.”
“It’s pretty important,” I said.
“But not important enough to ruin what you and Kimmie have right now.”
“What do we have?” I was getting confused.
“Your relationship. Your love for each other.”
“Right. But I don’t know what to do next time.”
“You need to wait,” Maggie said.
“I don’t want to wait.”
“You need to. You need to tell Kimmie that you’ll wait until she feels ready.”
Maggie wasn’t giving me good answers. “That might be never.”
“It might be a long time, that’s true,” Maggie said.
“Can’t you tell me how to talk her into it?”
“No way,” she said. “That’d be totally unfair to her.”
“I don’t want to be unfair to her,” I said, “but I want to have sex.”
“You are such a typical guy,” she said.
“Why did you say that?”
“Look, Andy,” she said. “Girls sometimes aren’t as hot for it as guys are. They have more to lose.”
“What can they lose?”
“They can get pregnant, for one thing, while guys can’t.”
“Not with a condom.”
“Even with a condom, but definitely not as easy.”
I didn’t know that. I tried to picture Kimmie with a big baby growing inside her. No way.
“It can hurt the first time, too,” Maggie said.
“Was that why she was scared?”
“Ask her, Andy. She’s the only one who can answer that question. And just…you have to be patient.”
“My condoms could expire by when she’s ready.”
Maggie laughed. “You can always get new condoms,” she said. “A new girlfriend as pretty and cool as Kimmie is harder to find.”
“Oh,” I said, getting it. I really would have to wait, because Maggie had finally said a very smart thing.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Keith
JEN WAS INTO THIS “DRIVING ON THE BACK ROADS” DEAL, which is why we were in no-man’s-land on a pitch-black night coming back from the movies in Wilmington. She liked driving any time of day or night, which was okay with me. Saved me gas money. I didn’t know what Jen’s story was, moneywise. She liked eating out and she paid for the movies and even filled my tank the last time we used my car. But she didn’t act like she was rolling in it. I didn’t care what her story was. All I knew was that I liked being around Jen better than I liked anything else in my life. She was the only person—next to my mother and Dawn and now Marcus—I didn’t feel like I had to hide my face around. She’d started helping me with my exercises, and even went with me to my last couple of PT appointments to learn the right way to do them. Gunnar fell all over himself to teach her what to do. Cracked me up.
It blew my mind that Jen never seemed embarrassed to be seen with me. At PT, it wasn’t such a big deal since there were a lot of screwed-up-looking people there. But at the movies and in a restaurant where I knew people were staring at me, she treated me like I was normal. She’d hold my hand. Even kiss me. Her attitude was, like, “Who gives a shit what other people think?” That’s how I felt about whatever the hell her age was. With that little streak of gray covered up, she looked nineteen to me again, totally, but I didn’t care one way or another how old she was.
When I was younger, before the fire, I’d told a few girls I loved them. A couple of times, I actually believed it. I didn’t know what I was talking about. This thing with Jen was the real deal. When I could make her smile—no better feeling than that.
“I’m starving,” she said now. “When we get back to my house, let’s make some eggs and grits. I love eating breakfast late at night.”
Whatever. That girl could eat eggs any time of the day. “Sounds good to me,” I said. I’d just as soon skip the meal and take her straight to that king-size bed, but if she wanted food first, that was cool.
The movie tonight was one of those serious flicks where you know way in advance that very bad things were going to happen to very good people. Sort of like life. It made me think of my mother. She was the best person, and something very bad had happened to her. I had no doubt about that anymore. I had to wipe the thought out of my mind while I watched the flick, or I knew I was going to lose it.
Jen cried during the movie. She was quiet about it, but I held her hand to comfort her, thinking that crying was really an over-reaction to what was happening on the screen. I mean, it was sad, but not totally tragic. Not compared to my life, anyway.
Now, driving back from Wilmington, I thought again about those scars she’d said she had inside. Maybe she was thinking about them during the flick. I decided I should finally ask her.
We were going over the swing bridge when I figured out what to say.
“You know when you told me you had scars inside you?” I asked.
“Mmm.” She pulled up to the only traffic light in Surf City. It was blinking red. Not another car in sight.
“What did you mean?” I asked.
She didn’t say anything as we started moving again. “It’d burden you if I told you,” she said finally. “I don’t want that.”
I turned toward her as far as the seat belt would let me. “You took on my burden,” I said. “Let me help you with yours.”
“It’s totally different.”
“How?”
“It just is.” She glanced at me. “You really want to help me?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Just keep lovin’ me to pieces.”
It was the first time either of us had said the L word.
“Cool,” I said.
“You know—” she looked over at me “—maybe you should let Andy and his girlfriend use the tower to get together.”
Wow, nothing like an abrupt change of topic. I liked the other one better. “Why?” I asked.
“You remember what it was like before you got your license,” she said. “Wanting to have sex and having no place to do it.”
“Whatever.” I really didn’t care where Andy had sex; I just didn’t want a picture of him doing it stuck in my mind.
Jen turned onto South Topsail Drive and we went a ways without talking. It was so dark. If I’d been driving, I’d’ve turned on my brights, but she was going pretty slow so it was no big deal. Just before we came to the place where South Topsail runs into South Shore, though, this small dark blur flew out of the woods and into the road ahead of us, and I felt the thud as we hit it.
“Oh, damn!” she said, hanging on tight to the wheel. “Splat! I hate that.” She kept right on driving.
“Aren’t you going to stop?” I asked. I could see the blur in my memory. A raccoon? A cat? A small dog?
“No way,” she said. “I don’t want to examine roadkill in the middle of the night.”
“Maybe it’s not dead, though.” Once, I ran over a rabbit in broad daylight. I could see it in my rearview mirror after I hit it. It was still alive, but writhing. Kind of flopping all over the road. I was shook up. I drove about a mile, but that stupid rabbit wouldn’t get out of my mind, so I turned around and drove back. I wished I had a gun to put it out of its misery, but of course I didn’t. I couldn’t think of anything to do but run over it again. I’d never forget the feeling of my tire flattening that poor thing. I drove miles past my destination, trying to get any trace of him off my tire and out of my head.
“I really think we should go back,” I said to Jen. She did have a gun. We could use it if we needed to.
“I’m hungry, Keith. We’re practically to my house. I’m not turning around now.”
“What if it was a cat or dog?” I asked. “Maybe it’d have tags and we could call—”
“It was only a possum or something.”
“But what if it wasn’t?” In my mind, the blur had turned into a black cat. Someone’s pet. “Wouldn’t that bother you? Wouldn’t you want to know if your cat was run over?”
“Why are you making such a federal case out of this?”
I pointed to a driveway. “Just turn around here,” I said. “You don’t even have to get out of the car. I’ll look. Do you have a flashlight?”
“I’m not turning around, Keith. You’re being silly.”
I stared at her. “Man,” I said, “you’ve got a real cold side to you.” In fifteen seconds, she’d totally blown the stupid romantic image of her I’d been building up in my mind.
“It was a possum, Keith!” she said. “It’s not like I hit a person. Not like it’s your mother. Or my mother. Or any other human being.”
I hated that she’d mentioned my mother like that, in the same breath as a squashed possum.
“We’re going back,” I said.
She stopped the car in the middle of the deserted street. “I do not believe you.”
“Come on. Just turn around in the next driveway.”
She made this huffing, annoyed sound, but she pulled into the driveway of an old cottage and turned around. We drove back to where she’d hit the animal, and we got out of the car and searched the road and the bushes in the light from her headlights. Nothing. Not even a clump of fur or a trail of blood.
“See?” she said. “It’s probably fine. Just bruised. And I’m starving.”
I wasn’t ready to give up. I started walking back up the road, checking the ditch on one side of it and the
bushes on the other.
“Keith!” she called after me. “You’re driving me crazy!”
I hardly heard her. I picked up a stick and started pushing the tall weeds out of the way so I could see behind them. Then I started whacking the bushes. Whacking the street. And I knew I was losing it, that I wasn’t looking for any injured cat or dog or possum. I was looking for my mother.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Sara
Healing Our Hearts
1998
KEITH WAS THE LIGHT OF MY LIFE. I DOUBT ANOTHER MOTHER ever loved a child more. He was handsome and bright, loving and lovable. I saw Jamie in him more and more each day, something that both saddened and comforted me. Since his birth, I’d been getting Keith’s heart checked, as prescribed, every year at UNC in Chapel Hill. For the longest time, I thought we’d dodged the bullet. He seemed so healthy. So active and playful. His doctor thought he might be okay and that he’d never need surgery. Shortly after his seventh birthday, though, I began to see a change in him. He couldn’t keep up with the other kids on the soccer field the way he used to, and sometimes I’d see him breathing hard just from his horseplay around the trailer. I tried to convince myself that he was fine. One day on the soccer field in Hampstead, though, I knew his doctor had been wrong.
Laurel was there that day. I was sitting on the lower bench of the metal bleachers, watching the last fifteen minutes of Keith’s game when she and Andy sat down next to me.
“Maggie’s team’s playing next,” she said, and I spotted Maggie with her teammates at the side of the field, wearing their blue-and-white uniforms. “What’s the score?”
“Two-three,” I said. “The other team’s ahead.”
We were coming up on a year since Jamie’s death and much had changed. Laurel and I saw each other with some frequency, but always around the kids’ activities. Keith and I often had dinner at her new house on the sound so the children could play together, but it was never the same without Jamie. Marcus, who’d usually been a part of those family get-togethers, was never around, either. I knew Laurel let him see Andy and Maggie, but she wanted nothing to do with him. Occasionally, she’d ask me to lunch when the kids were in school, but I always made up some excuse. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be alone with her, just the two of us. I didn’t want to hear her talk about how much she missed Jamie. I didn’t want to hear her talk about the designer she’d hired to put the finishing touches on the interior of her four-bedroom house. Should she go with a floral or a stripe for the draperies in the family room? Should she replace the fixtures in her brand-new bathroom because the finish on them didn’t quite match the finish on the doorknobs? Her insensitivity to my own financial situation was galling to me. Sometimes I hated her.
Secrets She Left Behind Page 29