by Judy Alter
She rolled over and propped her head up on one hand. “No, but it never stops, Mom. You promise and promise and some new threat comes along. The kids at school think I lead an exciting life…except Jenny, who knows better.”
“Whatever’s going on now, I didn’t do anything to set it off. I’m not looking into murder, or drug deals, or anything. It may be part of living with a police officer, but you wouldn’t get rid of Mike for that reason, would you?”
She shook her head. “No, Mike’s cool. I’m glad he’s our father now, but no one ever threatens him—it’s always you.” She paused, bit her lip, and looked away. “And now there’s gonna be a new baby. Kind of embarrassing at my age….”
Her age! What did she think about my age? But I managed to hold that comment back.
“And I suppose I’ll have to babysit and change diapers and all that stuff.”
“Not if you don’t want to.” I made myself a promise then and there that the girls’ lives would not change because of this baby.
She shook her head restlessly. “I don’t know. Nothing seems right. I want to be six years old again…or else I want to go to college next year. I hate school, hate the way I look….” She buried her face in the pillow again, but I pulled her upright and hugged her tight and hard. There were all kinds of things I wanted to say about being a teenager and finding herself and the success of late bloomers and all the stuff a mom wants to say to a teenager, but I just held on to her.
When I finally let go and held her at arms’ length so I could look at her, she said, “I’ll come do dishes in a minute.”
“No. Keisha and I will do them. You take some private time. Just remember we all love you, and I will never let anyone hurt you.”
“What about you? What happens to Em and me if something happens to you?”
“It won’t,” I said fiercely.
Maggie didn’t come back out that night, but just before I went to sleep, I sneaked into her room and found her sleeping soundly. Once again, I sat stroking her hair, but she didn’t stir.
Chapter Six
The next morning, Maggie seemed herself at breakfast, and I was relieved. Mike had an early appointment, so Keisha came to take the girls to school. Maggie gave me a fierce hug and said, ‘I love you.” I hugged back, but I knew she would never have done that at school. There, she would have hurried away from the car as fast as she could, as though anxious to disavow any knowledge of me.
So I was home, with a whole day before me to rest, relax, piddle and do some work for my lagging business, which was being severely ignored these days. I was carefully locked in with the alarm set. Mike had found the alarm necklace I got when he was home alone after his automobile accident and made me promise to wear it. In addition, he made me promise to keep my gun handy as I went from room to room. Good gravy! Does he think Al Qaeda is after me?
I spent most of the morning in our shared office, a cup of decaf at my elbow. On my own, without the doctor telling me, I’d cut out caffeine except for an occasional bite of chocolate. I booted the computer and cleaned up a lot of office files, something I should have done long ago—weeding out old referrals that had come to nothing, adding new listings that needed to be checked out, checking MLS listings to keep myself knowledgeable of what was going on in the area and what houses were available. After all, I couldn’t just sell the houses I had listed. Keisha called to give me a couple of messages.
“Kelly, you sure there’s not something else suspicious? Some house you sold that had something funky about it? A family in the neighborhood you’ve rubbed the wrong way?”
I’d have to have rubbed really hard to make them this serious about revenge. I didn’t say that to Keisha, and she went on. “Someone whose house didn’t sell?”
Finally I broke into the litany of suspects and said, “Keisha, none of the things you’ve said are worth burning down a guest house or head butting a pregnant woman. Yes, I think whoever did it knows I’m pregnant. What I can’t figure is why they went back from burning the guesthouse to the sugar thing. One’s vandalism, the other’s harassment. They’re two totally different things, two totally different levels of trouble.”
“I been thinking about that, too, Kelly. Can’t figure it. José is no help. He just listens and doesn’t talk.”
“He’s probably thinking about marriage,” I said. “I’m gonna fix myself some lunch.”
“You want me to get something from the Grill?”
“No, I think I’ll scramble some eggs.” And that’s just what I did. Then I checked all the doors one more time—Mike and Keisha were making me paranoid—and took the latest Deborah Crombie novel up to our bedroom. I read four pages before I fell sound asleep—no reflection on the book.
I slept hard for two hours and woke suddenly. One look at the clock sent me scurrying downstairs—Keisha would be bringing the girls any minute. I unlocked the front door, turned off the alarm system, and set myself to fixing snacks. Today I decided on sliced bananas with a scoop of Nutella on each plate. Healthy and good. My mind turned to supper, and I studied the contents of the freezer without much inspiration. Tuna in the cupboard didn’t inspire either, but I pulled out a can of salmon and decided on croquettes. My mom made them when I was a kid, and I loved them. I’d call and ask for directions.
I got so lost in planning my cooking that I lost track of time and realized with a jolt that it was after three-thirty, and Keisha and the girls should have long been here. Just as I puzzled about that, my cell phone rang.
“Kelly? I can’t find Maggie anywhere. She’s not out front where she usually waits for us, and I sent Em in to the office to ask, but they don’t have no idea. Now everybody’s in an uproar, and I don’t know what to do to find that child.”
My heart sank to the bottom of my bare feet. I couldn’t decide whether to weep or scream or call Mike. Surprisingly, I answered kind of calmly. “Ask the school to keep a lookout, but bring Em on home. I have an idea where she might be.” The phone rang again almost immediately. It was the middle school principal.
“Ms. O’Connell, we’ve looked everywhere, and we simply can’t find Maggie. We’re very concerned. After all, we’re responsible for our children’s safety while they’re on the grounds. Of course, Maggie wasn’t really on the grounds…or in our care since school’s out for the day.”
In my panic, I paused long enough to wonder if Mr. Stanush was building the school’s defense in case Maggie really disappeared and we sued. I could hear Mike telling me not to jump to the worst scenario.
Without stopping for makeup or to change out of my sweats, I thrust my feet into the handiest shoes—worn tennis shoes. Maggie would be embarrassed by my appearance. At least I finger-combed my hair, which was probably still wild on one side of my head and squished on the right side that I slept on. I was out the driveway before Keisha and Em returned, and I knew exactly where I was going.
Bun Appetit was experiencing an afternoon lull when I stormed in. Mona looked up from the counter where she sat working on some papers and pointed wordlessly to the kitchen. Maggie and Jenny sat on stools, eating the small ice cream cups Mona kept for kids’ treats.
Something held me back. I didn’t storm. I walked in calmly and said, “Maggie, Keisha and I were worried about you.”
She didn’t really look surprised to see me, but she hung her head. “Sorry, Mom. I just…I wasn’t ready to go home. Jenny let me come here, and she listened to me….”
Dear God, I wanted to scream, do I not listen to you? And then it occurred to me that I really didn’t listen to her. Even in the talk we’d had the night before, I’d been justifying myself, not really listening to Maggie.
Jenny had faded away, going out front with her mom, and I simply held my arms out, and Maggie walked into them. I realized that she was almost as tall as me. I pulled her head onto my shoulder, and finally let go of the sobs I’d been holding back. Maggie was crying too, though more quietly, and I was struck again with how much everyt
hing in her world was changing…and how fast.
When I finally mastered my emotions—well, almost—I said, “Maggie, as long as Mona agrees, you can come here any time but you must let me know where you are. Otherwise my imagination runs wild, and I think of all kinds of horrible things. I just need to know you’re safe, baby.”
She nodded but didn’t say anything, and I wondered how deep the hurt in this child was. Only then did she think to say, “Mom, you’ve got your sleeping clothes on!” She was predictably horrified.
“That’s how frantic I was,” I said.
Mona came in softly, and I asked her to call the school and report that Maggie was safe. I’d go up there in the morning to make sure they took no disciplinary action. This wasn’t willful disobedience—it was a cry for help.
Mona sent us home with hot dogs for everyone, over my protests that I had supper all planned. “Nonsense. You don’t need to cook. You’re supposed to be resting. It’s the least I can do.” She turned to hug Maggie. “Sweetie, you’re welcome here any time. In fact, this summer I may put you to work with Jenny. But for now, you keep in touch with your mom.”
Maggie brightened at the idea of work and thanked Mona.
When we got home, Em, hands on hips, threatened, “You are in so much trouble, Maggie. Whew! I’m glad it’s not me.”
“Em! Do your homework and pay attention to yourself and not Maggie’s business. Maggie, you better start on your homework.”
Keisha was in the kitchen, boiling potatoes, cutting up celery and scallions. She merely raised an eyebrow at me. I dumped the hot dog sack on the table and asked, “What are you doing?”
“Making potato salad to go along with those hot dogs you got there,” she said complacently, turning back to slicing the scallions.
“How did….” I stopped myself. I didn’t want to hear about sixth sense again.
“No sixth sense, Kelly. Logic. Maggie would go to Jenny, and Mona wouldn’t let you come home without supper. Sixth sense ain’t always the answer.”
I shut up and poured myself a glass of decided I liked a lot better than sparkling cider. But I’ll admit to a longing for chardonnay. I rubbed my belly to remind myself why I wasn’t drinking wine.
“Mom?” Maggie appeared in the kitchen, her voice tentative. “Are you going to tell Mike about today?”
I thought a minute. “No, I’m not. You are.”
When she went back to the dining table and her homework, Keisha uncharacteristically began to preach. “You know, Kelly, not all girls have people like Jenny and Mona to go to. They end up wandering the streets…it ain’t pretty.”
A part of me wondered how much of that Keisha knew from personal experience, but I simply said, “I know I’m lucky. I also know she’s a much better kid than most runaways. I don’t want to think about what could have been.”
When Mike came home, he kissed me, greeted Keisha and the girls, and headed upstairs to change clothes. As he headed toward the bedroom wing, Maggie said, “Mike? Get you a beer?”
He looked startled, then saw me nod ever so slightly, and said, “Sure, Mag. I’ll be right down.”
When he came downstairs, she took him by the hand and led him to her bedroom. I heard the door close softly behind them.
It was a long fifteen minutes before Mike came out, and when he did his face told me nothing. “Mag’s finishing her homework in her room,” was his noncommittal comment. Keisha refused to stay for dinner, sensing we needed to be a family that night, so I sent a hot dog and some potato salad with her.
After dinner, I finished in the kitchen and sat down with the Crombie novel I’d fallen asleep over that afternoon. Mike was reading a book on Fort Worth history—his favorite subject—and Em was busy at some project, not homework I deduced but something she’d thought up to do. About eight I reminded her it was time to think about bath and bed, and by eight-thirty I got pretty determined about it. I’d already heard the shower running so I knew Maggie was through with the bathroom.
Finally, the girls were asleep, and we trudged up to our room. How can I be so tired when I haven’t done anything all day? But I was exhausted.
“Are you going to tell me about your talk with Maggie?”
He shook his head. “It’s between Maggie and me. I will tell you she loves you a lot, but right now she’s feeling smothered, angry, confused….all those things teenage girls feel.”
“And boys don’t?” My tone was sarcastic.
“Oh, yeah, they do. But it’s not the same. If Snickerdoodle is a boy, he and I are bound to have some pretty big rows.”
That seemed to end the discussion, and I climbed into bed. Mike picked up the biography of John Quincy Adams that he kept on the bedside table. He was working his way slowly through it, at the rate of a few pages a night. The girls would be in college before he finished it.
****
I did as Sherrie Goodwin ordered and stayed home. I read, worked, and napped and finally got to the point I didn’t feel guilty about any of it. I learned a few things during those days: nothing catastrophic happened at the office, and Keisha even made headway with a few properties I’d been working on. She roughed out bids on the places we’d decided on for rental purchases. And I found I could work effectively from home. I could feel the balance of my life changing, and maybe it was the euphoria of early pregnancy, but I wasn’t all that unhappy about it. I decided to ease into my new life by spending one day a week at home. After all, I had a new baby to plan for.
Friday and Saturday night we went out for supper—once to the Grill and once to the Middle Eastern restaurant we all liked. Sunday Mike put a roast in the oven with potatoes nestled around it and declared we’d have good sandwiches for a few days. Monday I went back to work.
Keisha was businesslike. “Mornin’. You have a chance to look at those contract offers?”
“May I have a cup of coffee first? I’ll get it.” When I was settled at my desk, I said, “Yes, I looked. They’re good. I think as an initial offer you could go lower on both places, but not a lot.”
“You don’t want to scare them off,” she said a bit defensively.
“No, but you don’t want to overpay for the properties either, especially the one Anthony is going to have to redo.”
Anthony had gone by and looked carefully at the re-do. He pronounced it salvageable, even said it had good bones. But he added, “Mother of God, it suffers from deferred maintenance.” A phrase he’d learned from me.
We got that settled, and Keisha asked about Maggie. “I didn’t want to bother you all this weekend, and José kept me pretty busy”—said with a slight grin—“but how’s my Maggie girl?”
“Hard to tell. She spends a lot of time in her room with the door shut, and I know she’s on the phone a lot, both texting and talking. Mike had to take her to task for her minutes the other day.”
“Mike?”
“Uh, yeah. He’s sort of taken over some of the communication with Maggie on things that might look to her like discipline coming from me. That part’s sort of hard on me, but it’s working. And she’s pleasant when she’s not in her room—aside from squabbles with her sister.”
“She’ll be all right. Okay, what about the stalker?”
“No sign. Nothing.”
“He ain’t through,” she said as though she’d just talked with whoever it was and knew this for a certainty. “I’ve been making a list. We can’t rule anybody out, including Jo Ellen North.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that Mike and I had already ruled out most of the possibilities from my past adventures.
“The only one we can cross off the list is Ralphie,” she said.
Ralph Conaster was a peculiar fellow with a strange grudge against older women from his mother’s church circle. He snapped and starting killing them. All of Fairmount was in a panic about a serial killer just when my mom moved here. But I didn’t know it was Ralph or Ralphie as we came to call him, when he started to court Mom. Tha
t escapade nearly cost Mom and me our lives, but Ralphie was now safely confined in an institution.
“He didn’t have any friends or relatives to be angry with you,” Keisha went on. “But now John Henry—he had cohorts and unsavory connections, including pot dealers. Might be one of them is angry at their big deal gone wrong. Or John Henry could have bribed someone in prison who just now got out and came after you.”
John Henry Jackson wanted to build a big-box grocery in our historic neighborhood, and I organized a neighborhood battle to preserve the historic character of Magnolia Avenue. Only John Henry intended to use his “farm fresh” store as a front for growing and selling marijuana. When his scheme came out, he tried—and nearly succeeded—to take me to Mexico on a one-way trip. But I doubted John Henry’s reach extended from prison.
“Sheila said she doesn’t think any of Bruce Hollister’s former church members would be that anxious to get revenge for him. In fact the church fell apart soon after he went to prison for kidnapping her. And that hit man he hired—he’s long out of the country.”
“So,” Keisha said, “that still leaves Jo Ellen North. You sure she didn’t have siblings? A cousin maybe? One of her father’s business associates? Someone besides Jo Ellen who’s mad that you’re getting a bundle of money?”
I shook my head. “Mike checked with the warden. Jo Ellen doesn’t get letters or phone calls, no visitors. I guess her husband divorced her, probably happy for a reason.”
“Well, somebody’s giving the orders here. Somebody didn’t just come out of the woodwork and start harassing you. I still think the answer is somewhere in your life the last few years.”
“Did you ever think someone might be after Mike?”
“Nope.” She turned back to her computer.
I was tired of talking about the stalker. Perhaps it was denial, but deep down the fact was the stalker hadn’t done anything that scared me. I knew, like Keisha, that he wasn’t gone. He was playing a waiting game, and it did just what he wanted—it made me nervous.