Deleted

by Tess Thompson

  They’d talked long into the night until they’d both fallen asleep in their clothes from sheer exhaustion.

  Now, he stirred and opened his eyes. “Maggie, it’s like a dream. Only it’s real, right?”

  “It’s real. Now get up, sleepyhead. I smell bacon.”

  “Wait. I have something I want to tell you.”

  She snuggled closer to him, kissing his neck. “What is it?”

  “None of that, or you’ll get me off track,” he said.

  She scooted away slightly so she could look into his eyes. “What is it?”

  “I want to take you out to the house later today,” he said.

  “I’d like that, but first I have to talk to Darla. I’ve put it off long enough.” Jackson Waller had a way of distracting a girl.

  “I have to get to work,” he said. “But I’ll pick you up around six and take you out to the Arnoult place.”

  “Don’t you mean the Jackson Waller place?”

  He groaned. “I really hope I haven’t made a huge mistake.”

  “Following your dreams is never a mistake,” Maggie said.

  “Do you mean that? Despite what happened in New York City?” he asked.

  She played with the collar of his t-shirt. “You know, I do. I’ve been thinking about all that since I got back here. We can’t know what roads will lead where. All we can do is trust our instincts and be as brave as possible.”

  After Jackson left, Maggie knew it was time to call Darla. Her hands shook as she located Darla’s number in her phone. She could do this. Be tough. I have the cards.

  The phone rang several times before Darla answered. “What do you want?”

  “I need to talk to you,” Maggie said.

  “I’m busy.”

  “Make time. I’m coming over in five minutes,” Maggie said.

  “Not the house. Your father’s sleeping. Meet me at the little park in the middle of town.”

  “Five minutes.”

  “Yes, okay.”

  Minutes later, Maggie sat on the bench near the statue of one of the founding fathers of Cliffside Bay, Jacob Meeker. Why were there never any statues of founding mothers?

  Darla was as she remembered. Short and stocky with a fluff of frizzy brown hair. Eyes like a trapped ferret’s, suspicious and nervous. She plopped onto the bench like her legs were about to collapse. She wore a cotton dress in need of an iron and sports sandals that did nothing to hide jagged toenails.

  “Your visit upset your father. It took me hours to get him calmed down.” Darla smelled of stale cigarette smoke.

  “I plan on upsetting him more before I leave,” Maggie said. “After what you two did, I’m not too worried about whether he’s agitated by my visits.”

  “I told him it was a mistake to contact you. But he said God told him to, in a dream, of all things.” She rolled her eyes. “A hell of a time to get religion.”

  “It happens when faced with your own mortality,” Maggie said. “Let me get straight to the point. I plan on going to the authorities about what you did. Last time I checked, tampering with mail was a federal offense.”

  Darla picked at her left thumbnail. “You’d have to prove it.”

  “Shouldn’t be too hard to get a coworker to squeal,” Maggie said. “Especially if Brody Mullen asks them to.” Where had that come from? Name dropping was so tacky. Somehow, though, she knew Brody Mullen would be happy to help.

  Darla crossed her arms, staring at Maggie with her ferret eyes. “Can’t you see we did it for you? Your father wanted you to have a chance. That Waller boy was trouble.”

  “Jackson’s a doctor with the moral code of a priest. How was he trouble?”

  “Your father knew you’d give up your dream to be with him.”

  “What did he care?” Maggie asked. “He hadn’t been a father to me. Ever.”

  “He cared.”

  “He wanted revenge.”

  “Maybe he believed in you,” Darla said. “Ever think of that?”

  “If he did, it was because he hoped to get money out of the deal.”

  Darla shrugged and opened her mouth to speak, then shut it again. By the pinched expression on her face, Maggie knew she’d pinpointed the reason for his “belief” in her talent.

  “Whatever I say won’t change your mind about him,” Darla said. “Those Waller people poisoned you against him.”

  “He killed my mother and my baby sister. How’s that for poison?”

  “He had nothing to do with the baby.”

  “Do you really believe that, or is lying just second nature to you?”

  “What do you want? Because I need to get back to your father.”

  “How about you give me what I want in exchange for me keeping my little mail fraud theory to myself,” Maggie said.

  “I’m listening.”

  “I want to know the truth about what happened the night my mother died.”

  “Why would you think I would know?” Darla said.

  Maggie turned to get a closer look at her father’s wife. Whiskers sprouted under Darla’s chin, sticking up like the first growth of a Chia Pet. “I think you know because I believe you helped him.”

  “I didn’t even know him then.”

  “You’re lying. You want to know how I know?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “The photograph on the mantel of you and my dad in front of the old Ford? Yeah, he sold that truck after my mother died. You were with him in Texas, weren’t you? You guys met there and when my mother sent the divorce papers, they enraged him. He wanted revenge and the payout from the insurance policy he took out on her. So, he decided to come home and kill her and make it look like an accident.” Maggie was bluffing about the insurance policy. She didn’t know if he had one out on her or not, but it wouldn’t surprise her, and it was certainly worth fishing. “Maybe you helped him come up with the plan to kill her for the insurance money. Two little lovebirds hatching their plan for a little nest?”

  “She didn’t have insurance money.” Darla scoffed and turned away, but not before Maggie saw the tremor of her upper lip. I’m right. There was a policy.

  “She did. You know why? Because she was afraid he was going to kill her in one of his drunken rages and she wanted there to be money to take care of me if he succeeded.” This invention of a story was second nature. Thank you, improvisation classes. “Here’s the thing. I don’t know if you helped him or not, and frankly, I don’t care. You’ll rot in hell someday right alongside him. As much as I’d love to see you in jail, I care more about the truth. You tell me everything you know, and I’ll leave you alone.”

  “How do I know I can trust you?”

  “You don’t,” Maggie said. “It’s a risk. But it’s guaranteed that I will go to the police the minute I leave here if you don’t start talking.”

  “What do you know?” Darla asked.

  “Let’s state the facts. She was pregnant with another man’s baby. A man she loved and planned to be with. When I left her that night she was about to give birth. When I returned, he was there. I heard her scream. I saw them fighting in the stairway and he pushed her. She fell and died. He carried a burlap sack, which held an infant. He ran out the door and met you. Did he come up with the plan of what to do with the body or did you? Was it spontaneous or planned? Tell me, what did you two do with the baby? Where did you dump the body?”

  “You’re right. He gave her to me, fully believing she was dead. He asked me to get rid of her.”

  “Why? Why did he care about getting rid of her?”

  Darla’s face crumpled. “Because he thought he’d killed her. It was an accident. When he ripped her from your mother’s arms, the baby dropped on the floor and stopped moving.”

  “Then he stuffed her in the burlap bag and asked you to get rid of his dirty work?”

  “That’s right,” Darla said.

  “Is that what my parents were fighting about? She saw him kill the baby and was running aw
ay from him?”

  “She screamed and scratched him before she ran down the hallway.”

  “Tell me the truth. He pushed her, didn’t he? Please, I want the truth.” Maggie hated the sound of her own begging, but she couldn’t let go now when she was so close.

  “Yes.”

  Maggie wept as relief flooded through her. Finally, the truth.

  Darla’s face seemed set in stone, her mouth barely moving as she continued her story. “He wanted me to take the baby’s body up to that lookout point and toss her over. You know the one.”

  Maggie nodded, barely breathing.

  “But as I was driving there, I heard a noise from the bag.

  “A noise?”

  “Yes. A cry, like a kitten.”

  Oh, my God.

  “I pulled to the side of the road and tore open the bag. The little mite started screaming her head off.”

  Please don’t say it. Please don’t tell me you killed her.

  “I was shaken up, as you can imagine, so it took me a few minutes to figure out what to do. Then, I remembered this thing from the movies about fire houses.”

  “Yes?” Maggie’s mind was whirling so fast she thought she might faint.

  “So, that’s what I did. I drove into San Francisco and I dropped her off at a fire station.”

  “A fire station?”

  Oh, God. Could her sister be alive? “Which one?”

  “I couldn’t honestly tell you. It was twenty years ago. I was upset.”

  “Does my dad know?”

  “No, he still thinks he killed her and that I carried out the original plan and that by luck, the body never washed to shore.”

  “Why didn’t you ever tell him?”

  “I was afraid. You know how he is when you don’t do what he wants,” Darla said.

  “Did you guys plan all this when you were in Texas? To murder my mom and the baby?”

  “No, it wasn’t like that. We didn’t have a plan other than to take what was rightfully his,” Darla said.

  “What was that exactly?”

  “There was money hidden under a floorboard. Money your mother didn’t know about. But when he got there that night, he found her upstairs. She’d just given birth to the baby. He’d been drinking heavily since Arizona. He lost it. Snatched the baby from her arms and tossed it to the ground.” Darla’s right eye twitched in an erratic rhythm.

  “Wait. Which was it? Did he drop her on accident or throw her to the ground?”

  Darla whispered. “He threw her.”

  Finally. Answers.

  “He killed an innocent baby just to hurt my mother?”

  “And to hurt the baby’s father. Your mother’s lover. He couldn’t stand that she’d found someone else—shared her bed with someone else.”

  “Isn’t that what he did with you?”

  Darla looked away. “He didn’t see it as the same.”

  Maggie shook her head, trying to think. Her dad knew who her lover was. “How did he know?”

  “Roger had a friend here in town who saw them together. He put two and two together.”

  “Who was it?” It had to be someone in town. Maybe even someone she knew.

  “Hugh Shaw. Your mother was running around with Hugh Shaw.”

  Zane’s father? Sweet Hugh who had always treated her like a daughter? Hugh, quiet and reserved, had been her mother’s lover? She had a sudden image of him at her mother’s funeral, stooped over, crying into his hands.

  “Did he know about the baby?” Maggie asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh my God.” Zane. She had to tell Zane. We have a sister somewhere.

  “Darla, can you please try and remember the fire station? If I know that, then I might be able to find her. Please, I’m begging you.”

  “It was fire station thirty-eight.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t remember?”

  “It just came to me.”

  Liar. “Jesus, Darla. How can you be with him? He’s a murderer. He tried to murder an innocent baby.”

  “He was a looker back then.” Darla shrugged and wiped a lone tear from her left eye. “I loved him from the first moment I set eyes on him. And, look at me. I’m not much. I’m ugly. I know that.”

  “For your sake, I hope he dies soon so you can be free.”

  “Don’t wish that. He’s all I’ve got.”

  “You’re his prisoner.”

  “He’s mine and I’m his. All we got is each other in this stupid world. When he’s gone, I won’t be anybody’s anything. Like before.”

  Maggie stood on shaky legs. “I’ll keep my promise to you, Darla. I won’t go to the police about your part in all this, but I will tell my dad I know the truth about what he did. He can’t hurt you now.”

  “He’s suffered. That’s the thing you don’t see. He’s paid for everything. The guilt has eaten him away until he’s nothing.”

  “So, his revenge on the Wallers and on my mother’s lover weren’t enough to satisfy him after all?”

  “No. If anything the guilt slowly killed him.”

  “I think it was booze, not guilt.”

  “You don’t know him like I do,” Darla said. “He had such passion for life. He cared too much about everything.”

  “I never thought I’d say this, after what you’ve done to my life, but I pity you. Please, get help. Thank you for the truth.”

  Maggie was halfway to Zane’s before she remembered to turn off the record button on her phone.

  Maggie found Zane in the kitchen sipping coffee. He’d already been out for his early morning surf and had showered and dressed for work.

  “Hey, beautiful,” Zane said. “Want coffee?”

  “No, I’ve already had some.”

  He patted the chair next to him. “Come talk to me. You look strange. What happened?”

  “You could always read me so well,” she said.

  “You’re not much of a puzzle. Even for the denser of the world such as myself. Your thoughts and feelings pretty much play out on your face.”

  Maggie took a seat at the table. “You remember how you felt when you had to tell Jackson and Doc that I was alive?”

  “Yeah. Surreal. Terrified. Excited too.”

  “Well, that’s the kind of story I have for you.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “I met with Darla this morning and told her I’d refrain from calling the police if she told me the truth.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Yes, it worked. She sang like the fat lady.”

  Zane smiled. “That’s not the saying. It’s either ‘sang like a canary’ or ‘it’s not over until the fat lady sings.’ ”

  “Right. Right. That’s what I meant. Anyway, this is where it gets a little crazy.” Her voice cracked. She set her hands on the table and took in a deep breath. “My dad thought he killed the baby when he tossed her to the floor. After he pushed my mom, he ran out the door with the baby in a burlap sack. I saw that part with my own eyes. Darla told me today that he instructed her to get rid of the body.”

  “So, he did kill her, like we’ve thought all along,” Zane said.

  “Not exactly.” Her voice shook, but she continued. “While Darla was driving out to the cliff to toss the sack over, she heard a faint cry. The baby was still alive. He hadn’t killed her after all. Darla took her to a fire station and left her there. You know, one of those ‘safe haven’ type of places. Station number thirty-eight in San Francisco.”

  “What? What the hell? Jesus, okay.” Zane pushed into the top of the table with his hands, like he was trying to steady it during an earthquake. “You’re saying she could be alive? Like twenty years old, right?”

  “That’s right. But there’s more. My mother’s boyfriend—the likely father of her baby—was your dad.”

  He blinked and cocked his head to the side as if he hadn’t heard her correctly. “What’s that now?”

  “My mother and your f
ather were having an affair. I don’t know if he knew about the baby or not, but I’m assuming he did. She told me right before she died that as soon as her divorce was final we were going to have a new kind of family with the man she loved.”

  Zane stared at her without blinking. “What are you saying?”

  “I think our parents were in love. And we have a sister out there somewhere. That is, if she survived whatever injuries my dad did to her that night.”

  “I can’t believe this,” Zane said. “It makes no sense.”

  “Do you remember ever seeing them together? We were ten the year my dad was in Texas.”

  He shook his head as if to say no, and then appeared to remember a detail. “There were voices coming from the living room one time in the middle of the night. My dad’s voice and a woman’s. I went to investigate, but it was just my dad. When I asked him if he was talking to someone, he said it must have been the television. However, I thought he was lying. It just popped into my mind. I hadn’t thought of it in years.”

  “It could’ve been my mom. It probably was my mom.”

  “I had no idea. He never dated that I knew of. His life was the bar and me. Or, so I thought.”

  “Should we try and find her?” Maggie asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe she doesn’t want to be found. Or, maybe she didn’t make it. She was tossed on the floor. You shouldn’t get your hopes up.”

  “You’re probably right,” Maggie said. Like heck. She’s made of tougher stock than that. We’re looking for her.

  She looked out the window as a flock of sparrows flew by the window and landed in the large oak. Logically speaking, Zane was right. Getting ones hopes up was never a good idea. She’d learned that lesson many times over the years. But still, the moment Maggie learned it was possible that her sister might be alive, an intense yearning stretched into every crevice of her body. If she was alive, she was the only family Maggie had left. Zane, too, for that matter. His dad didn’t know him, and his mother had left when he was a baby. That said, maybe he didn’t feel the need for family like she did. He had the Dogs. From what she’d observed last night, they were like family.