The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes

by Diane Chamberlain

  “I don’t want to go,” she said now.

  “I know you don’t, honey,” Eve said as she lifted Dru out of her booster seat. Dru’s chubby little legs were already pumping before Eve had even set her on the floor. Then she was off, running into the living room to watch cartoons. At two and a half, Dru was already Cory’s opposite. Where Cory was long and lithe, Dru was short and sturdy, much like Eve had been at her age. Dru had the look and nature of a brown-eyed, curly-haired imp, while Cory grew more ethereally beautiful and reserved with each passing year.

  “Can you say Sugar Hollow five times fast?” Jack asked her, but Cory didn’t bite.

  “Please don’t make me go,” she pleaded, looking from Eve to Jack and back again.

  “Look at it as an adventure, Cory,” Eve said, then realized how dumb a response that was. Cory went out of her way to avoid adventure.

  “You’re going to have such a good time.” Jack sipped his coffee. “You’ll learn silly songs and eat s’mores and the boys from the Boy Scout camp across the lake will sneak over to your camp at night and you can all go tiptoe into the grown-ups’ tents and tie their shoelaces together.”

  “Dad,” Cory moaned. “Why can’t you come, Mom?”

  “You know why.” Eve peered around the corner to check on Dru, then sat down at the table again.

  “Dad could take care of Dru,” Cory said.

  “No, Dad cannot,” Jack said. “Dad has play rehearsal tonight and his students sorely need it.” He was teaching drama at the university now and he was in seventh heaven.

  He stood up and carried his cereal bowl to the sink. “Oh, Rocky Raccoon,” he sang to the tune of the old Beatles’ song, “found Cory baboon, asleep in her tent at the campground. Rocky crept in, and grinning a grin, he nibbled her toes ’til she looked down.”

  Cory didn’t crack a smile. At nine and a half, she was already jaded to her father’s corny humor.

  “You’ll never forget your first time at camp,” Eve said, although she’d never been camping in her life. She was nearly as anxious as Cory about her going. Besides the night Dru was born, when she stayed with Marian, Cory had spent only one night away from home, at a well-supervised sleepover she’d somehow managed to get invited to. She had a panic attack in the middle of the night. The mother in charge of the party called Eve and Jack at two in the morning. “She’s crying and shaking from head to toe,” the woman said. “I’m not sure what got her so scared.”

  Jack went to pick her up from the sleepover, and Cory was subdued in the car on the drive home. “Maybe a little too young for a sleepover,” he’d whispered to Eve when he brought Cory in the house.

  And maybe she was too young for Girl Scout camp, Eve thought, but she tried to act as though it was no big deal. She doubted any of the other girls in the scout troop were unable to eat their breakfasts this morning.

  Cory eventually gave in, and Eve drove her to the elementary school parking lot. The other girls sat on their rolled-up sleeping bags, talking and giggling, as they waited to get on the bus. Eve kissed Cory goodbye, then watched as she carried her sleeping bag and mess kit across the parking lot, looking as if she were about to walk the plank.

  Jack got home from play rehearsal at eleven and flopped onto the bed next to her. Eve lay on top of the covers, reading a book on cognitive therapy. She was back in school, this time working on her master’s degree in counseling.

  “Any calls?” he asked, and she knew he was wondering how Cory was doing.

  “No news is good news,” she said.

  He kissed her bare shoulder and slipped his hand under the old pink tank top she wore to bed. “Let’s never get a place with air-conditioning,” he said. His fingers brushed the slope of her breast and she shifted on the bed to give him easier access.

  “Why not?” she asked. They had window air conditioners in their room and in the girls’ room, but neither of them worked very well.

  “Because then you wouldn’t lie around in skimpy clothes anymore.”

  She laughed, reaching for the buttons of his short-sleeved shirt.

  “Seriously,” he said. “I walked in here and saw you in this thin…rag or whatever it is, with no bra on and your nipples calling my name and it made me forget all my troubles.”

  Eve set her book on the night table. She would get no more reading done tonight, and that was fine with her.

  The call came after they’d made love. Just after. She was lying on top of Jack, breathless, her head heavy on his shoulder.

  “Oh, no,” he said.

  She propped herself on one elbow to reach the phone. The clock read midnight.

  “Hello?”

  “I’m so sorry to wake you, Eve.” It was Linda, the assistant troop leader.

  “Just tell me she’s alive and not bleeding,” Eve said.

  “She’s alive and not bleeding,” Linda replied. “But she’s having a rough night. She had a rough afternoon, actually.”

  “What’s going on?” She started to roll off Jack, but he held her fast.

  “She was fine on the bus and fine until we went to see the horses,” Linda said. “A couple of the girls went riding. Just pony rides. You know, being led around a path. And the others hung out on the paddock fence feeding carrots to the horses and that sort of thing. But Cory stayed back. You know the way she does sometimes?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I mean, stayed way back. We’d walked there, so there was no vehicle she could stay in, and she sort of stood behind a tree so the horses couldn’t see her.”

  “Oh, God,” Eve said.

  “What is it?” Jack whispered. “Is she all right?”

  Eve pressed her fingertip to his mouth and nodded.

  “And then she seemed okay at dinner again, but she got scared when it was time to go to bed. She was in a tent with three other girls and she wouldn’t turn out her flashlight. She had to go to the bathroom, but was afraid to walk to the latrine at night, and she wet herself. Though I didn’t realize that until later. Anyhow, she was afraid of raccoons coming in the tent and—”

  Eve smacked Jack lightly on the shoulder.

  “Ouch,” he said. “What’s that for?”

  “She was afraid of raccoons coming in the tent,” she said to him.

  Jack laughed. “Oh, brother,” he said. “It was just a song.”

  “So now she’s here sitting in the mess hall with me, but she won’t go back in the tent and I’m afraid I can’t sit up with her all—”

  “No, of course not,” Eve said. “I’ll come get her.”

  “Do you know how to get here?”

  “I think so.”

  She listened while Linda went over the directions, then hung up the phone.

  “It was just a nice little Beatles ditty,” Jack said.

  “Oh, I know.” She rolled onto the mattress and stared at the ceiling.

  “So she’s coming home just because she’s afraid of raccoons?”

  “She also hid from horses that were safely locked in a paddock. She hid behind a tree. And she was afraid to go to the latrine, so she wet herself.” Her voice broke on the last word.

  “Oh, Evie.” Jack pulled her to him and nuzzled her neck. “She’ll survive. We all survived the trauma of our childhoods.”

  “We need to get her counseling, Jack,” she said. “I think we’ve ignored this problem as long as we can.” She got out of bed and walked to the dresser. Her feet hurt as she crossed the room. That had been happening a lot lately—her feet hurting when she got out of bed.

  “I’ll go get her,” Jack said.

  “No, I want to.” She slipped on a bra.

  “I don’t want you driving those winding roads in the dark.”

  “I’ll be fine.” She felt herself tearing up. “I just want to get my little girl in my arms.”

  Jack propped himself up on his elbows. “You don’t worry about Dru the way you do about Cory, do you know that?” he asked.

  She’d been abou
t to reach into her dresser drawer for a T-shirt but stopped short, trying to read the tone of his voice.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing. Just a statement of fact.”

  She returned to the bed and sat down next to him. She couldn’t argue with him about it; she knew he was right.

  “I love them both equally,” she said. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Dru doesn’t seem to need me the way Cory did at that age.” Dru’s bubbly self-confidence would serve her a lifetime.

  “I know,” he said.

  She thought he regretted starting the conversation and was easing his way out of it. She would let him. There was no way she could make him understand what drove her protection of her oldest daughter. He could never know that, long ago, she and Cory had saved each other’s lives.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Cory was quiet on the dark drive home from camp, unresponsive to Eve’s gentle questions about her experience. Eve felt frustrated, as she often did with her oldest daughter these days. Why could she get the most recalcitrant teenagers to open up to her, while her own daughter shut her out? She was learning new counseling skills every day, but when it came to her own family, she might as well be studying carpentry.

  Cory went directly to bed when they got home, and she was still quiet the next morning, though contrite enough to help Eve and Jack clean the house after church.

  “I don’t want to go to school tomorrow,” she said to Eve as she ran a sponge over the bathroom sink.

  “Why not?” Eve looked up from the tub she was cleaning.

  Cory kept her back to her. “My friends are going to tell everybody what happened. They already think I’m a wimp.”

  “Well.” Eve thought about how to respond. “I have an idea how you could handle it.”

  “How?”

  “You call the girls who were in your tent and tell them how embarrassed you—”

  “Uh-uh, Mom!”

  Maybe Eve could call their mothers, then, and ask them to talk to their daughters about compassion and kindness. Most likely, though, the damage was already done. Fourteen girls in the Scout troop plus fourteen telephones times fourteen different sets of friends would equal a bad day at school for Cory.

  “Laugh at yourself tomorrow, Cory,” she said.

  Cory turned from the sink to stare at her. “Laugh at myself?” she asked, as if she must have heard incorrectly.

  “Don’t you admire people who can just admit their foibles and move on?” Eve asked.

  “What’s a foible?”

  “Their flaws. Their quirks. You just say, ‘I was really a chicken at camp, wasn’t I?’ If you say it first, it doesn’t leave them with much ammunition.”

  Cory rinsed the sponge out under the faucet. “I can’t say that, Mom,” she muttered. “You must not know me very well if you think I can.”

  It was seven o’clock that evening before Eve had time to read the Sunday paper. Cory sat at the table in the dining area of the living room, her head bent low over a paper she was writing for school, and Jack was in the girls’ room, reading Dru a story. Eve made a cup of tea and sat on the wing chair near the fireplace, her feet on the hassock and the paper in her lap.

  The cover of the magazine section caught her eye. Two people were on horseback, one a stiff-spined man, the other a strawberry-blond teenager. The heading read: At Home With Former North Carolina Governor Irving Russell. Eve stared at the words for a full minute before returning her gaze to the picture. All her fantasies that Cory bore a strong resemblance to Genevieve had been accurate. In front of her was the proof—a teenaged girl who reminded her of both Cory and her mother. The long, slender limbs. The small pert nose and fair skin. The hair, though significantly blonder than Cory’s, framed her face in waves. She had to be fourteen. Vivian. Vivvie, Genevieve had called her. She opened the magazine and scanned the article.

  Russell was now the CEO of a foundation in Northern Virginia and had recently bought property outside Charlottesville. She read that sentence twice; it seemed unreal. A cruel joke. Please don’t let our paths cross, she thought. She looked at the pictures and realized with relief that the chances of that happening were slim. Russell and his daughter were rolling in money. Their house was huge and white-pillared, with a massive portico above a circular driveway. There were stables on the property, and it was clear the Russells were part of the horse circle. There was one brief mention of Genevieve: His life changed after the 1977 kidnapping of his pregnant wife, Genevieve, who has never been found. Russell has not remarried, but has instead devoted himself to raising the couple’s daughter, Vivian, now fourteen.

  There was another picture of Vivian with the article. She was hanging upside down by her legs from a tree limb, her long fingers just touching the grass below.

  Eve sank low in the wing chair, her body crumpling in on itself. Her chest felt hollow, her muscles slack with an empty sort of sorrow. She looked at the vivacious blonde—Vivian had been a perfect name for her—and then at Cory, sitting at the table on the other side of the room. Cory’s bare feet rested on the rungs of one of the ancient, mismatched chairs. She wore hand-me-downs from Shan—a faded blue T-shirt and baggy cotton shorts. One hand was at her mouth as she chewed her stubby nails. Tomorrow she would face her classmates, who would mock her for her fears. Never before had Eve felt this degree of guilt over having stolen Cory from the life she’d been meant to live. Not just a life of riches, but a life filled with the self-confidence that graced her sister’s face. She could almost hear Vivian giggling as she hung from the tree branch. It was a sound Cory rarely made.

  She’d created a fearful child. The beauty was Genevieve’s doing. Maybe they could share the credit for her sharp, incisive brain. But the fears were her responsibility entirely, and she didn’t know how to undo whatever she’d done to create them.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  1988

  “What’s a milkman?” Cory asked, when Eve picked her up from school.

  “Well,” Eve said, looking over her shoulder as she pulled away from the curb, “in the old days, even before I was born, they used to deliver milk to people’s houses. People had metal boxes on their porches and the milkman would leave bottles of milk in the boxes. Sometimes eggs, too, I think. And cottage cheese.”

  “Oh,” Cory said.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Caitlin said my father must have been the milkman, because I don’t look like anybody in my family.”

  Eve silently cursed Caitlin’s mother, a woman who spent too much time sticking her nose into other people’s business.

  “That was a rude thing for her to say,” Eve said.

  “Was I adopted, Mom?”

  Eve glanced at her. Cory’s face, her eyes wide and serious, was raised to hers as she waited for her answer.

  “Do you remember we talked about this when you were much younger?” Eve asked. “You’re my daughter, and when Daddy and I got married, he adopted you.”

  “So…do I look like my real father?”

  “Yes,” she said. “You look like your biological father.” She thought of telling her he’d had red hair and her fair skin, but couldn’t embellish the lie any more than was absolutely necessary.

  “What does that mean? Biological?”

  “The man whose sperm fertilizes an egg is called a biological father.”

  “Oh. You said he died, right? In an accident?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Were you married to him?”

  Ugh. “No, honey, I wasn’t. I was very young and I got pregnant.” She’d explained the birds and the bees to Cory, but she wasn’t certain how much of the explanation she’d understood.

  “Did he ever meet me?”

  “No, he died before he had a chance to meet you.”

  “Was he nice?”

  “Yes, he was nice. But he was wild. He rode a motorcycle and that’s how he was killed. In a
motorcycle accident.”

  “I wish I could’ve met him,” Cory said, deep sorrow in her voice.

  Eve reached over to brush Cory’s hair away from her cheek. “He would have loved you very much,” she said.

  Nearly eleven, Cory was not much younger than she’d been when her mother died. She suddenly felt sorry for the little girl she’d been. It was horrible to imagine Cory parentless and alone. Was she doing as good a job with Cory as her own mother had done with her? She didn’t think so. With a longing that made her chest ache, she remembered her mother’s wonderful letters. What strength she’d had! And poor Ronnie. What had she done with that huge box of letters?

  “What was his name?” Cory asked.

  “Patrick Smith.” Eve had christened Cory’s father with the name years earlier. Smith seemed like a smart, untraceable choice for a surname.

  “Why did he ride stupid motorcycles?”

  “He was young, and young men tend to do things that are risky sometimes.”

  Cory was quiet for a moment. “So you did sex with him before you were married?” she asked.

  “Yes. That was really dumb of me and I hope you never do that. Although if I hadn’t, then I wouldn’t have you and I just can’t imagine that.” She smiled at her and Cory smiled back.

  “Daddy is Dru’s real father, isn’t he?” she asked.

  “He’s your real daddy, too, honey. Once someone adopts a person, that makes him or her a real father or mother.”

  “But he’s not my real real father.”

  She decided not to play dense. “That’s right. But I hope you know he loves you every bit as much as he would if he was your real real father.”

  Cory fell silent again, and Eve waited for another question.

  Instead, though, Cory let out a sigh. “I’m really glad Dru gets to have Daddy for a real father,” she said. “Otherwise she might feel very sad.”

  “Do you feel very sad, honey?”