Secondhand Sinners (4 page)

“It’s Levi’s. He was a sophomore when we were…” She couldn’t finish the sentence. She’d barely started her senior year before she ran away.

Miller studied the page. “God that was a terrible night.”

“Really? Everyone looks so beautiful and happy, like they know they have the rest of their lives ahead of them.” She didn’t mean to sound so sad when she said that. She’d spent hours looking at the pictures of her former classmates and everything she’d missed because she ran away. Homecoming, the Christmas dance, prom, graduation.

Miller looked at her, and his face softened. “You didn’t finish high school?”

She shook her head. “I got a GED. There is no prom or graduation for correspondence school.”

“Well…” He tapped the open page of the yearbook. “This was probably the stupidest prom in the history of proms. They actually had some kind of Under the Sea theme. All these dressed up girls with all the make up? They didn’t look so good after ten minutes of dancing in that hot, stuffy gym.”

It was obvious he was trying to make her feel better.

“In fact, it’s a good thing you weren’t there. Someone spiked the punchbowl with some kind of toxic moonshine, and every single girl there went bald within a week.”

Emily couldn’t help but laugh at that a little. Miller was always so good at making her feel better.

“And if you look close enough,” he flipped to the section with all the graduation pictures, “you’ll notice that all these girls are wearing wigs.”

“No they’re not.”

“None of them ever got their hair back. Don’t tell anyone, okay?”

“What? No. That’s—”

“And all their kids were born bald.”

That did it. She busted out into a full-blown laugh. It wasn’t loud, and though it didn’t last long, it was the best laugh she’d had in months. When she was finished, she touched Miller’s hand. “Thank you.”

Miller stared at her hand on his, which made her acutely aware that she couldn’t reach out and touch him like that anymore. She couldn’t ask him to be her safe place anymore. She pulled her hand back and blurted out, “I had to leave.”

He sat forward with his elbows on his knees and clenched his hands together. “I thought we were going take some time to figure it all out. You know I would have taken you anywhere you wanted to go.”

“You had college, a baseball scholarship, and a career ahead of you. A shot at a real future. I would’ve ruined your life, and I would have been a disastrous mother, like mine was to me and hers was to her. I had to do it, and I had to leave. Alone.”

“If you would have come to me, we could have figured something out.”

She looked at him, really looked at him for the first time since they were seventeen. She could see it—the hurt and confusion she’d left behind. She expected to see that. The weariness, though, was a surprise. It saddened her.

“I didn’t have a choice, Miller. They were going to…”

“What?”

She could not get into this now. This was not why she came back to town. “Nothing.”

“Did something happen? Is that why you flew out of town the way you did?”

Even now, Emily couldn’t say it, couldn’t face it, couldn’t even understand it herself. All she knew was that people who were supposed to protect her had hurt her, cursed her. Normal relationships weren’t possible, not with her mom or dad, not with her ex-husband, not even with her son. So she had to run, break off all contact, and lie to Miller about having an abortion because he deserved a shot at a good life. So did her baby.

“I just left, okay? I left so I wouldn’t end up like Ma'am or my mom. Apparently I didn’t go far enough because I’m exactly like them. It’s in my blood, and if I had kept the baby I would have ruined her like they ruined me. So now you can live out your life thankful that you didn’t get stuck with me or my screwed-up family.”

Miller stood, clenched one fist, and motioned in the direction of the big house with the other. “You’re forgetting that I’m the one who’s been stuck with your screwed-up family.”

“That was your choice.”

“Yeah. Some choice.” Miller walked to the door, put his hand on the knob, and stopped. “Her?”

“What?”

He looked back at Emily. “You said, you would’ve ruined ‘her.’”

Emily closed her eyes and took a breath. “Her. Him. Whatever. I always thought of the baby as a her. Probably because I’m a woman. Whenever you think about the pregnancy, you probably think of a boy because you’re a man.”

“No. I think of a girl. A beautiful little girl who looks exactly like Daniel.” He left, slamming the door on his way out.

***

Miller

Miller hurried to his truck. That conversation hadn’t gone like he’d hoped it would.
Your hair got wavy?
Where had did that come from? He’d practiced what he’d say and how he’d say it on the way over.
Emily, there’s something you should know
…Or
Hey, Emily, nice ass. Speaking of asses, you’ll never guess what lie I’ve been telling everyone for the last fourteen years…
Or his favorite scenario,
What’s that? Have sex with you? Please, Emily, stop begging. You’re only embarrassing yourself.

And then the first words out of his mouth were, “Your hair got wavy”? He was completely unprepared for how vacant she was. The way she stared out the window unsettled him. What if she was always that way, and Levi was right? It was better for him that she had left. His life hadn’t been so bad, after all. He and Sara had a few good years and one or two great ones. She had loved him when they were kids the same way he loved Emily. Loved him so much, in fact, that she agreed marry him and adopt a baby that wasn’t hers because he wanted to. Agreed to move away from town for a few years so that when they moved back no one would question Abby’s parentage. All along, as he led her to believe they were adopting Daniel’s and Emily’s baby, he knew he was getting his own child. Was the joke was on him, or what?

He tried to find a way to tell Emily. After that visit, however, he didn’t think she’d understand what he had done. Once inside his truck, he banged his head on the steering wheel a few times, hoping to knock away some of his frustration, and then noticed Abby had left a white hair ribbon on the seat. He picked it up and rubbed it between his fingers. The weight of his hypocrisy bore down on him. For fourteen years he told himself he was keeping secrets to protect other people. The truth, he was beginning to realize, was that he was really protecting himself.

CHAPTER FOUR

Emily

After Miller left, Emily laid on the sofa.
Her
. How could she be so careless? Did she have Levi tell Miller she had an abortion only to ruin that lie fourteen years later by saying
her
? It didn’t matter. Miller was obviously still hurt over how she left. Of course he was.

Jack poked his head around the corner. “I want waffles.”

Emily plastered on a fake smile even though she knew it didn’t matter to Jack if she smiled or scowled as long as he got his breakfast. “We don’t have waffles. You can have Cheerios.”

“I want waffles.”

“Jack—”

“I want waffles.”

Emily stared at him. Did she really have to do this now? Argue about waffles after Miller’s visit? And in Levi’s house while he was in a jail cell? It was too unfair. She had no idea how to help Levi and didn’t know how to explain to Miller why she left. Couldn't she have a little control over the damn breakfast?

She had two choices. Give in to Jack and get him some waffles, or deal with the fit that was sure to come. Was setting Jack up for a fit fair to him? It wasn’t his fault she was throwing him off his schedule. It wasn’t his fault she was so sure they’d be home by now that she only brought two syringes of his B12 that the autism doctor wanted him to have every morning, which she had already decided she was going to have to ration out now. While she considered her choices, she noticed he was doing that weird blinking thing with his eyes again. It looked like some kind of Morse code. Right eye, right eye, right eye. Left eye. Right eye. Left eye, left eye. He was stressed.

She sighed. He was doing the best he could. “Come here, Jack.”

“I want waffles.”

“We’re going to go get waffles. First I want to give you a big hug.”

He took the few steps he needed to get to her and stood pencil straight with his eyes squinted closed. Emily pulled him closer and hugged him around his chest like the physical therapist showed her and pulled him in tight with her hands locked behind his back.

“Does that feel better?”

He rested his head on her shoulder, which meant he did feel better.

After a minute she released him. “Okay. Let’s get you dressed.”

“We’re going to get waffles?”

“We’re going to kill two birds with one stone.”

Jack stomped his foot. “I don’t wanna kill two birds. I want waffles.”

Emily stifled a laugh and went to the bedroom to get some bird-killing clothes out for her son.

Thirty minutes later she parked in front of the hospital where her father was in a coma.

“Okay, Jack. We’re going to eat waffles in the cafeteria here, and then we’re going to visit with Grandma for a little bit. Can you handle that?”

He was too preoccupied with his solar system pop-up book to answer with any more than a distant, “Yeah.”

“We’re going to have to get out now.”

“Yeah.”

They got out of the car and went to the hospital’s entrance. The walk through the stark white, institutional hallways ruined what was left of her appetite. Everything looked exactly the same as the last time she was there—when she rushed through the sliding doors to the emergency room after she got the call about Daniel. She tore out of the house in the middle of the night and sped to the hospital unaware that his mom’s words “gunshot wound,” along with the questions, “What happened?” and “Why?” were growing into a terrible beast that would be poised to pounce on her life and rip it to shreds sooner than she could have imagined.

Since then, she decided that words like: “goodbye,” “affair,” and “syndrome,” though innocuous on their own, could be pieced together in such a way that they could come alive. Like Frankenstein’s monster, they’d wreak havoc on the landscape of a person’s life and destroy everything except the vaguest notion of what could have been.

They ate breakfast and left the cafeteria to go to the ICU. They located her father’s room but didn’t go in. Jack sat on the floor of the hallway and thumbed through his book while Emily watched through the big window. Green lines hurtled across the monitors next to her father’s head. His hospital gown was draped off one shoulder to expose a large piece of gauze taped close to his clavicle. His face was nearly unrecognizable.

She’d heard people describe loved ones tangled within the setting of an ICU room as looking weak or helpless. That wasn’t how her father looked at all. Not that she considered him to be a loved one. To her, he was angry and abusive, controlling, constraining, and small. Yet in a coma, with Levi’s future depending on him, he was enormous and dangerous. For the first time she could remember, Emily cared if he lived or died. She needed him to live.

A nurse went into the room, switched a full bag of clear liquid for an empty one, and checked Norman’s IV. When she walked out, Emily asked, “Excuse me?”

The woman faced her while still continuing to back away slowly. “Yes?”

“Is he going to be okay?” Emily asked, afraid the nurse’s words were about to confirm the grim look on her face.

“Are you family?”

“I’m his daughter.”

The nurse said, “We don’t know yet.” Then she hurried off.

After ten more minutes, Emily and Jack went to the ICU waiting room. She sighed at the sight of her mother sleeping on a makeshift bed of old connected chairs, using her own coat as a blanket. She sat Jack in a chair and then touched her sleeping mother’s arm.

Gail opened her eyes, sat up, and smoothed her long skirt at her thighs. She looked at Jack and then at Emily through confused eyes. “Seth Folsom died,” she said. “He was president of the National Peanut Association.”

Emily was concerned. Seth Folsom had been dead for twenty years. “Mom?”

Gail flinched as though she’d been slapped. Then she blinked a few times and recognition hit her eyes. “When did you get here?”

“Yesterday.”

Gail took a tube of lipstick out of her purse, along with a compact mirror, and applied a shade of orange that Emily remembered from when she was in junior high. “This lipstick is almost as old as you, ya know?”

“Old makeup is not safe, Mom.”

Her mom scoffed as she dropped the tube back into her purse. “What took you so long?”

“You know it’s hard for me to travel with Jack.”

“Where’s that husband of yours?”

“We’re divorced, remember?”

“Oh yeah. I guess giving up comes easier to some people.”

“Mom, I didn’t…” Emily decided to let it go. Nothing she could say to her mom would change the low opinion she held of the way she lived her life. Nothing.

Jack turned the page from Mercury to Venus. “We can’t go home. It’s toxic.”

Gail raised an eyebrow.

“Long story,” Emily said. “How’s Dad?”

“Alive. Comatose.”

“I don’t understand. How did this happen?”

“Well, I don’t know, Emily. Levi knocked Norman down and slammed his head into the floor. Now thanks to the police,” she brushed invisible crumbs off her sleeve, “the whole town knows.”

“I thought Levi was in Chicago. What was he doing here?”

“Working on some installation for a hospital in Georgia. He said he needed the space and the right climate. The patina on the metal was wrong or something like that.”

“Was he acting weird at all? Was Dad?”

“They were fine. They both acted fine.” Gail eyed Jack and cocked her head. “What is that boy doing?”

“He’s adding up all the moons of the solar system. I tried to see Levi yesterday. He didn’t want to see me. Has he talked to you?”

“That would be rather hard for him to do since I haven’t visited him.”

“Don’t you think you should go see him?”

“I can’t even go see Mother in the home now because I have to stay here and wait, so I’m certainly not going to be able to make it to the jail. He gets a phone call. He knows my number.”

Emily had completely forgotten about her grandmother. “Do you want me to wait here so you can go visit with Ma'am? You could go see Levi too.”

Gail shooed that idea away with a flick of her wrist. “How would that look? Your father’s in ICU fighting for his life, and I run all over town visiting other people, including the person who put him in the hospital in the first place?”

“I think it would look like you were doing the best you could, given the circumstances, that you loved your son no matter what may have happened. You know this has got to be some kind of a mistake, right? Levi wouldn’t hurt anyone who wasn’t hurting him first.”

“Norman would never do anything to provoke your brother.”

It was nine-thirty in the morning and Emily could swear she had already lived through a whole day since she woke up. She pressed her palms to her eyes. “Oh my God, Mom. Can’t you even consider that this was some kind of accident? Or that there might possibly be two sides to the story of what happened?”

Gail picked her old prayer book up off the chair next to her, clutched it to her chest, and spoke to the floor. “Do not take the Lord’s name in vain, Emily. I raised you better than that.”

“‘God’ is not his name. ‘God’ is his title. He has names. Real names. God, Mom. Dad’s in a coma, Levi’s in jail, and you’re pulling this self-righteous crap? Can’t you have an emotion for once? Let go of that book of someone else’s prayers and feel something?”

“Like what?” Gail snapped. “What would you like me to feel?”

“Anger. Fear. Doubt. You’ve got to be experiencing something like that.”

For the first time since Emily walked into the room, which meant it was the first time in years, Gail locked eyes with her. “To what end? So I can say I felt anger, fear, and doubt? You think that would please God?”

“I think God would be more pleased with one genuine emotion than this false stoicism. I think he’d rather hear one genuine cry for help than a prescribed prayer bought with a credit card.”

Gail moved her eyes from Emily and rested them back on Jack. “Smart words coming from someone who’s paying for her own disobedience of having sex with the town drunk’s son.”

Emily took a few steps back, feeling a physical blow from her mother’s words. “You think having a child with autism is a punishment for something that happened years before he was even born? Jack is not my punishment. He is my reward.”

“You know what I’m saying. God does not let disobedience go unpunished. Somewhere down the road we all have to pay for the wrong we’ve done.”

Emily stared at her mother’s pale, shaking hands and nodded. “You’re right, Mom. We all face consequences. I was just standing at the window to Dad’s room trying to figure out what the hell he was being punished for. We’re staying at Levi’s if anything changes.” She ushered Jack out of his chair. “Daniel was more than the town drunk’s son, you know? And I wasn’t having sex with him. I was having sex with Miller.”

Gail flinched again. It was different this time, though. It was more subtle than a few minutes ago. This time it was deeper, like someone had assaulted her soul instead of her body. “Miller?”

“Yeah. I wasn’t pregnant with Daniel’s baby. I was pregnant with Miller’s. That night I ran away? I was running to get my baby as far away from the three of you as I could.”

“Miller?” Gail asked again. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It wouldn’t have mattered.”

She and Jack left the hospital, and Emily drove back to the apartment feeling like an orphan. It was as though her family had been hit head-on by a freight train, and she was left lame and helpless in the wreckage while everyone bled to death around her. She had to save one of them. She had to save Levi.

***

Once Emily got Jack settled on the sofa with a
Magic School Bus
video on her iPad, she sat at the little kitchen table and looked around the small, stylish room that was only meant for one person. The place was comfortable, cozy. Although Levi had claimed it and fixed it up, it was still family property. She had great memories of the place when it was an old shed by an old barn that was next to a willow tree. It was where she met Daniel when the family knew where she was and Miller when they didn’t.

Now she and Jack would stay until she could get Levi out. She looked at Jack sitting on the sofa. “You want to go for a walk?”

“No.”

“You want me to read to you?”

“No.”

It was at that moment she realized Jack hadn’t asked about his father in months. Did he even know they were divorced? That his father moved to Seattle with his new wife? Did he feel anything? If he hadn’t even noticed, should she bring it up?

“Hey, Jack?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you ever feel sad?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sad about anything today?