Secrets She Left Behind (43 page)

Keith

“I
STILL FEEL TERRIBLE ABOUT NOT BEING WITH YOU THIS
morning.” Jen held my hand as we walked from her house to her car. We were going to drive to the mainland to rent a movie. I was pretty desperate for a comedy. One of those really stupid lame ones like
Animal House
that forced you to laugh in spite of yourself.

“That’s okay,” I said. It really
wasn’t
okay, though. I’d told her it was no big deal, but man, I’d wanted her there with me. She had to go to Durham. A cousin’s wedding or birthday or who knew what. Something she said she couldn’t get out of. She told me the whole story, but all I heard was that she couldn’t come with me. Why not? Would missing her stupid cousin’s stupid wedding have been so terrible? I would’ve felt a lot less pathetic having her there with me.

Maybe it was just as well, though. She wouldn’t have fit in. It was a Topsail Island thing. A
Lockwood
thing. I’d felt like a Lockwood for the first time in my life, even though I resisted feeling that way with a passion. But it was the Lockwoods who were holding me up. Laurel asking me a thousand times if I was all right. Marcus actually helping me spill my mother’s ashes into the inlet because my arms were shaking so hard. That whole spectacle stank. I hated it. When Maggie told me that’s where my
father’s ashes had been scattered, though, it started making sense and I knew it had been the right thing to do. It was what my mother wanted.

We got into Jen’s car and I sniffed the air.

“I smell gas.” I wondered if she heard the panic in my voice. I’d pulled out the seat belt but didn’t latch it. I was ready to bolt.

“Oh, I know,” she said as she pulled onto the road. “I just filled it up. It always smells like this afterward.” She rolled down her window. “Open your window and it’ll go away.”

I opened the window but still didn’t latch the seat belt. I was already picturing the car exploding. Us trapped in it. Trapped in a fire. I thought of saying maybe we should go back and take my car, but I’d sound like a wuss and the video store wasn’t that far.

“So how was your cousin’s…thing?” I asked.

“Baby shower,” she said. “It was okay.” She glanced at me. “I
had
to be there, Keith. I was in charge of the whole thing, but I left as soon as I could get away. I hope you understand.”

“It’s okay.” Right then, all I could think about was the explosion that was going to happen any second. My left hand hung on to the seat belt, while my right hand was on the door handle.

“Maybe I could help you go through your mother’s things? That’s got to be so hard, sorting through…you know.” She glanced at me again when I didn’t answer. “Or would you rather do that alone?”

“I haven’t thought about it,” I said. Marcus and Maggie had driven the five hours to Charlotte and back again to get the stuff from the car. There was a lot of it, and now the boxes were stacked up in my mother’s bedroom in the trailer. I didn’t even want to
go in
that room, much less go through the things she’d been taking to her new life in Charlotte. Marcus said I should go through it soon, though,
in case she left a will. I doubted it. She wasn’t the will-making type. Plus, she had nothing to leave anyone.

We pulled in front of the video store and I let go of the seat belt. Jen leaned forward to get a good look at me.

“You okay, baby?” she asked.

“Yeah, I’m all right.” Images from the morning were coming back to me: the crowd of people by the ruins of that chapel. People saying things I wasn’t really listening to about my mother. Trying to open that damn urn. Everyone back at Laurel’s, politely nibbling little sandwiches and pretending not to stare at me. I’d needed to get out of there in the worst way. “Maggie was there, of course,” I said.

“Of course.”

“She gave me all this crap about how she talks to her father and he talks back.”

“Really!” Jen opened her car door. “She sounds like a nutcase.”

“Yeah,” I said. “She’s totally whacked.”

I got out of the car and followed Jen into the store, trying not to think about how Maggie’s eyes were exactly like mine.

Sara
Maggie’s Latest Victim
August 2008

I
T’S
3:00
A.M., AND I CAN’T SLEEP.

This morning, I took Keith to PT, as usual.

“Do you need me here?” I asked Gunnar as he began working on Keith’s shoulder. Lately, I have the feeling Keith doesn’t want me hovering over him during his physical therapy. He says I ask too many questions. I think he likes having the time alone with Gunnar. An older guy for him to relate to. I just get in the way.

“We’re fine,” Gunnar said as he slowly stretched Keith’s left arm over his head. Keith is really gaining mobility in that shoulder. I can tell when we do the exercises at home, and watching Gunnar work with him, it’s even more evident. Gunnar isn’t as afraid as I am of taking that arm to the limit. “I’ll come get you if we need you.” Gunnar glanced up at me.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll see you in a little bit, Keith.”

“Whatever,” Keith said, his face knotted in either pain or concentration or both.

I sat down at the public computer in the waiting area to catch up on my e-mail. I spotted one from an unfamiliar address, EMatthews. Ellen Matthews? Jordy’s mother? The subject line caught my
eye: New Lockwood Victim. Those words shook me up. I clicked on the e-mail and saw dozens of addresses in the header. If it was from Ellen, I thought, she sent it to everyone in her address book. I quickly read the two lines.

On the news tonite, you can learn about Maggie Lockwood’s latest victim. Be sure to watch.

Oh, no,
I thought. Another child died? This long after the fire? I bit my lip. I always think of Keith as being the worst injured of the children who survived, but I know several of them suffered severe lung damage from the fire. Keith himself would always have to be careful with his lungs. I felt devastated for whatever family had lost its child, and I hated the cryptic and insensitive way Ellen was letting people know. I had to excuse her, though. Ever since losing Jordy, she’d been teetering on the edge of mental illness, and everyone knew it.

I saw her in Jabeen’s a few weeks ago and barely recognized her. She’d aged five years since the fire, but I figured she could be thinking the same thing about me. I walked around the counter to give her a hug. Although I didn’t know her well, all the parents of the victims became instant family the night of the fire.

“How is Keith?” she asked as I made her tea. “Is he in terrible pain?”

“It’s a lot better than it was,” I said. “The worst part is that he’s embarrassed.” I handed her the cardboard cup. “He doesn’t want anyone to see him. He has to go back to school in the fall, and my heart breaks for him.” I suddenly realized my terrible,
unforgivable
faux pas and my hand shot to my mouth. “Oh, I’m sorry, Ellen!” I said. “
Yes,
he’s injured, but he’s alive. I’m so sorry I said all that! I
still have him. I know how lucky I am.” I was stumbling over myself to apologize.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I’m glad he’s doing well.”

I thought she tried to smile, but I was so devastated by my stupidity that I really couldn’t say any more, and she left without another word.

I put the e-mail out of my mind as Keith and I drove home. We stopped at the pharmacy in Sneads Ferry. Or at least,
I
stopped there, while Keith waited in the car.

“Please come in, Keith,” I said as I picked up my purse from the floor between our seats. He still refused to be seen in public and I was getting increasingly worried about it. “You can’t hide from the world forever,” I said.

His eyes were closed as he listened to his MP3 player, but I knew he heard me in spite of the earbuds.

“At least I can hide from it for the next fifteen minutes,” he said.

“Okay.” I didn’t push him. Maybe I should start to, though, I thought. School was just a few weeks away. I didn’t know how he was going to manage.

I picked up a couple of prescriptions, then got back in the car. Keith was still hooked up to the MP3 player, humming, his eyes closed. I pulled out of the parking lot and turned toward the high-rise bridge that linked Sneads Ferry to the island. At first, the road was clear, but as we started over the part of the bridge that rises above the marshland, I saw the long line of cars ahead of us.

“Damn summer traffic,” I said.

Keith opened his eyes. “Cops ahead.”

I saw the flashing red-and-blue lights. Police cars. Ambulances. A fire truck. “Must be a bad accident,” I said.

Keith sat up straight, pulling out his earbuds, craning his neck to see over and around the line of cars.

I looked in my rearview mirror. Was it too late to back up and get out of this mess? I could take Old Folkstone Road to the swing bridge and cross over to the island there. But already, cars were lined up behind me. I was good and stuck.

Keith put his earbuds back in and slumped down in the seat. I tapped my fingertips on the steering wheel for a moment, then put the car in Park, got out and walked to the side of the road to try to see better. A couple of old men, fishing poles in their hands, stood by the railing.

“Do you know what’s going on?” I asked.

One of the men, his gray beard neatly trimmed, looked at me. “Car went over the side of the bridge,” he said.

“We seen it happen,” the second man said. “Went real fast, caught on the guardrail and flipped smack up in the air and over.” He used his hand to demonstrate.

“How horrible!” I leaned over the railing. I saw a couple of Coast Guard boats in the water, just beyond the marsh. There was no sign of a car, though, and I pictured it sinking through the murky water to the bottom of the sound. Teenager on summer break, I thought. Too much to drink. I hugged myself, thinking of the phone call someone would have to make to those parents.

I looked back toward my car. I couldn’t quite see it from where I stood, but I pictured my own son inside it and was once again grateful that he was alive. I doubted the person who flew off this bridge had been so lucky.

“You could turn around like them folks’re doing.” The man with the beard pointed to the line of traffic.

I looked behind me. People were jockeying for space so they could make U-turns and head back toward the mainland.

“Oh, good,” I said. “Thank you!”

I went to bed about ten and, as I did every night, I watched the news on the small TV on my dresser. I’d completely forgotten about Ellen’s e-mail, and I started to drift off during the first story, which was about a murder in Wilmington. Suddenly, though, the high-rise bridge appeared on the screen and I remembered the accident. I sat up quickly, hoping that whoever had flown off the bridge had survived.

“A woman was killed today when her car fell off the high-rise bridge in Sneads Ferry,” the newscaster announced.

I hugged my knees beneath the sheet as a reporter started interviewing a marine police officer. He stood on the Sneads Ferry side of the bridge, the long span behind him.

“Witnesses reported seeing the white Toyota suddenly pull into the westbound lane, then pick up speed as it cut across the eastbound lane,” he said. “When it hit the guardrail, it went airborne, flipped over the rail and fell into the water. Our divers were able to get the body of the driver from the vehicle. As best we know, there were no other passengers.”

“Do you know the identity of the driver?” the reporter asked.

The officer rubbed his temple. “What I can tell you is that the victim is a woman in her early forties,” he said. “She’s a Hampstead resident, and we’re withholding her identity until her relatives can be notified.”

I sucked in my breath, then sank back on my pillow. Ellen.
Maggie Lockwood’s latest victim.
Before I realized it, I was crying. I finally pulled out this notebook and began to write. It’s as though I can’t rest until I write things down these days. It helps me think things through.

I know why Ellen killed herself. It’s more than the pain of losing
her daughter. It’s that in a few weeks, Maggie will be back and Ellen couldn’t bear to see her return to normal life while Jordy would never have that chance. I understand. I picture Maggie stretching her arms above her head with painless ease, breathing in clean air with her perfect, healthy lungs. How can I expect Keith to stoically witness her return? It will hurt him so much, and I feel every speck of his pain—physical, emotional—a thousand times over.

I’m not sure how either of us is going to be able to bear it.

Andy

T
HE DAY AFTER MISS SARA’S MEMORY SERVICE, MOM SAID MY
room was a wreck and I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere till it was clean. Me and Kimmie had a plan to go to Uncle Marcus’s tower again. She was ready to have sex. Finally! But I couldn’t go till my room was clean, so she was helping me clean it. I was doing things really fast. Putting clothes under my bed, even, which was totally against the rules.

“It’s just as fast to hang them up,” Kimmie said when she saw me push a shirt under the bed. She really did sound like Mom sometimes. She pulled the shirt out and stuck it on a hanger in the closet.

I was worried that when we finally got to the tower, Keith might be there. That would mean no sex because Kimmie said it would give her the creeps to do it with somebody in the house. I didn’t care. I would’ve done it right there in my bedroom with Mom downstairs.

My desk had all this stuff on it. A book I was supposed to be reading. My tape measure. A bunch of pens and pencils. Eyedrops. My iPod. Some cables. I opened the clutter drawer of my dresser, got all the stuff from my desk and dropped it in the drawer.

“It’s never going to close,” Kimmie said.

“Yes, it will.” I could always get that drawer closed, but this time,
it only went in halfway. I moved stuff around and tried again. It still wouldn’t close.

Kimmie made a sigh sound. “Let me work on it,” she said. “You hang up the rest of your clothes.”

I looked at the pants and shirts and things in the laundry basket on my desk chair. She was wrong about how everything should get hung up. “Some of them go in a drawer,” I said. I started folding my T-shirts while she pulled the clutter drawer totally out of my dresser and put it on my bed.

“You need little boxes in here to organize stuff better,” she said as she started moving things around. “I think you have things from when you were in diapers in here.”

“No, I don’t,” I said. I didn’t even
have
that dresser when I was in diapers.

“What’s this?” She held up the mail for Keith I’d stuck in there. I’d forgotten all about it. It was kind of crumpled now.

“Just mail for Keith,” I said. “His mother told me to give it to him, but I forgot.”

“You should give it to him,” she said. “It might be important.”

I should’ve just thrown it away. “Okay,” I said. I could take it over to the tower and leave it in the kitchen. That way he didn’t have to know it came from me.

Kimmie shoved things around in the drawer some more. Then she stuck it back in my dresser and it closed right up. I folded the two last T-shirts real fast and stuck them in a different drawer. Finished!

I patted my jeans pocket for the condom and the key to the tower. “Let’s go!” I said.

We rode my bike and Maggie’s bike over to Uncle Marcus’s. When we were a block away, I could see Keith’s car wasn’t there.
That made me smile really big and I hoped Kimmie was smiling, too. She was ahead of me, so I couldn’t see.

We parked our bikes by the side of the tower so nobody would steal them. Most of the time, Uncle Marcus didn’t bother locking his door, but today it was locked. I was really smart to bring the key.

We walked inside and there was Keith! He was sitting right there in the living room, watching TV.

“What are
you
doing here?” I asked.

“I happen to live here,” he said. “The real question is, what are
you
doing here?”

“But your car’s not here,” I said. I actually felt like crying.

“I parked on the street because Marcus and Flip were here earlier and took up both spots out front,” he said. “Not that it’s any of your business. So what do you want?”

I wasn’t sure what to say.

“We found a letter that belongs to you.” Kimmie kind of knocked me with her elbow, and I pulled the letter out of my pocket. I walked over and handed it to him.

“Miss Sara told me to give it to you when I was sick,” I said.

Keith stared at the envelope. “When were you sick?” he asked.

“It was the day she disappeared,” Kimmie said. “I’m really sorry about her.”

Keith tore open the envelope and unfolded the paper inside. Money fell out of it. Two dollars, or maybe they were bigger than just dollars. I couldn’t tell from where I was. I thought we should leave. I knew Kimmie wouldn’t have sex with him there. Keith was reading reading reading while I tried to figure out what me and Kimmie should do.

All of a sudden, he jumped off the couch. “You
asshole!
” he
shouted. He waved the paper around and I could see lots of writing on it. “You total fucking loser!”

“Don’t talk to him that way!” Kimmie shouted.

I should’ve been angry for him calling me names, but I was more scared because he looked real mean. He walked toward me. I wanted to run out the door so he couldn’t hit me, but I had to stay there and protect Kimmie. Keith walked right past us, though. He grabbed his key-ring thing from the counter and opened the door.

“Can we stay here?” I asked.

“I don’t care what you do!” he shouted. Then he slammed the door so loud my ears hurt.