What She Wanted (5 page)

I checked the time on my phone. Almost six thirty. I needed to get back to the hospital and find out what was going on with Mark. He had surgery in less than an hour. I needed a shower. I needed to tell Sylvia I couldn’t work today. I needed to thank Heidi, her mom, and Mrs. Wells for yesterday. And Dean. I pushed his face from my mind. There was no time for crushing on sexy guys. I had a better chance at getting into NYFA this fall.

In other words, not even.

I groaned onto my tiptoes and stretched for the lightbulb string. Impossible. I righted Mark’s stepstool and climbed aboard. A maroon and gold file box with a Monroe Central High School Seminoles logo caught my eyes. Mark had pushed it to the back of the top shelf. What was a box from my high school doing in this dank old crap hole, surrounded by tools and dirt? Why did it exist? I’d never seen it before, and Mark had grown up in Kentucky. He hadn’t gone to Monroe.

Something pinched in my chest. Mark hadn’t, but Mom had
.

I pulled the big box into my arms and lifted the lid. A stamp on the interior wall said “Property of MCHS Cheerleading.” A shoebox of bills topped a pile of random things.
My mom’s things.
I smeared my face with dirt again, wiping fury from my brows. Mark had selfishly kept her things from me all my life. A whoosh of air escaped my lungs. Her life was right here, in a box, and I’d had no idea.

I yanked the light string hard enough to send the bulb flopping and kicked the shed doors shut behind me.

Mark had a lot of explaining to do after his surgery.

I put the box on the bathroom counter and locked the door while I showered. Parting with it, however temporarily, was unreasonably difficult, but I was filthy and worried the box might vanish. Who knew? Maybe it wasn’t real. I’d slept on the ground in Mark’s shed. I could have inhaled some kind of fumes and given myself hallucinations.

I scrubbed until the water swirling over my feet and down the drain smelled of nothing but shampoo and peach bodywash. I jumped out with renewed vigor and wrapped a towel around my middle. My sopping wet hair dripped a puddle onto the rug while I texted Heidi to come over.

Personal pieces of my mother’s life were in this box.

By the time the doorbell rang, I was dry, dressed, and making coffee. I’d emptied a can of biscuits into the oven for plumping and set strawberry freezer jam, knives, plates, and napkins at the ready.

“Come in.” I pulled her inside and shut the door with more flourish than I’d intended.

Heidi looked like she’d rolled out of bed and directly into her car. Her pink pajama shorts had lace around the bottoms and the matching tank top was covered in white fluffy bunnies. “Are you okay? Tell me you got some sleep. Otherwise, how do you look like that and I look like roadkill?”

“I’ve had coffee.” I ushered her to the kitchen and poured her a cup. “I slept on dirt, but that’s behind me.” I topped off my cup and took another swig.

She squinted at me over the rim of her mug. “I don’t think I’m awake yet. Repeat, please.”

I patted my mug and glanced at the box on the dining room table. “Look.”

She followed my gaze. “What’s that?”

The oven dinged. “You won’t believe it. That’s why I texted. Actually, I really needed to not be alone right now, but, also, I wanted you to see it.” I slid giant mitts onto shaky hands and lowered the oven door. “Apparently Mark had his heart attack in the shed, so it was unlocked and wide open when I got home last night.”

“No.” She sucked down her coffee and moved to the back door for a look across the lawn. “The shed was open? Did you really sleep on dirt?”

“I didn’t mean to. It was a crappy day, and I guess I was totally cashed because poof, morning.”

She pressed her fingers to the window. “So, what’s he keep in there? Were any of our theories right? Shrunken heads? Creepy jars with formaldehyde and body parts?”

“No.”

“Dirty magazines?”

“Gross. No. There are just tools and old man junk.” Fresh anger simmered beneath the words. “It’s gross out there. He could at least sit in here and ignore me.”

She nodded supportively. “Exactly.”

“When I tried to turn off the light this morning, I found the box.”

“The school box?” She wandered toward the dining room. “That’s weird. Why would he have a box from our high school?”

I refilled her cup while she made the connection.

Color drained from her face. “What’s in the box?”

“My mom’s stuff.”

“No.” She dragged the word into several syllables and abandoned her coffee. “So, you’ve opened it, right?”

“How else would I know what was in it?”

“Well, you haven’t exactly told me what’s in it. I don’t know! Maybe it’s sheer conjecture at this point. Maybe you were afraid to see what’s in there so you called me to open it for you.”

“Be serious.”

She drifted into the dining room and hovered her hands over the lid. “May I?”

“Go for it. I’ll get the food. I have to eat to deal with this.” I piled steaming biscuits on a plate and hauled them into the dining room.

Heidi stuffed one into her mouth, never taking her eyes off the box as she huffed and chewed. “Hot.” She fanned the air outside her mouth, as if that could help. “Have you seen Joshua again?”

“No, thank goodness. Dean told him to leave me alone and he did.” I hated the sour feeling of abandonment that caused. I didn’t want him, so I should be happy he listened to me, but instead it only made me madder.

Heidi opened her mouth in a full teeth smile. “Please explain to me how Dean Wells became your personal chauffeur and bodyguard? You told me you weren’t even going to speak to him. Three hours later, he’s driving you to the hospital and defending you against your donor.”

“It was a fluke. I don’t know what happened. Yesterday was a blur of yuck and awful.” I made a second trip to the kitchen for the jelly and place settings. “What do you think about the box?”

I flopped into a chair at the table beside her and shoved a spoonful of jam between my lips.

“He had all this stuff and never let you know?” The question was rhetorical and barely a whisper.

Heidi worked her magic on the tangled pile of keepsakes. The knot of random ribbons became a rainbow before her, organized by place, first through fifth, and also by year, freshman through senior. She made a pile of loose snapshots and another of odds and ends like spirit bracelets, dried flowers, and mementos which probably only had significance to Mom.

I’d sorted the programs from various community events while the coffee brewed but hadn’t gotten any further. There were dozens from cheer competitions and varsity games alone. I’d bundled them into groups and tied them with gold hair ribbon. “She was involved in everything from drama club to FFA. I knew it. I’ve been told. Seeing the evidence is completely different, you know?” I dug out another spoonful of jam. “She was a freaking cheerleader. Do you even know how far I am from cheerleading material?”

“Yes, but you’d be great at drama or art club. You’re extremely creative, and I’m constantly jealous.”

I was a little creative. Nothing like Heidi. She lived a loud, happy life. If she was technicolor-creative, I was sepia with limited potential.

I traced a finger over a pyramid of girls in pleated skirts on the football field. “She was gorgeous, and she looks so happy.” Nothing like the senior picture on our mantel.

Heidi moved on to the shoebox. “Yikes. These are all bills?” She thumbed through the statements.

“Pretty much. There are a bunch in my grandma’s name, but most are Mom’s. I didn’t spend much time on those. Honestly, I carried the box inside, took a shower, and texted you.”

“Smart.” She smeared a biscuit with jam and stuck the spoon in her mouth. “We make good jam.”

“Yeah.”

“Mr. Cuddle-ups!” She smacked a photo on the table between us.

I jumped. An emaciated version of my mother sat on a rocker with a pink bundle in her lap. Her arms were limp at her sides, but the baby was propped against her chest and secured by Mr. Cuddle-ups, the pink elephant that lived on my bed. In the photograph, Mr. Cuddle-ups was pinker and still had all his stuffing.

Emotion rattled in my chest. Tears sprung from nowhere, filling my eyes and stinging my nose. I lifted the picture slowly, not bothering to hide the tremor in my hand. My mom had given Mr. Cuddle-ups to me. I’d always hoped but could never be sure it wasn’t a gift from a neighbor or friend. “I’ve had a piece of her with me every day and never knew.” My voice was a choked mess. I pressed the photograph to my chest and let the tears run over my cheeks. “She looks so sick.”

Heidi moved onto the seat closest to me and leaned into my blurry view. “She was sick, but she was happy.” She pulled the picture away from my chest and tapped the frail-looking girl with her baby. “She was happy because you were here.”

My gaze traveled up Mom’s bony arms and gaunt cheeks to her eyes. She didn’t have the energy to hold me, but her smile was wide, all teeth and pure joy. Her sunken blue eyes twinkled, despite the pain she must’ve been in.

A sob warbled free. I wiped my eyes frantically and sniffed my way to the nearest box of tissues. “Jeez. I’ve been more emotional in the past twenty-four hours than I have in my entire life.”

“Well, sarcasm and cynicism can only get you through so much.” Heidi sorted the pile of photographs into smaller stacks. “These are pictures of her alone. These are her with friends. These are random. There are a lot of people with missing heads and appendages. Can you believe they had to blindly print every picture on a roll and hope for the best? What a waste of everything.”

I feigned horror and chanted. “Reduce, reuse, recycle.”

She winked and fired a finger gun my way.

I shook off the tension bunching in my shoulders and flipped through the miscellaneous pile. I’d have to save anything with potential to teach me more about my mom for another time. I wanted to savor the details, and my morning agenda was already full. I glanced at the clock. “Mark’s having surgery right now.”

Heidi dumped the shoebox of bills. “He’ll be okay. It’s the happy people who get struck by lightning or squashed by trees. He’s so miserable, he’ll probably outlive us all.”

“Probably.”

She huffed, clearly discouraged by the statements before her. “Seriously, though. He’s going to be okay.”

“I know.” I refocused on the scenery photos. A few were really good and definitely not taken with the same camera as the others. I set a photo of the local apple grove aside and slid the others into a sandwich bag marked “RANDOM.”

Heidi unfolded and stacked papers with a scowl. “No wonder Mark’s always going crazy about money. There’s hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of bills here and a bunch of insurance rejections for payment. This stuff goes back to the nineteen nineties. Half of these are from your grandma’s treatment and expenses. The other half are your mom’s.” She flipped back and forth between two documents, looking madder by the second.

“What’s wrong?”

She smacked the table. “The bills from the funeral home were over eight thousand dollars for your grandma and eleven for your mom.” She dropped the yellowing papers and rubbed her forehead. “This is insanity. We should have my dad take a look at these.”

“Yeah, right.” Heidi’s dad was an estate attorney, but Mark was too private and independent to ask for help. He had an arsenal of misogynistic quotes to support his positions. Most started with, “Real men…” and ended with lots of ways “real men” lived. All the quotes involved physical labor, shouldering burdens, or not accepting charity.

I flipped through the other pictures, feeling more emotionally stable. I started with the stack of Mom with friends. Ball players, coed groups, concerts. I flipped the photos over. “I thought people used to write on the backs of pictures.”

“I think they only wrote on the backs when they gave them away, like graduation pictures for extended family. My mom wrote on all those.”

I tipped the box over. “What’s left?” A couple of paperbacks and a journal covered in glitter and doodles flopped onto one of Heidi’s piles of bills.

“Hey! Watch it.”

“Sorry.” I lifted the worn-out journal and stacked the books. Folded notes and newspaper clippings stuck out from between the journal pages, but a tiny heart-shaped lock held it shut.

“A journal!” Heidi did a little fist pump. “You can learn about her in her own words. That’s perfect. Open it.”

“It’s locked.”

She wrinkled her nose. “So, break the lock. It’s not like Fort Knox or anything. I’ve had pimples bigger than that thing.”

I rubbed my hand over the cover. “I don’t know. It feels like an invasion of privacy. I mean, she locked it for a reason, right?” I pulled the loose pieces free and smoothed them over the tabletop. “Man, she kept everything.”

“I can think of one reason she locked it, and he’s in surgery at the moment.”

“Right. I have to go to the hospital and see how it went. How long does heart surgery take?”

“All day?”

“Really?” I straightened the groups of Mom’s things on the table. “We can leave all this here, I guess. No one will be around to complain about the mess.” I pried the covers a few millimeters apart and shook the journal. A strip from a photo booth fell out. Mom and a guy were squeezed into a little space. She had a letterman’s coat wrapped over her shoulders and a basketball-sized belly beneath her hands. The boy planted a kiss on the basketball while Mom watched. I’d never seen anyone look at another person like that.

“What’d you find?” Heidi asked.

I dropped the photo set onto the pile. “Nothing.”

The doorbell rang, and I jumped to my feet, eager to get away from the pictures of a man who’d abandoned me twice.

Heidi followed me through the living room. “You need to start a sheet and keep track of all the meals people bring over so we can send thank you cards.”

“I know,” I groaned.
Been here. Done this
.

I opened the door and blinked against the raging summer sunlight.

“Hi.” Joshua gripped his ball cap to his chest like a child preparing for his scolding. “Your boyfriend wouldn’t let me talk to you when I got to the hospital last night. He said to give you some time, but I really need to talk. Can I come in?”