The Girl Death Left Behind (12 page)

Beth stepped into her bedroom. The tenants had put up wallpaper for a nursery. Bright balloons and circus clowns made the room look strange. Not like Beth’s room at all. Sunlight was pouring through the window and spilling onto the carpet around her feet. Beyond lay a sea of shadows. The
golden glow of her childhood was gone. She couldn’t bring it back.

She wandered down the hall, stopped, and swung open the door to her parents’ bedroom. She half expected to see their king-sized bed, but all that remained of it was a faint outline on the wallpaper. She eased herself down to the carpet and clutched her knees against her chest.

Gone!
They were all gone. The house was a shell, left behind by life. Tears stung her eyes.

She heard a commotion coming from downstairs and jumped to her feet. She ran down the hall, rushed down the stairs, and saw Carl blocking Teddy from coming inside. “It’s all right,” she yelled.

“Beth? Is that you?”

She didn’t answer. She flung herself into Teddy’s arms and burst into soul-wrenching sobs.

“I can’t believe this. You’re here. You’re actually here!” Beth was sitting in Teddy’s kitchen, and Faye was pouring them a round of hot chocolate and talking a mile a minute. “I still think we should call your aunt’s. If
even just to let your cousin know you got here safely.”

“Don’t worry. Aunt Camille will be calling us Sunday.” Beth had explained how her impromptu trip had come about. Now that she was home, she didn’t want to think about Tampa.

“We’ve got to split.” Carl had gulped his chocolate and was standing, impatient to leave.

“Where will you go?” Faye asked.

“Fort Payne’s only an hour away, and that’s where my uncle lives. I’m taking Sloane to meet him.”

Beth walked out with Sloane and Carl. “I really appreciate your bringing me.”

“Glad we could do it,” Carl said.

Beth turned to Sloane. “Guess I’ll see you … whenever.”

“Maybe not,” Sloane said. “Me and Carl may just stay in Alabama. Nothing much for me back home, you know.”

Beth didn’t know what to say. Change was happening all around her. She was home, but everything was different. She had ties back in Tampa, but she didn’t know what to do about them. She felt suspended
between two worlds, like a fly stuck to a screen, looking into one place, unable to leave the other behind. “You take care of yourself,” she told Sloane.

“Don’t I always?” Sloane grinned.

Beth waved goodbye.

“We’ve missed you,” Faye said when Beth returned to the kitchen.

“And I’ve missed everybody here.”

“Teddy shared your e-mail with us. A good thing. It made it easier.”

“You did a nice job on the flowerbeds. They really look pretty—just like Mom would have kept them.”

Faye waved away Beth’s compliment. “Your mother was my best friend. I loved doing it for her. I miss her very much. I’ve missed your whole family. I miss watching you grow up, Beth. These have been the saddest months of my life.”

Teddy hauled himself up from the table. “So why don’t I take Beth around to see everybody? That’s why she came.” Once they were outside, he added, “Thought we should blow the place. I was afraid Mom would start bawling in front of you.”

“I’ve cried plenty, that’s for sure.”

They walked around to the side of the house, where they’d spent so many hours playing Horse over the years. “You know Marcie’s out of town, don’t you?” he said.

“She told me she was going to her grandmother’s in Kentucky. If I’d planned this trip, I’d have made sure I came when she was here, but it wasn’t planned. You know I want to see her.” She pursed her lips. “You still kissing her?”

Teddy turned a deep shade of red. “Who told you that?”

“Who do you think? We’re friends, you know.”

“You still kissing that guy down in Tampa? What’s his name?”

Beth gasped. “Marcie! That little rat fink. I told her not to tell.”

Teddy grinned. “We used to be friends and you told me everything.”

“Not that.” Beth’s cheeks grew warm. Partly because Jared’s face and smile and the way he’d looked at her the night he’d kissed her jumped into her memory. She half expected him to materialize so that she could introduce him to Teddy. “You’d like Jared. He reminds me of you in some ways.”

Teddy picked up the basketball. “Want to shoot a few?”

“I’m rusty.”

“Can’t kick my butt anymore?”

She snatched the ball. “Let me warm up.” She dribbled and shot. And missed.

“It’s good to have you home again, Beth. If there’s anything you want to do, tell me.”

She said, “I want to go to the cemetery. I want to be with my family again.”

21
 

I
t rained. For three days a hard, drenching rain kept Beth captive at Teddy’s house. Flash flood warnings and downed trees and power lines held the city at a standstill. By the time the skies cleared and the sun shone again, Camille and Terri had arrived from Florida.

Camille was hardly out of her car and reacquainted with Faye before she hauled Beth into the Carpenters’ spare bedroom, where Beth was staying. There she confronted Beth, demanding, “What were you thinking? How could you run off this way?
Don’t you know how worried Jack and I have been?”

Beth was prepared for her aunt’s anger. “I never meant to upset you. I just wanted to see my house before it was sold,” she explained calmly.

“I would have brought you. All you had to do was ask.”

“The chance to come came up real sudden, so I took it.”

“Well, you should have used better judgment. Terri too. She should have called immediately and told us what was going on.”

Terri had kept her promise to Beth, and for that Beth was grateful. She didn’t want her cousin to get into any more hot water than she was in already. “Don’t be mad at Terri. I made her promise to wait until you came home from your weekend. Was the seminar all right?”

“Yes, it was worthwhile, and I’m glad we went,” Camille said. “But that doesn’t excuse what you did. Our going away for the weekend was no license for you to run off.”

“I wasn’t running away. I just wanted to come home, and I knew Teddy’s folks would
let me stay with them. I’ve been perfectly safe, you know.”

“I know that,” Camille said. “It’s just that you had no right to take off that way.”

“If I’d asked permission to go with Sloane and Carl, would you have let me come?”

Camille’s face reddened. “That’s not the point.”

“You wouldn’t have.” Answering her own question, Beth shook her head for emphasis. “I wanted to come home, Aunt Camille. Is that so hard to understand?”

“But your home is with us now. I don’t want to lose you too, Beth.” Camille sighed. “Did coming here, seeing the house, make it better for you?”

Torn, Beth hugged her arms to herself. “When I went through the house, I thought I’d be close to my family again, but I wasn’t. It was freaky to see the rooms and remember where all the furniture had been. I could still hear Mom’s and Dad’s voices. I could still see Allison and Doug running down the halls. Except, not really. It was only make-believe. The renters had changed some things. I know they had every right to, but I
felt like they were intruders, like they didn’t belong in our space.”

“Beth—I’m so sorry about the house. Really, if there was anything I could do—”

Beth shook her head. “No, it’s okay. The house isn’t really important to me. Not anymore. I came to see it, and I did. But I know I don’t belong there. Not without them.”

Camille’s eyes glistened with tears. “We’ll stay a few days, I promise. We’ll let you visit with your friends. We’ll do anything you want to do. No rush.”

“There’s school.” Beth remembered that school would be starting up the first of the week, and she had a paper due in English and a big test in algebra. And she wondered how Jared was doing, and if he missed her.

“You and Terri both can take a few days off from school. It’s no big deal. This is more important.”

“Thank you,” Beth said. But the victory felt hollow because it wasn’t really about staying or leaving her old house and old friends and old city. It was about saying goodbye to herself in this place. It was about finding a new Beth inside the old one.

*   *   *

Teddy had gone off to his part-time job at McDonald’s, Camille was in the kitchen with Faye, and Beth was shooting baskets when Terri came outside that evening.

“You’re pretty good,” Terri said.

“I’m pretty rusty,” Beth said, watching the ball sail through the bent hoop.

“You should go out for basketball next year. Bet you’d be on the team in a flash. I’m not very good at sports myself.”

Beth caught the ball and held it. Turning to Terri, she said, “Thanks for keeping quiet about me going off. That couple of days’ head start was a good thing. I know you got into trouble because you covered for me, and I appreciate it.”

Terri shrugged. “Mom and Dad got over it once they realized you were all right. They’ve just grounded me for a few weeks.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“I was pretty scared that first night all alone by myself. I locked all the doors and stuck a baseball bat under the covers with me. I’ll bet I didn’t sleep half an hour.”

This information surprised Beth. She
hadn’t even considered that her going when she did would leave Terri feeling frightened. “I’m sorry—”

“It’s okay. No boogeyman came to get me.” Terri smiled shyly. “And on Saturday I had the whole place to myself. I raided the fridge, watched TV till my eyes crossed, talked on the phone whenever I felt like it. But I didn’t tell a soul I was by myself.” Terri looked proud of that. “I—I didn’t realize how much your being down the hall had come to mean to me until you weren’t there.”

“I thought you hated me living there.”

Terri poked at the ground with the toe of her sneaker. “Some days I did. At first I felt really sorry for you. And I thought I was going to be your best friend. I thought I’d introduce you around to all my friends and we’d all hang out together. I thought … well, a lot of things. But you didn’t like my friends. You didn’t want to be around them. Or me.”

Beth felt her cheeks grow warm. Everything Terri was saying was true.

“It’s all right,” Terri added hastily. “It’s just that things didn’t go the way I expected. And Mom and Dad kept bending over backward
to make sure you were happy. And you kept ignoring me. You made friends with Sloane, the toughest girl in the school. A girl who hated me. And then Jared liked you and not me.”

“I—I didn’t mean to—”

“That’s okay too.” Terri’s eyes were diamond bright with tears. “I know I’ll never win the Miss Popularity contest at Westwood. Thinking I could get Jared to like me was dumb from the start. But of everything that happened, the very worst part is that nobody seemed to care that I lost Aunt Carol and Uncle Paul just like everyone else did. And you and Allison and Doug are the only cousins I’ll ever have. My family’s never been close like yours, you know. You did everything together. Dad worked all the time, and Mom and I usually argue and fight.” She shrugged. “I’m not sure why.”

Beth had never honestly seen the situation through Terri’s eyes. She’d never once considered the impact of her tragedy on Terri’s life. All at once, Terri’s brattiness and hostility made more sense. “Well, you’re right—I didn’t think much about anything, or anybody, for a long time.”

“I thought you hated me,” Terri said. “And I didn’t know how to fix myself so that you’d like me.”

“It irked me that you had a mother you didn’t treat very nicely, while I had no mother at all,” Beth confessed. “I know we’re related, but I didn’t feel close to you.”

A wry smile crossed Terri’s mouth. “Well, you know what they say: ‘You can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your relatives.’ ”

Emotion clogged Beth’s throat as she heard her mother’s words from Terri. “My mom used to tell me that.”

“Yeah, me too. When I asked her why you didn’t like me, that’s what she’d say.”

“You talked to my mom about us?”

“Aunt Carol was the best listener in the whole world. I talked to her every chance I got.”

More information Beth had never heard.

Twilight had gathered, and Faye called out to them to come in for ice-cream sundaes. Beth put the ball down. “Guess we’d better go in.”

Terri started after her. Beth stopped and caught her cousin’s arm. “Will you promise me something?”

“What?”

“Be nicer to your mother, Terri. Not so snippy. I’m not being bossy, just letting you know you sound mean when you talk to her sometimes. That makes me crazy.”

Terri nodded. “And will you promise that you’ll stop ignoring me? That you’ll stop treating me like I’m a nobody, and like the things I like are stupid and childish?”

Beth studied her cousin’s face. Her eyes were brown, like Uncle Jack’s, but she had her mother’s high cheekbones. It was a trait Beth had shared with her mother too—high cheekbones and deep-set eyes. In the pale purple light, she saw the faintest traces of her mother’s smile on her cousin’s face. The recognition was startling, yet oddly comforting. “All right,” Beth told Terri, trembling. “We’ll make a pact about it. We’ll both try harder to think of the other’s feelings.”