The Secret Life of Ceecee Wilkes (21 page)

I
n early October, Eve was working at the Cartwright House when one of the other counselors knocked on the door of her small office. She was in the middle of a session with a boy whose tough facade and pink Mohawk disguised a tender soul, and she was surprised anyone would interrupt her.

“Eve?” the counselor said through the door. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but your daughter’s school is on the phone. They said it’s urgent.”

Eve managed to say “excuse me” to the boy before racing out of the room as quickly as her huge belly would allow. She ran down the hall to the main office and the telephone. In the space of thirty seconds, she pictured broken bones. Blood. Worse. The last couple of months had been so easy with Cory, her transition to the first grade seamless compared to the early days of kindergarten. Cory liked her teacher, Mrs. Judd, a short, dark-haired woman who resembled Eve, which seemed to give the little girl comfort. Her grades were good, and she now had her own library card. It was hard to keep her supplied with books, she zipped through them so quickly.

In the office, she grabbed the receiver from the desk.

“This is Eve Elliott,” she said, winded. “Is something wrong?”

“This is Mrs. Judd, Mrs. Elliott,” Cory’s teacher said. “I don’t know how concerned we should be, but I needed to let you know that Cory didn’t return to the classroom after recess. I thought maybe you or your husband came to pick her up?”

Eve ran a hand through her hair, trying to think. Had she forgotten an appointment? Might Jack have gone to the school to get her for some reason? She looked at her watch. “I didn’t pick her up, and her father’s in class right now,” she said. “Are you sure she’s not in the restroom?” Cory occasionally got stomach cramps when she was nervous about something.

“We’ve checked everywhere,” Mrs. Judd said. “None of the other children noticed her leaving the playground, but…she tends not to hang around with them, anyhow, so they might not have been paying attention. Usually she just sits on the grass and reads during—”

“I’ll be right there,” Eve said. She slammed the phone down, asked her co-worker to apologize to the boy she’d been counseling, then took off for the school.

Please, God, let her be there,
she prayed as she drove through Charlottesville. It was so unlike Cory to wander off on her own. She was not that courageous.

Eve was trembling by the time she reached the office of the elementary school.

“Did you find her?” she asked as she burst into the room.

A police officer stood near the secretary’s desk, and he looked up from the notepad in his hand. “Mrs. Elliott?”

“Yes. Have you found her?”

“No,” he said. “We need to know how to reach your husband. Is there a chance she could be with him?”

Eve shook her head. “He’s in class.”

“Is there anyone else who might have picked her up from school?”

She shook her head. “I’ve got to find her,” she said. “She’s only six years old!”

“Her teacher said she was wearing green pants and a white cardigan sweater today, is that right?”

“Yes.” Her hand shook violently as she brushed her hair away from her face. “She—”

“You sit down, ma’am.” He interrupted her, his eyes on her stomach. “I don’t want you to have that baby right here.”

She sank into the seat and pictured Cory as she’d looked that morning when she walked her to school. “She had on sneakers and was wearing a green backpack. Unless that’s still in the classroom. You said she’s—”

“They found her!” The secretary suddenly ran into the room. “One of the police officers has her. He’s bringing her here.”

“Oh, thank God.” Eve stood up again. “Is she okay? Where was she?”

“I don’t know any of that, Mrs. Elliott,” the secretary said. “Can I get you some water?”

Eve shook her head.

The officer closed his notebook. “Sounds like a happy ending.” He smiled at her. “Sit down again, Mrs. Elliott. Are you all right?”

“I’m okay,” she said, but she clutched the edge of the counter.

Cory walked into the room, holding the hand of a police officer. The moment she spotted Eve, though, she let go of the officer and sprang toward her mother.

“Mommy, Mommy!” she cried, grabbing Eve’s hand.

Eve wrapped her arms around her. “I’m so glad to see you,” she said, bending down to kiss the top of her head. “Oh, baby, I’m so glad.”

“We found her three blocks away, by the Piggly Wiggly,” the officer said.

Eve lowered herself onto the chair again to be eye level with her daughter. “Who took you there, Cory?” she asked.

“I walked there.”

Eve shook her head at the officer. “She wouldn’t do that,” she said. “She’d be afraid to go off on her own like that.”

“I was going to the Carter house,” Cory said.

“The Carter House? You mean the Cartwright House? Where I work?”

Cory nodded. “I needed to find you.”

“Oh, sweetie, you can’t do that. I work too far from here.” She was filled with terror over what might have happened. “You never would have found me. You must never, ever walk off on your own again.”

She leaned over to whisper in her ear. “But I needed to tell you something,” she said.

“What?”

“Caitlin said her aunt
died
when she had a baby,” Cory said. “The baby was born too soon and she
died.
And you said to Daddy last night that you were ready for the baby to come
right now
and I was afraid you’d go have the baby be born now and you’d die. And I had to find you to tell you not to do that so you wouldn’t die, Mommy.”

“Oh, the poor little thing,” the secretary said.

There was such sincerity in Cory’s face. Such love and concern. How terrified she must have been to do something as brave and out of character as leaving the school, unsure where she was going, to try to find her and keep her safe!

Eve pressed her hands lightly on the side of her head and leaned forward to kiss her temple. “I’m not going to die, honey, and I’m not going to have the baby now. Even if I did, though, I wouldn’t die. It’s very, very unusual for that to happen. Something must have been wrong with Caitlin’s aunt for that to happen, okay? You don’t need to worry about that at all. Not even the tiniest little bit. And if you ever
are
worried about something like that, you need to talk to an adult about it instead of leaving school to try to find me. Promise me that you’ll never do that again.”

“I promise,” she said. “If you promise not to die.”

When her contractions began the afternoon of November twenty-first, Eve thought of Genevieve, but her labor was entirely different from that of Cory’s mother. The pain was far worse than she’d expected and it seemed to last an eternity before they finally gave her an epidural. She had Jack by her side the whole time, breathing with her, holding her hand, feeding her ice chips, and at times, annoying her with made-up songs that were meant to cheer her on. They called Cory to reassure her that Eve was fine, and as the clock ticked past midnight, to wish her a happy seventh birthday. The new baby would indeed be Cory’s biggest birthday present.

One of the nurses said something about this being Eve’s first pregnancy, and she shrugged her shoulders at Jack with a nonchalant smile that took some effort.

“Looks like they screwed up my chart,” she said, and hoped that he felt no need to set them straight.

Her labor lasted eleven hours and twenty minutes, and by the time she was holding beautiful, black-haired Dru Bailey Elliott in her arms, Genevieve’s bloody death was the furthest thing from her mind.

1987

E
ve was not the least bit surprised when Cory woke up with a stomachache the second Saturday in July. She sat at the breakfast table, her arms hanging limply at her sides as she stared glumly at her untouched cereal. Her Girl Scout troop was going on an overnight trip to Camp Sugar Hollow, and Cory had started getting nervous the night before. Eve knew she’d gotten very little sleep.

“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 about 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.