What She Left Behind (15 page)

“Right.”

“Okay. I’m in,” he says.

“What?”

“I said, I’m in.”

“It’s okay if I don’t tell you why?”

“I’ll pick you up in half an hour.”

The ride to Brian Paterson’s house takes us from one dirt road to the next.

“Looks like we’ll get a ride through the car wash out of this,” says Alex.

“Sorry. Those things freak me out.” And so does Dad’s voice in my head.
Don’t even
think
of leaving.

“It’s a little cold to be playing with hoses, but if you insist.”

“Uh-huh.”
I will find you.

“Is this helping?”

“Is what helping?”
Guaranteed.

“Is my talking about completely useless things helping you forget about whatever it is that’s freaking you out? And I’m not talking about the car wash.”

I smile.

“Yes and no. The distraction is good.”
Because I’m close to losing it.
“But I also need to think.”
Because there’s got to be something I’m missing.

“I’ll shut up now.”

“Thanks.”
Where
are
you, Mom?

As we churn up the dust on Mr. Paterson’s driveway, I try to imagine my mother living in the plain brick ranch that’s ahead of us. There’s no sign of her car.

A chill is in the air, so I pull on my hooded sweatshirt as we walk up the stone path to the front door. I ring the bell.

“Please tell me we’re not doing the Jehovah’s Witness thing,” says Alex.

I hear him, but I’m not really listening, so I don’t say anything.

“Crap. We
are
doing the Jehovah’s Witness thing. Okay, you do the sales pitch and I’ll stick my foot in the door when they try to slam it in our faces.”

A woman answers the door. Not my mother. I just kind of stare at her. Finally Alex nudges the side of my shoe.

“Hi,” I say. “We’re looking for Brian Paterson. He’s a friend of my mom’s. Michelle Peters.” She doesn’t react, she just stares back at me, zombie-style.

“Is he home?” Alex prods.

“Just a minute,” she says, turning away from us. Toenails click on linoleum and one of those slobbery Labrador retrievers looks up at me. Definitely not my type. Or my mom’s. Which is also what I think about Brian Paterson when he appears on the other side of the screen. Square glasses with giant frames. Reddish-brown hair. Mustache. And he’s short. Quite short, actually.

“Hi, Mr. Paterson. My name is Sara. Laurie Young said you were a friend of my mom’s.”

He stares at me just like the woman had. “And your mom is …?”

“Michelle Peters.”

“Oh, yes, of course. We used to work together. Is your mom still at Essence? Sorry about not recognizing you, Sara. When you first moved here, you must have been this high.” He put his hand
roughly at the level of his Labrador’s head. Surely I had been taller than that. But I let it pass. “How is your mom?”

Either this guy hasn’t talked to my mom in months or he’s a really good actor.

“Fine,” I say.
I hope.

“Would you like to come in?” he offers.

I start to say no, but figure I should at least take a peek inside. Just in case there’s something I’m missing.

“Sure, thanks.”

He holds the screen door open. As I step into the entryway, the slobbery dog presses his slimy nose against my wrist and licks my hand. I try to pretend it doesn’t bother me. We pass through the kitchen with its dog-scratched cabinets and into the living room, which has knickknacks on every surface. Lots of dog figurines, a few elephants, and statues of kids that are supposed to be cute, but that are really just cheesy.

“Would you like some lemonade?” asks the woman who answered the door.

Now, I really don’t need or want any lemonade, but I don’t want this guy to hold anything back about his relationship with my mom because she’s there so I say, “Yes, please. With lots of ice.” Hopefully they have an ice maker like ours that’s always getting plugged. We’re always having to open the drawer and rattle the collection tray. That should make enough noise to drown out our conversation.

She looks at Alex. “Would you like some too?”

I guess he saw my little nod of encouragement because he says, “Yes, thanks very much.”

As soon as she’s out of the room, I say, “I’m surprised that you haven’t talked to my mom recently. She talks a lot about you.”

Mr. Paterson doesn’t look away or blush or stammer or try to jump in with any excuse like guilty people do on
The Winds of Change
.

“That’s nice to hear. I keep meaning to call.”

I leave an opening, an uncomfortable gap in the conversation for this man to say “Just kidding” and call my mom out from the back bedroom. He doesn’t.

I look around. Amid the figurines there are lots of pictures of Mr. Paterson and his friend. Presumably she’s his wife, since he’s wearing a wedding band and he has his arm around her in more than a few of the photos. No children or friends, just them and the slobbery old dog.

Mrs. Paterson comes back in with our lemonades. Mine has lots of ice, just as I asked, which makes it easy to down in a few swallows. It’s also just the right amount of sweet, like Mom would have made it. I almost ask for more.

“So the reason we stopped by—” I pause and drink the last of my lemonade while watching for any change in expression. Mrs. Paterson is vacantly staring and Mr. Paterson sits at the edge of his seat.

I start to put the glass down on the coffee table, but there aren’t any coasters and it looks nicer than the fiberboard one we have in our living room, so I set it down on the carpet. The dog promptly comes and tries to stuff his entire snout down into the glass. I look Mr. Paterson in the eye and continue, “Is to invite you to a surprise birthday party for my mom.”

Mr. Paterson looks confused. Admirably, Alex doesn’t, he just nods and smiles and shakes the ice in his glass.

“Isn’t her birthday in November?” asks Mr. Paterson.

How does this guy remember her birthdate? Does he just have a good memory or is he closer to my mom than he’s letting on? I think quickly. “Yes, but I wanted people to be able to set aside the date. That, and we were in the area for the Chicken Broil. It was good. You should go.”

“Maybe.” Mr. Paterson shrugs his shoulders. “So when is it?”

I look at Alex. “I don’t exactly remember what the sign said—until six, maybe?”

Alex nods.

“No, no,” Mr. Paterson says. “I mean, when’s the party?”

“November fourteenth.”

“Is that a Saturday?”

“Yeah.” I have no idea what day that is. I hope that they don’t either.

“Okay. We’ll mark it on our calendar, then.” Mr. Paterson stands. I reach down and pick up the contaminated dog-drool-lemonade glass.

“Let me take that for you.” Mr. Paterson leads us back through the kitchen and to the screen door.

“Thanks for the lemonade,” I say. The Labrador jumps on me and gives me a big lick on the cheek. I don’t want to be rude so I don’t wipe it off. As we walk back to the car, the wind makes the dog slobber cold against my cheek.

Back in the car I put my head on Alex’s shoulder. One of the coolest things about Alex is that he’s okay with just holding me
even if he doesn’t understand why. Right then I know that I’m screwed. In a few days my mom’s coming back for me, and I’ll have to leave Alex.

And if she doesn’t come back, it can mean only one thing.

She’s dead.

T
welve twenty. I have maybe five minutes before Dad gets home. Unless he already is. Dad always leaves work at noon on Saturdays. As Alex and I approach our driveway, my palms start to sweat. I don’t want Alex to meet my dad, because Dad is always rude to my friends, Matt’s friends, and my mom’s friends. I wipe my hands on my jeans and sigh in relief when I notice that the garage door is still closed.

“I’d invite you in, but the place is a mess,” I say.
Actually, I’d like to make out with you on the piano bench again.

“Somehow I doubt that.”

“I have a lot of homework?”
I’ve got to figure out where my mom is.

“Nope. Not buying that one.”

“Okay, then. I can see only the truth will do. I’m actually a
Russian spy sent here to infiltrate Scottsfield High.”
And now you really have to go or my dad’s going to drive up and it won’t be pretty.

“I always knew there was something suspicious about Altman. It’s him you’re after, isn’t it?”

“Most definitely.”

“Pick you up at seven thirty, then?”

“I’ll be here.”
Unless my mom comes back or I’m dead. Either one.

Before he can say anything else, I jump out of the car and wave. Alex drives a few feet and stops. He rolls down the window. “I almost forgot,” he says. “I downloaded ‘Wildfire’ for you. Here you go.” He tosses a thumb drive out the window, then guns the engine and drives off in a cloud of dust. Oh, Dad would just love that.
Please let the dust settle before he gets back.

I go inside and put the thumb drive in my duffel bag. I’m pretty sure the song doesn’t have a happy ending. I decide to wait and play it after my mom comes back for me. I also quickly repack my bag so it’ll be ready for Tuesday. I put in everything I’ll need except for the things Dad would expect to see, like Sam and my photo album.

Normal. You have to act normal for when Dad gets home.
This had to be like any other weekend. On a normal Saturday afternoon, I would practice my clarinet, so that’s exactly what I do.

I get out my shrunken clarinet, my portable music stand, and some sheet music from my room, and go out to my pumpkin patch, which is in the middle of the front field. I’ve always loved pumpkins, so one day at dinner a few years ago I said, “Wouldn’t it be cool to have a pumpkin patch?”

“Not,” Matt answered. My mom was indifferent. My dad, on the other hand, was all for it. “Great idea!” he said. The next day he was outside in the middle of the field with the roto-tiller. I ran outside and watched, all happy.

He smiled at me. He never does that anymore.

When the pumpkins are big enough, I sometimes sit on them. When they’re not, I sit on the wooden bench my dad made for me that’s between the pumpkin patch and the skating pond. Well, we call it the skating pond, but it’s really just part of the field that dips lower than the rest and tends to flood and ice over. Matt and I used to put on our skates and chase each other on it. An iced-over hay field has lots of bumps. Matt always did his best to catch me before I wiped out, but we usually both ended up tangled together in a pile on the ice, laughing. We’d sit there for a while, talking, until we got too cold, then we’d go inside and have hot chocolate.

I sit on the bench and unfold the music stand, then attach the music with clothes pins. The breeze feels good. I start with the “Russian Sailor’s Dance.” I love how fast it goes. Next I play “I Had a Bad Day.” Matt used to like that song. He left it on continuous repeat the day he died.

“We still going biking, Sara?” Matt had asked, leaning against his cherry-red convertible in the school parking lot.

I’d never heard of a Karmann Ghia before Matt had dragged it home. It’s made by Volkswagen, which meant that Matt loved the car partly because it was foreign and partly because it was cute. My dad hated it because he’s still against anything foreign on account of the whole
dead-partner-Internal-Affairs issue. So Matt had to rebuild the car on his own. Even if he hadn’t despised the convertible on principle, Dad wouldn’t have been much help. He didn’t know the first thing about restoring a car. He didn’t even change his own oil.

“Oh, sorry. I kind of forgot,” I said as I brushed by him with Lauren. “I’m going home with Lauren to work on our history project.”

“Jay said he’ll take you home when we’re done,” Lauren volunteered.

“And you say your brother never does anything nice for you,” I teased her.

“It’s true. He only does nice things for my friends.”

Stupid, stupid, selfish, stupid me.

We didn’t actually have a history project. Instead I walked Lauren home, making my own personal detour to her next-door neighbor Ian’s house. Afterward I’d popped over to Lauren’s.

“Hungry?” Lauren asked as she rifled through the cupboards.

“Got any Ritz Bits in there?”