What She Left Behind (16 page)

“Most people don’t keep boxes of Ritz Bits in stock, you know.”

“Good thing I’m friends with you, then. I see some up there on the top shelf,” I said.

“Now how am I supposed to reach that? Jay!”

“What? What’s the matter?” Jay said, appearing from the living room, the Wii remote in his hand.

“Can you get the Ritz Bits down for Sara?”

“Don’t bother. I can just get a kitchen chair and climb up,” I said.

“Oh, no. Jay would just love to help out. Wouldn’t you?”

“Sure. No problem.” He reached the box easily and tossed it to me like he was at basketball practice.

“You know, if you want to play basketball, you can just go outside instead of playing it on the Wii,” Lauren said.

“Or you can wait and play with Matt when you drop me off.”

“Won’t your dad be home by then?” asked Lauren.

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

“Why is it he never lets you guys have any friends over again?” asked Lauren.

“Too much noise?”

“Isn’t that a toddler thing? Although I guess my brother does still kind of act like a toddler.”

Jay flicked her on the head.

“Ow! Come on, Sara, let’s leave Mr. Immature to his video game.”

Once we were in Lauren’s room with the door closed she said, “So tell me about your ‘study session’ with Ian.”

“I felt like such a dork, ringing the doorbell. I was sure his mom was going to answer. But no, it was Ian. Did you see how hot he looked today?”

She shook her head. “Sorry, I didn’t see him at all today.”

“Trust me, he looked hot. The first thing he said was ‘My mom had to go to the grocery store.’ And he got this look in his eyes, you know, like he’s trying to tell me something else.”

Lauren put her hands under her chin and sighed.

“‘You want to go do math?’ he asked. Only he puts this pause before the word ‘math.’ So we go to his room. He’s got this basketball hoop hanging over the door, and he shut it so we could take a few shots.”

“Yeah, right,” said Lauren, rolling her eyes.

“The room was a mess except for his bed, which was sort of made—the bedspread was on crooked.”

Lauren raised her eyebrows.

“So I tried to make this shot and Ian went to block me, only I tripped on a shoe in the middle of the floor and I fell—”

“Onto the bed,” Lauren finished.

“Onto the bed,” I said, blushing.

“So?”

“We kissed.”

“And?”

“He put his hand up my shirt.”

“And?”

“Then his mom came home so we sat at the desk and opened a book.”

Childish, selfish, stupid me.

That’s what I was doing the day my brother blew his brains out. I’d been avoiding Lauren ever since, until Friday at the football game. I’d been afraid that if we hung out I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about Matt and how I hadn’t been there for him. But somehow that didn’t happen Friday night. She’d made me feel better.

We still going biking, Sara?
I practice the right answer every night as I’m falling asleep, but when I wake up in the morning, nothing has changed.

One fifteen. Here I am in the middle of a pumpkin patch, trying to make it look like everything is normal, and Dad isn’t even here to see it. Where is he? The store closed at noon and Dad never works late. Enough pretending. I fold my music stand and go back into the house.

As I pass the office, I pause mid-stride. No. She wouldn’t have. No. There’s no way she would have planned our escape using the home computer. Is there? And if she did, she surely would have deleted the history. … Right?

Who was I kidding? My mother had a copy of
The Internet for Dummies
, and as far as I knew, she had never actually read it, so she probably had left a clue on the computer.

I sit down at the computer and pull up the history.
Shit!
It’s all here: The Wichita, Kansas, Chamber of Commerce.
Really, Mom, Kansas?
A real-estate office in Lexington, Kentucky. Another in Bangor, Maine. Houston, Texas. Raleigh, North Carolina. Eau Claire, Wisconsin. San Diego, California. American Airlines. Delta. Southwest. My mom could be in any of those cities. Or in none of them. Did she leave the history because she didn’t know enough to erase it or did she deliberately leave a trail of false clues for my dad to follow?

I look at my watch. I could call the airlines anytime, but I don’t know how long real-estate offices stay open on Saturdays. I start with San Diego, since it sounds the most appealing.

“Homes for Hire, may I help you?”

“Yes, hello. My name’s Michelle Peters and I called last week about an apartment. I can’t remember the name of the person who was helping me.”

The woman at the other end of the line laughs. “Don’t worry about it. That happens more than you would think. Fortunately our agents keep track of these things on the computer. Let me check for you. Hmm. Peters, you say? Do you remember what day you called?”

“Monday, maybe?”

“I’m so sorry. It looks like the agent must have forgotten to enter the information. But I’m sure another agent would be happy to help you. Shall I transfer you?”

I guess San Diego is out. “You know what? Someone just came to the door. Let me take care of that, and I’ll call back. Thanks so much for your help.”

The conversation plays out much the same with the other real-estate offices I call, except for the one in Maine. Their answering machine says the offices are closed until ten o’clock on Monday.

Well, at least I know where not to look. And then I realize my stupidity. Just because no one recognizes my mom’s name doesn’t mean she hasn’t called. In fact, it tells me nothing at all, since I can only hope that my mom didn’t use her real name.

There’s one more site in the computer history that I needed to check. My mom’s e-mail account. I go to the sign-in screen.
Think. What would she use as a password?
I try her birthday, her mother’s maiden name (Travis), my name, Matt’s name. Then I try “saramatt.” I’m in.
Way too easy, Mom.

The cuckoo clock sings two. Dad still isn’t home.

First, I check the sent items. Nothing since Monday.
Calm down, Sara. Of course she wouldn’t keep using her old e-mail account.
I start going through her in-box. Forty-three unread messages. There’s nothing from anyone named Brian and nothing with a clue as to where she might be. Until I find three receipts, all in a row. Three sets of plane tickets on three different airlines. Denver, Atlanta, Phoenix. None of the cities match the ones from the
real-estate offices. All are for the two of us. And all were for last Tuesday.

God, Mom. This doesn’t make any sense.
Were we going to fly one place and then drive to another? Is one of these cities the right one or are they all meant to mislead Dad? I pick up the phone and dial the first airline.

“All of our customer-service representatives are busy helping other customers. Please hold for the next available representative.”
Come on, come on. Before Dad gets here.

“Good afternoon. My name is Rebecca, employee number 2873. How can I help you today?” Great, I get the woman with the Southern drawl who talks slower than my dad when he’s drunk.

“My daughter and I missed our flight to Denver on Tuesday and I was wondering if we can still use our tickets on a later flight?”

“Sure. There is a change fee, but if you give me your confirmation number I can get that taken care of for you.”

I read the confirmation number off the receipt.

“One moment, please.”

One! Come on, lady, please hurry. Ten seconds. Thirty. Forty-five. I have to get off this computer.

“Thank you for holding. I found your reservation. What is your new departure date?”

Damn it, no!
She was supposed to say sorry, she must have misunderstood. That her records show Michelle Peters took that flight, and that it’s just her daughter who needs to reschedule.

“Actually, I haven’t decided yet. I just wanted to make sure I can still do that. I’ll call back when I know. Thanks anyway.”

Thank you not at all.
My heart is pounding so hard it hurts.
What does this all mean?

I call the other two airlines and get two other reservation agents who would be delighted to change my reservation. Not one says “You idiot, you got on that flight.” Not one gives me any clue as to where my mother might be.

I delete the reservations from my mom’s inbox and from the trash, and clear the history on the computer. But I have the feeling that all of this is either too late or not enough to stop my dad from finding her and us.

I look through the unpaid bills until I find their joint credit-card statement. I call, give my “mother’s” maiden name and the last four digits of “my” social security number. Again, way too easy. I ask for the latest charges to the account. Since Tuesday: Abbot’s Party Store. Dad’s beer. Or maybe his cigarettes. Gas. Fifty dollars’ worth of groceries at the local supermarket. I open the refrigerator door. Pretty sparse. None of them seemed to have made it here. More gas. In other words, no help at all.

“Just one more thing—can you read me the charges for Monday?”

No airline tickets. My mom
does
have a second credit card. And if I’m confused, maybe that means that Dad would be confused too. At least, for a little while.

I have to find that credit-card number. To know if my mom is still out there somewhere, using it. And if the activity on our home computer is meant to confuse Dad, I need to find the computer my mother really used. I know that she has a laptop at work, not a desktop. So where’s her laptop? She brings it home with her every
night. That means she either took it with her or it’s somewhere in this house. I’ve searched everywhere—except the attic. I pull the ladder down and am on my way up the stairs when Keith Urban starts singing from my phone. Alex.

“Hey there.”

God, why do I feel all tingly inside every time I hear his voice? And like I’m in some kind of alternate universe where my mom isn’t missing? Someplace where everything is okay?

“There’s a Tarzan movie with quicksand on TV,” says Alex.

“I told you that stuff is more common than you think. But seriously, this is what you’re doing with your Saturday afternoon?”

“Actually I’m watching college football, but I did blow by the movie. Okay, so I didn’t actually see the quicksand, but I did see Tarzan. Or at least, I think that was him. The movie’s in black and white in any case. Thought maybe we could watch it together, over the phone.”

“You’re going to watch Tarzan?”

“How about this—I’ll keep watching college football and you watch Tarzan. That way I can keep track of the score and you can tell me if they make it out alive. Or I can come over and we can—”

Rip each other’s clothes off.
And then maybe I can push the terror out of my mind for just a little while. Unless Dad comes home first.

“Actually, I’m cleaning the attic.”
Which I’m beginning to think is a crazy idea. I’m never going to find anything this way.

“Okay, yep, that’s exactly what I had in mind.”

I open a box of old baby clothes. Mainly pink. A few in purple. Sizes six months, twelve months, 2T. I’m not even going to pretend
I remember wearing any of it. Why in the world did we still have this stuff? At the bottom of the box I even find some bottles. One of them has a paper rolled up inside. Since when do you need instructions for operating a baby bottle? I take the cap off and pry out the paper.

It’s a credit-card statement. Recent. One with just my mom’s name on it.

“Um, Alex? I gotta go.”

I hang up. I’m not really sure I actually say good-bye. Then I call the credit card company. The airline tickets were paid for with the card.

And there have been no charges since Monday.

Alex arrives at seven thirty like he promised. He doesn’t say anything about how I hung up on him. Fresh from the shower, he radiates musk. I’m completely drained and exhausted. Since I spent the afternoon imagining what might have happened to my mom, I’m pretty sure I also have a look of sheer terror on my face.