Secrets She Left Behind (42 page)

Keith

I
WAS WORKING OUT ON THE ELLIPTICAL TRAINER IN MARCUS’S
bedroom, watching this dude jog on the beach with his Jack Russell terrier, when the doorbell rang. I kept pumping away on the elliptical. I was going over to Jen’s later, so I knew it wasn’t her at the door, and anybody else would be for Marcus. But the bell kept ringing and I started thinking maybe Marcus locked himself out, or maybe it was Flip Cates with news about my mother. So after about five minutes of listening to the bell ring, I got off the elliptical, slung a towel around my neck and went downstairs. I pulled open the front door and was really sorry I bothered: Maggie.

Without even thinking about it, I turned my head to the left to hide the scars. “What do you want?” I asked. I could’ve happily gone the rest of my life without seeing her.

“To talk to you,” she said.

I’d seen her those couple of times on the news since she got sprung, but I hadn’t realized how skinny and pale she’d gotten.

“No, you don’t,” I said. “’Cause if you start talking to me, I’ll start talking back, and you won’t want to hear what I have to say.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I mean, I do. I want to hear what you have to say.”

“Go away.” I started to close the door, but she put out both hands to stop it.

“Please, Keith,” she said. “I know you don’t owe me anything but—”

“Damn straight.”

“I know that, but please. Let me in.”

I couldn’t say why I caved, but I turned away from the door and let her walk into the house behind me. I flopped down on the sofa and folded my arms across my chest. I wished I wasn’t wearing a T-shirt. I felt like one big walking scar.

“So, go ahead,” I said.

She leaned against one of the chairs and stared out the window toward the beach, and I realized that the last time she saw me, I was in the hospital, covered in bandages. This was her first real glimpse of her handiwork. First time was always a shock. She pulled it together finally, though, and looked right at me.

“I’m really sorry, Keith,” she said. “For the fire. For your injuries. They’re all my fault. I’d give anything to be able to change what happened.”

“You’re not the only one.” Man, I hated that girl. She sort of slid from leaning against the chair to sitting in it, like she was inching her way closer to actually being in the room with me.

“How are you doing?” she asked. “Uncle Marcus says your PT’s going pretty well, but you dropped out of school.”

“That’s my business.”

“I know,” she said.

She was just trying to start up a conversation, and I felt kind of sorry for her. The weird thing was, she had the same eyes as me. I’d never noticed it before, but they were
exactly
like mine. The shape of them—kind of abnormally round. The brown color that
was practically black. The fat eyelashes that looked good on a girl but were too fem for a guy. So, maybe it was because she had my eyes that I felt like I could see behind them. I could see she was scared, being there with me. I didn’t want to feel any sympathy toward her, but when someone has your eyes and you can see right through them, you can’t help but feel some of what they’re feeling. I was glad when my phone rang and I could pull it from my pocket to look at the display instead of her eyes.

It was Marcus.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey, Keith.” The way he said it, I knew something was wrong.

I sat up. “What is it?” I asked.

“Your mom’s car’s been found.”

“Is she…Is she with it?”

“Your mother?” Maggie leaned forward in the chair.

“I’m sorry, Keith,” Marcus said. “She…It looks like she had an accident. She ran off Route 74 outside of Charlotte, and her car was deep in the woods. It probably happened that first day she went missing. They think she was probably killed instantly. I’m at the police station. They need you here. Do you want me to come get you?”

I couldn’t speak right away. I couldn’t get enough breath in my lungs to say a word.

“Keith? Let me come get you.”

“No,” I said. I’d known it from the start, didn’t I? That she was dead? “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

I got up, turning off my phone. I ignored Maggie as I headed to the kitchen for my car keys.

“They found your mother?” Maggie watched me grab my keys off the counter, then followed me to the door. “Keith? Did they—”

“
Yes,
they found her.” I spun around to stare her down, smacking my fist against the wall. “She’s dead!”

“Oh my God!” She covered her mouth with her hand, tears already in her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

“So what’s the score now, huh, Maggie?” I asked as I yanked open the door. “Five for Maggie Lockwood? Congratulations! You have another victim.”

She followed me out the door, practically tripping over me, she was so close.

“Are you going to the police station?” she asked. “Let me drive you.”

My car. Her car. Both of them a blur in front of the tower. Why was it getting to me like this, when I’d known all along she was dead? My chest muscles squeezed tight around my windpipe.

I pounded the hood of my car. Once. Twice. “Fuck!”

Maggie took my arm and led me to her car. I let her. It was like I had no fight in me. I let her open the car door. My legs shook, from the elliptical or from freaking out or both. I fell into the seat.

Maggie got in behind the wheel and turned the key.

“Damn it!” I said when we pulled into the street. “Why Charlotte? Why without me? Why didn’t she fucking
tell
me?”

“I don’t know,” Maggie answered, like I’d actually been talking to her and not myself. “Could she have been going to a job interview, maybe? Uncle Marcus told us about the apartment and the bank and—”

“Your uncle should keep his trap shut.”

“We’re
family,
Keith.”

“Cut me a break,” I snapped. “You and I might have some of the same blood in our veins, but that’s where it ends. I don’t want you for a sister. Get it? I don’t want
shit
to do with the Lockwoods.”

That shut her up. She sniffled and wiped her eyes with her hands, but we didn’t talk for the rest of the way to the station. When we got there, she walked right into Flip Cates’s office with me, like I’d invited her to tag along. Marcus was there, too, and if either of them was surprised to see Maggie and me together, they didn’t say anything.

Flip stood up from behind his desk. “I’m sorry, Keith,” he said. “This wasn’t the news we were hoping for.”

Marcus walked over to hug me, but I wasn’t having any of it. “Where’s my mother?” I kept my arms at my sides. “What did they do with her?”

“She’s at the medical examiner’s office in Charlotte,” Flip said.

“Why? What does a medical examiner do?” It was one of those things I probably should have known, but I needed an answer and didn’t feel like faking it.

Marcus leaned back against Flip’s desk. “They’ll figure out how long ago she died and the probable cause of death,” he said.

I didn’t want to think about what my mother looked like when they found her. Decomposed and everything. I didn’t want that to be the last image I had of her in my mind.

“They’ll probably want to do an autopsy,” Flip said.

“Why?” Crap. Now they wanted to cut her up.

“To try to figure out if there was a medical condition or…possibly alcohol or another substance in her system that might have led to her losing control of the car.”

“She didn’t take any drugs,” I said. “And she hardly ever drank. I already told you that.”

“Maybe a deer ran out in front of her car,” Maggie said.

“Very possible, Mags.” Marcus nodded.

“There were boxes and some other things in the car with her.”
Flip looked at a notepad lying on his desk. “The police will turn them over to you. When you’re ready, you’ll have to go up to Charlotte to get them.”

“I can do that for you if you want, Keith,” Marcus said. “Or at least go with you.”

“Or I could,” Maggie said.

“They can just throw it all away,” I said. “I don’t want it.”

“Well, I think you need to get it in case there’s something important.” Marcus folded his arms. “The police said there were a lot of papers. Bank statements. That sort of thing. Then some books. Some clothing. A suitcase. Probably the one you thought might be missing.”

“I never said I thought one was missing,” I said. How many times had I told them I didn’t even think she had a suitcase?

“One of the boxes had a pan on it, like Andy Lockwood said he saw her carrying,” Flip said. “But it was an old box and just had toiletries in it.”

“Like she was moving,” I said.

“We don’t know that.”

“Without me.”

“Her car was totaled,” Marcus said, “but you should be able to get insurance money for it.”

“Whoop-de-do,” I said. “That should keep me going for another month or two.” The walls of Flip’s office were closing in on me, getting dark around the edges. My legs started shaking again and I sat down on one of the chairs by the desk. Flip and Marcus and Maggie were all staring at me, and I felt so
alone.
All those weeks my mother’d been missing, with me knowing deep inside she must be dead, and I’d never felt that horrible, scary, suffocating
aloneness
until that moment.

“What am I supposed to do now?” I asked. My voice cracked on the “now,” and I was pissed at myself for sounding afraid.

“You don’t have to make any decisions right away,” Marcus said. “Let’s take this one step at a time. The first thing is to just…let this sink in. I’ll go back to my house with you and we’ll chill for the rest of the day, all right? Then we can start planning a memorial service for her.”

“I don’t know how to do that shit.”

“You’ll have plenty of help,” Marcus said. “Dawn and Laurel, for starters.”

“I can help, too, Keith,” Maggie said.

I snapped my head toward her. “Don’t you get it, Maggie?” I asked. “I don’t
want
your help. This whole mess wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for you.”

“Mags,” Marcus said. “Why don’t you go home. We can talk later.”

“All right.” She nodded. “I’m sorry, Keith,” she said for the zillionth time.

I waited till I was sure she was far enough down the hall that she couldn’t hear me. “You don’t need to come home,” I said to Marcus. “I’m gonna call Jen to come get me.” I needed to be with Jen. With her screwed-up family, she was the one person who’d get how I was feeling.

“You sure?” Marcus asked. “Why not let me take you home. Give you some time to process all this.”

“I want to be with my girlfriend, okay?” I stood up, wobbling a little. Marcus reached out an arm to steady me, and I let him. “I’m all right,” I said. “I’m not going off the deep end or anything. I’ll come back to the tower later.”

Maggie

I
NEEDED AN EXTRA SESSION WITH DR. JAKES THE MORNING
of Sara’s memorial service because I so didn’t want to go. I wanted to hide in my room. Mom would have let me stay home. She was scared for me. She didn’t say so, but I could tell by the way she kept checking on me as I got ready, and I finally told her what Dr. Jakes had told me: “Today is about Sara, Mom,” I said. “It’s not about me.”

Keith and Uncle Marcus would be driving together to the service. Uncle Marcus told me that Keith had a girlfriend now, and she’d probably be coming with them. He said he’d been seeing her for a while, but Uncle Marcus hadn’t met her yet. I was amazed that Keith had a girlfriend. It made me happy. He needed somebody to care about him, especially since he was pushing all of us away.

There was a line of cars parked on the road by the northern tip of the island, and we pulled right behind Marcus’s pickup. Mom and Andy and I held hands as we walked toward the windy spit of land by the remains of Daddy’s chapel. Apparently, Sara once told Dawn she’d like to have her ashes scattered in the inlet by the old chapel, so Dawn suggested the service be held there. I wished she’d picked someplace—
anyplace—
else. It had to be so hard for my mother. I held her hand tight as we got close to the twenty or thirty people milling around near the old chapel walls. Mom probably thought it
was because I was freaking out with all the people there, but I just wanted to comfort her the way she’d been comforting me all year long.

The sky was that bright, bright blue you saw on the island sometimes. As things got going, I stood between Mom and Andy, and Marcus stood next to Keith. No sign of his girlfriend that I could see. Dawn was there, and she stood in front of everybody since she was in charge of the service. It was the first time I’d seen her since I got out of prison, and I couldn’t look straight at her. I guessed the guy standing closest to her was her boyfriend, Frankie. He was short—a lot shorter than Dawn—and he had that blond-and-tan surfer look.

Dawn talked about Sara—what a good friend she’d been and how much she’d loved working with her at Jabeen’s. I could hear her because I was close enough, but I was sure some of the other people just saw her mouth moving as her words were blown out to sea. Then Mom went up in front of everyone and talked about what a great mother Sara had been to Keith. A few other people spoke, but I was spacing out, thinking about how Dr. Jakes was wrong. This
was
about me. I’d changed the island. I’d done more damage than a hurricane. Keith with his scars. Sara dead. There was nobody to blame but me, and every single person there probably had that thought going through his or her mind. Some of the people hated me, for sure. Keith certainly did. Dawn. So many others. Even people who didn’t know me still knew what I did and hated me for it. As long as I lived on Topsail Island, every time I’d be in a group of people, it would be about me. Someday I’d have to leave. If I ever wanted a normal life, it couldn’t be here. But there was a difference between leaving and running away. I wouldn’t go until I was sure which one I was doing.

When everyone was done speaking, Keith carried the urn out to the inlet, Marcus at his side. The wind blew Keith’s dark curly hair all over the place and whipped at his shirt. I couldn’t see what was happening, but he was struggling with the urn and Marcus had to help him. I watched Sara’s ashes suddenly explode in a gray puff of smoke before they were swallowed by the wind and the water. It was incredibly quick. That’s really when it hit me, and when I started to cry. She was actually
gone.
The woman I’d loved for most of my life. My second mother when I was little. In less than a second, she was gone.

People followed us back to our house afterward, where this caterer Mom knew was setting up sandwiches and coffee. I went straight up to my room. Mom had told me not to worry about socializing, and I was relieved that she understood how hard that would be for me. My courage had its limits.

I sat on my bed, looking out the window at the sound. Even though the window was closed, I could hear the squawking of the gulls that flew over the water. The activity going on downstairs was a steady thrumming sound, and my bed seemed to vibrate with it.

I noticed someone walking across our sandy yard, heading for the pier, and it took me a minute to realize it was Keith. He was kind of hunched over like an old man. I was sure he didn’t want to mingle with the crowd downstairs any more than I did. My tattoo burned and I rubbed my hip as I tried to blink away the image of Sara’s ashes disappearing in a puff of gray. As shocking as that moment had been for me, it must have been a thousand times worse for Keith.

I wanted to help him. To do things for him. I’d gone to Charlotte with Uncle Marcus the day before to get the things that had
been in Sara’s car. That’s when Uncle Marcus told me about the girlfriend, and I felt kind of angry at her for not being with Keith today, when he really needed her.

I got off my bed, put on my sneakers and walked quietly down the stairs and out the front door. A few people saw me and probably thought I was the biggest coward, but I didn’t care. I walked through the side yard and out on the pier, where Keith sat with his legs dangling above the water. He glanced up as I walked toward him, and I saw a look of disgust cross his face.

I sat down next to him. For a minute, neither of us spoke.

“Do you know that your mom’s ashes were scattered in the same place as our father’s ashes?” I asked after a while.

He was quiet. Finally he said, “Weird.”

“I guess it’s nice in a way,” I said, trying not to think about my own mother. “Nice for them.”

He picked a splinter off one of the boards and tossed it in the water. I was sitting on his right side. Looking at that part of his face, you wouldn’t know there was anything wrong with him. He reminded me of pictures of Daddy from when he was young.

“Sometimes I talk to my father,” I said. “And I think he hears me. Sometimes he…communicates with me.”

“What is this?” He smirked. “True confessions?”

“No. I just wanted to tell you that. I know your mother’s…gone from Earth, but that doesn’t mean you can’t talk to her.”

He laughed. “I
know
I can talk to her,” he said. “I just don’t believe she’ll be listening.”

“Maybe or maybe not.”

“Whatever.” He looked toward the horizon, squinting. “You know, Maggie,” he said, “I came out here because I wanted to be alone.”

I nodded and got to my feet. “Okay,” I said. “That’s all right.”

I walked back up the pier toward the house, hugging my arms against the wind. I wished I could really talk to him. I wanted to tell him that he didn’t need to be alone, ever again. I wanted to tell him that I had an amazing mother and an amazing uncle and a totally wonderful little brother, and that we would always be there for him—whether he wanted us to be or not.