Secrets She Left Behind (26 page)

“Back when I was drinking,” Mom said, “after you were born—”

“You had postpartum depression.” I wanted her to get to the point.

“Right. And you know Uncle Marcus was an alcoholic, too.”

“Yeah.”

“We spent a lot of time together, drinking. And we…one time we—”

I stood up. “I do
not
want to hear this!”

“Sit down, Mags,” Uncle Marcus said.

I did. I looked at my mother. “So you and Daddy both cheated on each other.” I felt sick. “This is totally too much information. Why do I need to know this?”

“Because I’m Andy’s father,” Uncle Marcus said.

I stared at him. “No way.”

“Yes,” Mom said. “It’s true.”

I rubbed my head. This was unbelievable. My family was a train wreck.

“Did Daddy know?” I asked.

“Yes,” they said at the same time.

“Is that why he had the affair with Sara?”

“No, remember?” Mom said. “Keith is older than Andy.”

“So did you know about them, and you were angry and—”

“No, Mags,” Uncle Marcus said. “At the time, nobody knew anything about anybody. What happened with your mom and me was independent of what was happening with your dad and Sara.”

“This is so fu—screwed up.”

“Well,” Mom said. “I admit things
were
very screwed up back then, but what we have to deal with now is how to tell Andy, because you’re right. He’s old enough to know. Especially now that Marcus and I are together.”

“
No.
I don’t want him to know.” I was pissed off with both of them. “It’s going to hurt him.”

“I know it will confuse him,” Mom said. “I know that and I’m so sorry for it, but you said it yourself…that it’s time for the truth to come out.”

“I didn’t know about
this
truth, though,” I said.

I thought of how Uncle Marcus treated Andy. For as long as I could remember, he was always around, even when Mom wasn’t exactly putting out the welcome mat for him. He saw Andy whenever he could. Showing up at his swim meets. Taking him places. He did the same for me. I always thought he was being a dad to us because our own father was dead. I suddenly realized that not only was
Keith
my half brother, so was Andy. It felt like someone was twisting my heart in his fist.

“I think you’re both underestimating Andy,” Uncle Marcus said.

“I know you say that,” Mom said to him, “but I’m just…I’m worried, that’s all.”

I could tell they’d talked about this a lot, that this was like a continuation of a conversation they’d been having a long time.

“Look. Am
I
your daughter?” I asked my mother. “Yours and Daddy’s? Are there any more big skeletons going to pop out of the closet? Because I don’t know if I can take any more.”

“You’re Jamie’s and mine, Maggie,” Mom said. “Absolutely.”

“Let’s all get on the same page about this, okay?” Uncle Marcus leaned toward me, elbows on his knees beneath the afghan. “Maggie, we need you behind us on this. If you and your mom are breaking down in front of him and everything, it’s only going to make it worse for him.”

“I don’t want to be there when you tell him,” I said.

“Please be there,” Mom said. “He’ll need you there.”

“Your mom’s right,” Uncle Marcus said. “The easier
you
are with it, the easier it will be for him to hear it.”

“Fine.”
Even to myself, I sounded stupidly immature and belligerent. I sighed, tipping my head back to look at the dark porch ceiling. “All right,” I said. “I’ll be there. When are you going to tell him?”

They looked at each other again with that weird silent communication.

“Tonight,” Mom said. “Let’s get it over with.”

Sara
Part of the Family
1991

D
URING LAUREL’S SIX-MONTH STAY IN REHAB, JAMIE MOVED
Keith and me into a double-wide trailer in the Persimmon Trailer Park in Surf City, which it turned out he owned. I knew he’d inherited plenty of property from his father. Marcus, quite a bit less. But I’d driven past that trailer park any number of times and never knew it belonged to him. He told me I could live in the trailer—rent-free, of course—for as long as I liked.

I had never even
been
in a trailer before and was surprised how much I liked it. First of all, it was mere steps from the beach. Second, Keith and I would nearly have the park to ourselves during the winter months. The trailers were definitely summer rentals, yet ours was cozy and warm, and it felt solid. Not as solid as a house with a foundation, especially since it was raised up on stilts in case of flooding, but it didn’t feel as though it was going to topple over in the next nor’easter. The rooms were small, though no smaller than in the house Steve and I had rented outside Camp Lejeune.

Best of all, it was only a few miles from the Sea Tender and Jamie.

Not only did Jamie essentially “give” me the trailer, along with two thousand dollars a month to live on, but he told me he
planned to make arrangements for Keith and me for the future. “I want to be sure you and Keith will be taken care of in case something happens to me,” he said as he helped move my things into the trailer.

I should have asked him what he meant. I should have pushed him to “make those arrangements” as soon as possible. Instead, I simply laughed.

“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” I said with that sense of immortality only someone in her twenties could possess. “Don’t talk like that.”

I expected the months Laurel spent in rehab to be blissful, having Jamie all to myself, but even though we saw each other often, he was preoccupied with her progress and with the baby he was not even allowed to visit. He loved our sweet son, but he knew Keith was safe and adored, while his other son was on his own in a foster home.

Laurel got out of rehab on a Thursday, and I wasn’t invited to visit the Lockwoods until the following Tuesday. It was a very lonely few days. It felt as though Keith and I had suddenly been cut out of Jamie’s life. On that Tuesday, I tried not to feel bitter as I pulled up in front of the Sea Tender and got Keith out of his car seat. I’d put on my game face.

I could barely believe that the woman opening the front door of the Sea Tender was the same woman I’d chewed out in the hospital. Laurel looked vibrant and healthy and very, very pretty. So much so that I felt a wave of jealousy as I imagined Jamie holding this attractive woman in his arms. Worse—much worse—
sleeping
with her. Laurel the depressed drunk had been a weak adversary for me. This woman looked strong enough to take on the world.

“Laurel!” I hugged her, Keith squawking as he got crushed between us. “You look fantastic!”

“Thanks,” she said. “I feel like I’ve come back from the dead.” She grabbed my arm and drew me into the living room. “Come in. Come in.”

“Miss Sara!” Maggie ran up to me.

“Let me take that little guy so you can say hi to Maggie,” Laurel said. “She’s been babbling about you all weekend.”

I did as I was told, numbly handing Keith over to Laurel and squatting down to hug Maggie, the whole time knowing that my world was shifting beneath my feet.

Jamie had gone out to pick up a couple of pizzas, and once he arrived, we sat out on the deck in the spring weather, eating and talking. Laurel spoke openly about her months in rehab—how long it had taken her to accept that she was an alcoholic, how amazing the antidepressants were and what a fool she’d been to turn them down when her doctor suggested them after Maggie was born. The only time I saw sadness in her face was when she talked about Andy.

“We’ve started the process to get him back,” she said. “They’ll do a home study in a few weeks and then I hope it won’t be long after that.”

“I’m sure you’ll get him back soon,” I said.

“I hope so,” Jamie said. If he was uncomfortable with me being there, he didn’t show it. He seemed happy and at ease, more so than I had seen him in a while, and seeing him that way made me realize what a terrific strain he’d been under the past six months. I knew that Marcus had moved to Asheville just the day before, and that Jamie was hugely relieved he was gone, afraid of his negative influence over Laurel. This new Laurel, though, wasn’t going to break, I thought to myself. She wasn’t even going to bend.

They didn’t get Andy back until he was a year old. By that time, I had allowed myself to be drawn into their family by deepening my friendship with Laurel, knowing it was the only way I could ever safely have Keith and his father together, as well as be with the man I loved on holidays and birthdays. My loneliness away from him was profound, and there was not a soul I could confide to about my grief and longing. So, I helped Laurel learn how to mother a year-old boy, a role she was suddenly thrust into with no real preparation since she’d mothered Maggie not at all. I thought she was far too overprotective with Andy because of her guilt over his rocky start in life. But aside from that, I had to admit she did well, and she and Jamie were both effusively grateful to me for my help.

My true feelings about Laurel vacillated between admiration and disdain, affection and animosity. I knew that she had fought hard to regain her sobriety and mental health, and that none of my situation was her fault. Yet Laurel had what I wanted, and I couldn’t simply will away my sense of envy and resentment.

Jamie seemed careful about showing Laurel too much affection when I was around, but that didn’t stop me from imagining it. Sometimes, alone in my bed at the trailer, I’d picture him making love to Laurel, and I’d have to go outside and take in deep breaths of salty air to erase the image from my mind.

One evening, Laurel and I were cleaning up the kitchen after a celebratory dinner for Maggie’s third birthday, when she suddenly stopped drying the dishes to smile at me.

“I just want you to know that, next to Jamie and my kids, you’re the most important person in my life,” she said.

I felt stunned. “I am?” I asked.

“I owe my happiness right now to you,” she said with a laugh. “I
never would have gone into rehab if you hadn’t called me a self-absorbed bitch.”

I laughed myself, and hugged her, knowing I’d never be able to use those words to describe her again.

Andy

M
E AND KIMMIE WERE IM’ING ABOUT A GIRL AT HER SCHOOL
when Mom and Uncle Marcus and Maggie walked in my room.

“Hey, Andy,” Uncle Marcus said. “We’d like to talk to you. Are you done with your homework yet?”

“Yup.” I was totally done, which was why I could IM Kimmie. I wasn’t allowed to IM or text her or call her when I still had homework. I didn’t really want to talk to them, though. “Is this a good thing or a bad thing?” I asked.

“Neither,” Mom said. “Just an important thing.”

“Okay. Wait a minute.”

I wrote in the IM to Kimmie, Gotta go. C U later.

I swirled my desk chair around. Mom and Maggie were on my bed. Uncle Marcus stood by Mom. His hand was on her shoulder. I wondered if this was going to be about sex. Uncle Marcus gave me four new condoms with good dates on them, even though he didn’t want me to do it.

“This is going to be a little…shocking,” Mom said.

I thought she meant like when you walked across a room and touched something and got a shock. Then I knew she meant like a surprise. My brain was thinking quicker as I got older.

“What are you talking about?”

“Andy,” Uncle Marcus said. “I’m not really your uncle. I’m your dad. Your father.”

I laughed. He was being silly. “No,” I said. “You are, too, my uncle.”

He shook his head. “There are some secrets your mom and I kept from you and Maggie because we didn’t want to upset you, but we’ve decided it’s time you know the truth.”

All of a sudden, I got scared. Was this one of those things I just didn’t know about? I thought Mom and Uncle Marcus had sex when he slept over sometimes. I tried not to think about it, but I was pretty sure they did it. Could him and Mom having sex
now
somehow make him my father?

I thought of how Kimmie was adopted.

“You adopted me?” I asked.

“No,” Mom said. “It’s that—”

“Panda…Andy.” Maggie sat cross-legged on the bed. “Mom and Uncle Marcus had sex a long time ago. They weren’t married to each other, so it was wrong, but something good came out of it and that was you. Mom got pregnant with you when she and Uncle Marcus had sex.”

I looked at Mom. Her face was red.

“Uncle Marcus and I cared about each other,” she said. “That’s why we made love. Maggie is right that we shouldn’t have because I was married to your dad…to the man you’ve always thought was your father…at the time.”

“You didn’t use a condom?” I asked Uncle Marcus.

He rubbed his hand over his mouth. I knew he was smiling. Sometimes you could see smiles in people’s eyes even if you couldn’t see what was happening with their mouths.

“We didn’t,” he said. “And that was very stupid of us.”

“Totally,” I said.

“But I love you,” Uncle Marcus said. “I’ve always loved you, and I’m very proud that you’re my son.”

“Because of when I saved kids in the fire?”

“No. I mean I’m…I feel
lucky
that you’re my son. You’re very important to me.”

“Do you get it, Andy?” Maggie asked. “Do you understand that Daddy wasn’t your father and that Uncle Marcus is?”

“It’s like with Kimmie,” I said. “Daddy is my adopted father and Uncle Marcus is my birth father.”

“That’s right!” Mom clapped her hands. Just once. Not like at a play.

“Close enough,” Uncle Marcus said. He walked over to hug me. “I love you,” he said again.

“Me, too. Am I supposed to call you Darren?”

“Darren?” he asked.

“That’s what Kimmie calls her birth father. She never met him, but she says Darren was America Africa and was a marine and things like that.”

Maggie cracked up, so I must’ve said something funny. Uncle Marcus laughed, too. “She calls her…birth father Darren,” he said, “because that must have been his name. You can keep calling me Uncle Marcus, okay?”

“Okay,” I said. I swirled around to my computer. I couldn’t wait to IM Kimmie to tell her I had an adopted father and birth father, just like her.

“Andy?” Mom said. “We’re not finished talking.”

“Maybe that’s enough?” Maggie said.

“No, let’s finish it,” Mom said.

“I want to IM Kimmie that I have a birth father,” I said.

“I know,” Uncle Marcus said. “But there’s one other thing we want you to know. Turn your chair around again, okay?”

I swirled it back again.

Uncle Marcus sat down on the bed, too. They reminded me of an audience, all looking at me and everything.

“Keith is your cousin,” Uncle Marcus said.

“Keith?”
He was wacko. “I don’t have any cousins.”

“I don’t blame you a bit for being confused,” Mom said. She leaned over and picked up a pad from my dresser. “Come sit here, Andy,” she said.

Maggie got up so I could sit where she was, even though I didn’t want to leave my computer. Mom was drawing something, though. Maybe a picture of Keith? I wanted to see, so I sat next to her on my bed.

She was drawing little people. “Okay,” she said. She pointed to a stick man and a stick lady with a dress. She wrote
adopted Daddy
above the stick man and
Mom
above the lady. Then she drew a line from them to another stick lady that was Maggie. Pretty soon there were stick people and lines everywhere. She put a lady that was Miss Sara on the paper. Then I gave up.

“I don’t get it,” I said.

Mom laughed. We all looked at her crazy drawing. “It’s a mess, all right,” Mom said.

“Want me to try?” Maggie asked Mom.

“Be my guest,” Mom said.

Maggie stood in front of me like a teacher. “All you need to know is that Keith is your cousin. Daddy—your adopted daddy—is his real birth father like Uncle Marcus is your birth father.”

“Are you his mother?” I asked Mom.

“No,” Maggie said. “
Sara
is his mom, like you always thought.”

I wanted a cousin. Not Keith, though. “Can I have a different person to be a cousin?”

“It doesn’t work that way, And,” Uncle Marcus said. “
Keith
is your cousin. He’s also Maggie’s half brother.”

I put my hands over my ears. “I’m Maggie’s brother!” I wasn’t angry, but I felt like when Mr. Krachwitz talked about A equals B equals X equals all that stuff.

“Like, here’s the thing,” Maggie said. “Keith is your cousin and that means he’s technically a Lockwood. I mean, his last name is Weston like always, but he has…he’s related to us. That’s why Mom asked him to move in with us until Sara is found. Because he’s part of our family and we should help him. And…like, you know how our family has a lot of money?”

“We’re rich.”

“Well,” Mom said, “it’s not that we’re—”

“Yes,” Maggie said. “We’re rich, especially compared to Keith. And that’s why Keith was upset the night of the fire. Remember he called you a little rich boy? He and Sara never had a lot of money, and because he had the same father, that seemed unfair to him.”

I stared at her. I was almost as confused as when I looked at Mom’s stick-people drawing.

“Do you understand any of this?” Mom asked.

“Of course I do. I’m not an imbecile.”

But all I got was that we were rich. Keith was poor. And that was totally not fair.