Secrets She Left Behind (27 page)

Keith

“D
O YOU KNOW HOW TO DRIVE A BOAT?” JEN ASKED.

She was lying sideways on my bed, totally naked, with her long tan legs stretched up on my wall. She said it felt good on her back to lie like that. I was propped up against my pillow, a beer in my hand, enjoying the view. My shoulder was killing me, though.

“I don’t know if you say ‘drive,’” I said. “I think you pilot a boat or something like that.”

She rolled her pretty, blue eyes. “Whatever. Do you?”

“Uh-uh.” It seemed lame that I’d lived on an island all my life and never piloted a boat. “Why?”

She shrugged. “I thought it’d be fun to rent one, maybe. Go out in the sound.” Her hair was spread out all around her head, and it was totally dark again. It made me wonder if I’d imagined that gray stripe. Maybe it
had
just been her scalp.

“Kayaks are best out there,” I said. I didn’t know much about boats, but I knew you could get stuck in the sound and the Intracoastal pretty easily. “My friend Dawn’s boyfriend works for a boat-rental place. Maybe he could give us a discount.”

“Really?” she said. “That’d be so cool.”

I stood up and pulled on my jeans. “Need a Perc,” I said.

She swung her legs off the wall and pulled on her thong. “How
’bout I make us an omelette.” She followed me, still nine-tenths naked, into the kitchen.

“Sounds good,” I said.

I had the bottle of Percocet in my hand when I heard a car door slam, then footsteps on the deck stairs. Crap. Who now? I held my breath as the screen door squeaked open, followed by a knock on the door.

Jen started to say something, but I put my finger to my lips.

“Keith?” It sounded like Marcus. I really didn’t want him to meet Jen—especially not nine-tenths naked—and have to go through that whole conversation of who she was and all that. I wanted to keep her separate from the rest of my life. She was like my fantasy girl and Marcus was too much reality for me.

I managed to pull open the door in spite of the pill bottle in my hand.

“Hey,” I said, walking onto the deck.

Marcus looked from one of my hands to the other. Bottle of pills to the bottle of beer. Then he nodded toward the trailer. “Company?” he asked.

I walked to the other side of the deck to get out of Jen’s hearing.

“Just a friend,” I said, putting the beer down on the dirty plastic patio table.

He smiled. “Great.” He leaned against the creaky deck railing. “I’ve got something serious I wanted to talk to you—”

He stopped midsentence. He must’ve seen the color drain from my face.

“No, no,” he said fast. “Sorry.” He went to touch my arm, but I pulled it away, remembering the last time he did that. “This isn’t about your mother,” he said. “There’s no news there. I just wasn’t sure this was the time to talk to you about something serious
with…you know—” he nodded toward the trailer again “—since you have company.”

“I’ve got a minute.” I sat down at the table, mostly because my legs were suddenly giving out.

“Well—” Marcus sat down across from me “—there’re a couple of things. We—Laurel and Maggie and Andy and I—want to be sure there’s no more family secrets between any of us. And since you’re part of the family, I want to tell you something we talked about yesterday.”

Shit. How many secrets could one family have?

“Here’s the big one,” he said. “I’m actually Andy’s father.”

“Whoa. You’ve gotta be shittin’ me.”

He shook his head. “We only told Andy and Maggie yesterday, but we thought you should know, too. Not find out in some half-assed way.”

I tried to figure out what the news meant for me. “So I’m not related to Andy?” I asked.

“Yes, you’re his cousin. Jamie and I were brothers, remember?”

“Damn, is there anybody who didn’t screw somebody else in your family?”

He laughed, though I don’t think he meant to. “Mistakes were definitely made,” he said. “You can do stupid things when you’re young. And it’s
your
family, too, don’t forget.” He held out his hand. “Let me see the pills.”

For some reason, maybe because I was still in shock over what he’d told me, I turned the bottle over to him. He opened it, poured the pills into his hand, checked the date. “You’re taking too many, aren’t you? And it’s ten in the morning and you’re drinking beer. What gives?”

“Oh, gee, I don’t know.” The question really pissed me off. “You think I might have some crap going on in my life or something?”

“This can only make it worse, Keith,” he said, Mr. Serious now. “If you’ve got that much pain, maybe you need different meds, and you sure don’t need beer to go along with them.”

“You don’t know anything about my pain.”

“You’re right.” The sound of pans clanking together came from inside the trailer and he looked toward the door. “You know I’m a recovering alcoholic, right?”

“You are? Like, since when?”

“Fifteen years.”

“You don’t drink at all?”

He shook his head.

“Well, so why tell me this? I’m not an alcoholic.”

“I’m just concerned about the pills and the booze. Creeps up on you.”

“I’m fine.” It
was
creeping up on me, but so what? The pills and the booze—and now Jen—were the only things keeping me going. “What was the other thing you wanted to tell me?”

“I get that you don’t want to stay at Laurel’s,” he said, “but I’d like you to move in with me until your mother’s found.”

“No way.”

“I know you’re eighteen, Keith, but you’re not used to being on your own.”

I didn’t want him looking over my shoulder every minute. Cracking down on my booze intake. Counting my pills. “I just want to stay here,” I said.

He was looking at me funny all of a sudden. Head tipped to the side. Eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute,” he said. “You’re not…When’s your birthday?”

Shit.
“You going to send me a card, or what?”

“You’re seventeen!” he said.

“What does it matter?” I asked.

“Why do
you
think it matters? You can’t live alone.”

“I’m
fine,
” I said.

He shook his head. “Look, I’m sorry,” he said, “but I have to talk to DSS about this.”

“No fucking way! They’ll stick me in some group home.”

“I have to,” he said, like he’d go to prison or something if he didn’t. “No choice. But I’ll see if they’d let you live with me, since we’re related.”

“Marcus.”
I was pleading with him. “Just let it go. I’ll be eighteen in a few months, anyway.”

“Then you can just move in until you turn eighteen. Or your mother’s found.” He shook his head, motioning toward the trailer. “This is no good, you living here by yourself, Keith,” he said. “You can see that, can’t you?”

I thought of Jen inside, making me a perfectly nutritious omelette. Taking care of me.

“I’m not moving in with you or anybody,” I said. “I’ll split first. Someplace they won’t find me.” He didn’t say what we were both thinking. It would be pretty hard for me to blend in with a crowd.

“Sorry, Keith.” He ran his hands through his hair. “I’ll let you know what they say, all right?”

I blew back into the trailer once Marcus drove away.

“He just figured out I’m seventeen!” I said to Jen. She was standing in the middle of the room, dressed now, with a spatula in her hand. “He says he has to report it. It’s his solemn duty or something.”

“Can’t you live alone at seventeen?” she asked. “I mean, if you
kill someone at sixteen, you’re considered an adult in North Carolina. So, why can’t you live alone? That’s insane.”

“No shit.” I was freaking out. I wondered if I could live with her. If she’d ask. But I’d have to let someone know where I was in case my mother was found.

“They’ll make you go back to school,” she said.

“And stick me in some foster home. Probably a group home with a bunch of nutcases. I won’t go.”

She turned off the burner under the eggs and sat down at the little table. “I think they can make you,” she said.

“Like how? You mean physically?”

She nodded. “I think the cops can force you if you won’t go on your own.”

I dropped into the other chair. “What am I going to do?” I felt beaten down. I’d
die
in a group home. With my face, I’d be the one getting all the grief. Getting beat up. It was so stupid. I was
fine
in the trailer.

“I don’t know, baby,” she said, reaching across the table and running her fingers over my fucked-up left hand. “All I know is, somebody really turned your life upside down.”

Maggie

“I
DON’T BELIEVE THERE ARE ANY GOOD PEOPLE IN THE WORLD,”
I said to Dr. Jakes. I was sitting on the edge of the leather chair and my voice was louder than usual. Too loud.

“What makes you say that?” he asked.

“I think people put on a show that they’re good,” I said. “Maybe they even start to, like, believe it themselves. But people are really…not
evil,
exactly, but they just care about themselves. They don’t really care about who they step on. They just pretend like they do. You can’t trust them. You really can’t trust anyone.”

He frowned at me. “Where’s this coming from, Maggie?”

“From everywhere!” I said. I’d just told him about the depraved mess that was my family. Did he really need to ask me where my distrust was coming from?

“Can you be more specific?” he asked.

“Take Ben, for example,” I said. “He was this sweet, wonderful guy. I would have trusted him with anything.”

“You trusted Ben with your heart.”

I rolled my eyes. “That sounds so melodramatic.”

“But it’s true, isn’t it?”

“
Yes,
it’s true,” I said. “I trusted Ben, but he was just looking out for number one. Everything he said was a lie. And then there’s my
father, who was…” I gripped the arms of the leather chair. “God, I thought he was so amazing, and all the time he was cheating on my mother with Sara. And Sara is, like, this perfect supersweet kind of person, and she deceived my mother, not to mention her own husband. And my mother screwed my uncle when she was married to my father. And that brings me to my uncle, who was screwing his brother’s wife. And all these people—you’d meet them and think they’re, like, the best people in the world.” I turned my hands palm side up. “See what I mean?” I asked. “There are no good people. Not really. My little brother’s good, because he doesn’t know any better, and even
he’s
probably hiding something. Some dark side. There are no good people left.”

“Left?” Dr. Jakes raised one eyebrow over his striped glasses. “That implies you think there
used
to be good people in the world.”

“Left in my mind, I mean.” He could be so literal.

“If all those people you mentioned are not good, are they bad?”

“Yes!”

“Your father was bad?”

I couldn’t quite say it. I nodded instead.

“What about you?”

“I’m the worst of them all,” I said.

He sighed and put down his pen. I didn’t know why he always had that pad and pen on his lap. He hardly ever wrote anything down anymore.

“You’re trying to paint things as either black or white,” he said. “As either good or evil. It’s never that neat.”

I leaned my head against the back of the chair and looked up at his burned-out bulb. Was he ever going to replace that thing?

“Are you feeling some envy of Andy, Maggie?” he said out of the blue.

“Envy?” I lowered my head to look at him again. “No way. Why would I?”

“Well, now he has a living father and you don’t.”

“Oh, no. I’m really glad for him.” I was. “He loves our uncle. Well…
my
uncle. His father.” This was going to take some getting used to. “Of course, I wish my father was alive, but I’m not envious of Andy.”

“You wish your father was alive, terrible person though he was.” Dr. Jakes smiled at me.

“Right.” I was annoyed by the
Gotcha!
tone in his voice.

“Why did your mother decide all of a sudden to tell Andy and you about Andy’s paternity?”

I had to stop and think. So much had happened in the last couple of days. Then I suddenly remembered feeling Madison’s light weight against my body.

“There was this little girl at the hospital,” I said. “She’s really sick and I…She’s really sweet. Anyway, I was reading to her when this guy burst into her room and said he was her biological father. She didn’t know anything about him. It was really traumatic.” Not to mention scary as hell. Madison was home now, at least for a few days. Everyone knew she’d be back soon, that she would probably spend the rest of her too-short life in and out of the hospital. “So I told Mom I thought Andy needed to know the truth before he found out some other way.”

“I hope they’re getting that little girl counseling,” Dr. Jakes said. He thought therapy was the answer to everything.

“I actually miss her,” I said. “It’s terrible to say that, because I know it’s better for her to have some time at home than in the hospital, but…” I remembered watching Madison’s concentration as she painted a lion. A bear. “Sometimes at the hospital, I forget about
myself,” I said. “I think about what those kids are going through and forget all about prison and the fire and just think about them instead.”

“You empathize.”

I looked at him. Laughed. “I have a tattoo on my hip,” I said. “Do you know what it says?”

“Not
Ben,
I hope.”

“Oh, God, no. I would have to have that one removed. No, it says
empathy.
”

“Really? That’s unusual.”

“My father had one on his arm. He got it to remind him to try to…well, to
empathize
with other people. I wanted to be like him so much that I got one, too.”

“Why your hip?”

“So my mother wouldn’t see it.” I laughed again.

He smiled, then looked at his watch, and I knew our session was over. For the first time, I really didn’t want it to end. I was just getting revved up.

“Time’s up?” I asked.

“I’m afraid so.” He nodded. “I’ll see you next week.”

I stood up and walked to the door.

“Maggie?”

I looked over my shoulder at him. He was still in his chair, but he’d taken off his glasses and was leaning toward me. “There
are
good people left in the world,” he said. “And you are most certainly one of them.”