Secrets She Left Behind (37 page)

Sara
The Fire
2007

I
LEFT JABEEN’S JAVA AROUND FOUR BECAUSE I WAS BATTLING
a sore throat and Dawn said she could manage without me. All I could think about on the drive home was taking a couple of aspirin and crawling into bed. Keith was probably surfing—his usual Saturday activity—so I thought I’d leave him a note about the leftover chicken in the fridge before I conked out. I could quickly make some rice to go with it. I had it all planned out by the time I pulled up in front of the trailer.

It was dim inside, especially after walking in from the bright sunlight, and I jumped when I saw Keith sitting on the sofa in our little living room.

“Hi, honey,” I said. “You surprised me. I thought you’d be surfing.”

“What’s this?” He held something out to me. A manila envelope?

“What’s what?” I pulled open the curtains above the sofa to let in more light.

“This.”
He rapped the envelope on his bare knee.

“I have no idea.” I took it from him and looked at it, back and front. No name or address. “Where’d you find it?”

“Like you don’t know.” He could get so snarly sometimes, and I really didn’t need one of his moods when I felt so lousy myself.

I sat down with a sigh and opened the flap on the envelope, pulling out the three sheets of paper inside. I saw the handwriting on the top sheet:
Dear Sara.

Oh, no,
I thought.
Oh, God, no.
What had Marcus written in that letter? I searched frantically through my memory, hoping there was some way Keith couldn’t have figured out why he had a college fund.

“So, were you ever going to tell me Jamie Lockwood was my father?” he asked.

I looked at him. “Oh, Keith, I’m so sorry you found out this way.”

He got to his feet. “You’re sorry I found out, period, aren’t you?” he shouted. “You weren’t ever going to tell me. Don’t you think I had the right to know?”

“Too many people would be hurt,” I said.

“What about
me?
” he shouted. “What about
me
being hurt?” He stomped around the living room so hard, the trailer shook.

“Yes, you deserved to know,” I admitted. I’d hated keeping that secret from him. I planned to tell him when he was older. He needed to be mature enough to handle the news without hurting everyone else in the process. “I know it wasn’t fair.”

“You put Laurel and Maggie and Andy ahead of me!” he shouted.

“No, I never—”

“They’re rich! And I’m poor, in case you never noticed. Even that college fund. I can’t have that till I’m twenty-five? What kind of crap is that?”

“You can use it for
college,
Keith.” I sat forward. “You should be grateful for it. Marcus didn’t need to use his own money that way.”

“I deserve a hell of a lot more than that. The Lockwoods are zillionaires.”

“I know you’re upset, honey,” I said. “I don’t blame you. But you absolutely
mustn’t
tell anyone about this. There’s no point in dredging it up now. It would kill Laurel and her children.”

“What about
me!
” he shouted again.

“You have to suck it up.” I slid the papers back into the envelope. “The same way I’ve been sucking it up for the past seventeen years.”

He stopped his pacing and glared at me.
“Bitch!”
he said. “I can’t believe you’re on their—”

“Don’t you
ever
speak to me that way again!” I stood up myself and tried to stare him down. He was taller than me now and beginning to take on Jamie’s thick build. “Sometimes you have to put your needs aside for the sake of other people,” I said. “Laurel’s been my best friend since you were little. You’d have a foot-long scar on your chest if it weren’t for—”

“I don’t care!” He stomped across the floor and out the door, slamming it shut behind him. From the window, I watched him grab his surfboard and wet suit and head toward the beach.

I pressed my hand to my forehead and sat down on the sofa again, shutting my eyes. Could I have handled that any worse? I was not a good mother. I’d failed him in so many ways. If only Jamie had lived! Keith would have had a father, and I would have had a partner to help me raise him better. Was that a cop-out, though? Laurel managed to raise two great kids without Jamie. Yes, she had money, but I knew it was more than that. I’d tried to give Keith my values, to teach him right from wrong, and he started out as such a lovable little boy. Yet now he was a lazy student with mediocre grades. He’d skipped school at least a few times. I knew he sometimes drank, and once he was caught with an ounce of marijuana in his pocket. I could blame it on peer pressure, but that seemed weak. He was right that he deserved more, and not just money. He deserved a more competent mother.

I looked at the letter from Marcus, still in my hand. How hurt Keith must have been when he read it! My heart broke just thinking about it, but he
had
to keep it to himself. I didn’t trust him not to tell anyone, though. Not when he was this angry.

I called Marcus, but got his voice mail.

“It’s Sara, Marcus,” I said. “Call me back as soon as you get this.”

I thought of going down to the beach to try to talk with Keith again, afraid he’d call Laurel from there, but then I spotted his cell phone on the kitchen counter. As long as he was at the beach, it’d be okay. I made myself a cup of tea with honey, but despite my aching head and sore throat, I didn’t dare go to bed. I wanted to be up and alert when he came home. We needed to talk.

I was half-asleep when I heard him on the deck around seven-thirty. He came into the trailer, wet and sandy and flushed, and he walked right past me toward his bedroom.

“Keith,” I said, sitting up straight. “Let’s talk more about this, okay? Let’s…order pizza and—”

“I’m going out.” He walked into his room and slammed his door shut. I suddenly remembered he’d planned to go to a lock-in at Drury Memorial that night. I’d been happy about it. An all-night, chaperoned event sponsored by a church. I’d know right where he was and he’d be safe. Now, though, I didn’t want him to go.

I knocked on his door. “Honey? Please stay home tonight. You’re too upset and we need to talk about this.”

He opened the door, but only to walk past me toward his bathroom. “The only thing
I
need is a shower,” he said. “I’m getting picked up in fifteen minutes.” He shut the bathroom door behind him.

“Who are you going with?” I asked through the door. “Who’s picking you up?”

“Chick from school. Layla. You don’t know her.”

I leaned against the wall as I heard the squeak of the faucet. My head felt as though it was in a vise. All right, I told myself. He’ll be away all night. Supervised and—hopefully—having fun. In the meantime, I’d talk to Marcus and we’d come up with a plan. Maybe Marcus could talk to him. Keith listened to other adults more easily than he listened to me. Maybe Marcus could settle him down.

An hour or so later, I was asleep on the sofa when my phone rang. The woman on the other end of the line was hysterical. “I’m Layla Schuster’s mother!” she shouted. “There’s a fire at the lock-in! It’s on the news!”

I didn’t bother with the news. Instead, I jumped in my car and drove the few miles to Drury Memorial and into a nightmare that would forever be a part of my life. Worse, it would forever—
forever—
be part of my son’s.

The word
chaos
is inadequate to describe the scene at the church. I had to park a quarter mile away, yet I could smell the stench of the fire before I was even out of my car. I ran toward the smoking, flaming church, where people were screaming and shouting, out of their minds with terror. I searched faces in the darkness, looking for Keith. In my mind, he was not the snarly teenager from earlier that evening. He was the baby I’d once held to my breast, the toddler who took his first steps into Jamie’s arms, the seven-year-old who submitted bravely to all sorts of frightening medical procedures.

“Sara!” one of the police officers hollered to me. He grabbed my arm and half pushed me across the street toward a taped-off area. “Keith was hurt!” he shouted in my ear. “Burned. They can tell you where they took him!” He gave me a shove toward the yellow tape.

The word
burned
played over and over in my mind as I ducked
beneath the tape. I was surprised when I suddenly spotted Laurel among the crowd.

“Laurel!” I shouted. “Why are you here?”

“Andy’s here!” She jockeyed her way closer to me.

Later, I realized how crazy it was that Andy was there—she never let him go
anywhere—
but that fact didn’t have time to register because we suddenly heard this horrible cracking, groaning sound coming from behind us. We turned to see the roof of the church collapse in a horrific, thundering mass of flames and smoke. Laurel and I hung on to each other, scared out of our wits.

The next few hours were a blur. They told me Keith had been taken to New Hanover Hospital, but by the time I got there, they’d flown him on to the burn center at UNC. I made the three-hour drive in two, actually hoping a cop would stop me so I could plead my case for an escort. When I got to the hospital, they wouldn’t let me see him. His condition was grave, they said. His lungs had been seared, his face and arms burned, and he was in a medically induced coma. I fell completely apart in the waiting area and someone took me into a little room where I could wail and cry. I wanted Laurel with me. I needed my best friend’s support, but I knew she had her own fears about Andy. I would have to make it through this crisis alone.

In the burn unit, it was touch-and-go. I was allowed to sit with Keith in his extraordinarily hot room between the horrific treatments he needed to undergo. They kept him in the coma because it was the only way he’d be able to endure the pain. I talked to him constantly, keeping up a one-sided conversation just in case he
could hear me. I told him how much I loved him and apologized for being a less-than-perfect mother. At night, I lay awake on a cot in his room, wishing for some knockout medication of my own. Laurel and Dawn left phone messages for me, but I didn’t return their calls. I was too wrapped up in Keith and the world inside the hospital, and every ounce of my energy went into understanding what the doctors told me about his condition. If I tried to speak to anyone else, I knew it would be pure jibberish coming out of my mouth.

Around the fourth day after the fire, I received a voice mail from Marcus. He’d reserved a room for me at a pricey hotel near the hospital. I could use it as much or as little as I wanted, and he added that I should put any meals I ate in the hotel on my room tab. I was so grateful to him. I needed a long soak in a tub and a real bed for at least one night. I didn’t want to be away from Keith, but his nurse convinced me that I’d be doing him a favor if I took better care of myself, so I moved into the hotel even though I still spent most of my waking time at the hospital. As for those meals in the hotel restaurant, though, I didn’t bother. Seeing Keith in his hot and airless hospital room, wrapped in enormous bandages and hooked up to IVs and a breathing tube, left me far too nauseated to even think of food.

Laurel met me at the hotel for lunch one day after Keith had been in the hospital nearly two weeks. I still had no energy to see anyone, but I needed some clothes from home and she was willing to bring them, so I agreed to meet her in the hotel restaurant.

It’s amazing how much you can change in two weeks! I knew I was an emotional wreck, but I hadn’t realized what a
physical
wreck I was until I saw myself through Laurel’s eyes. We met at the
entrance to the restaurant and she looked absolutely horrified by my appearance. My clothes were hanging off me, and I hadn’t bothered with makeup. I was known for always being neat and sort of tailored. No wonder she was so shocked.

She started crying, and I realized the reason I hadn’t wanted to see her or anyone else from home was that I didn’t have the energy to cope with
their
worries about Keith and me on top of my own.

She asked me questions about Keith’s condition, and I tried to answer her as best as I could. I felt like I was in a dream—or a padded cell—removed from what was really going on around me. I could see Laurel’s mouth moving, and on some level, I heard what she said and even managed to respond, but she and I were in two entirely different universes. Hers had two healthy children in it. Mine had one child whose life was hanging by a thread.

“You should talk to him,” she said. “They think that people in comas might be able to hear even if they don’t respond.”

“I talk to him constantly,” I said. “I tell him I love him and…I tell him I wish I’d been a better mother for him.”

“Sara!” Laurel looked shocked. “You’re a
terrific
mom.”

“He gets in so much trouble, though,” I said. “You’re a single mother, too, and your kids are perfect.” Well, Andy was hardly perfect, but Laurel knew what I meant. “Maggie’s just a year older than Keith, but she’s so much more mature.”