What Happened to My Sister: A Novel (32 page)

“It’s a matter of life and death?” Her eyes widen in pure terror.

“It could be,” I say.

Ed nods.

After agonizing over it some more, Cricket finally says, “So, um, Carrie was asking me all kinds of questions about the computer, you know, because she hadn’t ever seen one before—remember how she came over that first day? It was like she was from another planet. I mean, who’s never seen a computer?

“She was all
could you ask it anything
and
what about family history
and on and on. I just kept saying
yeah
and asking her what she needed to check out but she didn’t say at first. Not that day, at least.

“Fast forward and it comes out that, um, I guess her father was murdered back when she was little. Then she said she had a little sister but there was something secret about it. She wanted me to look up birth records for her. She said her momma says she never had a sister but she knows for a fact that she did. She made me promise not to talk to anybody about it. I had to swear up and down to Tuesday I wouldn’t breathe a word of it to y’all or anybody.”

“Her father was
murdered
?” Ed and I speak at once in near unison.

“I asked her if her mom had files or pictures she could look through and Carrie said no.” Cricket ignores our question and continues. “I think her mother’s mean or crazy or something but I don’t know. Carrie never really says anything bad about her—it’s just a feeling I get. Anyway, I found her sister’s birth certificate online. We were so psyched. It was awesome. She copied it down word for word in that notebook of hers. I asked her why her mom would tell her she didn’t have a baby sister if she did but I don’t think she knew the answer to that any better than I did.”

Ed cannot sit still a moment longer. “I’m going to call this in,” he says, getting up while dialing his cell phone.

“Why? What do you think happened to her?” Cricket asks. “Mom? She’s okay, right? I’m so scared now.”

I reach for her and, still a little girl at heart, she comes over and sits on my lap even though she’s way too big for it, and buries her head in my arms while we listen to Eddie talk to the station house.

Where are you, Carrie? Where are you?

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Carrie

When you’re hurt and away from home ever-thing seems scary. Car horns sound like they’re aimed at you and you only. Lights look mean they’re so bright. Footsteps are all heading your way, about to discover wherever it is you’re hiding. No one smiles. Every smell makes you want to throw up.

When the sun of the following day sets about scorching the ground and anyone stupid enough to walk barefoot on it, I take cover under the bramble bushes in an empty lot a couple hours’ walk away from the Loveless, squinching myself small enough to fit in what little shade they throw. If I had my flip-flops I might could keep going but I don’t so I wait for the sun to ease up before setting out again. I scan the dirt for anything looking like food and catch sight of some trash toward the middle of the lot that might be something. I pick my way around the broken glass and abandoned tires and find there are still some potato chip crumbs at the bottom of a bag called
Lay’s
, so I tip the whole bag into my open mouth to be sure I get every last one. Someone walks by. I
panic and race back to my bramble bush but they don’t see me. Phee-you. My heart slows back down. I don’t want to be a scaredy-cat but Momma always says
you can’t always get what you want
and I guess she’s right. I am a scaredy-cat. At least today I am. After listening to my belly growl one too many times I give up and scrape some dirt into a pile so I can take pinch bites. It’s not as bad as you might think and it quiets my stomach. That’s the good news. The bad news is now, instead of thinking about food, I cain’t help but think about what happened in the dark back at the pool. Waking up to a man standing over me. His grunts as he pinned me down. The stink of his beer-breath as he tried to pull off my pajama shorts. The ache in my legs as I kicked him off me before he could. The crinkle of trash underfoot when I scrambled to the ladder of stairs. The cool metal steps leading me up, up, up, up to the edge of the empty pool I thought no one else knew about. The thump-thumping of my heart beating in pure fear. The slap-slap-slapping sounds of my bare feet against the pavement, running me away from the man in the pool, away from room 217, away from Momma.

I fall asleep, wake up, then fall back asleep again. By the time I wake up for good, the sun’s gone down but night hasn’t entirely taken over yet so I set out from the empty lot feeling dizzy and sore but I’ve got to keep going. I keep telling myself that the whole way there.
Keep going. Keep going. Keep going
. My eyes are giving me trouble but I figure that’s the least of my problems.

At the exact second I press the doorbell I realize it’s probably later than it looks and I shouldn’t be bothering them. A light comes on over my head and the front porch comes into focus when I squinch my bad eye closed and blink with the good one. On the porch swing, a book is splayed out and it looks familiar but like I said, I
cain’t see all that well right now. If I had air-conditioning like they do here I’d never set outside in this heat ever. Even if the book I was reading was real good.

“Oh my goodness, Carrie! We’ve been looking all over kingdom come for you, honey,” Mrs. Ford says, pulling me into her body for a hug then pushing me back an arm’s length to see me better. “You’ve had us worried sick. Oh my God—what happened? Sweet baby Moses in the rushes,
what on earth happened to you?
Come inside here, come on in, there you go. One more step. Eddie!
Mother!
Someone come out here, will you? There you go, honey. Oh my God, just look at you.”

I hear her voice calling out again for help and that’s about the last thing I hear before I run out of batteries altogether. Next thing I know, blurry faces are staring down at me and someone lifts something cold off my forehead then puts it back again in a way that feels cooler.

“Here she is,” a voice is saying. “Here’s our girl. Honey? Can you hear me? Carrie? Can you tell us where you’ve been?”

“Don’t bombard her with questions,” a man’s voice says. “Let her come to before you set in with the third degree.”

Seems like there are a dozen people in the room. Voices come from everywhere.

“We should take her to the hospital …”

“Let’s see what’s what first, why don’t we …”

It takes a lot of blinks to bring them into focus.

“Looks like she’s got something in her left eye,” the first voice says. I see now it’s Mrs. Ford. “She’s favoring it. Mom, call up to Cricket and tell her to bring me a washcloth from the linen closet, will you?

“Keep them closed for now, honey,” she says to me in a softer voice. “I think you’ve got something lodged in your eye—if you keep opening it like that, it could scratch your cornea.”

From somewhere that feels far away but probably isn’t, I hear Miss Chaplin hollering for Cricket. Then the booming of footsteps overhead. Then the mix of voices talking at once.

“I’m sorry to be a bother,” I say. At least I think I say it—Mrs. Ford is sitting right here next to me on the edge of whatever I’m laying on but she don’t hear me so I try to get my mouth moving again.

“I’m so sorry to put y’all out like this,” I say.

“I think she’s trying to say something,” Miss Chaplin says.

“What’s that you’re saying, honey lamb?” Cricket’s mom asks me. “You trying to tell us something?”

Why aren’t they hearing me?

“I’m sorry …,” I start again, but up and suddenly I feel too tired to make any more words.

Jumbled sentences fill my ears:

“Where’s that washcloth?”

“Cool water—not too cold, cool.”

“Mom? Dad? What’s going on? Oh my God,
Carrie
? What
happened
to her?”

“Shhhh, we’ll get to that but first we’ve got to get her cleaned up.”

“Is she asleep?”

“Cricket, bring me a bowl with some ice.”

I’m trying hard to stay awake, to make my brain work along with my mouth, to figure out why they’re looking at me funny, but I cain’t fight sleep.

So I don’t. I float away from them and let my brain turn off again. Until, a while later I think, it comes back on and this time it’s clearer. The thump and thwack of Momma’s foot then the sting of her hand across my face. The prickly dead grass ringing the pool. That’s all clear in my brain until it turns itself off for sleep. When I wake back up I hear them saying stuff about me and I don’t know what it is but I know it ain’t good. I think I’m being blamed
for something and since I don’t know what it is and I cain’t exactly make it right, I know the best thing for me to do right now is to be scarce so’s not to be more of a burden. I want to holler at the top of my lungs
just tell me what I did wrong and I swear I won’t do it again. I’m real good at never doing wrong stuff again, you’ll see
. That’s what I’d holler out but the words stay in my throat to almost choking.

“Look at her fingernails,” the man’s voice says. Then I realize the voice belongs to Mr. Ford. “You see that? They’re packed with dirt.”

Mr. Ford looks different in his police uniform. Official-looking. If I hadn’t met him when I did and the way I did, I’d be scared of him for certain. Then again, Mr. Ford’s got a Yosemite Sam mustache that curls up at the ends so he looks to be smiling even when he’s not.

“Look look! Shhh. She’s waking up,” Mrs. Ford says. “Shh, y’all be quiet for a minute. Honey? Carrie? There’s our beautiful girl. You remember Mr. Ford. Cricket’s daddy. He’s here too.”

“Hey there, sweet Caroline.” Mr. Ford steps in closer so I can see his face better. He smiles and gives a little wave.

“Honey, Mr. Ford’s got a few questions he needs to ask you, okay?” Mrs. Ford says. “You feel up to a couple of questions?”

It hurts on my side when I push sound through my mouth so I near to whisper “yes, ma’am,” and Mrs. Ford looks relieved. I feel so grateful to them I want to jump up and hug them all close. I cain’t but I want to. Maybe in a bit I can get over to a sink so I can wash my hands. Get the dirt out from my fingernails.

“Honey, what happened to you, can you tell us?” Mr. Ford asks.

Cricket is craning her neck over her father’s shoulder.

I want so bad to answer them but my tongue feels heavy and thick in my mouth and my side feels like a log split open with an ax.

“Did your mama do this to you, Caroline?” Mr. Ford asks. When his eyebrows crinkle together with worry he looks exactly
like Cricket. He moves closer and tilts his head so my voice can get a straight shot to his ear. “You can tell us anything—nothing bad’s going to happen to you I can promise you that.”

I cain’t keep from resting my eyelids but I’m still awake.

“I swear, that woman is a monster out of a horror movie …,” Miss Chaplin says from somewhere off to the side.

Mrs. Ford hushes her.

“Shhhhh,
stop
it, Mother. She won’t say a word if she thinks we’ll do something to the mother.”

“I’m just sayin’.”

“Well,
don’t
. Not now. Not in front of her.”

“Why don’t y’all leave Caroline and me alone for a minute?” Mr. Ford says to them, lowering his voice then raising it to jostle me awake. “We could use some sweet tea, I bet, right, Caroline? Wouldn’t that taste good? Some nice, cold sweet tea?”

“Coming right up,” Miss Chaplin says. “Come on, Honor. Cricket, you too, honey.”

“But, she’s
my
friend,” Cricket’s saying.

“Grandma’s right, let’s let Dad talk to Carrie alone for a bit. You can come back and check on her later.”

“Aw, man,” Cricket groans and lets herself be led out of the room. “Carrie, I’ll be in the kitchen, okay? You need me, you just tell my dad and he’ll get me. Dad, be gentle, ’kay?”

“Always am, princess,” he says. “Now go on. All of you.”

Both my eyes are back working okay and I watch him watch them leave the room.

“That’s better,” he says, turning his head back to me, letting his brows relax while his mouth puts a smile on. A smile that feels like the sun is shining on my face. A smile like Cricket’s.

“Finally some peace and quiet around here! That’s much better, isn’t it? Listen, Caroline, I want to tell you something real important here. I’m a police officer which I know you know and police officers are real good secret keepers which maybe you
don’t know. We are. You can tell me anything at all and if you say I can’t tell anybody about it, well, then I won’t. But it’s real important you tell me the truth, okay?”

“Yes, sir,” I say with my tongue so fat it comes out “yeth thir.”

“Now, I can see it pains you to talk so what I’m going to do is ask you yes and no questions so all you’ve got to do is nod or shake your head. You don’t even need to say the word
yes
or
no
if you feel you can’t. All right?”

I nod my head.

“Good,” he says. “That’s real good. You’re a smart little girl, I can see that. Sometimes smart people find themselves in not-so-smart situations, you know? Or maybe they do not-so-smart things. When I was your age I got up to lots of not-so-smart things. Hell, let’s just call a spade a spade: I did some pretty dumb things. Who-ee, my mama sure did have her hands full with me. And I had eight brothers and sisters so you can imagine how tired my poor mother was. I’m worn out just dealing with that one in there!”

He smiles and tips his head in the direction of the kitchen so I know it’s Cricket he’s talking about.

“It’s just you and your mama living over there at the Loveless, is that right?”

“Yes, sir,” I say out loud.

“Um-hmm, yeah, your mama probably worries herself sick about you, I’m guessing,” he says. “That’s what mothers do. They worry.”

He’s pulled over a gray metal folding chair like they got at church for when too many people show up for services. The way he’s eased back into it you’d think it was the most comfortable chair in the world, man-crossing his legs, one ankle over the other knee.