Lisa Gardner - Catch Me

I pulled out a chair, sat down next to my aunt, picked up my toast. After another moment, my aunt nodded, maybe to me, maybe to herself, then regarded her own breakfast. She eyed the egg white-topped bread curiously, then gamely took a bite.

“Very nice,” she declared after swallowing. “Never been a huge fan of egg whites, but with the toast, it works.”

“She’s a healthy eater, that one,” Fran said.

I looked at my landlady in surprise. I hadn’t realized she’d noticed what I ate, one way or another.

“Hard worker,” Fran continued, apparently taking it upon herself to vouch for my character to my own aunt. “Tends her night job, comes home to sleep, then is always ready to report to work the next evening. No nonsense, this one.”

“Charlene’s got a good head on her shoulders,” my aunt agreed. “She was always a huge help to me in the B &B. This past year, I’ve missed her.”

I ate another bite of toast, starting to feel like an outsider in my own life.

“Lease is almost up,” Fran commented. She faced me, instead of my aunt. “You coming or going?”

“Sunday,” I said.

“You’ll give me the answer?”

“Sure.”

My aunt, who understood the relevance of Saturday, frowned at me.

“Gonna include the dog that’s not your dog?” my landlady continued. “You know, the one that’s supposed to be outside but is in your room instead?”

I flushed. My aunt arched a brow.

“Yeah…um…Gonna talk to my aunt about that. See about finding a home for Tulip.”

“Hmmm,” my landlady said. “By Sunday?”

“Yeah, by Sunday.”

“Dog pees, dog chews, it’s out of your pocket.”

“Agreed.”

“I like her,” my aunt said, referring to Frances.

I finally smiled. “Figured you would.”

BY THE TIME I led my aunt down the hall to my little room, I felt nervous again. Like a teenager, anxious to impress her parent with her first dorm room. Look at me, look at the life I created all on my own. Clean sheets, made bed, hung-up clothes, the whole works.

Tulip met us at the door. Judging by the look on her face, she hadn’t appreciated being shut up for the morning adventures. Maybe you can take the dog off the street but not the street out of the dog. I thought I knew how she felt.

She refused to greet me, but worked her charm on my aunt instead. My aunt had the typical questions. What was Tulip’s name, breed, what a sweet face, what a nice disposition.

While she fawned over the dog that I hoped would become her dog, I went through the requisite hostess motions-found my aunt a chair, refreshed her coffee, then closed the door behind us for privacy. We sat, me on the edge of the bed, her in the lone wooden chair, and Tulip on the floor in between. The conversation almost immediately sputtered out.

“Sorry you had to drive down,” I said at last, not really looking at her, but at the floor beside her chair.

I was thinking of Detective Warren’s assessment of Randi and Jackie’s attacker. It would be up close and personal. Someone I wouldn’t immediately fear. Someone I would welcome with open arms.

I couldn’t really be afraid of my aunt.

Could I?

“Have the police learned anything more?” my aunt asked.

“About Randi and Jackie’s murders?” I shook my head. “No. But I’m working with a couple of Boston detectives now. They have some fresh ideas.”

“You still think you’ll be next,” my aunt said, a statement not a question.

I nodded.

“You’ve lost weight, Charlene. You look different. Harder.”

“Probably.”

“It’s not good for you, Charlene. The way you’re living right now. It’s not good for you.”

I surprised myself. I looked up, stared my aunt in the eye, and asked, “What happened to my mother?”

My aunt’s pale blue eyes widened. I don’t think I could’ve shocked her more if I’d blurted out that I was a man trapped in a woman’s body. But she caught herself. Fussed with her hair for a second, fingering the fringe around her neck, tucking a short Brillo curl behind her ear.

Her hands were trembling. If I looked harder than she remembered, then she looked older than I remembered. Like the winter had been long and taken some of the fight out of her.

Or maybe she’d spent the past year performing her own countdown to the twenty-first. Which was more stressful, fearing for yourself or for someone you loved?

“What do you think happened to your mother?” she said at last.

“She’s dead,” I said flatly. “And it’s my fault. I think…I did something…resisted, or maybe finally got angry, lost control. I hurt her, though. Badly, and that’s why I don’t remember. I don’t want to face what I did.”

“She’s not dead, Charlene. Least, not last I knew.”

“What?”

“Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant,” my aunt stated, and her tone was different now, testing.

“I don’t understand.”

“Do you want to understand?”

“Why do you keep asking me questions like that!”

“Because from the first moment I arrived at the hospital, that’s what the doctors advised me to do. I was not to tell you what happened, but to give you love and support until one day, when you felt safe enough, you would remember on your own.

“I’ve waited twenty years, Charlene, never knowing if this might be the week you’d suddenly bring it up or, worse, if this might be the day she would magically show up. It’s been a lonely vigil. Stressful, too. But I did it, because that’s what the doctor said. And I don’t have kids, Charlie. I don’t know what’s right or what’s wrong for an eight-year-old girl. The only attempt I had at child rearing was the years I spent trying to rein in my baby sister, and we both know how well that went.” My aunt’s voice broke off, the first tinge of bitterness I’d ever heard from her. Then I noticed a sheen in her eyes that had nothing to do with the lighting.

I’d hurt her. I’d made my aunt cry.

Immediately, I wanted to take it all back. I was sorry I’d brought up my mother. I was sorry I’d left New Hampshire. I’d do anything, say anything, return home. I just wanted my aunt to be happy. She was all I had, and I loved her.

And in the next second, I realized how warped that was. How quickly I’d fallen back into the trap-appeasement at all costs. Loving too little and holding on too tight.

Worst part was, my aunt didn’t even expect me to appease her. She simply sat there, shoulders squared, jaw set, awaiting my next question.

“If my mother’s alive,” I ventured, “why hasn’t she ever contacted me?”

“I don’t know.” She hesitated. “I always figured she would. If not in person, then by mail. Then later, when all this Internet and e-mail and Facebook nonsense started, I worried about that, too. But nothing that I’ve ever seen, or you’ve ever said.”

“Nothing, not a single word from her,” I agreed, and took a moment to digest that.

“Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant,” my aunt said again.

“Did I hurt her?” I asked, and my fingers were unconsciously moving across my left side, the top of my thigh, the back of my hand. I couldn’t help myself.

“We don’t know. When the EMTs arrived, they found you on the floor, seriously injured. In fact, they assumed you were dead.” My aunt spoke the words flatly, having obviously spent the past twenty years turning them over in her head. “There was no sign of your mother in the house.”

“She ran away?”

“The police put out an APB for her. Especially…after the other discoveries they made.” She paused, stared at me again. When I didn’t respond…“To date, they’ve never found her, and I would know if they did. There are charges pending against your mother, Charlene. Serious criminal charges. Which may be why she’s never appeared in person. I’m sure she knows I’d toss her sorry ass in jail the second she did.”