David Bell - Never Come Back

“Can I sit?” I asked.

“Yes, please.”

We both sat, on opposite ends of the couch. I still held the phone in my hand with Neal’s number ready to go.

“I guess you just want to ask me a bunch of questions,” Beth said. “I guess you want to know everything.”

“Yes. Everything,” I said. “You called me on the day of Mom’s funeral, didn’t you?”

“I did. Yes.” Beth nodded. Her voice was a little rough, like a smoker’s. “I didn’t think it was right for me to go, especially since you didn’t know about me. I didn’t think that was the time. I almost went anyway. I got dressed. I put on makeup. I was ready to drive down there, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Mom was already gone at that point, and it would only make things complicated for you.”

“And did you call the lawyer?”

“I’m not trying to chisel money out of anybody,” Beth said. “I don’t want you to think that.”

“But you called him?”

“I just wanted to know where I stood, that’s all,” she said. “You know, I didn’t have anyone else I could ask. I didn’t think I could approach you. I wasn’t sure.”

“How did you know the lawyer’s name?”

Beth hesitated, then said, “Mom told me. She told me when she changed the will. She said if anything ever happened to her, that’s who to call. Mr. Allison.”

“Did she expect something to happen?”

Beth raised her arms and hugged herself as though a cold breeze had blown through the room. “I don’t know,” she said. “But there were a few times I talked to her, right before she died, when it seemed like she did think something was about to happen. And then it did.”

Then why didn’t you do something? I thought to myself. Why didn’t anyone do anything?

“Okay,” I said. “Questions. I guess I’ll just start with the big one. Both your father and—”

“My father?” Beth asked. “How do you know him?”

“He came to my apartment,” I said. “He told me all about you. About a lot of things. He said you were supposed to be dead, that you disappeared one day when you were fifteen, and you never came back. The police said there was a serial killer in this part of the country then, some guy named… Rodney—”

“Rodney Ray Brown,” Beth said, her voice thin.

“That’s it. Gordon said you were dead. Murdered. But apparently you’re not. So what happened?”

“My dad,” Beth said. She shuddered; this time it didn’t seem to be from the cold, but from the thoughts that were crossing her mind. Thoughts of her father? “I didn’t disappear,” Beth said. “Disappear makes it sound like I was taken—like someone kidnapped me, you know? It wasn’t like that. Not at all.”

“Then what did happen?” I asked. “If you weren’t kidnapped and you weren’t dead, why did you stay away for so many years? Why didn’t I know about you until now?”

Beth closed her eyes. She took a long time answering. When she opened her eyes again, she looked right at me. “I chose to stay away all that time,” she said. “I wanted to get as far away as possible from that sick, disgusting house. I didn’t ever want to go back.”

Something wormed around in my gut. It felt like the worm had teeth and was starting to gnaw on my insides. I didn’t know how to ask the question. But I pressed on. There was nothing to lose now.

“Did Gordon…” I let my voice trail off. “Did he… sexually abuse you?”

Beth shook her head. “No, he didn’t do that. It was nothing like that.” She paused. “I’d like to say it was worse, but when you talk about these things, it’s tough to make those comparisons.”

“Then what happened?” I had the same feeling then that I’d had in the car during the ride over with Neal. I had to know, but I just didn’t want to know.

Beth forced an awkward smile. “This is the time I would reach for a glass of wine or something.”

“Do you have some?”

She shook her head. “I quit drinking. I quit all of that stuff. But sometimes I really want it.”

“If you don’t want to rehash a bunch of stuff, that’s okay,” I said. But I didn’t mean it. I had come all that way for the rehashing.

“That’s nice of you to say. But you want to know, don’t you? You really don’t want me to stop now, do you?”

“No,” I said. “I want to hear it.”

“And you should hear it,” she said. “It all happened before you were born, but it’s affected your life, right? It’s still affecting your life.”

I nodded. “And my brother’s.”

“Right,” Beth said. “I know. And I’m sorry.” She licked her lips. “Well, I was kind of a wild kid. Typical in many ways, but maybe even more wild than most.”

She then told me the things that Gordon had told me about her wild days in high school. I would have expected Gordon’s version to be worse, exaggerated for the sake of proving his own point, but as things went, it seemed that Gordon had been pretty accurate in his description of his daughter. She’d been a troublemaker. She’d become difficult for her parents to discipline and control. She’d run with an older and wilder crowd. She mentioned the drinking and the drugs.

“Your dad said they found heroin in your room,” I said.

“They found heroin paraphernalia in my room,” she said. “And it really wasn’t mine. I know that’s the oldest lie in the book, the one every teenager gives when they’re caught with something illegal, but it was true in my case. I was holding it for another girl. I’ve never shot up. I’ve done a lot of things, but not that. I know it looked bad to them. To Mom and Gordon. Dad, I should say.”

“You don’t call him Dad?”

“It’s hard to think of him as Dad,” she said. “You’ll see.”

She didn’t go on right away. She seemed lost in thought. My phone vibrated in my hand. I thought it would be Neal, but I saw Dan’s name on the display. Just checking in, I assumed. I wished I’d given his number to Neal so he could stay updated.

“So you were a wild teenager,” I said. “And you ran with some wild kids. Wasn’t this the seventies? Wasn’t everybody wild?”

“Not everybody,” Beth said. “I don’t think one time is really that different from another. Kids get wild. Parents worry. People didn’t always send their kids off to rehab back then. They took a harder line, I guess. Gordon—Dad—threatened me with a lot of stuff. He grounded me. He wouldn’t let me use the phone.” She shrugged. “Big deal, you know? Kids can find ways around that stuff.”

“And Mom?”

Beth paused. She stared at the floor, her eyes fixed on something, some moment in the past I would never see. “Mom did her best. I understand that now. She was hard, you know? She didn’t take much crap from me. She even slapped me once when I mouthed off to her.”

“Really?”

“Did she ever hit you or Ronnie?”

“Never.”

“Different times,” Beth said. “I don’t blame her. I would have slapped me too. She tried to talk to me as well. She treated me like a human being. I didn’t see it all then—I really didn’t. But she tried in her own way. I think she was just… confused by me. That’s all. She was just… baffled by my spirit. My strong will. My stubbornness.”

“She shouldn’t have been,” I said. “She had all those things.”

“True,” Beth said. “I have a daughter, and I see those same things. But it’s tough to step back from being the parent. Mom tried. I know she did. I couldn’t see that she was doing that, so I couldn’t meet her halfway. I just resisted. That was all I knew how to do back then.” She sighed. “Sometimes it seems that’s all I’ve ever done with people who wanted to help me. Resist them.”