Chevy Stevens - Still Missing

“And then your mom sold your house, didn’t she? Half your family is gone and so is your home?”

“How do you know—”

“If you want to get to know someone, really get to know them, there are many ways. As there were many ways your mother could have dealt with the situation.”

“She had to sell it, Dad didn’t have any life insurance.” Six months after the accident Mom finally came and got me, and that’s when I found out my home no longer existed.

“Perhaps, but it couldn’t have been easy moving when so much had already changed. And into such a small house?”

“It was just the two of us. We didn’t need a lot of space.”

We moved to a cramped two-bedroom rental in the worst part of Clayton Falls, with a view of the pulp mill. The pill bottles had been replaced with vodka bottles. Mom’s pink silk robes were now nylon and her Estee Lauder White Linen perfume was a knockoff version. We may have been tight on money, but she still managed to scrape up enough for her French cigarettes—Mom thinks anything French is elegant—and her not-so-elegant vodka. Popov isn’t Smirnoff.

Not only had she sold our house, she’d also sold all Dad’s things. Of course she kept Daisy’s trophies and her costumes, which hung in Mom’s closet.

“But it wasn’t just the two of you for very long, was it?”

“She was going through a lot of stuff. It’s hard for a single mother. There weren’t a lot of options back then.”

“So she thought she’d found a real man to take care of her this time around.” He smiled.

I stared at him for a second. “She worked… after the accident.”

As a secretary with a small construction firm, but mostly she just worked hard at looking good. She never left the house without a fully made-up face, and she was usually half cut when she was applying the stuff, so it wasn’t uncommon to see her eyes smudged or her cheeks too bright. Somehow it worked for her, in a broken-down-doll sort of way, and men looked at her like they wanted to rescue her from the big bad world. Her recently widowed status didn’t stop her from smiling back.

Four months later I had my new stepdad, Mr. Big Shot Wannabe. The sales guy for the firm, he drove a Caddy, smoked cigars, even wore cowboy boots—which might make sense if he was from Texas, or even Alberta, but I don’t think he’s ever left the island. I suppose he’s rough-around-the-edges handsome in an aging Tom Selleck way. Mom quit her job right after they got married. Guess she thought he was a sure thing.

“What did you think of your new father?”

“He’s okay. He seems to really love her.”

“So your mother had a new life, but where did you fit in?”

“Wayne tried.”

I wanted at least some of the closeness with him I’d had with my father, but Wayne and I didn’t have anything to talk about. The only things he read were girlie magazines or flyers for get-rich-quick schemes. Then I learned I could make him laugh. As soon as I realized he thought I was funny, I turned into a total goof around him, doing anything I could to crack him up. But if he did, Mom would get pissed off and say something like, “Stop it, Wayne, you’re just encouraging her.” So he stopped. Hurt, I’d make fun of him whenever I could, just being an all-around smart-ass. Eventually we just ignored each other.

The Freak was staring at me intently, and I realized that my attempts at learning more about him had served only to further his knowledge of me. Time to get things back on track.

“What about your father?” I said. “You haven’t mentioned him.”

“Father? That man was never a father to me. And he wasn’t good enough for her either, but she didn’t want to see it.” His voice rose. “He was a traveling salesman , for God’s sake, a fat hairy salesman, who…”

He swallowed a couple of times, then said, “I had to set her free.”

It wasn’t just his words that sent the shiver up my spine, it was the flatness of his voice when he said them. I wanted to know more, but my instincts told me to back away. It didn’t matter. Whatever storm was stirring in him had passed.

He leapt out of bed with a smile, stretched, and after a sigh of contentment said, “Enough talk. We should be celebrating the beginnings of our own family.” He stared hard at me, then nodded. “Stay there.” He threw on his clothes and coat and disappeared outside. When he opened the door, the smell of rotting leaves and wet dirt drifted over to the bed—the scent of a dying summer.

When he came back in, his skin was flushed and his eyes glittered. One hand was behind his back. He sat next to me, then brought his hand out. His fist was closed.

“Sometimes we have to go through difficult times in life,” he said. “But they’re just a test, and if we stay strong, we’re eventually rewarded.” His eyes met mine. “Open your hand, Annie.” Maintaining eye contact, he pressed something small and cool into my palm. I was scared to look at it.

“I gave this to someone long ago, but she didn’t deserve it.” My palm itched. He raised his eyebrows. “Don’t you want to see?” I slowly looked down at my hand, and in it a fine gold chain glistened. His finger reached out and touched the tiny gold heart that lay at the center. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” I wanted to throw the necklace as far away from me as I could.

I said, “Yes, yes, it is, thank you.”

He took it out of my hand. “Sit up, so I can put it on you.” My skin crawled as the chain tickled against me.

I wanted to ask what happened to the girl who owned the necklace, but I was scared he might tell me.

All righty, Doc, I’m seriously starting to question my attitude—yeah, yeah, I knew I had one. But now it’s really beginning to get in the way of things. You know, things like my life. See, I may not have always been Little Mary Sunshine before all this went down, with some damn good reasons—dead sister, dead dad, drunken mom, dumbass stepdad—but at least I tried not to take my shit out on the entire world. Now? Man, there doesn’t seem to be anybody who doesn’t piss me off. You, the reporters, the cops, the mailman, a rock in the middle of the road. Actually, I’d probably be okay with the rock. And I mean, I used to like people. Hell, you could even say I was a goddamn people person. But these days?

Take my friends. They call or try to visit, they still invite me to stuff, but right away I start thinking they’re just hoping to get the inside scoop on how the investigation is going, or the offers are just your we-really-should-invite-the-poor-girl kind of thing. Then, when I say no, they probably sit around and talk about me

And see, that’s a spiteful, childish thing for me to even think , let alone say, because I should be grateful people care enough to try, right?

Thing is, there’s not much going on in my life I want to share, and I’m out of touch with half the shit they’re discussing. I’m behind on movies, world events, trends, and technology. So if I do run into someone I know during one of my brief forays into the outside world, I ask them about their lives, and they look relieved and blather on about a work crisis or a new boyfriend or a trip they’re taking. I tell myself it’s almost comforting to hear that even though my life is fucked, people are getting up and going about their lives every morning. One day I could be bitching about my work too.

But after we say our good-byes and I watch them walk away, back to their nice normal lives, I just start feeling all pissed off again. I hate them for not being in pain like me, hate them for being able to enjoy themselves. Hate myself for feeling that way.