Lisa Gardner: Hide

I came home. My mother-Stella, she was called then-was facedown on the sofa. This time no amount of shaking woke her up. I have a vague memory of racing across the hall. Of banging on our neighbor's door.

"My mother, my mother, my mother!" I screamed. And poor Mrs. Torres, who'd never been granted a smile or wave from any of us, threw open her door, bustled across the hall, and hands flying to her suddenly wet eyes, declared my mother dead.

Cops came. EMTs. I watched them remove her body Saw the empty orange prescription bottle slip out of her pocket. One of the officers picked it up. He gave me a pitying look.

"Someone we should call?"

"My father will be home soon."

He left me with Mrs. Torres. We sat in her apartment, with its rich smells of jalapeño peppers and corn tamales. I admired the brightly striped curtains she had hanging on her windows and the bold floral pillows covering her worn brown sofa. I wondered what it would be like to have a real home again.

My father arrived. Thanked Mrs. Torres profusely. Ushered me away.

"You understand we can't tell them anything?" he kept saying over and over again, once we were safely tucked back inside our apartment. "You understand we have to be very careful? I don't want you saying a word, Cindy. Not one word. This is all very, very tricky."

When the cops returned, he did the talking. I heated up chicken noodle soup in the tiny kitchenette. I wasn't really hungry. I just wanted our apartment to smell like Mrs. Torres's apartment. I wanted my mom to be back home.

I found my father crying later. Curled up on the sofa, holding my mother's tattered pink robe. He couldn't stop. He sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.

That was the first night my father slept in my bed. I know what you're thinking, but it wasn't like that.

A family is a system.

WE WAITED THREE months for my mother's body. The state wanted an autopsy. I never did understand it all. But one day we had my mom back. We accompanied her from the morgue's office to the funeral home. She was put in a box labeled with someone else's name, then sent into the fire.

My father purchased two small glass vials that dangled from chains. One for him. One for me.

"This way," he said, "she can always be close to our hearts." Leslie Ann Granger. That was my mother's real name. Leslie Ann Granger. My father filled the vials with ashes, and we put them around our necks. The rest of her, we turned loose into the wind.

Why buy a tombstone that would only cement a lie?

We returned to the apartment, and this time my father didn't have to ask; I had packed our suitcases three months earlier. No Boomer and blankie this time. I had placed them in my mother's wooden box and sent them with her into the flames.

Once your mother is dead, it is time to be done with childish things.

I CHOSE THE name Sienna. My father would be Billy Bob, but I would allow him to use B.B. He rolled his eyes but played along. Since I'd done the honors with the names, he chose the city. We headed for Seattle; my father had always wanted to see the West Coast.

We did better in Seattle, each in our own way. My father returned to Sears and, without ever disclosing that he'd worked at one before, was taken to be a complete natural who flew up the managerial ranks. I enrolled in yet another overcrowded, underfunded public school, where I disappeared into the nameless, faceless B-average masses.

I also committed my first act of rebellion: I joined a church.

The small Congregational church existed one block from our home. I walked by it every day to and from school. One day, I poked my head in. The second day, I took a seat. The third day, I found myself talking to the reverend.

Will God let you into Heaven, I wanted to know, if you were buried under the wrong name?

I talked to the reverend for a long time that afternoon. He had bottle-thick glasses. Sparse gray hair. A kind smile. When I got home, it was after six, my father was waiting, and there was no food on the table.

"Where were you?" he demanded.

"I got held late-"

"Do you know how worried I've been?"

"I missed the bus. I was talking to a teacher about a homework assignment. I'm… I had to walk all the way home. I didn't want to bother you at work." I was babbling, my cheeks flushed, not sounding anything like myself.

My father frowned at me for a long time. "You can always call me," he said abruptly "We're in this together, kiddo."

He ruffled my hair.

I missed my mother.

Then I walked into the kitchen and started the tuna casserole.

Lying, I've discovered, is as addictive as any drug. Next thing I knew, I'd told my father I'd joined the debate team. This, of course, gave me any number of afternoons I could spend at the church, listening to the choir practice, talking to the reverend, simply absorbing the space.

I'd always had long dark hair. My mother used to braid it for me when I was a child. As an adolescent, however, I had relegated it to an impenetrable curtain I let hang over my face. One day, I decided my hair was blocking the true beauty of the stained glass, so I walked to the corner barbershop and had it chopped off.

My father didn't speak to me for a week.

And I discovered, sitting in my church, watching my neighbors come and go, that my oversize sweatshirts were too drab, my baggy jeans ill-fitting. I liked people in bright colors. I liked the way it brought attention to their faces and made you notice their smiles. These people looked happy. Normal. Loving. I bet there wasn't a three-second delay every time someone asked them their name.

So I bought new clothes. For the debate team. And I started spending every Monday night at the soup kitchen-school requirement, I told my father. Everyone's got to fulfill so many hours of community service. There happened to be a nice young man who also volunteered there. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Matt Fisher.

Matt took me to the movies. I don't remember what was playing. I was aware of his hand on my shoulder, the sweaty feel of my own palms, the hitch to my breath. After the movies, we went for ice cream. It was raining. He held his coat over my head.

And then, tucked inside his cologne-scented jacket, he gave me my first kiss.

I floated home. Arms wrapped around my waist. Dreamy smile upon my face.

My father greeted me at the front door. Five suitcases loomed behind him.

"I know what you've been doing!" he declared.

"Shhhh," I said, and put a finger to his lips. "Shhhh."

I danced past my stunned father. I drifted into my tiny, windowless room. And for eight hours I lay on my bed and let myself be happy

I still wonder about Matt Fisher sometimes. Is he married now? Has two-point-two kids? Does he ever tell stories about the craziest girl he ever knew? Kissed her one night. Never saw her again.

My father was gone when I got up in the morning. He returned around twelve, slapping the fake ID into my hand.

"And I don't want to hear it about the names," he said as I arched a brow at my new identity as Tanya Nelson, daughter of Michael. "Trying to get paperwork at a moment's notice already set me back two grand."

"But you picked the names."

"They were all the guy could give me."

"But you brought home the names," I insisted.

"Fine, fine, whatever."

He already had a suitcase in each hand. I stood firm, arms crossed, face implacable. "You picked the names, I pick the city."

"Once we're in the car."

"Boston," I said.

His eyes went wide. I could tell he wanted to argue. But rules are rules.

A family is a system.

WHEN YOU HAVE spent your life running from the Bad Thing, you have to wonder what it will feel like one day when it finally catches you. I guess my father never had to know.