Alexandra Burt - The Good Daughter - A gripping, suspenseful, page-turning thriller

The last time we spoke was the night I left.

“If you think about it, why not go to Colorado, or California? If we’re going to leave, might as well go far,” I had said but he had remained quiet. We had talked about leaving Aurora for years, leaving Texas altogether; we had imagined it many times.

“You want to hear what I think?” he finally asked.

I sensed sarcasm. He started talking about having a different perspective and maybe I should be thankful for what I have instead of griping about what I don’t. That night, he made his way through a six-pack in no time, and by the time he was on the last beer, he didn’t make a whole lot of sense. He went on and on about choices some people have that others don’t. Had we not talked about leaving Aurora since tenth grade, had we not imagined what life could be like somewhere else ? —but suddenly there was no more I vent and you listen . He was judgmental and mean and not what I needed that night. We parted ways then; he was drunk and I was angry.

At home, I saw my mother hadn’t lifted a finger to fill out the paperwork I needed to apply for financial aid. I threw my clothes and a few books in a duffel bag, waited for the sun to come up. When I heard my mother rummage around in the kitchen, I went downstairs.

“You still haven’t filled out the forms.” It came out sharply, just as I intended. All my life there had been missing paperwork and incomplete forms. “Are we still doing this? We still don’t have the right paperwork?” I asked. There were the missing papers when I was a kid—what I now know to be shot records and residency documentation—and school was the mother of all wounds. She would never let me leave, wanted to attach an eternal tether to me, to make sure I’d never be more than she was.

We argued. I told her I’d leave. She said she’d pay for a community college close by. I told her I wanted to go out of state. We argued some more. Eventually she turned silent and ignored me.

I left that night. I drove down the highway, leaving Aurora behind me. I had about five hundred dollars, a fifteen-year-old car, and my high school diploma—a pretty meek start for a life on my own. There were regrets about that night: I had fought with my mother, and I had never said good-bye to Bobby.

I felt panic rise up. The streets felt alien to me, yet I drove on until I reached Amarillo. The city was depressing, with nothing but dust and yellow grass, far away from everywhere and close to nowhere. I found work the very next day and a place to stay. Help Wanted signs at motels were plenty along the two major highways running through town, and my mother had taught me well: the right motel and the right owner, and you can offer free work for a week in exchange for a room. One week’s worth of work for the room each month, cash for the next three weeks of work. I knew that many employers didn’t mind turning a blind eye to the fact that I insisted on getting paid under the table.

I got a second job at a nearby motel, and after a year of saving every penny, I felt confident I was in a good place. One day, on my way to my second job, a tapping and slapping sound under the hood made me pull over. The car, by then sixteen years old, was no longer fixable. The next day I went to apply for a car loan, for a used older model Subaru—though it was still better than what I had—but I needed my social security number.

“I’m sorry we can’t process the application,” the car salesman said. “Do you have your card on you?”

“I think I lost it,” I lied.

He scrambled through the papers. “You might want to go to the social security administration office downtown.”

“How about I pay you cash for the car?” I hated to use every penny I had saved up, but I needed transportation. I haggled some, paid for the car. I never went to the local social security office. It was just like it had always been, the old and familiar hurdle that was paperwork .

I worked more jobs to save more money and eventually moved out of the motel. I knew better than to try to rent an apartment, but I waited for a sublet to come available—there’d be no credit checks, no paperwork, and no contracts to fill out. I lived in a three-bedroom apartment with two other women: a flight attendant and a pharmacy student from Ecuador.

I thought about starting my own residential cleaning business, but I knew the business license would never happen. Again, there’d be paperwork . There were better jobs I qualified for over the years—cruise ships taking off from Galveston—but I needed a passport. I kept my head down, never forming lasting friendships or getting seriously involved with anyone. Fifteen years passed, and I saw myself going nowhere but down a lonely, dead-end road of minimum wage jobs and double shifts.

I thought about returning to Aurora, but those moments passed. I thought about my childhood, and those thoughts lingered. My early years remained sketchy at best; I couldn’t name my favorite childhood food, stuffed animal, board game, friend, place, or person. Glimpses emerged, yet none of them could be verified; there was no attic stuffed with trunks and boxes holding dolls and toys and old bicycles. When my mother and I did move, we started completely from scratch; no phone calls to left-behind friends, no letters, no Christmas cards. Everything was final, never to be revisited.

I imagined myself twenty years from now and I panicked. I needed a social security number, a birth certificate, and proper documentation so I could emerge from the shadows of my bleak existence.

With those thoughts, I got on the same highway that had led me to Amarillo and I went back to Aurora. The trunk was filled with hardly more than I had left with fifteen years before. On the highway, I folded the visor down, and in the mirror I saw my reddened face. I was going to appear back in my mother’s life the same way I had left; one minute there, then gone, then back again.

I had questions. The kind of questions that, once raised, demanded answers.

Sitting in the ER, I want to apologize to Bobby for ignoring him all these months.

“You okay?” His words pull me out of my lulled state.

I attempt to speak, but my voice fades into unintelligible croaks.

I hear a gurgling sound from the water dispenser and he holds my hand steady as he places a cup of cold water in it.

“Drink this.” He raises his hand and brushes my wet hair out of my face.

Water spills over my hands. I remember the creek. There’s that odor, the one I smelled in the woods. Sweet and pungent—roadkill is what comes to mind, a recollection of hiking and coming across a deer cadaver, weeks old, dissolving in the heat. All blood leaves my face and I grip the paper cup so tight that I nearly crush it.

“Maybe you should spend the night in the hospital? You look horrible. You don’t seem well at all.”

“I’m fine. Really, I am. How’s your dad?” I ask to change the subject. I wish I looked more put together, hair done, makeup, a shower.

“You know, he’s old.” Bobby pauses for a moment, and a shadow falls over his face. “He’s not the man he used to be.”

A nurse behind the counter turns up the volume of the TV mounted to the wall. Bobby and I both look up, glad to be distracted.

There’s mention of breaking news about the girl from the woods coming up and immediately a vision of the tree line appears out of nowhere and my mind pops like an overheated lightbulb. The hand of a dead woman with red fingernails. There’s no sense in fighting the image of her fingers prodding through soil layers, a hand stealing a glimpse of the underworld.

“You’re shaking.” Bobby waves his hand in front of me as if to fan me some air. “You look like you’re about to pass out.”