Diane Chamberlain - The Lost Daughter

“I’m so sorry,” she said, overwhelmed. His family, apparently once prosperous and happy, had quickly turned to dust. A daughter sentenced to death. A brother gone crazy in Vietnam. A mother’s suicide. She wrapped her arms around Tim, pressing her cheek to his bare chest. “It’s all so horrible,” she said.

He returned the embrace and she felt his chin rest on the top of her head. “You still want to be here with me?” he asked.

“More than ever,” she said. She could comfort him. They could comfort each other. “Is Andie … is she still alive?” she asked.

“On death row,” he said. “And I still haven’t told you about SCAPE,” he said.

She leaned back to look up at him. “What is it?”

He put out his cigarette and drew her back to the bed again. “We—Marty and I and some lawyers—have been trying to get her sentence reduced. SCAPE is an organization of people who are against the death penalty. It stands for Stop Capital Punishment Everywhere. But it’s kind of an underground group.”

“What does that mean?”

“Did you ever hear of the Weather Underground?”

CeeCee shrugged. The name was familiar, but she didn’t know why.

“It was a group of people who believed things needed to be different and who gave up on conventional channels. So, in the case of SCAPE, we try to find ways to get rid of the death penalty. We protest and … that sort of thing.”

“Have you tried writing to President Carter?” she asked.

“It’s really not up to Carter,” Tim said. “The only person who could stay her execution is Governor Russell. We’ve written to him and tried to get in to see him. He doesn’t give a shit. He’s a hard-liner who’s glad to see the death penalty back. He’s an asshole. I think he sees Andie as someone he can use as an example. ‘See? Even women will pay if they disobey the laws of the land.’”

“There’s got to be something you can do,” she said.

He looked at her and for the first time since he’d started talking about Andie, there was a smile on his face. “I love your optimism,” he said. “And I think I’m falling in love with you.”

They were the words she was waiting for. “I know I love you,” she said.

Tim wound a lock of her hair around his index finger. “I can honestly say I’ve never felt this way about a girl before,” he said. “You’re young, and I thought that might be a problem at first, but you have such a way about you. You’re so positive and you make me feel more positive. Thank you.”

She nodded.

“And please keep this … this stuff about SCAPE between you and me.”

He looked worried and her heart filled with love for him. “I would do anything for you,” she said, and she meant it.

Dear CeeCee,

It’s hard for me to give you more advice about boys and men without scaring you. How do I balance preparing you without frightening you? I guess I can only tell you about my own experiences.

When I was fifteen, I was raped. (This was not your father, so don’t worry about that!) I worked after school at this nursery (the plant kind) and he was a regular customer there, so when he offered me a ride home one evening, I took it. It was dark when we got to my house and I stupidly told him my parents weren’t home. He walked me to the door and the next thing I knew I was on the porch, flat on my back, his hand over my mouth. I couldn’t do a thing. He just stood up with a smile afterward and drove away. That was the angriest I’ve ever been in my life. If I’d had a gun, I would have killed him.

I never told anyone about this except you, CeeCee, because I was so ashamed of how stupid I was.

So I guess there are some good ones out there, but I never had the pleasure of meeting one of them. Just be careful and don’t do anything as stupid and trusting as I did, okay?

EVERY MOMENT SHE SPENT WITH TIM, HER LOVE FOR HIM deepened. In the coffee shop in the morning, she felt the sweet secret of their relationship in the air between them. Oh, Ronnie knew how much she loved him, but she didn’t know—and she could never understand—the bond that was growing between them. Ronnie was still into playing games with guys. She told CeeCee to flirt with other customers in the coffee shop to make Tim jealous. She told her to fake orgasms in order to boost his ego. The orgasm problem did worry her, but for the most part, she laughed off her friend’s advice.

She’d not been loved this way since she was twelve. Everything she did was appreciated, even applauded. They were lovers and best friends. He was helping her with her application for Carolina. The deadline was mid-January, but he said the sooner she applied, the better. She had to get her high-school transcripts and write an essay, among other things, and she felt him holding her hand every step of the way. She thought her acceptance would mean as much to him as it would to her.

She’d moved from organizing Tim’s room and closet to straightening the rest of the house. The once-filthy kitchen was now spotless, every pot and pan in its place. She’d polished the living-room furniture with lemon oil and scrubbed mildew from the tile in the bathroom. Tim told her she didn’t need to do any of it, but it gave her a sense of satisfaction. He did so much for her; she loved being able to give back, and she began to feel some ownership in the beautiful mansion.

Pictures of Andie were everywhere. She’d pick them up and study the girl’s eager smile, thinking, You had no idea what fate had in store for you. She would imagine Andie being raped by the photographer, and even though she knew the rape had occurred inside the house, in her mind it took place at night on the front porch—a front porch that didn’t even exist at the mansion. Tim told her childhood stories about his sister, how she brought home stray kittens and how, at age seven, she tried to sneak into his hospital room when he’d had his appendix out because no one would let her visit him. How she’d tried to climb into the coffin at their grandmother’s funeral. The love CeeCee felt for Tim began to expand to encompass his sister.

“Can I meet her?” she asked one night when he was telling her Andie stories in bed.

“I’ll look into it,” he said. “She’s in Raleigh and they limit who can visit, but I think you should meet her. Y’all would really love each other.”

Funny how love could double and then triple. She even felt some of it toward Marty. Marty began to see her as friend rather than foe, and the night he said that her fried chicken was the best he’d ever tasted, she knew she was winning him over. That same night, he’d brought his guitar into the living room and played a lot of Creedence Clearwater Revival songs that he knew all the words to, while she and Tim stumbled through the lyrics. He’d had a guitar in ‘Nam, Marty explained to her, and music got him through some rough times.

The day before Halloween, she bought three pumpkins and she, Tim and Marty sat in the kitchen, carving jack-o’-lanterns and nibbling roasted pumpkin seeds. At first she’d wondered if it had been a mistake to put a knife in Marty’s hands, but he was careful with his carving, and his design turned out to be the most intricate, if also the most frightening, of the three.

Her mother had liked to dress up to open the door to trick-or-treaters, so CeeCee made a Jolly Green Giant costume out of green tights, a green turtle neck and an abundance of green felt. She had the feeling that Tim thought she was going a bit overboard, but he still told her she looked adorable in her outfit.

On Halloween night, she put on her costume, lit candles in the jack-o’-lanterns, and set them out on the front stoop. When the first trick-or-treater arrived, though, Marty panicked.