Diane Chamberlain - The Lost Daughter

“Any messages?” she asked, her attention darting toward the phone. She’d seen Tim at breakfast that morning, but the coffee shop had been crowded and there’d been no time to talk.

“Uh-uh, sorry.” Ronnie looked up from her bed, where she was painting her toenails. “But there’s a package for you.” She nodded toward CeeCee’s bed, where a small, square box wrapped in brown paper rested on her pillow.

“Weird,” CeeCee said. It was rare for her to get mail. She picked up the package by the cord tied around it. Light as air. Her name and address were printed in black ink.

“I shook it and it sounds empty to me,” Ronnie said. “How’d tonight go? I take it Tim didn’t stop in?”

“No.” CeeCee sat on her bed and kicked off her tennis shoes. Her feet hurt and she massaged her toes through her kneesocks. “Is he ever going to ask me out again?”

“I hope so.” Ronnie sounded genuinely sympathetic.

“Why can’t I just ask him?” CeeCee pulled one end of the cord, but it was tightly knotted. “Why do we always have to wait to be asked? Can I borrow your nail clippers?”

Ronnie tossed the clippers to her. “If he doesn’t ask you out again, he’s a cretin. You don’t want him.”

Yes, I do. She had constant fantasies about Tim picking her up after her shift, driving to a park, someplace quiet and private, and making love to her on the mattress in the back of the van. “I should never have told him I was a virgin,” she said.

“Well, that’s a no-brainer,” Ronnie agreed. She’d screamed so loudly when CeeCee told her about her “I’ve never had sex” comment that their landlady rushed in, afraid they were being murdered.

CeeCee clipped the cord and ripped the paper from the package to reveal a flimsy white cardboard box. She lifted the lid and gasped.

“There’s money in here!” she said.

“What?” Ronnie set her nail polish on the windowsill and rushed to CeeCee’s bed. “Holy crap,” she said, peering into the box. “How much?”

CeeCee pulled out the wad of bills and started counting.

“They’re all fifties,” Ronnie said.

“Six hundred, six-fifty,” CeeCee counted, shaking her head in disbelief. “Seven hundred, seven-fifty.”

“Oh my God,” Ronnie said as the number grew. She grabbed the brown paper the box had been wrapped in. “Was there any name anywhere?”

“Shh,” CeeCee said. She was up to twelve hundred and her hands were starting to shake.

Ronnie watched in silence until CeeCee had counted one hundred fifty-dollar bills. Five thousand dollars. They looked at each other.

“I don’t get it,” CeeCee said.

“Maybe, like, your last foster mother sent it?” Ronnie suggested. “You said she was really nice.”

“Really nice and really poor,” CeeCee said.

Ronnie picked up one of the fifties, squinting at it as she held it up to the light. “Are there any marks or clues or anything on the bills?”

CeeCee riffled through the bills and shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“Well,” Ronnie said, “when you were baring your soul to Tim the other night, did you happen to mention that you were penniless?” She was reading CeeCee’s mind.

“But why would he do this?” CeeCee asked in a whisper.

“That—” Ronnie gnawed her lip “—is a very scary question.”

She poured Tim’s coffee the following morning. “I got a package in the mail yesterday,” she said.

“A package?” He looked innocent. “What was in it?”

“Money.” She set the coffeepot on his table and whipped out her order pad. “Tim, tell me the truth. Did you send it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His blond, sun-lit curls gave him a soft, angelic look.

“It was five thousand dollars.”

Tim nodded as though impressed. “That would take you through a couple of years of college and then some, wouldn’t it?”

She slapped her order pad onto the table. “It’s from you?” she asked.

“CeeCee, settle down.” Tim laughed. “If it were from me, I wouldn’t tell you because I wouldn’t want you to feel obligated to me. I wouldn’t tell you because I’d want you to have it, no strings attached. If you and I broke up tomorrow, I’d still want you to have it. If I’d been the one to give it to you, that is.”

If they broke up? He considered them a couple? She didn’t allow the elation to show in her face.

“I’m getting angry,” she said, instead. “Tell me.”

“Look, CeeCee.” He patted her arm. “Whoever sent it wouldn’t have done it if they couldn’t afford it, right? So, you need it. Just enjoy it. Buy me supper with it tonight. And put the rest in the bank the first chance you get.”

They ate at a Moroccan restaurant, sitting on the floor in a small room all to themselves. Tim ordered a bottle of wine and, away from the eyes of their waiter, she drank from his glass. Soon the money was forgotten, and she felt relaxed and a little loopy. They told every old joke they could remember and sang songs from The Beatles’ White Album, which she knew because her mother had loved The Beatles. CeeCee told him about the time she saw The Beatles in Atlantic City at the age of five, because her mother’s friends had a bunch of tickets and they’d been unable to find a babysitter for her. It had been one of the most traumatic events of her early life. She couldn’t hear the music for the screaming of the fans, and everyone had stood on their chairs while she sat on the floor, her hands over her ears. Still, Tim was impressed. He’d never gotten to see them at all.

She tried to pay for their dinners, which had been the deal, but Tim brushed her offer aside. She wanted to tell him, No more tips, ever, and that she would pay for everything when they went out, but since he hadn’t acknowledged he’d sent the money, she couldn’t do that.

After dinner, he drove her to the house he shared with his brother, and she knew for sure that he’d been the one to send the money. The house—a tall, stately brick mansion surrounded by manicured lawns and boxwood hedges—was in the moneyed, historic heart of Chapel Hill. Once inside, CeeCee stifled a gasp. Tim obviously had someone to care for the grounds, but if he also had a housekeeper, she hadn’t worked in a very long time. Clothes, dirty plates and pizza boxes were strewn on the small antique tables and chairs in the otherwise elegant foyer. She spotted an overturned chair in the dining room on her left and a broken vase in the living room on her right. The odor of marijuana drifted down the curved staircase, along with the sound of the Eagles singing “Hotel California.”

“Maid’s day off,” Tim joked. “Hope you don’t mind a little clutter.”

A man, straggly haired and barefoot, walked into the foyer from the living room carrying both a beer and a cigarette. He stopped short when he saw them.

“What’s up, bro?” Tim asked.

The man looked at CeeCee, and she took an involuntary step backward toward the door. His eyes were bloodshot and he wore several days’ growth of beard. He looked like some of the homeless guys who sometimes hung out on Franklin Street.

“Who’s this?” He nodded toward her.

“This is CeeCee.” Tim put his arm around her. “And this is my brother, Marty.”

Marty’s nod was curt. “How old are you?” he asked. “Twelve? Thirteen?”

“Give her a break,” Tim said.

“I’m sixteen,” she said.

Marty let out a whistle and walked back into the living room. “Tim, get your ass in here,” he said over his shoulder.

Tim looked at her apologetically. “Kitchen’s in there.” He pointed toward one of the arched doorways off the foyer. “Help yourself to something to drink and I’ll be there in a second.”