Diane Chamberlain - Secrets She Left Behind

“Keith!” Dawn said, but I ignored her. I needed to go outside. Get into the fresh air. I was just about to turn the door knob when I saw the news van still parked on the street. Damn.

Everyone in the living room was calling to me by then, but no one was coming after me, and I was glad. My head spun, and I turned around and leaned against the wall, and that’s when I saw a pair of bare feet disappear into the upstairs hallway. Maggie? She’d been sitting up there listening the whole time? The thought creeped me out and I thought I was seriously going to puke. I headed for the bathroom under the stairs and locked the door behind me. I closed my eyes and leaned back against the door and this picture of a machete chopping off Maggie’s feet flashed into my mind. I breathed long and steady through my mouth so I wouldn’t get sick.

Where was my mother?

I pounded my fist against the door behind me.

Where the hell was she?

I started to cry like a total jerk-off, and I turned on the water so no one could hear me. In the mirror above the sink, I saw this kid who didn’t look like me. Half his face was tight and red and the skin was twisted into smooth planes and deep gullies and his hairline was all screwed up and it was all so damn unfair!

“Keith?” It was Dawn. Right outside the bathroom. “You okay?”

I knew if I tried to talk, my voice would crack, so I just grunted.

“Flip wants to know if you have a more recent picture of your mom than the one you gave him at the trailer. Trish is going to do up another press release and she needs one.”

I got a grip on myself. “Be out in a minute,” I said.

“Okay.”

I heard her walk away. I splashed water on my cheeks until I felt settled down enough to face them all again.

Walking back to the family room, I thought of the pictures in the trailer. My mother had pictures of me—the pre-fire me—framed on the bookcases and her dresser, but the one I gave Flip was of both of us, taken on my twelfth birthday. Not exactly recent.

“Keith,” Miss Trish said when I walked into the room. “Do you have a more recent picture of—”

“No.” I cut her off. Then I felt like an asshole. She was only trying to help. “Sorry,” I said. “That was the only one.”

“I might have a picture somewhere,” Laurel said. Good ol’ Laurel, coming to the rescue.

“Me, too,” said Dawn. “I’ll look when I get home.”

“You’ll need a good one for the flyer and the Web sites,” Flip said. He looked at me again. “How about your father?”

My father? The question caught me totally off guard. I glanced at Laurel as I sat down again. I knew she knew about her two-timing dead husband. Marcus knew, of course. Probably Dawn, too. But did Flip?

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Steven Weston.”

Oh. That father.

“I know your parents split up a long time ago, but did your mother stay in touch with him? Or did he stay in touch with you?”

“No, man.” I rammed my hands into my pockets. I still felt kind of shaky and I didn’t want everyone looking at my jittery hands. “He was out of our lives.”

“Do you know his whereabouts?”

“No clue.” Steven Weston deserted me and my mother when I was a baby. I had military insurance because of him, but that was it. I’d never met him and never wanted to. “Me and my mother’ve always been on our own.”

“Is it possible your mother was still in touch with him?” Flip was barking up the wrong tree. “Or maybe just recently got back in touch with him?”

“Why would she?” I asked. “Believe me. He wanted nothing to do with us and we wanted nothing to do with him.”

“I think Keith’s right,” Dawn said. “Sara never mentioned him at all.”

The meeting went on like that awhile longer, with Flip saying what the cops would do and Laurel making her notes and divvying up the workload. I was tired when it was over. Tired and so damn frustrated, because my mother was somewhere out there and we’d been talking and arguing and getting nowhere except further and further from finding her.

And the whole time, nobody said what they were all thinking. What I refused to think, myself. That my mother was probably dead. Nobody said a word about that at all.

Maggie

“DO YOU WANT ME TO DRIVE YOU TO THE THERAPIST?” Mom looked at me across the kitchen table. It was just her and me. Uncle Marcus had left for work at the fire station and Andy’d caught the school bus an hour ago. I knew Mom had made his breakfast and probably eaten with him, but she was drinking coffee while I ate my cereal. To be with me. Just to be with me.

Yes, I wanted her to drive me. I knew how all those stars felt with the paparazzi following them around. The reporters were in front of the house again. I’d heard Uncle Marcus out there when I first woke up, telling them to leave Andy alone as he walked to the bus stop. It was one thing for them to hound me, another for them to go after Andy, and I hoped Uncle Marcus walked with him to the corner. Andy wouldn’t know what to say to the vultures, or else he’d say too much. You never knew with him.

If Mom drove me, I could lie down in the backseat until we were past the news vans. But I had to face this mess sooner or later, and it was my mess. Not Mom’s.

“I’ll be okay,” I said. I wasn’t just dreading getting past the reporters, but the appointment itself. What was I supposed to say to a shrink? Open up with my deep dark secrets? Everyone already knew mine. I was an arsonist. A murderer.

“Can you work on the flyer this afternoon?” Mom asked.

“I’m almost done with it already,” I said.

“You are?”

I’d gotten to work on my “assigned tasks” right after the meeting, before Mom even came upstairs to tell me what they were. I’d been sitting at the top of the stairs during the whole meeting, taking my own notes. I’d heard how angry Keith sounded. I got a glimpse of him storming out of the family room, but didn’t see any of his face. I couldn’t blame him for being totally pissed off. He probably had plenty of anger to go around ever since the fire, most of it aimed at me. The least I could do was my part to help find Sara. “I just need a picture of Sara. Did you find one?”

“I did.” Mom stood up and walked over to the refrigerator. She pulled a photograph from behind a magnet. “Will this do?” she asked, handing it to me. It was of Sara and Dawn at Jabeen’s, both of them smiling from behind the counter.

“Yeah.” I wondered if she thought it bothered me to see Dawn in the picture. “I can crop Dawn out and blow Sara up bigger,” I said, like it was no big deal. God, Dawn was so pretty and so mature looking! How could I have thought Ben would be seriously interested in me? I’d been such an idiot.

We still had my white Jetta, only now Andy was learning to drive it. I couldn’t picture it. Andy, behind the wheel of a car? Watch out. Today, though, the car was mine. I got into the Jetta inside our garage. I’d missed driving and that sense of freedom it could give you, but I felt kind of nervous since I hadn’t driven in a year. I had to go through a mental checklist, like a pilot. The car’s in Park. Press the button on the remote to raise the garage door. Turn the key. Give it a little gas. Put it in Reverse. I started backing out of the garage.

Suddenly, there they were in my rearview mirror—the reporters with their cameras, jumping out of their vans. Oh, God. I took my foot off the gas, letting the car come to a stop. Exactly the wrong thing to do. The faster I got past them, the better off I’d be. I floored it. I’d had a few frightening moments in the last couple of years, but flying backward down my driveway toward a bunch of reporters was one of the scariest. I was totally out of control. People jumped out of the way. The crazy girl’s coming! I hit the brake when I got into the street, shifted into Drive and took off with a squeal of my tires.