I looked at Flip. “That must be when he initially went to the men’s room and noticed the air-conditioning unit outside,” I said.
“No,” Emily said. “That was a different time, because when he went to the boys’ room, I went to the girls’ room. But then he left again and I tried to find Mom to tell her but then he come back so I just said don’t do that again.”
Could I possibly not know Andy as well as I thought I did? Ridiculous. No way could Andy mix up a brew of gasoline and diesel, cart it to the church and spread it around. Any kid who would misinterpret a “do not carry lighters aboard the aircraft” sign could not possibly plan and carry out arson.
“Did you ask him where he was?” Flip asked.
“No, I just yelled at him.”
“Emily,” I said, “did Andy disappear before or after the fight with Keith?”
“I don’t remember.” She looked at her mother. “Do you remember, Mom?”
Robin shook her head. “This is the first I heard that Andy left the church at all,” she said. “If he did.” She nodded toward her daughter as if to say take what she says with a grain of salt.
“Don’t even think what you’re thinking,” I said, when Flip and I got into my pickup after the interview.
“I don’t like that bit about Andy disappearing during the lock-in,” Flip said.
“Consider the source.” I turned the key in the ignition. “No one else has said anything about Andy disappearing.”
“It’s possible no one else was paying attention to him,” Flip said. “At least not until the fight.”
“Look, Flip, Andy can’t plan anything.” I pictured Laurel’s step-by-step charts on the corkboard wall of Andy’s room. “He lives in the here and now.”
“He figured out how to escape from the building when no one else could,” Flip pointed out. “That took some planning, didn’t it?”
Chapter Sixteen
Laurel
I WALKED INTO THE LOBBY OF SARA’S CHAPEL Hill hotel and was relieved to find it spacious and nicely decorated, huge vases of flowers on every surface. I’d been worried about how she’d afford to stay in a hotel for so long in such an expensive area, but I guessed Keith’s hospital had an agreement with this hotel and she’d been able to get a good rate. At least, I hoped so.
I decided the day before that I had to see Sara face-to-face. It had been nearly two weeks since the fire. Nearly two weeks since I’d seen her. I needed to know she was all right, as well as to lay to rest my new concern about her resentment over our financial differences. When I called to tell her I was planning to visit, she was quiet at first. I was relieved when she said she’d really like to see me. She asked if I could pick up some clothes and a few other things from her house. I was thrilled to be able to help her in some small way. I missed her so much.
I was to meet her in the hotel’s coffee shop. I stood at the entrance to the restaurant, trying to see inside in case she’d gotten there ahead of me.
“Hi, stranger.”
I turned to see her behind me and had to mask my shock. Sara was the type of woman who put on her makeup to run out to the mailbox, but she didn’t have a speck of it on now. She was pale, the color washed from her face, which looked nearly skeletal. She’d lost a lot of weight in two weeks. Dark roots formed a line along the part of her hair, which was in need of a cut and, I feared, a shampoo.
I pulled her into my arms and hugged her hard. “I love you,” I said, my tears surprising me. “I’ve missed you, and I’ve been so worried about you.”
“I love you, too,” she said. “You’re so sweet to drive nearly three hours just for lunch.”
I let go of her reluctantly.
She smiled at me. “I’m okay, Laurie,” she said, smoothing a tear from my cheek. “I’m hanging in there.”
The hostess led us to a table in the back of the coffee shop, as if sensing we needed the privacy.
Sara looked around as we sat down. “It’s such a relief to be out of the burn center for a while,” she said. “It’s eighty-five degrees in his room. I’m so glad you came.”
“I should have come sooner,” I said. “How’s Keith?”
She let out a tired breath. “A little better, so they say. It’s hard for me to tell because they still have him in a drug-induced coma, but his vital signs and everything are better. They’re pretty sure now that he’s going to make it.”
I reached across the table to wrap my hand over her wrist. “I’m so relieved.”
She nodded. “The right side of his face is perfect,” she said. “The left side was pretty badly burned, though. He’ll have a scar, but right now, I just want him to live.”
“Of course, sweetie,” I said.
The waitress brought us glasses of water and menus.
“I wish I could talk to him,” Sara said once the waitress left our table. “I miss him, Laurie.”
“You should talk to him, Sara. He may be able to hear you.”
“Oh, I do! Constantly. I tell him I love him and miss him and…I apologize for not doing such a great job with him.”
“Oh, Sara. You’re a terrific mom.”
“Then why does he get in so much trouble?”
“It hasn’t been all that much.” I longed to reassure her. The truth was, you could be the best parent in the world and still have your kids screw up.
“Well, you’re a single mother, too, Laurel,” she said. “And look at Maggie. She’s just a year older than Keith and at least five years more mature.”
“She’s a girl. And you and I both know it’s Jamie who made her the way she is.”
She looked down at the menu. “Give yourself some credit,” she said. “Jamie died when Maggie was eight.”
“Well, thanks,” I said. “I just don’t want you to doubt yourself, that’s all.”
“I know.”
“Have you been in touch with Steve?”
She looked surprised, then shook her head.
“Don’t you think he should know about Keith?” I asked.
“No. He’s…you know the kind of father he’s been.”
I did. Steve and Sara divorced when Keith was barely a year old and Steve had never once been in touch with his son. Sometimes it took a tragedy like this one to wake people up, though. But it was Sara’s decision to make. I wasn’t sure what I would have done in her position.
The waitress returned to our table. Sara ordered soup. I ordered a green salad and a broiled, skinless chicken breast that was not on the menu and that I had to talk the waitress into writing on her little pad. Sara smiled. She understood why I ate obsessively well, ran every day, kept up with mammograms and Pap smears and flu shots. I was an orphan. My children had already lost one parent. I wasn’t going to let them lose another if I could do anything to prevent it.
“I have zero appetite,” she said after the waitress left.
“You’ve lost weight.”
She smiled ruefully. “Well, there’s the silver lining, huh?”
I’d been practicing my next words for days.
“Are things okay with you and me?” I asked.
“Of course. What do you mean?”
“Just…I guess it’s just that we usually talk nearly every day and everything’s changed since the fire. I feel distant from you.”
“I’m totally focused on Keith right now, Laurie,” she said. “I’m sorry if I—”
“No.” I interrupted her. “It’s me. I’m being paranoid. Maybe you don’t even know this because you’ve been away, but Keith…at the dance, he called Andy a ‘little rich boy’ a few times. It got me worried that you might resent that my kids and I are so much more comfor—”
“Laurel.” Sara smiled. “That has never ever been an issue between us, silly,” she said. “I can’t believe you’ve been worrying about that.”
Right after lunch, Sara left the hotel to go to the hospital, and I waited until she was gone to approach the check-in counter. I hoped Sara was being stra
ight with me about her lack of resentment, because I intended to pay her hotel bill.
I handed the young man behind the counter my credit card.
“I’d like you to use this to cover all of Sara Weston’s hotel charges,” I said. “She’s in room four thirty-two.”
He tapped his keyboard, eyes on the screen in front of him. “They’ve already been taken care of,” he said.
“Well, you probably have her card number there,” I said, “but I don’t want her to have to pay for her room. I’d like to.”
“It’s taken care of, ma’am,” he said with a smile. “Somebody beat you to it.”
Chapter Seventeen
Laurel
1990
THE FIRST YEAR OF MAGGIE’S LIFE PASSED BY me in a haze. We had a birthday party for her at The Sea Tender in May. I had forgotten the exact date of her birth, but Jamie had not. I planned the festivities, inviting Sara and Steve, Marcus, who now lived next door but who was around so much it was like he’d never left, and Miss Emma. A few friends of Jamie’s from his real estate job came, along with their spouses, and they all seemed to know Maggie very well, since Jamie still carted her with him most places. Daddy L had died during the winter of a quick-moving pneumonia, and I recognized in Miss Emma the mechanical movements of a grieving woman. She reminded me of myself. We both wore smiles that didn’t reach our eyes. The only difference was that she had a right to the grief, while I did not. Behind my back, I knew she called me lazy and I’m sure she thought I was doing exactly what she’d pleaded with me not to do: take advantage of her son’s generous nature.
I went through the motions of mothering a toddler as if I were a robot, a spiritless machine that clunked along at half speed, threatening to break down for good any moment. Maggie was already walking, and I’d found the energy to baby-proof every cupboard and drawer in the house, afraid that I might turn my back and she would get into something that would kill her. I had no confidence in my ability to protect her. I’d shifted from occasionally wishing she would die to being terrified I would somehow cause her death. If she was home alone with me, which happened only when Jamie couldn’t take her with him and Sara was tied up, I’d drag myself out of bed and try to attend to the little dark-eyed stranger who was my daughter. I followed her around the house like a shadow and checked on her repeatedly when she napped. It was hard for me to watch her for long, though; my own need for the escape of sleep was so great. The weariness I’d felt in the weeks after her birth had never abated, although I was no longer anemic. I began hiding my symptoms from my doctor. I didn’t care if I got better; I was that far gone. I didn’t care what happened to me. I sometimes still fantasized about leaving, though, about letting Jamie find a normal woman who could be a better mother to Maggie.
Sara had finally persuaded Jamie I needed “professional help,” and for several months, they both badgered me about it. Jamie even made an appointment for me with a psychiatrist in Jacksonville and drove me there to make sure I kept it. But the man sat and stared at me and I stared back. I didn’t cry. I’d moved beyond tears. The psychiatrist told Jamie he could force me into a psych unit for a couple of days, but Jamie didn’t have the heart for that.
Maggie didn’t like me. My early fears about that had come true, and who could blame her? She cried when I’d take her from Jamie’s arms, sometimes screaming as if my hands were made of cold steel instead of flesh and blood.
“Dada!” she’d scream, reaching for him. “Dada!”
By her first birthday, she knew five words, recognizable to those close to her. Dada. Bih, which referred to her pacifier.
Missu, which seemed to mean Miss Sara. Nana, which meant banana. And wah, which was water. She had no word for me.
Sara had become the closest thing I had to a friend, in spite of how I’d tried to push her away when Maggie was a baby. She’d bring us meals, occasionally do our grocery shopping and suggest ways I could deal with Maggie’s developing personality. She had no children of her own, yet she knew better than I did how to mother my daughter.
One morning when Jamie had been called to the fire station and I was alone with Maggie, I had a sudden spurt of energy and decided to take her outside to the beach. It was September and the weather was warm and mild.
Maggie screamed the whole time I changed her into her ruffly pink bathing suit.
“We’ll go out on the beach and make a sand castle!” I said. “We’ll have such fun!” My hands shook as I slipped the straps over her shoulders. What mother is nervous about dressing her sixteen-month-old child? I chided myself.
She continued screaming while I doused her with sunscreen, but calmed down as we walked onto the deck. I picked up her pail and shovel, and she held my hand as we toddled down the steps to the beach. We sat in the damp sand close to the water and I built a little sand castle, trying to engage her, but she preferred running through the waves where they splashed against the shore.
I was adorning the sand castle with shell fragments when Maggie suddenly screamed. I looked up to see her crouched over, still as a statue.
“Dada!” she wailed.
I ran to her and saw blood trickling from her hand.
“What did you do, Maggie?” I grabbed her hand. “What happened?”
I spotted a narrow, splintery board stuck in the sand, water flowing over it. Picking it up with my free hand, I saw the rusty nail jutting from the surface.
“Dada!” Maggie screamed again, the blood running from her hand onto mine.
Scooping her into my arms, I ran with her to the cottage. She wailed in my ear as I opened the door and darted toward the kitchen sink.
I turned at the sound of footsteps on the deck and saw Marcus through the window. He’d been fired a few days earlier after showing up plastered at work and falling off a roof. At that moment, I was glad he’d lost his job and was home. I needed help.
He pushed open the door. “What happened?”
“She cut her hand on a rusty nail!” I said, turning on the water.
Marcus moved swiftly toward us. “Good thing her mom’s a nurse,” he said.
I was a nurse. I’d nearly forgotten. It seemed as though some other woman had gone through nursing school and worked in a pediatrician’s office. Some happy, capable woman.
Maggie screamed, trying to squirm out of my arms, blood splattering everywhere.
“Hold her!” I said.
Marcus wrapped his arms around Maggie’s little body, capturing her unharmed hand with his so she could no longer fight me off. “It’s okay, Mags,” he said.
I straightened Maggie’s arm to hold it under the faucet as water flowed over the wound. It was deep and ragged across her palm. She’d need stitches. A tetanus shot.
Maggie’s wails turned to earsplitting screams. I wanted to grab her hand hard and twist it clean off her wrist. I could imagine the cracking, grinding feeling of it. Letting go of her, I jumped back from the sink. “I can’t do this!” I started to cry.
“Yes, you can.” Marcus was so close I could feel his boozy breath against my ear. “You have a clean dish towel?”
I fumbled in the drawer near the stove, pulling out a dish towel. Still crying, I rinsed Maggie’s hand again, then pressed the towel to her palm.
“She needs stitches, doesn’t she?” Marcus asked.
“I can’t do this, Marcus,” I said again. My voice was a child’s whine in my ears. I wasn’t even sure what I was talking about. What couldn’t I do? I hated myself.
“She’ll be okay.” Marcus misinterpreted my tears.
I nodded, sniffling. The dish towel, where I held it to Maggie’s hand, was turning red.
“We’ve got to get her to urgent care,” he said.
I nodded again.
“Come on,” Marcus said. “I’ll drive. You hold her and keep pressure on her hand.”
He shoved Maggie into my arms, and I followed him outside to the driveway.
Together, we managed to buckle Maggie into her ca
r seat. I sat next to her, trying to keep pressure on her hand while she screamed and screamed and called out for her daddy.
When we arrived at urgent care, I longed to hand Maggie over to the staff, but they wanted me to hold her as they cleaned and stitched her cut, erroneously thinking that, as her mother, I would be a comfort to her. I looked down at her dark curls as the doctor worked on her. Beautiful curls. Huge tears glistened on her jet-black eyelashes. Why didn’t I feel anything for her? How could I be holding my own frightened, hurting child and feel nothing? I pictured my bed. How good it would feel to crawl under the covers! I could call Sara to come watch Maggie so I could sleep. I had it all planned out, my mind a million miles away as they worked on my baby, whose screams might have been made by a machine for all they touched me.
“It’s okay, Mama.” The young female doctor smiled at me as she finished bandaging Maggie’s hand. “She’s going to be fine. She’ll just have an extra lifeline across her palm. Too bad we can’t all be that lucky.”
That night, Jamie sat on the edge of the bed as I burrowed beneath the covers.
“What would you have done if Marcus hadn’t been here?” he asked.
I thought about the question. What would I have done? I remembered the image of twisting Maggie’s hand from her arm and shook my head quickly to make it go away.
“Why are you shaking your head?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You could have called me.”
“Jamie.” I wrapped my hand around his arm. “I want to leave.”
He tilted his head to one side. “What do you mean, leave?”
“You and Maggie would be better off without me.” It was not the first time I’d said those words in the past sixteen months, but it was the first time he didn’t contradict me. Whatever Jamie and I’d once had together had disappeared. We rarely made love. We hardly spoke to each other. He’d stopped trying to understand me, to empathize with me, the way he’d stopped trying to empathize with Marcus. “I don’t trust myself with her,” I said. “With being able to take care of her.”