“They won’t officially call it arson until the investigation is over, but a burn pattern like that doesn’t happen by accident.”
“Couldn’t it have something to do with the electricity going out in the youth building, though?”
“That still wouldn’t explain the burn pattern.”
“Tell me what evidence they have,” she demanded. “Do they have something on Andy I don’t know about?”
“They know the type of fuel,” I said. “A gasoline and diesel mix.”
She snorted. “Like Andy carried gasoline and diesel to the lock-in. I drove him there. I think I would have noticed.”
“I know, babe.”
She looked toward the beach. “I feel like they’re only looking at Andy as a suspect now. Not even trying to figure out what really happened.”
“Andy just makes a colorful rumor, that’s all. The truth will come out eventually.”
“Didn’t a church burn down in Wilmington this year? Could it be, like, a serial arsonist?”
“Pretty good, Mags.” I was impressed. “I’m going to suggest the investigators hire you.”
“Seriously?”
I laughed. “No, not seriously. If I can’t be on the team, they sure won’t take Andy’s sister. But that was a good catch about the church in Wilmington. The big difference is, that church was empty.”
“But they’ll still consider the possibility, won’t they?”
“Of course,” I said. “Has your mom talked to a lawyer yet?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What’s she waiting for?” I said. “She’s in denial.”
“I don’t know. All I know is that Andy’s so confused. He cried in bed last night. He kept saying, ‘But I’m the hero.’” Her voice cracked. “I didn’t want him to go to school today. Kids are going to be so mean to him.”
“Maybe he should stay home for a day or two,” I thought out loud.
“I’m starting to plan this fund-raiser at school for sometime in May,” Maggie said. “A big makeover event with the beauty college coming in and a silent auction and everything. Now I don’t even feel like doing it.”
Couldn’t keep that niece of mine down. Who cared if she was valedictorian or not? “Well, just remember it’s for the victims,” I said. “Don’t punish them because people are spreading rumors about Andy.”
She screwed up her face. “You’re right,” she said. She looked at her watch. Sighed. “I’d better go back to school.”
“Listen, Mags,” I said as she got to her feet. “The best thing you can do—and I can do—is be there for Andy. Be his support right now, all right? Don’t let this get you down.”
“Okay.” She still looked glum as she leaned over to kiss my cheek.
I watched her walk down the steps. Once she’d disappeared around the corner of the house, I turned the newspaper over. Stared at the headline again. Could Fire Hero Be Villain?
I felt suspicion closing in on Andy, the way it had closed in on me years earlier. I knew how destructive it could be. How unstoppable. Like the waves ripping the sand away from my beach.
Chapter Thirty-One
Laurel
I WAS SUMMONED TO THE PRINCIPAL’S OFFICE like a wayward little kid. That’s how I felt, sitting on one of the small, armless wooden chairs outside Ms. Terrell’s office in my white nurse’s jacket, waiting to be invited inside. From where I sat, I could see one end of the high school through the office windows. How was Andy faring over there today? Maybe I should have kept him home. I told him that if anyone called him names or said anything upsetting to him, to use it as an opportunity to practice self-control. He said he would do that and I knew he meant it at the time, but even I had little faith in his ability to tune out ugly words from his classmates.
Certainly, this visit to Ms. Terrell’s office had something to do with Andy. I knew a few parents had called the high school principal, angry that he was still attending classes. They were worried that, like some other kids who didn’t fit in, he might bring a gun to school and slaughter his classmates. I imagined his principal calling Ms. Terrell, asking her to persuade me to withdraw him for the rest of the year.
“Mrs. Lockwood?” Ms. Terrell had opened her office door and stood smiling at me.
I followed her inside. At my modest five feet, five inches, I towered over her.
This was Ms. Terrell’s first year at my school, and I didn’t know her well personally, although I did know quite a bit about her. She was fortyish with a doctorate degree in education, a petite African-American woman who’d grown up on the streets of Baltimore and who, despite her tiny size, the string of pearls she always wore, and the heels you could hear clicking through the halls, was tough as nails with the kids. They both feared and respected her. I found, sitting across the desk from her, that I had the same reaction.
“How are you holding up?” she asked.
“I’m managing.” I smiled, trying not to look as wary as I felt.
“I wanted to touch base with you, given the situation with your son,” she said, folding her hands neatly on her desk. “I thought you might want to take some time off while you’re coping with this.”
I hesitated, trying to read her face. There were frown lines on her forehead and what I read as concern in her eyes.
“Are…have parents complained that I’m here?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “I do know that some parents over at the high school have complained that Andy’s still attending school, but I’ve had no formal complaints about you at all. I simply—”
“You’ve had informal complaints?”
She sighed. “Complaints is too strong a word,” she said. “Certainly there’s no problem with your work here. The children adore you.” She unfolded her hands and dropped them to her lap. “But people talk. You know how that goes.”
“They have no right to speculate about my life or my son,” I said sharply. Then I pressed my hands together in front of me as if in prayer. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not usually so defensive. I just…I know Andy’s innocent and it’s hard to…he’s misunderstood enough as it is. This is the icing on the cake.”
“I hear you,” she said. She looked out the window toward the high school and I wondered what she was thinking. “I have a son, myself,” she said finally.
I was surprised. “You do?” I didn’t think she’d ever been married.
“I had him when I was fifteen years old. He’s now twenty-five and in medical school at UNC.”
“Oh my God,” I said. She must have been a determined little dynamo right from the start to get where she was today. “How did you ever manage to…” I waved my hands through the air as if taking in her office and the diplomas on the wall. “You’ve accomplished so much.”
“I had plans for my education even back then,” she said, “and I would’ve had an abortion, if I hadn’t been scared and waited too long, but of course I have no regrets.” She smiled, looking at a framed picture on her desk. I couldn’t see the picture, but I imagined it was a photograph of her son. “I was very lucky,” she said. “My mother and grandmother helped raise him so I could keep up with school. When he got into his teens, the area we lived in…well, it was no good for an African-American male. He wasn’t a Goody Two-shoes, but he also wasn’t a misogynist hip-hoppin’ junkie, like a lot of the other boys his age. The cops didn’t know that, though. They saw this black teenaged boy and lumped him together with the others. I was making enough money teaching by then that I could get him out of the city. As I said, I was lucky.” She folded her hands on her desk once again and leaned toward me. “I’m telling you this to let you know that I know about being young and doing irresponsible things like getting pregnant at fifteen, or—” she nodded toward me “—like drinking while you’re pregnant, and I know about ostracism and about motherhood. So, I’ll understand if you need to take some time off while this is going on.”
I stared at her for a moment, taking it all i
n. “Thank you,” I said finally. “Maybe I could take a few days while I try to find a lawyer.”
“You don’t have one yet?” She seemed surprised.
I told her I’d called the attorney I used for my will and other documents, and he gave me the name of a woman in Hampstead who, as it turned out, had a nephew injured in the fire. She refused to take the case and didn’t bother to offer me other names. I was ready to turn to the yellow pages.
Ms. Terrell wrote a name on the back of one of her cards. She tapped a few keys on her computer keyboard, then jotted a number beneath the name.
“I don’t know this man well,” she said, handing the card to me. “But I do know he’s handled criminal cases. His name’s Dennis Shartell and I met him through a friend of a friend. He’s all the way in Wilmington, though, but he might at least be a starting point for you.”
I stood up. “Thanks again,” I said.
Walking back through the hallway, I clutched the card in my hand. I’d call this man, this Dennis Shartell. By the time I reached my office, my hopes were pinned on him. He’d be the one to stem the tide of suspicion that was rising against my son. I’d made mistakes in my life. Failing Andy a second time would not be one of them.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Laurel
1991–1992
WITH THE REALIZATION OF MY PREGNANCY came the sucking, sticky grip of a depression that made the black mood I’d experienced since Maggie’s birth seem like little more than a rainy afternoon. A voice in my head repeated incessantly You’re a liar, an adulterer, a hideous mother. I hated myself. I withdrew from everyone, including Marcus, never going to Talos, although he still came to The Sea Tender a few nights a week to drink and watch TV. He probably attributed the change in me to my desire to avoid the hot tub and a repeat of that night in his guest room.
I missed him. He was my best friend. My only real friend. I was afraid, though, that spending too much time with Marcus would lead me to tell him what I didn’t want him to know.
I knew I couldn’t have this baby, the child of my husband’s brother, another child I would ruin with my lack of maternal instinct. A child I certainly didn’t deserve and who didn’t deserve to be born with me as his or her mother. But getting an abortion required picking up the phone, making an appointment, driving myself alone to the clinic in Wilmington as well as back home again, and every time I thought of all I needed to do to make the abortion happen, I crawled into bed and cried until I fell asleep.
I was lying in bed one afternoon when I felt the flutter of bird wings between my navel and my hipbone. Just a quick little ripple, but it scared me. Could I possibly be that far along? The sensation finally motivated me to get out of bed and call the women’s clinic.
“When was your last period?” the woman asked me on the phone.
I glanced at the calendar on the wall of the kitchen. It was still turned to the page for May, although I knew we had to be well into June.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Probably two, or maybe three, months ago.”
She gave me an appointment for the following day.
There were protestors, maybe twelve or thirteen of them, on the sidewalk in front of the clinic. They carried signs I avoided reading as I parked my car. I have to do this, I told myself.
I felt the hungry eyes of the protestors on me as they waited for me to get out of my car. I opened the door, shut it quietly behind me and started walking in the direction of the clinic door.
“Don’t kill your baby!” they chanted as I passed them. “Don’t kill your baby!”
One woman thrust her sign in front of my head so that I had to dart to the left to avoid running into it.
A young woman greeted me on the walkway to the clinic. “I’m your escort.” She smiled, and I let her take my arm and guide me inside. I walked into a waiting room, where a receptionist sat behind a glassed-in desk. I wondered if the glass was bulletproof. Maybe today would be the day the clinic was bombed. The idea didn’t distress me. I wouldn’t mind, as long as I was the only person killed. Spare the greeter and the staff and the other patients, I thought. Just take me.
The receptionist gave me a clipboard covered with brochures to read and forms to fill out. I took a seat and set to work on them. Once I’d filled out the forms, I let my attention wander to the people sitting around me. Who was here for birth control? Who was here for an abortion? One teenager caught me looking at her and gave me a snarly, scary look that made me study my hands. I didn’t lift my gaze again until a nurse brought me a paper cup and pointed to the water cooler in the corner of the waiting room.
“You need to drink water for the sonogram.”
I stood up. “A sonogram?” I whispered to her. “I’m here for an abortion.”
“We need to know how far along you are so you can have the correct procedure,” she said.
I drank the water, cup after cup, until I was certain my bladder would burst. Finally, I was led into a dressing room where I changed into a thin yellow gown, gritting my teeth against the need to urinate. Once I was on the examining table, I became aware for the first time that my belly was round—a smooth, gently sloping hillock above the rest of my body. I felt the flutter of wings again.
“Hey, there.” The technician, a woman with short, spiky dark hair, swept into the room carrying the clipboard and my forms. “How are you today?”
“Okay,” I said.
She wasted no time, reaching for the tube of gel, smearing it across my stomach. The sonogram screen was turned toward her as she pressed the transducer on my belly.
“Hmm,” she said. “About eighteen weeks. Do you want to see?”
“Eighteen weeks?” I asked in disbelief. Could it possibly have been that long since that night with Marcus? “What date is it now?”
Her gaze darted from the screen to me. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“Today. What date is today.”
“Oh. July twenty-first. Would you like to see the sonogram?” she asked again.
I shook my head. No. I was still stuck on the fact that we were well into July when I thought we were still in June. I pressed my hand to my forehead, rubbing hard, as if I could stuff the cotton back into my brain. “I’m so confused,” I said, unaware that I was speaking out loud.
“Well—” the technician turned off the ultrasound machine and wiped the gel from my stomach with tissues “—pregnancy can be pretty confusing sometimes. That’s why we have counselors to help you think things through.” She offered me a hand to help me sit up. “You can empty your bladder in the bathroom across the hall. Then get dressed and go to the first room on the left and the counselor will talk to you about the abortion. It’s a two-day procedure at eighteen weeks. And you will absolutely have to have a support person with you to drive you home each day.”
In the bathroom, I sobbed as I urinated. I felt completely alone. I knew a second-trimester abortion was a two-day procedure. I was a nurse; I knew what it entailed. In my alcohol-and-depression-fogged brain, I’d hoped I wasn’t that far along, that an abortion would be easy. But it wasn’t the complexity of the abortion or my inability to supply a “support person” that upset me. It was that I could remember Maggie’s eighteen-week sonogram with perfect clarity. She’d sucked her thumb. Rolled a somersault. Waved at Jamie and me. The technician that day had told us she was probably a girl. She’d been so real. So perfect. A tender little bundle of potential, into which we’d poured our hopes and dreams and love.
In the counseling office, I sat across from a woman with short-cropped gray hair, thick white eyebrows and a deep leathery tan.
“Are you cold?” She looked at me with real worry and I realized my entire body was shaking.
“Just nervous,” I said. I clenched my teeth to keep them from chattering.
She pulled her chair close to mine until our knees were almost touching.
“The technician doing your sonogram said you seemed surprised to learn how far along you
were,” she said.
I nodded. “I’m not going to have the abortion,” I said, “so I guess I really don’t need to talk to you.”
“It’s your decision,” she said. “What made you change your mind?”
I knotted my hands together in my lap. “Because I remember my daughter’s sonogram at that…at eighteen weeks, and I can’t…it would feel wrong to me, with the baby being this developed.”
“Ah,” she said. “I understand. You must have very conflicted feelings about this pregnancy to have waited so long.”
I nodded, thinking of the little market I’d passed on my way into Wilmington. I could stop there to get a wine cooler on my way home.
“Do you have some support at home?” She glanced at my ring finger. “Your husband? Did he want you to have the abortion?”
“He doesn’t know I’m pregnant,” I admitted.
“Is it his?” she asked gently.
None of your business, I thought, but I shook my head.
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered.
She looked at the clipboard on her lap, flipping through the forms. “You live on Topsail Island? I can refer you to a therapist in Hampstead,” she said. “You have some hard decisions to make and I think you’ll need some help.”
I nodded again, although I knew I wouldn’t go. I was still afraid of seeing a therapist, afraid I might end up in a psych ward if I opened up too much.
The counselor checked a Rolodex file, then wrote a name and number on a card and handed it to me.
“If you’re sure you don’t want an abortion, please see an obstetrician right away to get started with prenatal care,” she said.
“I will.”
“And one other thing.” She leaned forward, studying me from beneath her white eyebrows. “The escort told me she thought you’d been drinking this morning.”