She smiled again. A secret smile. It reminded me of Jamie when he talked about his “relationship with God,” like it was something only he could understand and someone as low on the food chain as myself could never get it. I wasn’t so crazy about the secret in her smile.
“It was bad at first,” she said. “And I hated this place. But they’ve helped me so much.”
“They convince you you had a drinking problem?” I asked.
That frickin’ smile again. “I’m an alcoholic.” She sounded like a parrot, repeating what she’d been told.
I leaned forward. “You drank little pink girly things.”
“I had withdrawal symptoms getting off those little pink girly things,” she said. “That’s how bad it was. I’m an alcoholic, Marcus. And so are you.”
I rapped the side of her head with my knuckles. “Hello? Is my favorite sister-in-law still in there?”
She rested her chin on her knees, her eyes pinning me to the back of my chair. “I hurt my baby,” she said. “I was depressed after I had Maggie. That part I couldn’t help, except that I should have taken antidepressants when my doctor told me to. I’m sorry I’ve been a crappy mother to her, but I have to forgive myself for that and move on. I won’t be a crappy mother to my little boy when I get him back. My Andy.”
I’d lost her. It wasn’t like I wanted her to be a bad mother to her kids, but I still wanted her to be my friend. She’d been my best friend. More than that. The night in my guest room—a night I knew she regretted but I couldn’t—would always be in my memory. That Laurel was gone now. I’d never get her back.
“What have they done to you?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“They’ve turned you into a Stepford wife or something.”
“I’m sober, Marcus,” she said. “And I’m happy and starting to feel good about myself again.”
I looked out the window. Acres and acres of rolling pasture, bordered by dense forest. I supposed the setting would seem peaceful to most people, but I was suffocating, looking at it. I needed the ocean. Didn’t she?
“When are you coming home?” I asked.
“I’m nowhere near ready to leave here,” she said. “I feel safe here. Safe from alcohol.” She pinned me again with her eyes. “Safe from you.”
I wanted to say Bullshit, but stopped myself. Because I suddenly got it. I may have loved her. I may have been the closest thing she had to a friend for a couple of years. But I hadn’t been good for her.
She pulled a picture from her shirt pocket and handed it to me. The baby. I’d seen him after he was born, hooked up to monitors in the intensive-care unit. He’d looked barely alive, his puny little chest struggling to rise and fall above ribs like bird bones. I hadn’t been able to look at him for long. I felt sorry for her that this flimsy piece of paper was all she had of her baby.
“He was completely vulnerable,” she said. “Completely dependent on me to take care of him.” She pressed her fingers to her mouth as her eyes filled. “I don’t care how hard this is, being here. I’d climb Mount Everest for him. I’ll gladly give up alcohol to have him back. To be a true mother to him.”
I stared at the baby, and something snapped inside me. I saw bruises where this tube or that entered his body. Saw veins under his skin. He was so defenseless. Fragile. Damaged. If they said it was alcohol that hurt him, then maybe it was. And I’d done my part to make his mother a drunk. For the second time in an hour, my eyes burned.
“Marcus,” Laurel said. “Please get sober. If you don’t, then I don’t want you coming over to The Sea Tender once I’m home. Understand?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t understand.”
“If you don’t get sober, I’ll have to avoid you.” Her voice broke. What she was saying cost her something.
“You’d cut me out of your life? Out of Maggie and—” I lifted the picture in my hand “—this little guy’s lives?”
She nodded. “Get sober, Marcus,” she pleaded. “I love you, and you’re a good man, deep inside. I know you are.”
No, I wasn’t. There’d been something off about me, right from the start. I always managed to push away the people I cared about. The people who cared about me.
I tried to give the picture back to her, but she cupped her hands around my hand, forcing my fingers to tighten around the photograph.
“Keep it,” she said. “It’s yours.”
I stared at her, the moment so charged it stole my voice.
What’s mine? I wanted to ask. The picture? Or the baby?
But the moment passed. She looked away from me, quickly. So quickly, that she told me all I needed to know.
I drank half a bottle of whiskey that night, staring at the baby’s picture. The booze didn’t taste as good as it usually did. After a while, in a moment of monumental strength, I poured every damn ounce of alcohol I had in the house down the kitchen drain. I called AA’s twenty-four-hour number. There was a meeting in Wilmington the next morning at seven.
I couldn’t sleep that night, afraid I’d miss my alarm. I left the house at five-thirty and drove through a pink dawn to Wilmington. Found the church building where the meeting would be held. Forced myself to walk into the room and was bowled over to see Flip Cates inside the doorway. He was a rookie cop in Surf City, a year or two older than me, and he’d made that same hour drive I’d just made to get there. He gave me a surprised smile. An arm around my shoulders as he led me into the room.
“Glad to see you, Marcus,” he said.
“This your first meeting, too?” I asked.
He laughed. “More like my hundred and first,” he said, and I thought, If he could do it, maybe I can, too.
I hit meetings every night, piling the miles on my pickup. Flip got me a construction job with a boss who’d let me take off for a meeting on days when I knew I was sinking. I doubt I would have made it through without Flip, because eighty percent of me wasn’t sold on sobriety. Eighty percent of me craved a beer. But that other twenty percent was stubborn as hell. It hung on to the image of a baby chained to tubes and wires. Of a woman who’d said the words “I love you” to me, even if she’d only said them as a sister-in-law to a brother-in-law. That part of me was stronger than I’d ever known.
I kept my sobriety to myself. I didn’t want to hear Jamie say he was proud of me, when I’d wanted him to be proud of me all along. I didn’t want to feel him watching me, waiting for me to screw up. And I didn’t want to feel the burning guilt that seared me every time I remembered that I’d slept with my brother’s wife.
I got jumpy as Laurel’s release day neared. I wanted to see her, sure, but living near her again? A mistake—for both of us. I didn’t want to be her brother-in-law. I wanted more than that. Not being able to have it, yet living next door to her, would be torture. The last thing I needed with only two months of sobriety under my belt was torture.
I had an AA buddy from Asheville. I decided to move there—a good six-hour drive from Topsail—the week before Laurel came home. Jamie was shocked, but pleased.
“Good for you, Marcus!” he said. “It’ll be good for you to really get out on your own. Maybe get yourself straight.”
Fuck you, bro.
After Laurel’s return, my mother wrote to tell me it was like having the “old Laurel” back. I remembered the old Laurel. Very cool woman. I was glad for her.
Several months later, Mama told me that one-year-old Andy had been returned to Jamie and Laurel. I wanted to visit. Wanted to see Laurel and the boy I was sure was my son. I didn’t go. I stayed in Asheville, joining the fire department—first as a volunteer, later as paid staff—and making a life for myself four hundred miles from my family. I was never going back, because seeing Laurel again would be like taking a sip of booze: I would only want more.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Andy
I HAD MY OWN ROOM LIKE AT HOME, BUT IT was a bad room. I didn’t have any windows except in the big metal door, and the
bathroom was right next to my bed. When I went to the bathroom, I worried someone would look in the window in the door. I got nervous when I had to go and by the end of the first day, my stomach hurt.
I was a lot littler than the other boys. Everybody wore dark blue jump things and flip-flops. The man who gave me mine said it was the littlest size they had. At dinner, it was like the cafeteria at school with long tables and everyone being there except there were no girls. I said hello and smiled at everyone. It was hard because I was scared. And nobody smiled back. I asked everybody, when can I go home? Some of the boys said maybe never.
I couldn’t sleep good last night. I was scared someone would come in the metal door and hurt me. I watched the door all night. Maybe I slept a little though, because I had a dream I was fishing on the pier with Uncle Marcus.
A bad thing happened at breakfast this morning. I said hi to a boy and smiled at him. He started laughing and said to the other boys, “We got us a little pansy,” and the boys laughed too and started saying things. One of them nearly pushed my tray off the table and said, “We don’t allow no faggots at our table.” I knew what that word meant and I ran around the table and started punching him. Then they all started punching me. I don’t know all what happened then except I ended up in the nurse’s office. The nurse, who was a man but he said he really honestly was a nurse, put burning stuff on my cuts. It hurt and I was scared and wanted Mom. I said, when can I go home? The nurse said a bunch of words I didn’t understand about a “pearance.” I asked him to explain and he said, “You dumb as a bag o’ hammers or you jes’ playin’ like it?” I sat on my hands to keep from hitting him. He said to me to “buck up.” I didn’t know what that meant except I thought it was swearing.
They said I could have meals in my room then, and even though my room wasn’t nice, I was glad. That way, the boys wouldn’t get to see me cry.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Laurel
I WAS WORRIED ABOUT DENNIS SHARTELL. I couldn’t believe I’d had such confidence in him in the beginning. He thought Andy was guilty. He didn’t say as much, but I could tell. Before the secure custody hearing, he told me he thought Andy would be safer if he stayed in detention until his trial because, as the intake officer had predicted, people were angry.
“Absolutely not!” I said. “Get him out of there.”
He shrugged as if to say It’s your funeral.
The judge, a very young-looking woman who reminded me of Sara, was compassionate, and I knew we’d lucked out in getting her. She seemed to take the innocent-until-proven-guilty statute to heart. In the end, she reluctantly allowed Andy to leave detention.
“Mrs. Lockwood,” she said, “I would suggest Andrew not go to school during this period. If he were to stay in detention, we could guarantee his safety. In the community, we cannot.”
I nodded, already thinking about tutors and home schooling and other ways he could keep up. It seemed unjust, but I had to face reality. Somehow, the accelerant had gotten on his clothes. I believed that now. Marcus had managed to talk me out of conspiracy theories and lab errors. But he and I were both in agreement that Andy lacked the capacity to plan and carry out arson. I was afraid, though, that Andy’s attorney was not so sure.
“Andrew,” the judge addressed him. “Will you and Mr. Shartell please stand.”
Andy and Dennis got to their feet.
“Andrew, you’re being charged with the burning of a church, three counts of first-degree murder, and forty-two counts of attempted murder. Do you understand these charges?”
Although I already knew the charges being brought against Andy, hearing them spoken from the mouth of the judge gave them an unbearable credibility. I thought I might faint, and I was sitting down. I could only imagine what Andy was feeling.
Dennis whispered something to him.
“Yes, ma’am,” Andy said, though I wondered if he knew what he was agreeing to.
“Your probable cause hearing will be scheduled within fifteen days,” she said. “At that time, it will be decided if you’ll be bound over to the superior court for trial.”
“Bound over?” I whispered to Marcus.
He didn’t look at me. He stared straight ahead but licked his dry lips, and a muscle twitched in his jaw.
“Adult court,” he whispered. “They’ll decide if they should try him as an adult.”
Then, for the first time in my life, I actually did faint.
I had a long talk with Dennis on the phone later that afternoon. He explained that, “given the serious nature of the charges,” a phrase I was quickly coming to hate, it was likely Andy would be bound over to the adult system at the probable cause hearing. He might—or might not—have a bond. I told Dennis if he did have one, I would pay it; I didn’t care how much it was.
“If he has one, it could be in the millions,” Dennis said. “But you need to prepare yourself, Laurel. Given the serious nature of the crime, they may see him as a danger to others and not let him post bail.” He blathered on. “Murder committed in the perpetration of arson is considered murder in the first degree. If he’s charged as an adult, he can enter a plea of guilty to the burning and maybe get the murder charges dropped.”
“But what if he’s not guilty of the burning?” I asked.
Dennis hesitated so long I wondered if we’d lost our connection. “We’ll have time to talk about all that.”
“Did you hear what I said, though, Dennis? I want you to fight this! You need to fight him being bound over.” If they tried him as an adult and found him guilty, he was doomed. “What’s the chance he can stay in the juvenile system?”
“I’d say there’s still a small chance of that,” he said. “They don’t like to bind over juveniles. If no more evidence is found and no more witnesses come forward with incriminating testimony, we’ve got a shot at it.”
Maggie, Marcus and I did our best to celebrate getting him home that evening. We ignored the camera crews outside the house, and I turned the ringers off on all the phones except my cell. We had a pizza delivered and Marcus picked up an ice-cream cake. We ate in the family room—although only Andy seemed to have an appetite. I’d felt dizzy ever since my fainting episode, and Maggie’d gone absolutely white when I explained to her about the upcoming probable cause hearing.
“They could try him in adult court?” she asked, wide-eyed. We were in my bed room and she waved her arms around in outrage. “He’s only fifteen!” she shouted. “This whole thing has ballooned into something insane! Is his lawyer totally brain dead? I don’t know how gasoline got on Andy’s pants, but he could not haved one it!” “It won’t happen,” I said quickly, taken aback by her outburst. “I’m sure his lawyer can make a good case to keep him in the juvenile system, so please don’t worry about it.”
I regretted giving her so much information. Maggie was suddenly more fragile than I’d ever guessed she could be. I’d caught her crying a couple of times the last few days. When I’d ask her what was wrong, I’d get the usual “nothing” in reply, but I knew she was frantic about Andy, as we all were. I decided right then to keep the gory details between myself and Marcus. She didn’t need to know.
Sitting in the family room, nibbling on the edges of our pizza slices, we talked about everything other than Andy’s experiences in detention or what had happened in court that morning or what lay ahead of us. For the moment, I felt safe.
Marcus’s cell phone rang as I started cutting the cake I knew only one of us would be able to eat. He walked outside to answer it.
“This is like my birthday,” Andy said as I handed him the first slice.
“Right, Panda.” Maggie’s eyes were red again, and I wondered when she’d found a private moment to cry. She was trying so hard to be upbeat for her brother, and it touched me. “So now we don’t have to celebrate on your real birthday,” she teased him.
“Yes, you still do,” Andy said.
Marcus appeared in the doorway and motioned me to join him in the kit
chen. I handed the cake knife to Maggie.
“What is it?” I asked once we were out of earshot of the kids.
“They found a couple of plastic gasoline containers in the landfill this morning,” he said, “Might be the ones used to lay the fire, because they each contain a bit of a gasoline and diesel mixture.”
I drew in a breath. “Are there fingerprints on them?” I hoped the real arsonist had been sloppy enough to leave his prints behind.
“They’ve sent them for testing.” He nearly smiled. “Pretty miraculous they found them. If there are some good prints on them, Andy could be out of the woods.”
Chapter Forty
Laurel
1996–1997
JAMIE HUNG UP THE PHONE, HIS SMILE bordering on incredulous. “He’s coming,” he said with relief. “He’s driving down tomorrow.”
I put my arms around him. “Good,” I said, as though my feelings about Marcus’s arrival weren’t mixed. Miss Emma had died the day before after a long battle with cancer, and it was right that he come, yet I hadn’t seen him or even spoken to him in the four years since he moved to Asheville. We knew little about his life there except that he had become a firefighter and was supposedly sober. He e-mailed Jamie occasionally and sent birthday cards and Christmas gifts to the kids, but other than that, he’d cut himself off from his family and I’d been frankly glad of it. Jamie’d been afraid Marcus wouldn’t come for the service. He thought his brother had stayed away all these years because of his animosity toward his mother and possibly toward Jamie himself. He never guessed it could have anything to do with me.
Marcus arrived at The Sea Tender the next afternoon. The last four years had put muscle on his slender frame, chiseled his face with maturity and brightened the blue of his eyes. I knew instantly that the change in him was more than superficial. It was a confident man who drew Jamie into an embrace. The brothers held on to each other for a full minute before letting go, eyes glistening.