Flip shifted in his chair, folding his arms across his chest. “So how did the fire start?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” Tears filled her eyes. “Honest, I don’t. All I know is that I didn’t start it. And neither did Andy.”
“Let’s take a break,” Marcus said, and I was relieved. Maggie had been stoic and brave throughout the past hour. Now, though, she was beginning to crumble. I wasn’t doing too well, myself.
Flip clicked off the tape recorder and stood up. “Good idea,” he said. “I could use a cup of coffee.”
“I’ll join you.” Marcus got to his feet as well. “You all right, Maggie?” he asked.
She gave a little nod, not looking at him. Not looking at any of us.
“Coming with us, Laurel?” Marcus asked. I supposed he and Flip wanted me to join them so we could discuss all we’d heard, but I wasn’t leaving.
I shook my head, still holding Maggie’s hand. “I’ll stay here,” I said.
Once the men left the room, Maggie began crying for real.
“I’m sorry, Mom!” she said, gripping my hand. “I’m so sorry for everything.”
“Shh,” I said. “I know.”
“I’m so relieved, though!” she said. “I’m so…I should have told the truth as soon as people started thinking Andy did it.”
Yes, she should have. But she didn’t. “You’ve told us now,” I said. “That’s the important thing.”
“There’s more,” she said. “I mean, not so big. It’s big, but not like that. Like the fire. And it’ll only matter to you. It’s about The Sea Tender.”
“I know you’ve been meeting Ben there.”
She shook her head. “Not just that,” she said. “I’ve been going there ever since I got my driver’s license. My permit, actually. Alone, I mean. Not with…a boy or anything.”
“Why?” I asked. I remembered Dawn telling me she smoked marijuana. Did she go there to do drugs?
“You’re going to think I’m crazy. Or crazier than you already think I am.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy.”
“I felt close to Daddy there. Sometimes I’d sit on the deck at night and I’d close my eyes and suddenly feel like he was there. His spirit or something.”
I felt a chill. I could almost feel Jamie in the room with us.
“Do you think I’m deranged?”
“If you are, insanity must run in the family, because I’ve dreamed he’s…visited me at night sometimes, too.”
Her pretty brown eyes opened wide. “Honest? Do you really think it’s him?”
“I have no idea, Maggie. I just think he left a mark on both of us—in different ways, of course—and we must both have a need to stay attached to him.”
She suddenly stopped crying, looking right at me. “I’m sorry about how I laid that whole Daddy and Sara thing on you. That was so mean.”
“It hurt, finding that out,” I acknowledged. That pain already seemed weeks old instead of hours, usurped by a more immediate heartache. “It helps me understand how you must be feeling about Ben right now, though.”
She turned her head toward the window. In her eyes, I saw the rectangular reflection of sunlight.
“If he cared about me, he’d be here with me,” she said. “At the hospital. Wouldn’t he?”
I thought that even if Ben did care about her, he was wise to stay away from Marcus and me right now.
“I think he would be,” I said.
“Do you think Ben was really…you know, with Dawn the same time he was with me?”
“Yes, sweetie, I do.” I remembered Dawn at her house the night before, wrapping her satiny little robe over those long legs as she swept into the living room. Who’s here, Benny?
“I trusted him totally. I loved him so much. I still do.”
“I know it hurts.”
She turned back to me. “Aren’t you totally furious with Sara?”
I sighed. I was furious. That was something I’d have to deal with on my own, though. “It was so long ago, Maggie,” I said. “And there are things I did that I regret from long ago, too.”
“Drinking.”
“That’s for sure. Other things, as well. I guess most people do things when they’re young that they come to regret. Sara and I have been friends for so long. I hope we can find a way to put it behind us.” I thought of Keith’s injuries. How could Sara ever forgive my daughter? In her place, I wasn’t sure I could.
“Mom, I just hurt so much!” she said. “I want to erase everything. The fire. Ben. Everything!”
“I’d love it if you could wipe all of that from your memory,” I said. “But you know what your father said to me one time?”
“What?”
“You know that my parents died when I was little, and then my aunt and uncle cut me out of their lives, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I tried, especially with my parents, not to think about them. To just keep going on with my life. Moving forward. Never looking back. And when I told your daddy that, he said that if you don’t think about your losses, they’d come back to bite you.”
“Bite you?” Maggie smiled. “That’s his exact words?”
“Yes, because I’ve never forgotten them, even if I haven’t always followed his advice. He meant that sometimes you just have to go through the pain.”
“So did you try to think about them?” she asked. “Your parents?”
“Not until I was in rehab. I cried buckets about them then. But the thing I learned was that you don’t just get over one loss and then you’re home free. Life keeps tossing them at you, and you have to learn how to handle them. How to keep going. Ben won’t be your last heartbreak, honey. But there’ll be wonderful experiences to make up for the hard times.”
My own eyes teared up at the thought of the hard times ahead of her. She read my mind.
“Will Andy still have a hearing?”
“I don’t know how that works, but he won’t be going to jail.”
“But I will be, won’t I.” It was a statement, not a question.
“I’m going to find an excellent lawyer for you. And I’ll be by your side the whole time, Maggie. I will.” I’d been so strong for her brother for fifteen years. I wanted to be strong for her, now. Finally. “I’m sorry for not being a better mother for you. You were so independent and Andy so dependent, that I sometimes forgot you needed me as much as he did.”
“I didn’t, though,” she said. “But I think I really do need you now.” She licked her lips and looked squarely into my eyes. “I know it looks like I set the fire, Mom,” she said. “I could tell Flip totally didn’t believe me.”
“No, I don’t think he does. But I believe you.”
“You do?”
I smiled. “Absolutely, sweetheart.”
There was so much I didn’t know about my daughter. At this point, I barely felt certain she wouldn’t burn a church with children inside. But one thing I did know with absolute certainty: she would never burn a church with Andy in it.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Marcus
ONE MORE TIME, I WAS IN A HOSPITAL room, this one hotter than blazes. I’d driven to Chapel Hill to tell Sara about Maggie’s confession; it was the kind of thing I didn’t want to say on the phone. I wasn’t sure about telling her with Keith there, but decided he had a right to know. Maybe a bigger right than any of us. I just didn’t want to be there when his rage hit. He’d been pissed off enough when he thought it was Andy who started the fire. When he found out it was Maggie, who had no mental handicap to use as an excuse…well, I wanted to be any place else.
But there I was, standing at the end of the bed while Sara adjusted the bulky bandage on the left side of Keith’s face.
“Maggie was having a relationship with Ben Trippett,” I began.
“No,” Sara argued, as though I had no idea what I was talking about. “Ben was with Dawn.”
“It looks like he was involved with both of them,” I said.
“Oh, no.” She sat down in the chair next to Keith’s bed. “Poor Dawn.”
“Maggie didn’t realize he was still seeing Dawn, though.” I came to my niece’s defense. I had the feeling I’d be doing a lot of that in the coming days. “He told her they’d broken up.”
Sara frowned. “That’s horrible,” she said. “And I thought Ben was so nice.”
“Why are we talking about Maggie’s pathetic love life?” Keith muttered. His right eye was squinched shut and he looked like he was in pain. Lines on his forehead. A deep crease in the peeling red skin between his eyebrows.
I went on to tell them how Ben was getting ragged on by the other firefighters for his claustrophobia. How Maggie had wanted to help him and how she’d been afraid he’d leave town if she didn’t. I said it all without emotion because my whole body felt like it’d gotten a massive shot of Novocain. I was numb all over. I couldn’t even get my lungs working right. It was hard to pull air in and out. I still couldn’t wrap my mind around Maggie doing it.
Neither could Sara, apparently. She wasn’t getting it.
“What does this have to do with the fire?” she asked.
I shifted from one numb foot to the other. Folded my arms across my chest. “Ben thought he finally had the claustrophobia thing under control,” I said, “but he needed a fire to prove himself. So—”
“You’re not saying Maggie set the fire?” Sara asked.
I nodded. “She confessed to it. But she didn’t mean for the kids to be there,” I added quickly. “Remember, the lock-in wasn’t—”
“I just don’t believe it!” Sara interrupted me. “Maggie wouldn’t do something like that. Could she be protecting Ben? Maybe he set it and she’s taking the fall?”
“Maggie wanted to help him,” I repeated. “She was so…hooked on him. So nuts about him. She wasn’t thinking straight.”
Sara’s face went white. She clasped a hand over her mouth like she was holding in a scream.
“She poured fuel around the church,” I said. “Andy helped her because…it’s a long story, but he didn’t know what he was doing. That’s how his prints got on the gas container.”
“Oh my God,” Sara nearly whispered. “I just can’t picture it. Little Miss Perfect. How could she hurt so many people?”
I couldn’t picture it either, and yet everything about Maggie’s story fit into place like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. All except her denial that she didn’t light the fire. It was like she looked up the law on the Internet and learned the charges against her wouldn’t be as bad if she didn’t actually burn the building down. I talked to her till I was blue in the face, trying to get her to own up to it, but she wouldn’t. I believed her because she was Maggie. And I didn’t believe her, because that part of her story just plain didn’t hold together.
“I don’t think she meant to hurt anyone,” I said.
“How can you say that? She burned down the church!” Sara had found her voice and, with it, her anger. The pallor in her face was gone now. Her cheeks were splotched with red, and I knew that, in a split second, she’d gone from loving Maggie to despising her. “She killed people!” she shouted.
“She swears she didn’t ignite the fuel,” I said. “She said once she saw the lock-in was moved to the church, she gave up the whole plan.”
“Oh, right,” Sara snapped. “Spontaneous combustion.”
“I know,” I said. “I don’t know what to make of it either.”
Keith had gone quiet in the last minute or so, and when I glanced at him, I saw tears running down his unbandaged cheek.
“Oh, baby!” Sara leaned forward, mopping his face with a tissue. “Oh, honey.”
“I thought it was all my fault.” Keith was just about sobbing. “I thought I did it.”
“What do you mean?” Sara asked. “How on earth could it have been your fault?”
It took a few seconds for him to catch his breath. “I was on the back porch of the church, getting ready to have a smoke,” he said. “I lit my cigarette, and when I threw the match on the ground, flames shot up. Massive flames. They blocked the back steps, so I ran back inside and then I was stuck in the fire, like everybody else. I thought it was my fault.”
“Oh, Keith.” Sara tried to hug his quivering shoulders. With the gigantic stiff bandages on his arms and hands, it must have felt like holding a block of wood. She pressed her face against his and I watched their tears mix together. “My poor baby,” she said. “All this time you were thinking you did it? It wasn’t your fault, honey. Not at all.”
I stood there watching, letting Keith’s words sink in. Sometimes relief feels like a trickle from a faucet. Other times, it’s a tidal wave. This was a tidal wave. My eyes burned. I could suddenly feel my arms. My legs. My lungs moved air in and out. My heartbeat was rock steady.
Maggie’d been telling the truth! There wasn’t much to celebrate about the whole damn mess, but just then, I felt like shouting for joy.
I called Flip from my pickup and told him to get someone up to Chapel Hill to take Keith’s statement. Then I stepped on the gas. I wanted to get back to Cape Fear. To the hospital and Laurel and Maggie. I wanted to see Andy. To see where we went from here.
People asked me why I’d never settled down. Never started a family. “Not my thing,” I’d say. Or “Just haven’t met the right woman.” I’d dated a fair amount. Lots of one-night stands. A few three-month-long relationships. Some six months. A couple lasted a year. But there was one good reason why I’d never settled down. Never started a family. I already had one.
Epilogue
Six months later
Andy
ISIT ON THE BENCH AT THE POOL WAITING for my turn. I don’t like swimming as much as I used to. I don’t win as much now that my startling reflex is gone, but Mom says I have to swim until Christmas. Then I can quit. Our new coach, KiKi, is a girl. Ben went to live with his wife in Charlotte. I cried at first because I missed him, but now I don’t remember what he looked like. Mom said I got so upset because he left right after Maggie did. It was like losing two people at once, she said.
I like a new girl on my swim team, so I watch her swim the butterfly that she does better than anyone. Uncle Marcus says I have to be extra careful about personal space now that I’m getting older. He’s not careful about it at all, though. Right now he’s sitting on the bleachers with his arm around Mom. Sometimes they kiss. The first time I saw them kiss I said, “Yuck! What are you doing?” Mom said I better get used to it, that there would be a lot more kissing from now on. But she meant her and Uncle Marcus. Not me. I’m not supposed to kiss anybody that’s not family.
I get to see Maggie every month. I like seeing her but not at the prison because the people are scary. Like the lady with the spider tattoos on her neck. Maggie shouldn’t be with them. She’s the best person and I won’t ever get why she has to be there. At least, I don’t get why me and my friend Keith aren’t there with her. Me and Maggie put the bug spray which was really car gas around the church. Keith threw a match and made it burn. If me and Maggie and Keith all had something to do with the fire, I don’t know why only Maggie is in jail, but that is what happened.
At night sometimes I think about how I can sneak her out. I told her about that the last time I went there and she laughed. “Oh, Panda, you’re a goofball!” She got real serious then and told me she belongs where she is. “I’ll get a second chance at life, but the three people who died in the fire only got one,” is what she said.
I have a big calendar on my corkboard wall, and every day I cross off is one day closer to having her home.
Then she can start her second chance.
Laurel
They took my daughter from me the week before her eighteenth birthday. They convicted her of attempted arson and obstruction of justice, and her lawyer was able to get involuntary manslaughter charges dropped. She was incredibly brave.
She’d done something terrible. Insane. I thought she needed counseling in
stead of incarceration, but it was not my opinion that mattered. I worry what she’ll be like at the end of twelve months in prison. How will she be different? The only thing I’m sure of is that I will be a very different sort of mother. I plan to smother her with love. She’ll be nineteen, but she’ll still be my beautiful little girl. And once I have her back in my arms, I’ll never, ever, let her go.
READER DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Empathy is a theme that runs throughout the book. Jamie’s mother talked about him having the “gift” of extreme empathy, being able to feel what others were feeling. Do you believe that some people have this gift and, if so, do you believe that Jamie had it? Maggie? Why or why not?
Discuss Maggie’s feeling that she could connect to her father’s spirit. Do you think she believed he was coming to her from “the other side”? How did her connection to him influence her actions? How did it influence her relationships with Laurel, Ben and Marcus?
Even though Andy was clearly the favored child, Maggie seemed to love him unconditionally and without resentment. Why do you think this was?
Maggie was an honors student with college plans and a bright future. What in her upbringing and personality allowed her to achieve so much? What in her upbringing and personality contributed to her falling so far?
Speculate as to why Jamie and Marcus were treated differently by their parents and the impact that treatment had on them and their relationship.
Were you able to remain sympathetic to Laurel during her postpartum depression and alcoholism? What other emotions did you feel toward her?
Do you think Laurel ever doubted Andy’s innocence? What do you think played into her assumptions and emotions? Could you relate to her desire to tamper with evidence to protect him? What would you have done in her place? Did you have doubts about his innocence yourself? Why or why not?
After learning that Keith had called Andy a “little rich boy,” Laurel worried that Sara might resent her wealth. Do you think Sara was resentful of Laurel? Discuss the dynamics in their friendship and how they changed—or didn’t change—over the years.