A Mother's Lie

by Sarah Zettel

  He let her go, slowly. It took everything Beth had not to jerk her arm back.

  “But that’s all in the past, isn’t it?” He graced her with one of his best smiles. “How about we leave it there? Time for a fresh start for the whole Bowen family. In fact, it’s our last chance.”

  Believe him, because no one will believe you.

  “How…how long has she been sick?”

  Dad shrugged. “Who knows? She doesn’t talk to me anymore. She barely even looks at me. It’s killing me, Star. She’s the only person I could ever really trust, and she’s in so much pain…and I can’t help her!”

  Tears—real tears—shone in Todd’s eyes. He scrubbed at them.

  “Please, Star. You know how hard this is. If it was just me, I would have said adios and go get ’em, tiger. But this is about your mother. She needs a doctor and some decent meds so she’s not screaming half the night. I need you to try—just try—to remember we are your parents. I mean, isn’t that what you’d want your daughter to do, if it was you?”

  Say yes. Do what he wants. It’s quicker that way. Don’t run. Don’t try…

  “Okay.” Beth’s throat felt thick with fear and all that ancient, calcified need. She swallowed. “Let’s go.”

  “Go?” Dad frowned. “Where?”

  Beth shrugged. “Wherever you’re staying. You just told me my mother’s dying of cancer. Practically bedridden, you said. I want to see her. I’ll get us a Lyft.” She brought out her phone. “Where are you staying again?”

  Todd hesitated. Beth watched him and felt a slow, warm triumph stretch underneath all the different layers of fear. Beth tried to will her heartbeat to slow. She needed to stay in control and show only the feeling that matched her words.

  “I’m not sure she’s going to want to see you, Star.” Dad picked up his spoon and rooted around in the depths of his chili bowl. “She’s pretty messed up. You know how she hates anyone to see her when…”

  “But this is different,” said Beth. “If she’s really sick, I need to be there. I can’t just hand you some money and say go away, can I? What kind of daughter would I be if I did that?”

  “Okay,” Todd said finally. “I didn’t think you’d want to, but okay. Can you give me that phone? I want to call, make sure she’s awake and let her know you’re coming back with me.” He paused. “Actually, she might even be happy about that. She’s missed you, you know.”

  Dad extended his hand for her phone. Beth hesitated. Probably the two of them had already agreed that if he called, Jeannie would hightail it back to whatever cheap motel or temporary rental dive they were staying at, so Beth would find her lying in bed, just like she was supposed to be.

  The screen flashed on, displaying the alert for a new text. Beth checked the time reflexively. Only four o’clock.

  Message from Chelsea.

  You need to be here, it said. And there was a photo with it. Clearly taken at a Starbucks. It showed a woman sitting at a table with her hands wrapped around a coffee cup.

  Anger burned, hot and dazzlingly bright, turning fear to ashes and then to hate.

  “On the other hand, Dad, we don’t need to bother. I know where Mom is.”

  “The fuck?” Todd frowned. “Star, what are you—”

  Beth didn’t wait for him to finish. She just grabbed her purse and ran for the door.

  When she reached it, she looked back, but just like last time, Todd was already gone.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “How can you say Mom was a criminal?” Dana demanded. “She was five!”

  “Four and three-quarters.” Jeannie scrabbled at her empty coffee cup with her perfect nails, turning and rattling it. Dana suddenly wanted to reach across the stupid little table and snatch the cup away. “She was very clear about that, and how she was going to kindergarten as soon as we were done ‘traveling.’ She looked forward to that for a long time,” Jeannie added softly. “Anyway. Yes, she was five, and then she grew up, and she helped her family out. A lot. She was sharp as a tack, and she could put on this totally innocent little face. Nobody who saw her believed she’d do anything wrong, at least not on purpose.”

  Sometimes, Dana felt like she could sense the difference in her own eyes, especially when she got mad. The brown one burned hotter. The green one saw sharper. She felt it now—a contained energy simmering inside her as she glared at this woman and all her stories.

  Jeannie stared right back—calm, a little tired, but ready to be patient.

  That was when Dana saw it.

  She didn’t guess at it or hope for it. She saw the shape of Mom’s face on this other woman. She saw the stiff way Mom held herself sometimes when she was trying not to let Dana know she was mad.

  She was telling the truth. This woman who called herself Jeannie Bowen was Deborah Ann Watts. Dana’s grandmother.

  All at once, that sickening, familiar off-balance feeling hit her, the same one she had when she’d sat all buckled into her father’s car, listening to him explain how it would be too difficult to tell his kids she was their sister.

  Because Mom must have known about how often and how easily Jeannie changed her name, but she never said that. She only told Dana about the one name—and it just happened to be the name that was least likely to have an internet trail.

  Dana shoved her hands under the table and clamped them between her knees. She did not want Jeannie—Grandma Jeannie—to see how bad she was shaking.

  But just like with Mom, it didn’t do any good.

  “You okay, Dana? I know this is a lot—”

  Dana didn’t let her finish. “So, you’re saying Mom did what, exactly? She shoplifted?” She hoped she sounded blasé, but there was no way to tell.

  Jeannie shrugged. “Lifted, carried, kept a lookout—whatever we needed. She wanted to do her part for the family. And Christ, did she love it when she helped with a big score. Lit up like a Christmas tree.”

  Jeannie stopped again, as if she just noticed what she was saying and who she was talking to. “She was little, Dana,” she said quickly. “When you’re a little kid, you only know about right and wrong because of what people tell you, and her dad told her—we told her—it was all okay.”

  Dana looked around her. Everything was…normal. People typed on laptops and phones. The baristas called out names and orders. The air smelled like coffee and sugar. Nobody else was getting their mind blown. Nobody even noticed.

  Except Chelsea, of course. Chelsea was glaring at her and seriously pissed off. Dana could tell that she was not going to hang around for much longer.

  Dana looked at her phone. It was already 4:15. She needed to be done, in case Mom checked up on her or came home early. And by the time Mom did come home, Dana needed to be done feeling this—whatever the hell this weird mix of confused and scared and hopeful and sick all at once was—because Mom would see something was wrong in a hot second.

  “Dana, I mean it.” Jeannie ducked her head, trying to catch Dana’s eye. “Nothing that happened was your mom’s fault or her idea. It was just the way things were.”

  “You still haven’t told me why you ran out on her.”

  Jeannie sighed. “Okay, okay. It’s not…it’s not pretty, all right? By the time she came along, me and Todd—your grandfather—we’d been living off the books for years. When we were young, it was a whole big rebel-rebel thing. We wasn’t gonna be no slaves to ‘da man’!” She flipped both middle fingers up. “But after a while…we just didn’t know how else to live. So, we hustled, whatever and however we could. And when you live like that, eventually you get into some heavy shit.”

  “Like what? Drugs or something?”

  “Well, pills anyway. You know this whole ‘opioid crisis’ thing?” Jeannie made the air quotes. “It was just cranking into high gear back then. So, what Todd and I did was drive around to different clinics in different small towns, mostly down around southern Tennessee and Georgia, sometimes up as far as Kentucky or over to Pennsylvania. Anyway
, when we found the right kind of clinic, we’d go in and tell them about this pain or that. They’d fill out some paperwork and hand over the pills. Then we’d take the pills and sell them to people in places where the local pharmacist maybe wasn’t quite so flexible.”

  Dana didn’t know what to say. She flashed on a memory of Chelsea’s half brother and his scuzzy bandmates. They had this buddy named Ashton. He looked like he’d just walked out of a Lands’ End catalogue and carried a whole backpack stuffed full of these little baggies. She remembered the band gathering around, typing in payments on their phones, or yanking wads of cash out of their jeans and practically drooling as he tossed them the pills.

  One time Ashton walked up to her and dangled a baggie full of pink and yellow capsules in front of her face. Take as many as you want. He laughed. Then we can all have some fun.

  He stopped laughing when Dana stuffed the whole thing into the garbage disposal. Then, he came after her. That was when they all found out Chelsea had been telling the truth about the shank she’d made from a glass nail file.

  “It was a lousy way to make a living,” Jeannie said. “I hated it. Hustling the losers and playing cards wasn’t great, but it was better than, well, that. But Todd…you know, he pointed out it was steady money. We could finally stay put and even get a real apartment in a nice town. Abrahamsville. It had white picket fences and, like, seven different churches and all that small-town stuff. Star—Beth—your mom…she could stay in school. So, you know, I kinda stopped arguing.

  “It was good for a while,” Jeannie said. “For a long while, actually. But then Todd did what he does and screwed up somebody else’s operation. And when Todd wouldn’t pay…this guy—he threatened your mother.”

  Memories flashed through Dana. She remembered Mom’s voice—hard and sad and bitter—but she couldn’t hear the words. Why can’t I hear? She remembered the pain in her head, and sitting up, and seeing Mom kicking the pink-hands man like she was never going to stop. None of it had anything to do with what Jeannie was telling her, but it was all there just the same.

  “We didn’t know what to do,” Jeannie said. “It wasn’t like we could tell the cops or anything. So, we sent Star back to her grandmother’s and went on the run. We were going to go back and get her. I swear to God we were, but we couldn’t. It just about destroyed me. I curled up into a ball and cried for hours. But this guy…if he’d found her, he would have killed her. Staying away was the only way to protect her. I thought she understood. I…”

  Jeannie swallowed hard. Her eyes glistened.

  A phone started ringing, loud and jagged.

  Jeannie wiped at her face. “Anyway, the thing was, we’d been on the road so long we didn’t know my mother was dead. So, your mom probably thought we’d just packed her off back to an empty trailer with no way to get hold of us.”

  That phone was still ringing. Dana realized the noise was coming from Jeannie’s side of the table.

  “It was all so screwed up…and…well, I told myself she’d be better off on her own.” Jeannie’s smile was thin and bitter. “Looks like I was right.”

  The phone was still ringing.

  “Are you gonna get that?” Dana asked, which was way easier than thinking about anything she’d just heard.

  “I know who it is.” But Jeannie pulled the tiny no-brand flip phone out of her pocket anyway. “And I was right,” she said, but she frowned at whatever she saw on the screen.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Oh, I’m just not where I’m supposed to be. Like you, I bet.”

  Dana didn’t answer.

  “I’m not blaming you or anything. I can just imagine what your mother would say if she knew…All the same, I was hoping…”

  “What?”

  “I really was hoping you’d talk to her for me. Tell her I’m here and—”

  Dana cut her off. “Why are you here? Why now?”

  “I wanted to make peace, or at least say I’m sorry.”

  “What about your…my…”

  “Your grandfather? Yeah, well, he’s still pretty angry.”

  “What’s he got to be angry about?”

  “You have to understand about Todd…Family is absolutely everything to him.” The phone was ringing again, but Jeannie kept talking. “And because he cares so much, he has a tough time thinking clearly about it. The way he sees it, your Mom should have waited for us, or she should have tried to find us. When she didn’t…he swore he’d never forgive her.”

  The ringing finally stopped. “So, is that him?” Dana nodded toward Jeannie’s phone.

  “Yeah. It is.” Jeannie didn’t even bother to check the screen. “Listen, I’m out of time. If you do figure out how to tell your mom about us, tell her that I just want to talk to her, like we’re talking right now. Maybe we can…come together. As a family, I mean. And even if we can’t, at least we tried, right?” Her smile was shy. She desperately wanted Dana to agree.

  And Dana wanted to. She was surprised how much. She wanted just one thing about this whole conversation to be simple. But it wasn’t. “I’ve got one question.”

  “Make it quick. I need…” Jeannie bit her lip. “Well, make it quick.”

  “Why’d you stay Jeannie Bowen? You said you mostly did. If you were in that much trouble, why not hide better?”

  Jeannie’s perfectly kept hands clenched into fists. “Because,” she whispered. “I wanted to be sure if your mom ever did want to find me again, she could.”

  Dana swallowed around all the feeling welling up in her throat. She couldn’t have said anything even if she knew what she should say. She reached toward Jeannie.

  But Jeannie didn’t notice. She was looking over Dana’s shoulder, toward the windows.

  “Shit.”

  Dana twisted around. On the sidewalk outside, a tanned, aging man in a plaid shirt and Cubs cap squinted through the glass.

  Jeannie was on her feet. “Just stay in here until we’re gone, okay, Dana? And please, if you can only tell your mom just one thing, tell her…I’m trying to leave him.”

  Before Dana could say anything, Jeannie was pushing past the tables toward the door. Dana scrambled out of her chair, trying to follow, but Chelsea got in her way.

  “What the hell?” Chelsea demanded. Over her shoulder, Dana saw Jeannie push through the door. Right away, the man in the plaid shirt started yelling. Jeannie held up both hands, answering back, trying to calm him down.

  He grabbed Jeannie by the arm.

  Dana dodged around Chelsea and bolted for the door.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Beth was still in the cab when four thirty came. She yanked her phone out of her purse.

  No text from Dana. Nothing at all.

  She hit the number on speed dial and pressed the phone tight against her ear. It rang, and it kept on ringing.

  “Where are you, Dana?” She gripped the door handle, the cracked vinyl turning instantly damp and sticky under her palm. “Where are you?”

  She desperately wished for the traffic to clear and for the cab to go faster, to be home. All the things Jeannie and Todd could do, would do, had done poured through her mind. Except this time, the girl trapped in those jumbled nightmares and memories was Dana.

  Dana going hungry. Dana sliding shoplifted junk under her jacket. Dana pouring out tears and babbling at security guards or men in the bars while her father got away.

  Dana with the shotgun in her hands while the old man stared at her, suddenly so pathetic and so very confused.

  The cab swung around the corner to the shouts of a pedestrian and a blaring horn.

  “This is close enough.” Beth shoved two twenties into the taxi’s cash slot and scrambled out into the street.

  But she was too late. There was Todd. He’d beaten her here—to her block, practically her building. While she’d been running down the sidewalk frantically flagging down a cab, he’d had a car waiting. He’d known just where he needed to be.

  Now h
e was screaming at a thin woman in front of him who cringed and put both hands up, pleading for calm.

  Recognition slammed adrenaline through Beth.

  That was her mother, backing away from her father.

  Beth barged across the street, ignoring the traffic and the frustrated horn blasts.

  Because there was Dana, ducking out of the coffee shop with Chelsea right behind her.

  Stop her. Save her.

  Stop Dana before they caught her. Save her from the sick, heavy storm of the past.

  Beth was within earshot of her father’s ranting now.

  “What are you even doing here?!” Todd roared. People hurried past, but people also gathered in the Starbucks window and pulled out their phones. “You said you were too sick to move!”

  “I was. But, you know, I started feeling better and…”

  “And you lied to me! I’m out there practically on my knees trying to get her to believe you’re sick so she’ll finally give us some help, and you were lying to me the whole time!”

  “Stop it!” screamed Dana.

  In that same instant, Beth reached her. She grabbed Dana’s shoulders and yanked her backward. Dana shrieked and spun, then saw who it was.

  Beth stared into Dana’s outraged eyes.

  “No! I wasn’t lying. I…It was just today!” cried Jeannie. Her voice shook.

  Jesus, Jesus—she sounds just the same.

  Dana pulled out of Beth’s hands, spinning back toward her grandparents.

  “She’s our granddaughter!” pleaded Jeannie. “I just wanted to talk to her, and you wouldn’t…what was I supposed to do? I swear I didn’t ever want to lie to you, but I had to—”

  Todd hit her.

  It was like lightning—the blur of motion, the sick, familiar sound of fist against bone and a sudden scream. In an eyeblink, Jeannie was on her back. Her skull cracked hard against the sidewalk.

  Dana screamed and dropped to her knees beside her grandmother. More people on the sidewalk stopped. More phones came out—people held them up to record the event, or held them to their ears to call 911.