She pushed away from the table.
“Goodbye, Mama,” she said, addressing Verna but not making a move to hug her or kiss her. Why should she do that now when she’d never done it before? Mama’s illness didn’t change a thing.
“He’s gone,” Verna whispered, hand outstretched.
“Who’s gone?” Jo asked.
“The bird,” her mother said sharply, looking angry. Then she set her chin on her chest and closed her eyes, seeming readier to nap than to eat.
“Verna and I, we’re going to have such a lovely time together, aren’t we?” Irma insisted, patting Verna’s shoulder this time. “Perhaps after lunch, we can go see a movie. You’ll drive, won’t you, darlin’? I don’t seem to have my keys.”
Jo sighed, giving up.
She went to the elevator, trying to remember the passcode so she could get out. It was always something easy, like 1234*—simple for the visitors, but impossible for the patients to recall when they tried to escape now and then.
Adam was waiting for her by the car.
She hadn’t asked him to come with her, but he’d wanted to. He’d even offered to go upstairs to see Mama. While Jo had so appreciated the offer, it would have made things more awkward, not less.
“How is she?” he said, holding the door open for her as she approached. “You weren’t in there for long.”
“Oh, I was,” Jo remarked. “Long enough.”
She had her belt on when he eased himself behind the wheel of his Jeep, and he reached over to squeeze her hand before he started the car.
“Where do you want to go?” he asked. “Anything you want to do?”
They had each taken some PTO so they could spend the day together.
“A museum, maybe?” he suggested when she didn’t answer. “A nice cool movie theater? We can sit and neck in the back row.”
“A movie?” Jo smiled. “But we might run into Mama and her new pal,” she said, having to explain when he didn’t get it.
“If it’s okay with you,” she told him, “I just want to go home.”
He didn’t respond, merely pulled the car out of the garage and headed north on the freeway, back to Plainfield.
Adam had an old CD in the player and cranked it up loud. Jo recognized the notes in the intro even before Geddy Lee started to sing. She knew it was Rush’s “Fly by Night,” having listened to the song often enough before. Adam belted the lyrics at the top of his lungs. They spoke of knowing when it was time to stop trying, time to leave, and start a new life, to move on.
Jo felt a tug in her heart, like the words were instructions. She and Hank had closed a rough case. She should be feeling lighter now, shouldn’t she? Knowing she’d done her part in getting justice for Kelly Amster. The Dallas County District Attorney had filed sexual assault charges against Robert Eldon Junior, and she’d heard they were considering charging Trey with complicity in Kelly’s rape. Trey’s entire posse was facing prison time for animal cruelty, which was the least that they deserved.
Though it didn’t look like the DA was seeking to punish Barbara Amster, they were still debating going after Cassie Marks for cyberbullying.
Jo made herself take a deep breath and exhale. Let it go, she told herself. She didn’t want to dwell on the darkness anymore.
Despite the blowing AC, she rolled down her window a crack, craving the warm wind on her skin and in her hair. She needed to feel something moving, not stillness, as she closed her eyes and leaned her head back.
She listened to Adam’s voice, so happily out of tune, and she focused on that, on remembering Jill Burns’s tear-stained and smiling face when she was reunited with Tucker; on the memorial service that Kelly’s school had held for her in a packed auditorium, with the principal asserting to the heavens, “We will not forget you.”
Jo hung on to those thoughts, the weight on her chest easing. She didn’t open her eyes again until they were home.
As soon as she exited the Jeep, she spotted mail sticking out of the box on her porch railing, something in a big white envelope. While she unlocked the door to let them in, Adam picked it up for her. He tossed it onto the skinny console as they entered, though the big white envelope slipped to the ground. Ernie spotted it instantly, racing over to bat at it, pushing it around the wood floor as though it were a toy.
“Hey, that’s mine,” Jo said and picked it up, squinting at the unfamiliar return address until she realized it wasn’t really unfamiliar after all.
It was from the lawyer that Ronnie had sent her to, the one helping her go through the legal end of Mama’s life, sorting out the insurance policies, her savings, and the pension still trickling in from the man who’d ruined Jo’s life. They were working to get Jo power of attorney, too, so she could make more decisions and ensure there was money enough coming in to cover all of Mama’s expenses.
Ernie followed her to the sofa as she slid a finger beneath the gummed flap. As large as the envelope was, she expected documents requiring her attention, something with those tiny Post-its indicating the pages to be signed or initialed.
Instead, there was a handwritten note:
Found these in your mother’s papers and thought you’d want them.
Them being old birthday cards, clearly meant for a little kid.
The first was for a five-year-old, a big green frog on the outside and a bad poem about leaping forward a year on the inside, along with an unfamiliar scribble.
Dear Jo Jo, it read. Happy fifth birthday. I wish I was there. Love you, Daddy.
She opened up another, this for A Princess Turning Six! There was a similar scrawled note within: I miss you. I love you. I wish I was there.
Jo couldn’t breathe.
She couldn’t move.
Something tugged inside her chest, and she let out a whimper. Then Adam was beside her, asking if she was all right, but she wasn’t.
“What is it?” he was asking.
“Birthday cards,” she told him, her voice sounding so strange, “from my father.”
“You hadn’t seen them before?”
She shook her head, biting her lip, remembering all the times Mama had angrily responded, “Daddy left us, Jo Anna! He doesn’t love us anymore. Don’t you get it?” whenever she’d asked, “Where’s my daddy? Why isn’t he here?”
Her father had taken off before she’d turned five. Mama had remarried just after she’d turned six. Those two birthdays and the year that connected them had changed her life forever. They were to her what Trey’s party had been for Kelly: a monumental turning point. Nothing was the same thereafter. She was not the same thereafter.
She’d been cast into her own living hell, just like Kelly. The only difference between them was that Kelly had jumped to end it.
Jo had held on.
“Can I take a look?” Adam asked.
She handed the cards to him, watched his eyes as he read, saw the questions in them as he looked at her again. “Why would your mother keep these if she was never going to show them to you?”
“I don’t know,” Jo started to say, but that wasn’t entirely true. A soft breath escaped her. “She didn’t want me to know that he was out there somewhere, missing me. She wanted to cut him off, to punish him, because he’d let her down . . .”
“How?” Adam asked.
This time, Jo answered, “I don’t know,” and it was the truth.
“They didn’t approve of him . . . Your mother’s parents. They didn’t like him one little bit.”
She took the cards from Adam and read them over again, and all she could think was that her mother had lied. And if Mama had deceived her with something as small as birthday cards, what else had she kept hidden?
“What do you want to do?” Adam asked.
Jo shook her head. She reached back into the envelope the cards had come in, hoping to find something else. There was no way to ascertain a return address. Though, the cards had been mailed so long ago, her father could have moved by now—several time
s, in fact.
“Have you ever thought of finding him?”
“Oh, God, so many times, when I was younger,” she said. “When I still hoped he’d come rescue me, take me away. But then”—she paused, sucked a deep breath in before she finished—“I gave up on him. I just quit.”
Adam squeezed her arm gently. “Whatever you decide, I’m with you,” he said, and Jo leaned her head against his arm.
“Thank you.”
She was not alone, she told herself. She didn’t have to be afraid of looking back, of learning all the things she didn’t know. Maybe it was time she acknowledged more about herself than just what her stepfather had done and what her mother had ignored. Maybe it was time to find out the truth about who her father was, what she’d meant to him, and him to her.
Do or do not . . . there is no try.
She thought of Kelly Amster again, and she wondered if the girl had felt such a distance from her own father. She doubted Barbara Amster had done a single thing to remedy it. Instead, she had given Kelly one less person to love who could love her back, just as Mama had done with Jo and her daddy.
That, in itself, was unforgiveable, as messed up as claiming to love a child and then calling her hateful names “for her own good.”
Jo held on to Adam’s hand, squeezing her eyes closed, trying so hard to remember a face that her memory blurred. She hardly knew what he looked like, not with Mama having cut him from their photographs. Jo had so very little of him to cling to. Or did she?
“He had very dark eyes and dark hair, much like yours.”
Irma’s words worked their way into her head again, unsettling her as much as they gave her a part of herself, a piece that had been long missing.
“He kept it short, of course. He had to, so no one would know.”
So no one would know what?
Maybe it meant nothing. Maybe it was more nonsensical talk from a woman too far gone to know the difference. Still, it was time, Jo realized, to get some answers.
What if she was that invisible bird Mama had seen, sitting on a branch, before it flew away? Her wings weren’t clipped anymore.
Mama couldn’t hold her back now.
No one could.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
We live in rough times, where kindness can often seem distant, but there is always someone willing to listen and help. Please do not suffer in silence. If you or anyone you know is being victimized or needs emotional support, there are resources out there to assist you. All you have to do is reach out:
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1-800-656-4673
The Trevor Project: 1-866-488-7386
Loveisrespect: 1-866-331-9474
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.”
—Helen Keller
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you, as always, to Christina Hogrebe for your unflagging belief in me and my work. I am so fortunate to have you guiding my career.
Thanks also to Megha Parekh and to Jacque Ben-Zekry for being Jo Larsen’s cheerleaders (and Kjersti Egerdahl!). It has been a wonderful journey thus far, and I look forward to more adventures with Jo to come!
Merci beaucoup, once again, to Caitlin Alexander, for being such a vigilant reader and developmental editor. You push the bar ever higher with your invaluable insight.
A big hug to everyone at Thomas & Mercer and Amazon Publishing who have been so supportive: Sarah Shaw, Gracie Doyle, Laura Barrett, Oisin O’Malley, Laura Costantino, Gabrielle Guarnero, and the rest of the magnificent crew. You seriously rock.
To my friends who listen to me gripe about deadlines: What would I do without you? Ditto my amazing family, who puts up with my odd hours and exhaustion and brain drain throughout the year as I work. I am beyond blessed.
And to the readers who have fallen in love with Jo and cheered her on, thank you so much. I hope I never let you—or her—down.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2015 Sarah Crowder
Susan McBride is the USA Today bestselling author of the Debutante Dropout Mysteries and the River Road Mysteries. The debut of her Jo Larsen series, Walk Into Silence, was a #1 Kindle bestseller in the US and the UK, and #3 in Australia. She has penned three women’s fiction titles: The Truth About Love & Lightning, Little Black Dress, and The Cougar Club. She has also chronicled her bout with breast cancer in the short memoir In the Pink: How I Met the Perfect (Younger) Man, Survived Breast Cancer, and Found True Happiness After Forty. Susan lives in Saint Louis, Missouri, with her husband and daughter.
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