He shook his head. “Not this time, but no more.”
“Okay,” I agreed and turned my head to the trees we passed.
“That thing’s pretty important to you, huh?” He nodded toward the box on my lap.
“Yeah,” was all I said. I couldn’t explain it to him because I couldn’t yet explain it to myself, but Hilary was right. The board was telling me things I needed to know. I just had to be brave enough to listen.
“What’d you do to your hand?” he asked, nodding toward the red line on the fat of my palm where Hilary, Amelia and I had last run the straight edge for our ritual.
“It’s nothing,” I said.
“Doesn’t look like nothing. Looks sore.”
“We’re blood sisters.”
He nodded and looked back at the road.
I couldn’t tell him that sometimes I ran the straight edge along the thin red line when I was at home too. While my mother was downstairs, her eyes moving left and right over the words inside her Bible, praising God.
Officer Marquette pulled his police car into my driveway and lifted my bike out of the trunk. “There you go,” he’d said and leaned it toward me.
When I took it from him he’d placed his palm on my shoulder and I’d felt the same heat as the night in my kitchen.
“We’ve got a deal, right?” he asked. “No more visits to the railcar.”
His hand had been warm, comforting as a blanket fresh out of the dryer. I’d dropped my bike and ran for the house.
He’d looked at my hand again today. Not everything in childhood gets left behind.
Chapter Twelve
I ate dinner with my mother a few times a month, usually on Thursday nights because then I didn’t interfere with her Bible class or scripture study or Jerk-offs for Jesus or whatever the hell religious group she was into that week. It wasn’t her cooking or her company that kept me coming back. It was guilt. She was, after all, my mother, even though she’d sucked at the job. But my mother had no friends. She’d never joined the PTA or shared stories about her kids over a bake sale table like other mothers. Sunday mornings after Mass she was in charge of coffee hour. Parishioners sipped their Maxwell House and licked the sugary remains of jelly donuts from their fingers. They’d nod when she passed, but I never heard anyone speak to her. She said it was because she was bi-racial, which was worse than being one or the other because no one knew where you belonged. And she may have been partly right, because what I’ve found is that kids don’t see the color of a person’s skin the way adults do. I know that because of the way Amelia’s mother always left me on the porch and every time Duane Wainwright looked at me, he scrunched his face like he had a mosquito up his nose, but Hilary and Amelia never mentioned the fact that I was black and they were white. I don’t think they noticed.
People stayed clear of my mother because she was a different breed, not because she was of mixed race. She was cultish about her faith and avoided because of it. She was so afraid of being like my grandmother, who’d had what they called the gift, that she buried her head in her Bible and begged for redemption. She kept herself closed off from the outside world and I think the world liked that just fine.
“Are you coming?” I asked Ben.
“Do I have to?”
“No, but I’d like it if you did.”
“Red Sox are on at eight,” he said.
“She has a television.”
He sank deeper into the couch and wrapped his arms over his head having run out of excuses.
“Forget it,” I said. “I don’t care.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. But you owe me.” I leaned over and gave him an upside down kiss on the mouth.
“I’d like a little more of that.”
“Play your cards right. I’ll be home early.”
I stopped at the general store in the center of Millers Falls to pick up dessert. The screen door creaked as I swung it wide and the familiar sound produced an image of Hilary, Amelia and me. The three of us barefoot, a thin layer of dirt clinging to our sweaty skin as we headed for the penny candy case. Squirrel Nuts, Bit-O-Honey and Mint Juleps; my mouth watered at the memory. The candy case had long been replaced with pies and cakes from the kitchen of Mrs. Wheaton, the new owner. The shelves were now dust free and stocked with jars of pesto and cellophane packages of gluten-free pasta. Goat cheese and soy milk lined the refrigerator. The phrase “You can lead a horse to water” came to mind.
I chose a black forest torte and watched Mrs. Wheaton wrap the white box with red and white string that she pulled from an overhead coil. She tied a knot and snipped the string, leaving the other end dangling like a snake above her head. The door creaked, signaling the arrival of a new customer. I turned, curious, and stared into the face of J.D. Dobbs. He looked at me as though trying to place where he’d seen me before and I spun around quickly back to Mrs. Wheaton.
“Ten dollars and ninety-five cents,” she said.
I saw her lips move, but couldn’t hear her over my heart. I wondered if he would remember me from Gritty’s or if seeing a black woman in Millers Falls just might conjure up an older memory, or maybe he already knew exactly who I was. I fumbled with my wallet and my credit card slid across the top of the glass case. I wanted out of there before any connection, recent or past, came to mind. I could hear him breathing behind me and felt his eyes on my back. I signed my receipt, grabbed the bakery box by its red and white string and headed for the door.
“Camel filters,” I heard him say and my stomach twisted.
I considered driving straight home to collapse onto the couch beside Ben. Instead, I turned onto Elmwood Court and passed the Donahues’ doublewide, where cars of their past and future resided on blocks. I passed the Swifts’ once aqua blue ranch house that had just been renovated into a two-story and, to the pleasure of the neighbors, painted white. Most of the residents of Millers Falls were on a never-ending mission of rural renewal and every time I came to visit it looked a little better. I passed four more houses in varying stages of recovery before pulling into my mother’s driveway. Gravel crunched beneath my tires and I slowed to a stop, still shaken. It was hard to spend time in the forest green split-level with so many mixed memories floating through the carpeted hallways and up the dark wooden stairs. I’d spent a considerable amount of time alone in this house, eighteen years to be exact. Hiding from a bullying brother and planting myself in front of a mother whose Bible blocked her view. Yet here I was back again—persistent or stupid, you pick.
I took a minute, as I always did before going inside, reminding myself that I was doing the right thing even if my mother hadn’t. I’d come to terms with the fact that she was a surface parent. I saw them every day in court. Parents who won’t set aside their own interests to be involved in the lives of their children; if the kids are breathing, sleeping and going to school, things are okay. No need to follow up on the reason Johnny has cat scratches on his forearms when they don’t own a cat or why Sally never joins the family for a meal, but devours cartons of ice cream alone at night in the dark. Or in our case, why Jarod got picked up every other weekend for defacing public property or expelled from school for smoking pot or why I felt safer in the company of my friends than in the midst of my family. Each time a policeman escorted Jarod home, my mother would shake her head teary-eyed then pick up her Bible and disappear behind her closed bedroom door. Maybe things would have gone better if she’d have sat down and told Jarod and me how she felt instead of whispering to God in solitude. I took the dessert from the seat beside me and approached the house.
“You didn’t have to bring anything,” my mother said, taking the white bakery box from my hand.
“I was just trying to save you the trouble.”
“Taking care of a home has never been any trouble for me,” she said over he
r shoulder as she headed for the kitchen.
I kept my mouth shut and followed her down the dimly lit hallway past the array of Jesus décor that hung on the wall: The Road to Damascus, The Crown of Thorns, The Garden of Gethsemane.
My mother set a meatloaf in the center of a plastic tablecloth that covered the same wooden table I’d eaten at all my life. “I was thinking of inviting Jarod for dinner next week,” she said.
My heart did a belly flop and I made a mental note to be busy the next time she called. I opened the refrigerator and took out a Budweiser. I’d always found it odd that my mother drank a case of beer a week considering her devotion to God. Somehow the two didn’t gel.
“I’d like to have you both here.”
“Not gonna happen, Ma.” I twisted the top and took a long swallow.
“Just once I want both my children here together. You can’t do that for me?”
I wanted to make some comment about all she’d done for me. Instead, I said, “I’ll think about it.”
“That’s what you always say and it never works out. I want Ben here too.”
“Ben’s schedule is even tougher than mine. I’ll see what I can do,” I told her with absolutely no intention of attending.
The meatloaf was dry and required a second beer to wash it down. Through dinner I steered the conversation toward a couple of cases I was working on and listened to her rant and rave about not understanding how parents can neglect their children. Over coffee and dessert she talked about the starving children in Africa and how sinful it was that I’d spent money on a three-layer torte, all the while shoving a chocolate-laden fork into her mouth. Christian hypocrisy, the soil from which I grew.
As soon as the dishes were washed, dried and back in the cupboard, I made up an early morning meeting and was on the road to home, full of undigested food and disappointment. All in all, a real enjoyable evening.
Chapter Thirteen
The weekend arrived on the back of a frustrating Friday. A mother brought in on charges of abuse had convinced the judge of her sincerity regarding counseling and turning her life around and I watched her walk away with her daughter at her side. I’d have sooner seen her fry than get that child back. The only other news, and I wasn’t sure if it should be rated as good or bad, was that Amelia had set up a lunch date with Dobbs. So much for phone sex, but even she admitted that she was more convincing in person and as long as they met in a public place she’d be okay. We’d decided dinner was off limits because of the expectation that would accompany it. I had to give her credit. I could never have sat across from him without giving in to the urge to wrap my fingers firmly around his throat.
Marquette called and said he was running a background check on Dobbs. If we were going to have him picked up and charged with an eighteen-year-old rape, we needed as much information to discredit him as possible in order to make it stick. I didn’t like the idea of using Amelia, but Ben had an acute distaste for PIs. Ever since he’d lost a case due to the testimony of a private investigator, he regarded them and their work as slithering and underhanded. In some instances I could agree with that description, but Marquette was in another class.
Amelia showed up Saturday morning at eleven o’clock, an hour before she was to meet Dobbs. She looked pale sliding onto the kitchen stool beside me and I noticed that her hand trembled as she lifted a cup of chamomile tea to her lips.
She gave me a half smile. “Just nerves, nothing a Black Russian won’t take care of.”
“Are you sure you can do this?”
She shrugged. “No, but I’m going to try. It’s the least I can do.”
“Hey,” Ben said, coming into the kitchen, his gray T-shirt sweatstained from a morning run. He tossed the newspaper and a bag of bagels onto the counter then turned to Amelia. “You ready?”
“As much as I can be.”
“I’m sorry this is falling on you,” he said to her, then shot me a look like I was putting her up to it.
She checked her watch. “I’ve gotta go.”
“Remember, back here immediately afterward,” I told her.
“I know,” she said and kissed my cheek.
And suddenly I didn’t want her to leave. My heart caught in my chest and I had to fight the urge to grab her before she walked away. I was sure as I watched her close the door that this was a bad idea. Within an hour, I had a searing migraine, confirming my gut.
I heard Ben turn on the shower and paced around the apartment holding Stitch under my arm, absently chewing on a sesame seed bagel, ignoring the seeds that dropped onto the hardwood floor. I checked my email to see if there was any news from Nick, but only the usual junk appeared in my in-box.
Why the hell would Dobbs come back to a place where he’d committed a crime? Who in their right mind would risk that, unless of course they’d left something behind? Only something really incriminating or really valuable could entice anyone back to Millers Falls, Maine. Rural was an understatement. Empty, dead and offensive were the adjectives I’d used to describe the town when asked, but I was prejudiced. It was a haven for rednecks and bikers and there are still enough of them around to make sure the rest of us don’t forget where the town got its roots and ultimately, where loyalty lies.
People always raised their eyebrows when I told them I’d grown up there. “You don’t look like you’re from Millers Falls,” they’d say. I liked to think they said that because I’m a well-educated lawyer and not because I’m black, but the truth is when my parents moved us to Maine from New York they’d said the reason was to get us out of the city. So even though Portland was a lot more colorful, Millers Falls offered the quiet country life they’d wanted. At least that was what I’d believed until my dad took off. I figured out then that he hadn’t known what he wanted, but whatever it was, it wasn’t us.
These days the town is struggling to find new footing. It recently received state funding for an elementary school and a junior high, although high school students are still bused out to Edgewater and the nearby private school for those who can afford it. I might never have become as close with Hilary as I did if it weren’t for the busing. Nobody wanted to sit beside a Wainwright or a black girl, so no matter how crowded the bus was, we were always assured a seat together. I never took any grief for being the only black kid on the school bus, which always surprised me a little. Millers Falls isn’t the most liberal town in the state. But I was Hilary’s friend and messing with me would have meant messing with Hilary and nobody messed with the Wainwrights.
The shower was still running so I dialed Nick’s cell. “Anything yet?” I asked when he picked up.
“Are you going to be one of those demanding, never-satisfied clients that calls me every half-hour?”
“Probably,” I said.
“Good, just as long as I know. I’ve got some minor stuff so far,” he said. “Dobbs used to live in Millers Falls.”
“How could he have lived in Millers Falls? We’d have known him, everyone knows everyone.”
“He’s got at least eight years on you. By the time you were old enough to notice, he was long gone. I followed him to the 7-Eleven last night. Went in and came out half an hour later with a pack of cigarettes. Seemed like a long time to buy smokes so it didn’t surprise me when he went back again at closing and picked up the cashier, who is half his age by the way. They drove to an apartment on Stephens Avenue. He stayed there all night. Car in the driveway is registered to a Brittany Stewart.”
“Who’s that?”
“I’m guessing it’s the cashier.”
> “If Dobbs is getting it on with some teenage cashier that means he’s not pursuing Amelia for a relationship. You think he knew who we were at Gritty’s the other night?” I asked.
“Maybe, or he just wanted a one-nighter.”
“He’s already asked her out again. She’s having lunch with him now.”
“Still doesn’t mean he knows who she is, just that he doesn’t believe in monogamy.”
My stomach did a somersault. “Anything else?” I asked.
“I’ve got his home address. The home he grew up in anyway. Name’s still on the mailbox.”
“Don’t knock on any doors yet. I don’t want him thinking anything’s out of the norm.”
“I know how it works, Cecily. I’ve been doing this awhile.”
I felt my face flush and was glad he wasn’t in front of me to see it. “Sorry,” I said.
“No problem.” His voice was soft. “This hits close to home for you. It’s not going to be easy.”
I nodded, knowing he understood better than anyone.
“Think he was homeschooled,” Nick went on. “There’s no record of education until high school.”
“Millers Falls doesn’t have a high school.”
“Edgewater does, that’s where he went.”
“That’s where we all went.”
“Like I said, he was long gone by then. Mother died four years ago, cancer. It’s all too coincidental. I think you’re right about him courting Amelia for a reason.”
“Courting?” I laughed. “You’re showing your age.”
“Does doing work for you?”
“Now your testosterone’s leaking.”
“It’s been a while.”
“Sorry, I can’t help.”
“I know, boyfriend.”
“You know?” I asked, surprised that he’d taken the time to look into my personal life and flattered that he had. Or maybe, intrigued is the better word.
In the Shadow of Revenge Page 8
