Where She Went

by Kelly Simmons

Emma

  Her mother was printing something in the small office at the back of the hair salon. Emma heard the familiar sound of the laser printer starting up, even over the buzz of the electric razor Chloe had turned on. She’d already lightened Emma’s hair on the ends, added tips of gold, then buzzed the sides just a bit. Maggie had always told Emma she had nice ears and nape and collarbone, and now she could see in her new reflection that maybe her mom was right. She’d always thought, Who gives a shit about ears and necks? Guys like boobs and asses, right?

  Chloe warmed lavender pomade in her hands and raked it through the top of Emma’s hair to give it more shape. The lavender smelled fresh and hopeful. It reminded her of their garden when they used to live in Philly.

  “I like it,” Emma said, looking in the mirror. She was actually amazed by the difference and how much, well, like herself she looked. As if she’d been hiding under all that hair, the golden shine masking the rest of her. And there was more to her, so much more, than that hair.

  “It really brings out your eyes,” Chloe said. “You look like an actress now, instead of a—”

  “Homeless person?”

  “You said it, not me.”

  “Well, I was, technically, homeless. Couch surfing. Sleeping in libraries.”

  Her mother came in from the back, holding out the piece of paper to her like it was a gift certificate. Since Emma was down to three shirts and two pair of pants, this would certainly come in handy.

  She took it and read it, her face curving into a small frown. No gift certificate. No Groupon. An email, from some random dude at Main Line Magazine.

  “What?”

  “He’s an old friend of your dad’s, and I know it’s in the wrong department, but the internship pays minimum wage, and he said you’d have access to all the reporters, and you could learn a ton.”

  “That’s great, Mom, but how can I do a full-time internship at a suburban magazine and still go to school?”

  Maggie blinked, and then it was her turn to frown. “Well, you’ll take a few classes at community college this year, and you’ll save money from the internship, and then you can transfer to Pitt or Penn State in the fall.”

  Emma frowned, struggling to take this in. Her mother had mapped out an entire alternate plan without asking her? She’d just assumed?

  “Transfer?”

  “Yes.”

  “And lose my scholarship?”

  Chloe and her mother exchanged a glance that Emma did not understand.

  “The scholarship doesn’t matter now, Emma.”

  “But I can’t just leave. God, Mom!”

  “Of course you can. And you should.”

  “No, Mom, I can’t give up. I can’t let them win!”

  “It’s not winning. It’s just being practical.”

  “Practical?”

  “Honey, those girls aren’t going away. Tim Trenton is still an RA, Jason is still editor of the paper, and even Grady is only on temporary administrative leave. It will take months for the police to sort out your allegations—”

  “Allegations? Jesus, Mom, whose side are you on?”

  Maggie took a deep breath. Emma watched her like she was watching a foreign species, an alien. How could this person even share her DNA? Who the hell was she?

  “After everything that has happened, Emma, how can you even ask such a thing?”

  “I’m sorry, but how can you even think that I would leave?”

  “How can you stay on campus, with everyone knowing what’s happened? Who would want you in their dorm? Who would—”

  “Jesus, Mom, I’m not going to live on campus. I’m not insane!”

  “So you would…commute? From here?”

  “If you’ll have me, yeah. And if we can afford a train pass. I grew kind of fond of the train when I was doing surveillance.”

  “Surveillance,” Maggie repeated with alarm.

  “Don’t worry, Mom, I’m not switching my major to criminal justice or anything. Your fear of me turning into Dad is not gonna happen.”

  Emma hopped down from the chair and took off the creamy-white nylon cape. She brushed a few errant hairs from her nose and cheeks and smoothed the front of her jeans.

  Her mother’s eyes were sparkling at the sight of her newly shorn hair. She smiled and held Emma’s gaze as if waiting to be thanked and told she was right all along, that Emma should have cut her hair long ago.

  “Sooo,” Emma said slowly.

  “Yes?”

  “Any chance we can go to Target and get some new clothes?”

  “Sure,” her mother replied. “Any chance you’ll switch your major to business instead of journalism?”

  “Mom,” she said and sighed. “Don’t push your luck.”

  Forty-Three

  Maggie

  Maggie waited for Emma at the diner. She had been instructed by her daughter to stay off campus, to avoid Hoden House, to not go near the journalism building, and if any students came into the diner that she had interacted with, to not speak to them, not thank anyone or harass anyone, and not, under any circumstances, to write to the dean or the head of school while she was waiting. She was told to drink coffee and sit, and if Emma wasn’t back in an hour and a half, then, and only then, could she text Sarah Franco or come looking for her. Parameters, once again, and Maggie would have to learn to live with them. Harder now than it had been before.

  Emma had divvied up tasks and responsibilities between the police and herself, and Maggie was to stay home and blow-dry hair, unless Emma needed a ride and a meal. She might ask her advice, but Maggie had been benched.

  It was like a personal, one-on-one restraining order. Maggie didn’t think she’d done any real damage—and she had saved her from the hospital—but Emma didn’t want her making things worse. But Maggie knew if Emma knew everything, knew the whole story—every gesture, every word—that she would be embarrassed. She would understand, but she would still be embarrassed.

  So she nursed a cup of coffee at the counter, memorized the menu, stacked the creamers in a pyramid, and waited for Emma to get back from her meeting with Jason. Or, as she’d put it, her intervention with Jason, since he’d refused to answer her calls, emails, or texts, and she planned to ambush him at his weekly newspaper meeting.

  After what seemed like a long time and was only about a half hour, the door jingled, and Emma walked in cautiously, looking around to see if she knew anyone before sliding onto the red vinyl stool next to Maggie.

  “So how’d it go?”

  “Oh, fine.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure, if fine means he called security and told me if I tried to slander him again, he would sue me, then yes, it went fine.”

  “Slander?”

  “That’s the part where I called him a man whore, a liar, and a bad journalist who would never get a job at a real newspaper.”

  “Very nice.”

  “I may have thrown in that he had a few STDs.”

  “Well done, grasshopper.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  “He was remarkably calm as I shouted this into his weekly meeting. Until the point where I called him a bad journalist for killing the story after Fiona got to him. That’s when he threatened to call his daddy.”

  “Daddy?”

  “Well, when a kid threatens to sue and his dad is a lawyer, I kind of put two and two together.”

  “Ah.”

  “I can’t believe I fell for his line of shit.”

  “Well, he’s still a boy,” Maggie said. “He still thinks with his penis. Come to think of it, most men do, too. But then…you know that, too, right?”

  The question hung in the air, heavier than it should have been, and Maggie felt guilty. This was why she wasn’t allowed on campus. She was too
sharp, too pointed, too unable to control herself. Emma picked up the menu and looked at it a long time before she answered. Measured and calm, those qualities reminded Maggie, with a pang, exactly of Frank. Now that Emma’s hair was short, she looked more and more like him, too—the cowlick at the nape of her neck, her small ears. Those were Frank’s. But any hair stylist knew better than to tell a girl with newly short hair that she looked like her father.

  “Mom, if you’re asking if I knew about Dad having an affair, then—”

  “No, I know you knew.”

  “You did?”

  “I found out from Salt.”

  “I only saw her a few times, and I thought she was just his friend, you know? I was young.”

  “I know. I don’t blame you.”

  “And then the day I figured it out, there was this little shed at a picnic park, and—” She shuddered, not finishing her thought. “I didn’t know what to do with that information. I couldn’t really process it.”

  Maggie nodded but didn’t let on that she knew what had happened. What Michael had said about Emma walking in on her dad. Her being a virgin. She thought back to that message Emma had kept on her phone from Frank, the repeated mention of the word we. She’d added two and two and two together and gotten a thousand. But now she knew she’d been right. But what good is it to be right unless you found out the right way? Not cheating, not sneaking around, not begging, just doing the right things that led you to answers? That was all her daughter was doing. Methodical, following procedures, not giving up.

  “It’s okay, honey,” she said, reaching up to smooth a golden piece of her daughter’s upswept pixie. “On some level, I knew, too.”

  “You did?”

  Emma didn’t squirm away from Maggie’s hand. She let her pet her exactly as Maggie had when she was a baby and the first soft, magical growth had come swirling in and seemed longer every morning than it had been at night. Maggie wondered if she put her baby pictures side by side with a picture of Emma now if they might look identical. The curious upturn of their mouths, the openness in their eyes.

  “Yes,” she said, dropping her hand back onto the counter. “I just didn’t want to deal with the consequences of it.”

  “So the woman who snuck into parties and accosted my college roommates was afraid of something? Interesting dichotomy, Mom,” she said and smiled.

  “Everyone’s afraid of something, sweetheart.”

  “See, that’s what I’m counting on,” she said.

  “How’s that?”

  “To tie up my story. You need to find out a source’s weak spot and use it to your advantage.”

  “Threaten them? Emma, seriously, you cannot go on like this. A story is not worth your schooling, your life, your—”

  “No, Mom. You don’t get it.”

  “Illuminate me, then.”

  “It’s like Mr. Maserati,” Emma said. “He was afraid his dead wife would be ashamed of him, so he wanted to do the right thing.”

  “You told him that?”

  “Of course not. I just knew it. And this new sugar baby I’m interviewing? She was afraid she wasn’t smart and couldn’t do anything in life except use her body, and by contributing to the story, she is proving otherwise.”

  “A new source?”

  “Yes.”

  “From school?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you found her when, exactly? While you were supposed to be resting in the psych ward?”

  “No, this other girl introduced me to her. Her boyfriend was the janitor at our dorm and had seen this pretty girl out back crying all the time. They mentioned it to me, and I put two and two together.”

  “Really,” Maggie said and smiled.

  “Remember the girl who found my shirt in the dumpster and then gave it back? Same girl told me this.”

  Maggie remembered the story. When she’d asked her daughter if anything positive had happened during this craziness. At first, Emma had laughed and said “Oh my God, roses and thorns, Mom?” because of the game they’d played at family dinners. Then, she had reluctantly admitted that there had been “this kid named Michael who was super helpful” and the dumpster shirt girl. Maggie hadn’t pressed her for more detail on either one. She knew if she even said she’d liked Michael, too, that would be the end of it. Let Emma find out on her own. She’d also mentioned that the head doctor at the hospital was handsome, around Maggie’s age, and didn’t wear a wedding ring. What did they call that, when a patient turned their doctor into a father figure? There was some word for it Maggie couldn’t remember. Still, she had a good laugh at the idea of her and Dr. Rivelli, who clearly thought she was a numbskull, then stopped herself. Maybe her mind was a bit too closed.

  “Well,” she said, “she sounds like a girl of character. A girl who would make a good friend.”

  “Yeah, why don’t you call her mom and set up a playdate?”

  Maggie thought about answering back but smiled and bit her tongue. “But your professor,” she said, “other than investing in the club or going to the club, which I guess are both legal, what exactly did he do wrong?” She thought of his clueless wife, his nice house. Had it been worth it?

  “You mean other than follow me and harass me? He had his secretary take photos of all the kids in his classes, claiming he had trouble remembering their names. Then he sent photos of girls he thought were good prospects to Tim Trenton. He’d try to get the other girls to recruit them.”

  “And why did the secretary tell you this? What was she afraid of?”

  “She was afraid her twelve-year-old daughter would find out and stop speaking to her.”

  “And what did Trenton get out of it?”

  “A cut of the club’s membership fees, we think.”

  Maggie nodded her head. Of course it was all about money. She supposed Tim Trenton was a business major.

  “So,” she said, sipping her coffee, “if you wanted me to be your source, what do you think I’d be afraid of?” She posed her shoulders and pouted like the kids did in their selfies, a coquettish exaggeration of wistful.

  Emma laughed, and her whole body shook when she did. Maggie had almost forgotten what that looked like, her daughter laughing, happy, not tense. How was that possible?

  “Mom, do you really want me to go there?”

  “So, what, it’s obvious? I’m an easy source?”

  She thought of Dr. Rivelli, his lack of hesitation as his simple words cut through generations of family pain and drama. Was she that transparent, that one-dimensional, a clichéd mother who feared her child wouldn’t live to chase her dreams?

  “I’m not doing this with you,” Emma said. “No way.”

  “Well, someday, when you need a quote from me, I’m going to say ‘no comment.’”

  “Okay then.”

  “Seriously, you will have to beg me to go on the record, come knocking on my door at night, like Robert Redford.”

  “You know I hate it when you make obscure film references.”

  “Well, someone has to educate you.”

  “Ha-ha. Right. I forgot. Thank you, Professor.”

  “One more thing,” Maggie said. “Why did you go to the health center?”

  “What?”

  “The appointment you made that you didn’t keep? What was wrong?”

  “I just wanted to see what the beds were like in there, in case I could sneak in and get some sleep.”

  “Are you…sure that’s the real reason?”

  “Yes, Mom,” she said. “What, you thought I was pregnant or something, is that it?”

  “Oh, no. I thought you pulled a muscle jogging.”

  “Yeah, right,” she said and laughed.

  The waitress circled back, and Maggie started to order pancakes for them both, but Emma stopped her and told the waitres
s she wanted a spinach and mushroom omelet. Maggie didn’t say, “I thought you hated spinach.” Because wasn’t spinach or blueberries or anything good for you something you could actually develop a taste for? Couldn’t a person change, improve, grow, at any age?

  Progress. They were both making progress. They were both becoming different people. Emma becoming bolder. Maggie growing softer. Maggie had been certain her daughter was not an escort, not suicidal. But there were more things to discover, more mysteries that would unfold. There would always be things she didn’t know, and that would have to be okay.

  Emma checked her messages on her phone, and Maggie sat still, not asking her who she was texting or what she was doing. Maggie was holding back, and Emma was forging ahead. All those times when Emma was a baby, when she’d wanted to speed her daughter up—please start sleeping through the night, please start eating vegetables, please stop falling off your training wheels. And now, all she wanted to do was slow her down. Suspend her in time so she could parent her, hold her, a little longer. As she watched her daughter doing something she did a thousand times a day, she was simply waiting. Waiting for the day when they would finally meet in the middle. In that warm, comfortable space between girlhood and adulthood, between parenthood and friendship.

  “What’s wrong?” Emma said. “You’re making, like, a weird face.”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Maggie said and smiled even broader, so wide it almost hurt.

  “It’s that face you make before you cry.”

  Maggie’s breath caught in her throat. Maybe her daughter had been watching her all along. Maybe Emma knew Maggie’s gestures and expressions, her precious tells, as well as Maggie knew her child’s.

  She swallowed and blinked back a tear. “I’m not crying. You’re crying,” she said, and they laughed, together, their lilting tones not the same but blended in harmony, filling the diner like a cathedral built for two.

  Reading Group Guide

  1. In what ways do Maggie’s pursuit of her daughter and Emma’s pursuit of her story run parallel, and in what ways do they differ? Did you find their motivations and methods relatable?

  2. Maggie’s parental intuition is portrayed in stark relief to the more left-brained methods of the police. Have you ever acted on a hunch or intuition? What drove you to this choice…and were you right?