“Nuh uh. She took off with her boyfriend, Lenny Herbert, when I was seven. Haven’t seen her since.”
I found myself unable to speak. I mean, what do you say to someone who’s just told you her mom left her and never came back? But Annie was ready to talk, with or without prompting.
“She left a note saying she’d be back for me as soon as they were settled.” She let out a short, humourless laugh. “Seems that unpacking a couple of suitcases is a bigger job for her than it would be for most people. It’s been over eight years now.”
“She left you a note?”
“Uh huh. I guess it’s not easy to look your kid in the eye and say you’re taking off.”
“Do you remember what the note said?”
“Are you kidding? I know it by heart. In fact, I still have it. You want to see?”
Of course I did! A few seconds later, she’d pulled a worn piece of paper from her jewellery box and I was reading it.
Dear Annie,
Me and Lenny are going to the city to make a better life for ourselves. I’ll send for you soon as we get a new place and get settled. Go to your grandma’s house and tell her you will be staying with her for now.
Love,
Mom
What a shock it must have been for Annie to find that note. “Where were you when she left?”
“At school. I was in grade three, and I remember I struggled to read the note. I was sure I’d gotten it wrong, that it couldn’t mean what it seemed to. But it did.”
“So you went to your grandmother’s place like the note told you to?”
“Yeah. Back then she lived just around the corner from us. Now she’s in a nursing home. Alzheimer’s. Anyway, I went to her place and she read the note and then we both cried and cried for the longest time.
“We walked back to my house and went in and looked around, in case my mom had changed her mind. But her suitcases and clothes were gone, all right. So, over the next week we packed up my stuff and the few things that were still there and I started waiting for her to come and get me.”
“Where did you live then? Before your mother left?”
“On Pendle Road, in an old place a couple of houses down from the car wash. The one with the huge willow tree in the front yard. Know where I mean?”
“I think so.” I could picture it easily — a sagging old two-storey house that stood out from the more modern homes in that area. “Does the house have purple shutters?”
“That’s the place,” Annie said. She rolled her eyes while her mouth formed what could have been either a sad smile or a grimace. “They were purple when we lived there, too. You’d think someone would have painted them by now.”
I couldn’t help thinking that a better solution would involve a bulldozer. Of course, I didn’t say that to Annie, just in case she had some kind of attachment to the place.
“Anyway, I don’t think anyone lives there anymore,” she was saying.
“Is it boarded up?”
“No, but it has a still, empty look.” Her eyes had drifted, past the walls of her room, off to a place where she’d been a small child who still had a mother.
I wondered how often Annie went by her old house. It was obvious that she was thinking about the times she’d spent there with her mother, but I had no way of knowing if those memories were happy or not. I didn’t seem likely that a mother who could take off and leave her kid and never look back would have been a great parent even when she was still around.
“You’d think she could have dropped a postcard or made a quick call or done something, even one time in all those years,” she said, confirming my suspicion that her thoughts had shifted from the house to her mother.
“Maybe something happened that she didn’t want you to know about,” I said. It sounded pretty lame.
“Or maybe she was glad to get rid of me.”
There was such hurt and bitterness in her voice that I didn’t even try to come up with anything reassuring. It would have sounded absurd anyway. What her mother had done was inexcusable.
“I just wish I knew, for sure, though. I mean, if I could find her, maybe she could explain it to me in some way that makes sense. It’s really hard for me to accept that she just didn’t care enough about me to come back. If I could talk to her, even one time, I think I’d feel better than I do always wondering.
“See, it’s not like she was a terrible mother before she left. She might have done some things wrong, but she read me stories and made me cookies and if I heard a noise at night she’d lie down with me until I fell back to sleep.”
“Have you ever tried to find her?”
I almost felt foolish asking that. It seemed impossible that she wouldn’t have done whatever she could to locate her mom. So it was a shock when she shook her head “no” and stared at the floor.
“I guess part of me was scared to,” she said after a moment of silence. “If I found her and she admitted she didn’t want a little kid in the way, that having a good time was more important than I was, then that would be it. If you know what I mean.”
I did, to some extent. It’s almost impossible to really know how another person feels. I did think that, in Annie’s position, I too would want to keep hoping and praying that somehow there’d be a happy ending.
Thinking about this, I almost missed what she said next, especially since she said it so quietly.
“But then Lenny came back.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“Lenny came back?”
Annie’s announcement had so surprised me that I found my mouth hanging open. (Trust me, this does not make a person look particularly sharp.)
“Uh, huh.”
“I take it that your mother wasn’t with him?”
Annie swallowed, blinked, and took a deep breath before saying, “No. She wasn’t.”
“But maybe he knows where she is.”
No answer. I could see that it had become difficult for her to keep talking about it, but I just couldn’t make myself stop. I tried a slightly different approach.
“Have you talked to Lenny?”
“Once, for a few minutes.” Another deep breath, and then her chin came up and she looked me right in the eye. I could see her pulling herself together and when she spoke again her voice was a little stronger. “I didn’t even know he was around until I saw him coming out of the rink one day a few months ago. At first I wasn’t even sure it was Lenny — he’d lost most of his hair and he didn’t look as tall as I remembered. But it was him, all right.”
“So, what happened?”
“I called out to him and he turned and looked at me. He had no idea who I was until I told him. I asked him right out where my mother was, and he told me that they broke up not long after they moved away and he’d lost track of her.”
“Lost track of her,” I echoed. “So he must have known where she was for a while. If we talk to him again, we can find out where she was the last time he was in touch with her. Maybe we can pick up the trail.”
I realized then that Annie was staring at me.
“This is about my life, Shelby,” she said, her voice rising and getting shrill. “It’s not some kind of game — something for you to entertain yourself with because you’re bored or something.”
“I didn’t mean ...”
“You just assume you can come over here — the first time you’ve ever been to my house, by the way — and start making plans that have nothing to do with you? Without even bothering to ask if it’s what I want?”
It took me a minute to find my voice and answer her. “I’m really sorry, Annie. You’re right — I had no business assuming anything. Believe me, I didn’t mean to jump in and act like I was taking over.”
Annie’s gaze on me remained steady and accusing, but I thought her expression might have softened just a little. I went on.
“And I know I’ve never come here before, but I have called you a couple of times lately and I honestly do want to be friends.”
“I’ve been thinking about how even though we’ve gone to school together all these years, we’re hardly more than acquaintances.” I cleared my throat, wondering if I was even making sense. “So, I thought it would be nice if we got to know each other.”
“Oh,” Annie said. Her eyes dropped away from me while, at the same time, her hand squeezed at a clump of the duvet that covered her bed. She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“No, you don’t have anything to be sorry about, Annie. I’m the one who’s wrong here. I seem to have developed an awful habit of butting into other people’s business.”
“But you’ve helped people, too,” Annie said. “I just get overly sensitive about some things.”
“Like your mom.”
“Yeah, like my mom. You don’t know how hard it is going through every day not knowing whether she ever even gives me a thought. That’s the hardest part — wondering if she might have just put me out of her mind completely. And, sometimes ...”
As her voice trailed off I stayed silent, not wanting to push it, even though I was curious. And then she coughed, clearing her throat, and went on.
“Sometimes I wonder if she might have other children. For all I know, she could have met someone after she and Lenny broke up, and got married and had a whole new family.”
“Were your parents married?”
“No. I don’t even know who my father is. I asked a few times when I was a little kid, but my mom always said she’d tell me about him when I got older.”
“Your grandmother didn’t know?”
“I asked her once, when she was still having some good days, but Nanny said my mother never told her, either. I’ll probably never know who he is.”
“That must be hard.”
“It’s weird, really. I look at guys sometimes, guys who are probably around my mom’s age, and try to see if there’s any resemblance. But it’s not like I could just walk up to someone and say, “Hey, Mister. I can’t help noticing that we have the same hair and eyes. Think you might be my father?’”
“Yeah, I can see that there’d be problems with that.”
She smiled — just a little at first, but it spread and grew and then she began to laugh. “Can you imagine, some poor guy walking along minding his own business, suddenly getting called “Daddy’ by some crazy teenage girl?”
“I’m thinking a little research might be a better approach,” I said, laughing with her.
“You think research could actually help me find my, uh ... one of my parents?”
I wondered which parent she’d been about to say. Probably her mother, since she was the one Annie knew. On the other hand, we had just been talking about her father. Either way, I told her it was certainly possible.
“Even after all this time?”
“There’s always information out there somewhere,” I told her, feeling my pulse quicken with excitement at the thought of a new mystery to look into. “It’s just a matter of figuring out how to find it.
“Just one thing, though. If you decide that you want to go ahead with this, I’d like your permission to talk to Greg about it. I promise it wouldn’t go any further. See, I don’t want to have to hide things from him — it’s been a problem for us in the past.”
“I guess that would be okay,” she said after a slight pause. “Are you sure he won’t say anything to anyone?”
“You can trust Greg one hundred percent,” I said.
“Okay,” Annie said. “I wouldn’t want you to have to sneak around and hide things from him.”
“Awesome!” I told her. “So, let’s do it!”
Annie nodded. Then she jumped up from the edge of her bed and crossed the room to the chair I was occupying. She leaned down and gave me a quick hug. Her face was flushed and her eyes shining.
“Let’s do it!” she echoed.
CHAPTER FIVE
Annie stared at the list I’d made for a moment before saying anything. When she did speak, her only comment was, “It’s kinda short, isn’t it?”
“That’s true,” I admitted. “But this is just a beginning. It will grow — honest.”
I hoped I sounded a lot more confident than I felt. Looking down at the page in my notebook, I could see why Annie hadn’t exactly been impressed. Following a cold trail was new to me, and all I’d been able to come up with were a few weak ideas. The list read:
1) Talk to Lenny
2) Talk to Gina Berkley’s old friends (Annie had told me that her mom’s name was Gina.)
3) Find out where Gina worked and talk to her former co-workers, if we can find any.
4) Visit old neighbourhood. (I wasn’t sure what that would accomplish, but at least it was something to put on the list.)
I thought it might also be a good idea to make up a list of questions to ask, but I had no ideas at all there. The big problem facing us there was that people often don’t realize which bits of information might happen to be important. So, when someone tells you about something, it’s easy for them to leave out details that could have been helpful.
Now, we were about to talk to Lenny Herbert and I was hoping I could hide the fact that I really didn’t know what I was doing from Annie.
The house Lenny was living in had been his mother’s. My guess was that it was the thing that had brought him back to Little River after all those years away. Mrs. Herbert had died sometime during the summer, and had left the house to Lenny.
It was a squat little bungalow, white with dark-green eaves and window frames. The lawn was in need of mowing and a small brick-lined garden was almost overgrown with weeds. Whatever Lenny was doing with his time, it wasn’t landscaping.
“Maybe this is a mistake,” Annie said as we reached the door.
“You’re just feeling nervous,” I told her. At the same time, I jabbed the doorbell button quickly before she could turn and leave.
A few moments passed before the door squeaked and opened enough to reveal a man who must have been about my father’s age. He was balding and his stomach strained against a grey T-shirt with some kind of sport logo on the front. I couldn’t quite picture someone running off with him. Of course, he might have looked a lot different nearly ten years ago.
“Yeah?” he said. His voice wasn’t exactly gruff, but you’d never describe it as warm and welcoming either.
“It’s me,” Annie said. “Annie,” “Annie?” He squinted.
“Annie Berkley?”
“Right.”
“I told you, I don’t know where your mother went.”
“Yes, but we thought you might be able to tell us something that would help,” I said quickly.
“And who are you?”
“I’m a friend of Annie’s,” I told him. “We’re hoping to find out where her mother is. There are just a few questions we’d like to ask ... unless you’d rather not help.”
He paused and I thought he was going to tell us to get lost, so I was a little surprised when he expelled a long breath, rolled his eyes, and told us to come in.
“You’re wasting your time, though,” he said as he led us into a small, dark kitchen. “I haven’t seen Gina in years. Don’t have a clue where she might be.”
It wasn’t the most encouraging beginning, but I knew from experience people sometimes have important information without even realizing that it’s significant. I was hoping that would be the case with Lenny.
Once we were seated at the table, which was surprisingly clean, Lenny plunked down across from us and said, “Shoot!”
“I’d like to know where you and my mom went when you left Little River.” I was surprised at the strength in Annie’s voice as she asked this. She’d seemed so nervous just a moment before, but her chin was up and she was looking steadily at Lenny.
“Well, now, that’s no big secret,” Lenny said. His eyes were down and his fingers tapped unevenly on the table. “We went to Toronto. Ended up in Mississauga, actually. I had a friend there at the time and we stayed with
him for a bit.”
“What was his name?”
“Doug, though I don’t see what difference that makes,” Lenny said. He seemed kind of annoyed and I made a mental note just to ask really important things. “He moved up north for a while and I heard later that he died in a snowmobile accident. Can’t say for sure if it’s true or not.”
“So, was that where you were living when you and my mom split up?” Annie asked.
“We didn’t exactly split up, kid,” Lenny said. “She just up and left. I came in from work one night and poof! No Gina.”
“Did she leave a note?”
Lenny looked startled, like he didn’t quite understand the question a first. “I don’t remember,” he said after a pause. “I think she just took off and that was it.”
“Did she take all of her things? Her clothes and stuff?”
“Yeah, everything.”
“And you never saw or heard from her again?” I asked.
“Nope.”
“Did you have a joint bank account or credit card or anything?”
He laughed at that. “I don’t think you quite get the picture, Shelly.”
“Shelby.”
“Whatever. Anyway, we weren’t exactly living the dream. There was no little house and picket fence or nothin’ like that. I made enough money to pay my way and party a bit and that was it. There were no bank accounts or credit cards.”
“Did Gina work?”
“What? Oh, yeah, sure. She had a job in some restaurant. I couldn’t tell you what it was called to save my life, though. It’s been a lot of years.”
“Why didn’t my mother call me when you got to Mississauga?”
“I dunno, kid. She was busy a lot, working and stuff.” Lenny paused, like he was thinking something over. “You wanna know the truth?”
“Of course.”
“I think your mother figured you were better off with your grandma than with her. Because of the life she was living and whatnot.”
“But Nanny was old, even then. She got sick, you know — Alzheimer’s. They had to put her in a home and I got sent to foster care.”
Searching for Yesterday Page 2
