Little Bitty Lies

by Mary Kay Andrews

  “I called Jessica,” Mary Bliss said. “Erin wasn’t there. And the rest of her girlfriends are down at the beach.”

  Josh shook his head, not disagreeing.

  “That just leaves you,” she said pointedly.

  He rubbed his eyes. “You think she was here?”

  “Was she?”

  “No. I was watching my little brothers all night.”

  “Has she spent the night over here before?”

  “No. Why would she?”

  She gave him a level look. “What do you think?”

  He rubbed his eyes again. “I think you’re messed up,” he said finally. He turned over and put the orange pillow back over his head. “Go away. Okay?” The pillow muffled his voice, but Mary Bliss got the meaning.

  Randy met her at the foot of her stairs. “Find anything out?” he asked. “Was Erin hiding in the closet up there?” He seemed vaguely amused.

  “It’s not funny,” she snapped. “You’ve got sons. You wouldn’t understand what it’s like to have a daughter. To wonder where she is, and what she’s doing, and who she’s doing it with.” Angry tears sprang to her eyes.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Randy asked.

  “Never mind,” she said, brushing the tears away and heading for the door.

  At noon, she drove over to the Fair Oaks Assisted Living Facility. The lobby was crowded with families there to make their weekly visit with the elderly.

  Mary Bliss brushed past them and headed toward the memory-impaired unit.

  Lillian King was leafing through some charts at the nursing station, sipping a can of Diet Dr Pepper.

  “Hey, Miz McGowan,” she said, surprised. “We didn’t expect you today.”

  “I didn’t expect to be here,” Mary Bliss said. She tossed her head in the direction of Eula’s room. “How’s she doing?”

  “’Bout the same,” Mrs. King said. “Ornery. Bossy. She say she in a lot of pain, but the doctor upped her medicine, so I swear she shouldn’t be feelin’ nothing.”

  “No changes in her condition?” Mary Bliss asked. “Is she any more focused? Does she seem to recognize people?”

  “She can focus plenty good when she want to. You know how she is. Like an old she-possum.”

  “Isn’t that the truth,” Mary Bliss said fervently. “Is she awake?”

  “Oh, yeah. Had her breakfast and been fussin’ about not having a BM. And then, her newspaper didn’t have no TV guide in it. You know how she is about that.”

  “Let me ask you something, Mrs. King,” Mary Bliss said. “Have you seen my daughter around here this morning? Or last night?”

  “Erin? Hadn’t seen her today.”

  “Do you know anything about her sneaking into her grandmother’s room and spending the night?”

  “You kiddin’?” Mrs. King asked. “Why would the girl do something crazy like that?”

  “We’re not getting along. Since her father’s accident. I know she’s been visiting Meemaw a lot, and now, one of her girlfriends says Erin sometimes spends the night, sleeping in the chair beside her grandmother’s bed.”

  “If she is, I hadn’t caught her,” Mrs. King said. “That ain’t allowed, you know.”

  “I know,” Mary Bliss said. She started toward Eula’s room but turned around and came back.

  “If you see Erin, would you call me?” she asked, shamefaced. “I’m really worried about her.”

  Mrs. King enveloped Mary Bliss in a hug. “Sure you are, baby. If I see that child, I’ll call you right off. I promise.”

  For the first time in weeks, Eula was sitting up in her wheelchair when Mary Bliss entered her room. She was staring at her television, pointing the remote control at it, swearing.

  “Dammit,” she muttered. “Damned cable.”

  “Hello, Meemaw,” Mary Bliss said.

  Eula looked up and frowned. “What are you doing here? It’s Sunday, isn’t it?”

  “I’m looking for Erin,” Mary Bliss said, deciding to get right down to business. “We had a fight last night. She’s been really difficult.”

  “She’s been difficult?” Eula said, laughing. “That’s not the way she tells it.”

  “So you have seen her.”

  “She came over here last night,” Eula said, finally clicking the remote. “Madder than spit.”

  “Did she tell you what the fight was about?” Mary Bliss asked.

  Eula nodded. “I hear you got yourself a boyfriend.”

  “He’s not a boyfriend,” Mary Bliss said. “He’s a neighbor. A friend. I went to the dance with him and another couple. It was all very innocent.”

  “Hah!” Eula said. “While the cat’s away, the mouse will play.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Mary Bliss asked. She was about out of patience.

  “Just what it sounds like,” Eula said. “Did you bring any pudding today?”

  “It’s just barely noon. I haven’t had time to cook. Anyway, I need for you to answer some questions for me.”

  “Maybe I will, and maybe I won’t,” Eula said, her voice a singsong. “How about gin? Did you bring me any gin?”

  “No,” Mary Bliss said. “You’re not allowed to drink alcohol with the medication you’re on.”

  “Bullshit,” Eula said. “Erin brings me gin. Brings me olives too.”

  “Where would a seventeen-year-old girl get a bottle of gin?” Mary Bliss demanded.

  “I don’t ask,” Eula said smugly, “and she doesn’t say.”

  “What else have you put her up to?” Mary Bliss asked. “Is it true she spends the night over here sometimes? Was she here last night?”

  “She’s here sometimes,” Eula said, lapsing again into singsong. “And sometimes she’s not.”

  “What about last night?” Mary Bliss repeated, kneeling down in front of Eula. “Tell me, Meemaw. She didn’t come home. I’m worried sick. Where was she?”

  Eula just shook her head vigorously. “It’s a secret.”

  “I’ve had enough of your secrets,” Mary Bliss said, her voice harsh. “Was she with a boy? Is that it?”

  Eula shrugged wordlessly.

  “I know she’s having sex with her boyfriend,” Mary Bliss said. “Surely you don’t condone that. She’s just a child, for God’s sake.”

  “What makes you think she’s having relations?”

  “I found condoms in her gym bag,” Mary Bliss cried. “She admitted it to me. I know she’s sleeping with Josh, across the street, but I can’t talk sense to her.”

  “Josh?” Eula looked puzzled. “What was that name?”

  “Josh. Josh Bowden. Did she tell you about him?”

  “She told me she’s in love. But that wasn’t the name she called. The name she called was some other name. A Bible name.”

  “Joshua is in the Bible,” Mary Bliss reminded her.

  “That’s not the name,” Eula said sharply. “She’s been asking me a lot of questions. About relations. Things like that. I told her she should save herself for marriage, but she just laughed. Headstrong, that one. Just like her mother.” Eula gave her a bitter look.

  “What kind of questions?” Mary Bliss asked. “Oh God. What was she asking about?”

  “I told you,” Eula said, her voice weak. “Relations. Intercourse!” She shouted the word. “She asked me what would happen if the boy didn’t use protection. She said it was just the one time when her friend’s boyfriend didn’t use protection, but she was kind of worried for her.”

  Mary Bliss buried her face in her hands. “Dear Lord. She had sex without protection. What did you tell her?”

  Eula smiled coyly. “In my day, a girl who was having relations douched with Coca-Cola. Not that I ever did it, mind you. I was saved at church camp as a young teen. But I heard all about it from some bad girls.”

  “Coca-Cola?” Mary Bliss wanted to scream. Actually, she was screaming. “Coca-Cola can’t keep you from getting pregnant. It can’t keep you from getting herpes or
VD or, God forbid, AIDS.”

  “You don’t need to shout,” Eula said. “I’m sick, but I’m not deaf. Not yet, anyway.”

  “All right,” Mary Bliss said. “You say she was here last night. What time did she leave?”

  “We watched Love Boat together,” Eula said. “That’s our favorite program. She made me a martini, then she said she had to go. She was waiting on her boyfriend to call her. She climbed out that window over there, and she was gone.”

  “What time?” Mary Bliss repeated.

  “Maybe eleven o’clock,” Eula said. “You say she didn’t come home? How would you know, running around in the streets all night with some strange man?”

  “I was home right after midnight,” Mary Bliss said, gritting her teeth to keep from lapsing into the screaming meemies again. “Where does the boyfriend live, did she tell you that?”

  “Maybe a ways away from here,” Eula said. “She asked me for gas money for her car. So I gave her twenty dollars. And the thirty for the gin. Beefeater’s. I always pay for my own gin.”

  Mary Bliss’s molars were grinding themselves into a powder. Erin had a full tank of gas. She could be anywhere. Or nowhere.

  “Meemaw,” Mary Bliss said. She grasped both the old lady’s hands in hers. Eula fidgeted, but Mary Bliss held tight.

  “Last night Erin said you know where Parker is. She said he’s living on a beach somewhere, and he’s going to send for her. Is that true? Do you know where Parker is? Has he talked to you? Has he talked to Erin?”

  Eula snatched her hands away and buried them in the sides of her wheelchair. She grinned maliciously.

  “Maybe so. Maybe not. That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

  66

  Erin still wasn’t home.

  Mary Bliss called every friend she could think of. She drove by the mall to see if the manager at the Gap had seen her. She hadn’t.

  By five she was frantic. Her daughter had been gone nearly twenty-four hours. Where? Where would Erin go? As far as Mary Bliss knew, she had only her car and her pocketbook. Should she call the police? She sat at the kitchen table and picked at the long acrylic nails. They were driving her crazy. They itched. She couldn’t even dial the phone properly with the damned things.

  Finally she went back upstairs and tore into Erin’s room. The place was a land mine. Somewhere in there, there must be a clue to her daughter’s secret life.

  This time, she didn’t bother to fold or neaten. Mary Bliss dumped out the dresser drawers and combed through their contents. She emptied the closet, dug under Erin’s bed, even tossed her trash can on the floor and picked through the discarded Coke cans and used tissues.

  Nothing.

  In desperation, she stripped Erin’s bed, throwing the sheets and quilts and pillows to the floor. When she’d removed the mattress pad too, she noticed a slight lump in the mattress. She slid her hand under the mattress, dreading what she would find. Her fingers closed around something small, smooth, and plastic.

  A cell phone. It was a tiny Nokia, smaller than Mary Bliss’s own bulky old phone. Mary Bliss turned it over. She’d never seen it before. Erin’s own cell phone was just like Mary Bliss’s, but since she couldn’t afford to keep up the cell service, both phones were in the kitchen, still plugged into their chargers.

  Mary Bliss carried the Nokia downstairs. She tried turning it on but got only a digital readout that said “Low Battery.”

  Neither of the old cell phone chargers fit this one. She chewed on one of the ragged acrylic nails. Where had Erin gotten this phone? Was this how she was conducting her clandestine affair? And if she wasn’t sleeping with Josh, who was she sleeping with? She turned the phone over and over again, hoping it would suddenly come to life and start providing answers.

  Josh. He knew something, she was sure of it. He’d become Erin’s most trusted confidant. She picked up her own phone and called the Bowdens. No answer. She got up and looked out the front window. No cars were parked in the driveway. Sunday. Was this Nancye’s day to have custody of the kids?

  She had to do something. This inactivity was driving her nuts. But driving around in circles wasn’t the answer.

  She went to the refrigerator to look for something to eat or drink, something to calm her nerves. The pink wrist corsage sat in the middle of the top shelf. Mary Bliss took it out. She put it on her wrist and held the roses up to her nose and inhaled. Last night seemed a world away. Last night she had allowed herself a few hours away, to laugh and dance. She thought of one of the songs she and Matt had danced to. “Be Young, Be Foolish, Be Happy.” She’d been all of that, and where had it gotten her?

  She ruffled the roses with her fingertips. Already the pink petals were tinged with brown.

  Call me, Matt had said last night. She bit her lip. She needed help. She’d been trying to deal with her family secrets all summer, and she’d made a mess of it. Maybe, she thought, it was time to let go. Time to get help.

  He answered on the first ring.

  “Matt?”

  “Hey there,” he said warmly. “Did you change your mind?”

  “No. Yes.” She hesitated. “Erin never came home last night. I think she’s run away.”

  “I’ll be right over,” he said.

  And he was. She told him again about the fight, about Erin’s movements the previous night.

  “So,” he said, taking notes. “She was at Jessica’s at eight. Then she went to the nursing home. She left her grandmother around midnight. And nobody’s seen her since?”

  “Nobody that I can find,” Mary Bliss said. “I talked to Josh this morning. He says he didn’t see her last night, but I think maybe he knows something. He’s her best friend.”

  “Did she have any money?”

  “Her grandmother gave her fifty dollars,” Mary Bliss said. “But she doesn’t get paid until this Friday.”

  “What does she do with her paycheck?” he asked.

  “She puts it in the bank,” Mary Bliss said. “She’s had her own checking account since she was thirteen.”

  “So she could have, what? Several hundred dollars?”

  Mary Bliss’s face paled. “I don’t know. I tried not to talk to her too much about money. I didn’t want her to know just how tight things have been.”

  Matt picked up the Nokia. “I’ll be right back.”

  She followed him out to the car. “What are you doing? Where are you going?”

  He was driving his own car, a black Explorer. He slid into the driver’s seat, turned on the motor, and plugged the little Nokia into an adapter mounted on the dashboard. “This is the same kind as mine,” he said. He let the motor run for ten minutes, and when he was satisfied the battery had charged enough, he unplugged the phone and she followed him back inside.

  He sat down at the kitchen table again and began pushing buttons on the Nokia.

  Mary Bliss leaned over his shoulder to watch, but his fingers moved so fast that they were a blur. She saw him punch the “Menu” button, and then select “Messages.” He paused. “I need a code to get in here. Does she have a special or lucky number?”

  “Her birthday is nine fifteen,” Mary Bliss suggested. He tried it but shook his head. “We’ll come back to that,” he said. He pushed some more buttons, then got a list of what appeared to be phone numbers.

  “What are those?” Mary Bliss asked.

  Matt was jotting down the list of numbers. “This is the call log. It lists all the numbers dialed, either in or out, on this phone. It also lists missed calls. You recognize any of these?”

  Mary Bliss scanned the list. “No. It looks like most of them are local area codes, though.”

  “Only three or four numbers,” Matt pointed out. “She’s been dialing them over and over again.” He pointed to another number with an area code Mary Bliss didn’t recognize. “This is a South Florida exchange.”

  “A lot of her girlfriends are at the beach,” Mary Bliss said. “I guess they could be down in Florida
. Now what do we do?”

  “First, we dial the numbers, see who picks up,” Matt said.

  He dialed the number, listened, frowned, then handed the phone to Mary Bliss.

  “Hey,” a man’s voice said. “Hit me back later.”

  “You recognize him?” Matt asked.

  “No,” Mary Bliss said. “It’s not Parker, if that’s what you were wondering. And it’s not Josh either.”

  He dialed the next number and handed it to her. This time it was a woman’s voice. “We can’t come to the phone right now, but leave a name and number and we’ll call you back,” she said.

  Mary Bliss shook her head again.

  He dialed the next number. She listened, confused.

  “It’s just the school,” Mary Bliss said. “Fair Oaks Academy. Erin’s school. She was probably calling about soccer practice.”

  Matt punched in the last number. He listened, but didn’t hand the phone to Mary Bliss this time.

  “What?” she asked. “Who was it? What was that last number?”

  “It was for a hotline,” Matt said.

  “What kind of hotline?” she demanded. “Tell me. I need to know.”

  “It was for a pregnancy support hotline,” Matt said.

  Mary Bliss’s nails itched unbearably. She pulled the right thumbnail off.

  “It’s what I was afraid of,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “She was asking Meemaw questions. About birth control. She had unprotected sex. She’s pregnant. And now she’s gone.”

  “You don’t know that,” Matt said firmly.

  “It’s why she ran away,” Mary Bliss insisted. “I let her down. She needed me to be strong, to be there for her, and I just…wasn’t.”

  “If she were pregnant, where would she go?” Matt asked. “What would she do?”

  “I don’t know,” Mary Bliss said, biting her knuckle. “We don’t have any other family. Just Meemaw and Parker.”

  “And the baby’s father,” Matt reminded her. “If there is a baby.”

  He kept looking down at the phone. “AirOne is the provider,” he said, tapping his pen on the edge of the table. “We need to find out who this phone is billed to.”