Girls in Trouble: A Novel

by Caroline Leavitt

  “Why would she come here?” he finally said.

  “I found her, Danny. I went to Florida to find her. She knows about you. She ran away and we all think she might have come to your house.”

  His house. Charlotte opened the door to everyone. She said even salespeople deserved common courtesy. How many times had he come home to find her with one of the runaways she helped at the church center? How many times would an extra place be set for dinner? Danny rubbed at his forehead. “I’m going home now to see,” he told her.

  “Wait, wait, here’s a cell phone number. You’ll call, if she is?” she begged. Her voice cracked and he felt pulled toward it. “We can fly up if she’s there,” Sara said.

  She waited. He knew she was expecting him to tell her to come to the house, to stay if she needed, but how could he do that? The last time he had seen Sara he had told Charlotte they were friends from school and that was that, and Charlotte had believed him. They had gone out to dinner that evening, and when he hadn’t been able to eat a thing, Charlotte had asked him, her voice rich with concern, if he was coming down with the flu because he was acting so strange.

  “I’ll call you,” he said.

  He hung up the phone, trying to think what to say to Charlotte. Maybe the girl wouldn’t show up at his house at all and to warn Charlotte would just needlessly upset her. Why would Anne show up, anyway? He hadn’t ever tried to contact her. She hadn’t tried to contact him. And he had told Sara he couldn’t consider bringing Anne into his life; surely Sara must have explained that to Anne.

  But if he didn’t tell her, and Anne arrived, Charlotte might never trust him again.

  He phoned her, and as soon as he heard Charlotte’s voice, warm and welcoming, he relaxed. “We have some company,” she told him, and he shut his eyes.

  “Who?” he said.

  “Another runaway, it looks like. A little skittish, but she told me her name—Anne —and she ate three bowls of soup and then fell asleep in the den.” Her voice was sure and calm.

  “I’ll be right home,” he said.

  “Honey, you’re working! You don’t have to come home!” Charlotte said, surprised. “Anyway, I already called the church and as soon as she wakes up I’ll take her over there and we’ll figure out the best thing to do for her.”

  “I’m coming home,” he repeated.

  The whole way driving home, Danny felt panicked. Charlotte didn’t see anything out of the ordinary about any of this. Charlotte was so bighearted, she was just the kind to take Anne in, the same way she would any lost soul. The same way she had taken him when he was floundering around, tense and miserable, his life feeling as if it were about to break into a thousand pieces. What would he say? What would he do? Danny swerved, beeping the horn at another driver. How could he ever explain it to Charlotte?

  He parked the car. He used to hate dusk, used to think it was the loneliest time of the day and he’d do anything to avoid it. Go to the movies. Go take himself out to eat. Go pick up a woman and spend the night with her. Anything so he didn’t have to be by himself. So he didn’t have to think about the mess of his life. But then he had met Charlotte, he had married her, and the dusk had been his favorite time, because it was when he’d come home to his own family, when he’d see his house—his house!—the wooden plaque with “The Slades” handpainted across it in his own careful script, the flowers Charlotte had planted so there’d be a blaze of color about the house. And then he’d see Charlotte, beautiful and smiling, he’d smell the delicious dinner she had cooked, and there was never a moment when she wasn’t delighted to see him, when she didn’t make him feel that she was the lucky one to have him, instead of the other way around. He felt as if he had spent his whole life yearning for this and he hadn’t even known it, not until it was here, love and family and home, and maybe it was because it was such an unexpected gift to him that he couldn’t help worrying that any minute, like everything else in his life, it might be wrested away from him.

  He walked inside, and there was light and warmth in the house, music playing from the radio, and now, the icing, he heard the baby. He looked at his boy and sometimes all he wanted to do in this life was make sure Joseph knew how much he was loved. His little boy. His baby.

  Anne was his baby, too.

  “I’m home—” he said tensely, but only Charlotte tiptoed out.

  “The girl’s still sleeping,” she said in a low voice. “I already called the church and they said they can talk to her, get her to consider going back home with her family.”

  She rested her head against his shoulder. “Know how I can tell we belong together?” she teased. “My head fits perfectly right here.”

  He stroked her hair. “I just want to wash my hands,” he said.

  He didn’t go into the bathroom. Instead, he walked to the den. His blood felt as if it were thrumming inside of him. Please, he thought. Please let it not be her, and as soon as he opened the door and saw the spill of red hair on the pillow, the lopsided mouth, he braced one hand against the doorjamb. He was looking at Sara.

  Slowly, he closed the door. He felt like crying. He walked heavily to the kitchen and there was Charlotte behind him, and she looked up at him. “What? What’s wrong?” she said. “Oh, honey, did you have a bad day at work?” And she placed one hand, warm, against his cheek, and then, because there was no longer any reason not to, he started talking, telling her, and she took her hand slowly from his face. She kept her eyes on him.

  She was so still, he began to worry. He had seen her this upset only once before, the first time she had gotten pregnant, when she had been so happy that the obstetrician used to joke with her that she was the only one he knew who even liked morning sickness. And then one day, during a routine visit, when she was three and a half months along, they hadn’t found a heartbeat. The baby had quietly died inside of her. “It’s a blessing,” the doctor had told her. “Usually that happens when there’s something very wrong with the baby.” But it was the first and only time Danny had seen Charlotte doubt God, something he himself doubted from the time he was twelve, the one and only prickly difference between them. She believed and he did not, could not. She had taken to her bed, not being able to get up until, desperate, Danny had called the priest and begged him to come over and talk to Charlotte. He had stood in the doorway listening to the priest tell Charlotte this baloney, that it was God’s will, that no one could understand God but God himself, and it was prideful to even try, and then Charlotte had gotten up, and after that Danny never said one bad word about religion again to Charlotte. He never stopped her from going to church Sundays, never stopped her from trying to tease him into coming, too, and sometimes he did go, just so he could sit beside her and think how lucky he was, how his blessing was not from God, but from her.

  “There’s a child?” Charlotte said quietly. “A child born out of wedlock?” And Danny wished he could disappear. “You think that Anne is your Anne?”

  “I thought Sara had an abortion,” he said, and Charlotte drew in her breath. She stepped back from him.

  “An abortion? You would have let her get one?” Charlotte said.

  “I didn’t know that was what she was planning. All I knew was she didn’t want to see me. Didn’t want anything to do with me.”

  “Well, thank God she didn’t have one,” Charlotte said. “Thank God.”

  Danny was silent. “I never wanted to hurt you. I wanted to keep this from you, Charlotte, to protect you. I swear I tried. I don’t know what to do now.” He looked toward the doorway. “You don’t have to do anything about this. I’ll take care of it. Sara and the girls’ parents said they’d fly in and get her. Things will go back to normal.”

  Charlotte looked at him. “Nothing’s normal anymore.”

  “No, no, don’t say that—” He didn’t know what to say to her, how to make it right. He was ruining everything again. “You can’t touch a thing without making it die,” his brother used to taunt him. The broken-winged birds he
’d find in the backyard would die before he even made up a box for them. A bike he had spent two whole Saturdays trying to fix had burst a tire the first time he took it out for a spin. He had been sent by his mother to buy a few things for the house once—butter, bread—and by the time he got to the store, he had lost the money. He hadn’t known what to do, so he simply slipped the items under his jacket and hoped for the best. Of course he was caught. Of course his mother was called and charges were threatened, and in the end, Danny and his mother were asked not to come to the store anymore. And when Danny and his mother got home, his brother had come after him, furious, shaking his finger. “You’d better stop screwing up!” he had shouted. “You’d better stop thinking of yourself! You’re killing her! Everything you do kills her a little bit more!”

  Danny had told his mother about Sara being pregnant only because he was beside himself, because he didn’t know what else to do, because he thought maybe she could help. He was nearly weeping. “Please—” he begged, and she had gotten up without speaking to him and gone into the other room and sat there in cold, rigid silence, as if it were all happening to her, and not to him, and in that moment, Danny had known he was lost.

  Charlotte shook her head, and when she looked at the door, he couldn’t help it, he grabbed Charlotte’s arm. “Don’t go,” he pleaded, and she looked at him, astonished.

  “Go? Go where? What are you talking about?”

  “I know I lied to you. You have a right not to trust me. A right to be angry, but please, we can work this out. We can get things back to the way they were.”

  She stepped back from him. “Sometimes I think I don’t know you,” she said.

  “I’m sorry—”

  “And sometimes I think you don’t know me, either.”

  “Charlotte—”

  “Your daughter is sleeping in this house and you’re here in this kitchen. Don’t you want to go in and talk to her?”

  “I’m going to talk to her—”

  “That time Sara came to your mother’s house, you didn’t tell me the truth about her, did you? You didn’t tell me she was your old girlfriend. You didn’t tell me how serious things had been with you. What did you think I would do if I knew?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “Did you still love her? Is that some of it? Did you want to leave me for her? Is that why you couldn’t tell me anything about her?”

  “Don’t talk like that.”

  “She was beautiful. And very smart, you told me. And she was your first love. I know what that means.”

  “Charlotte. It was sixteen years ago.”

  “And all I have to do is look at your face and see it’s upsetting you like it was yesterday. You think time matters? You think love goes away?” Charlotte brushed a hand through her hair. She smoothed her blouse. “I’ve gotten a little plump. I’m a housewife with a baby and I wear what’s practical rather than in fashion. I don’t have the time I’d like to have to read.”

  “Charlotte, who cares about that?” he said, but she lifted up her hand.

  “Your daughter is sleeping in our den, and your first love is about to come to town to get her. You tell me the truth, now. Should I be worried?”

  “Charlotte, of course not.” He touched her arm. “I love you.”

  She considered him. “You have a number to reach these people?”

  Danny nodded.

  “I want you to call them. They have to come here. All of them. As soon as possible.”

  He stared at her. “You want them to come here?” he asked, astonished.

  “No,” she admitted. “I don’t. I feel like screaming. I feel like asking God to help me not throw away everything good because right now I just want to walk right out of this house with Joseph and not come back.”

  He stroked her face. “Charlotte,” he said, and she drew herself up.

  “I’ll make a meal. When they get here, we’ll sit and eat and talk this all out. It’s the only way.” She started moving about the kitchen, looking in cabinets, in the freezer. “I was saving these chicken fryers for Sunday dinner.” She looked at him. “You invite them,” she repeated. “All of them.” She reached for a glass and it shattered on the floor, a million shiny shards. “Oh!” she said, as if she had been cut. He crouched down by her and helped her pick it up, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  He cupped his hands about her face and kissed her but her lips were cool, her kiss distant. She pushed him from her. “It doesn’t mean I’m happy about this,” she said. “It doesn’t mean I understand or I’m not angry with you, because I am. It just means they’re coming here.” She stepped back from him. “You call them, first. Then, you better go talk to that poor little girl in there,” she said.

  He spoke briefly to Sara, was put on hold while she checked and made reservations. “Best we can do is tomorrow late afternoon,” she said, “Please. Don’t tell her we’re coming. I’m afraid she’ll take off again.”

  He nodded because he couldn’t speak. Sara, here in his house. Sara.

  He put the phone down. He could hear Charlotte in the kitchen and all he wanted to do was go to her, wrap his arms about her and sway her to him. All he wanted was to feel her hands on his face, to feel there was no one in his life but his wife, even as he felt Sara, like an undercurrent, rising to the surface. No, he thought. He knew if he walked in there, she’d just point him back out again.

  Danny walked to the room where his daughter was. He stood in front of the closed door for a long time. What was he going to say to her? How could he possibly explain? How could he even know what he wanted to do? He knocked and a voice full of sleep said, “Come in.”

  She was sitting up, her red hair—Sara’s hair—rumpled, her clothes in disarray, and as soon as she saw him, her eyes grew huge. He couldn’t believe it. This girl in his house.

  “Are you my father?” she asked.

  “I’m Danny.” He thought suddenly of his own father, a man who left his family without a second thought, who drove off toward a new life and ended up dead. God, how he had hated him. How he had wanted him back, too. “I’m your father.”

  Her eyes narrowed, as if she were measuring him up.

  “You look just like your mother,” he said.

  “Ha. Some mother,” Anne said. “Abandoned me twice.” She studied him. “And you abandoned her.”

  He shook his head. “No, she didn’t. And neither did I.”

  “Uh-huh. Do you still love her?”

  Danny started. It was the second time that day someone had asked him that.

  “I love my wife,” Danny said. “I love my son.”

  Anne picked at the tufts in the spread. “What about me?” she said. “Did you love me?”

  “I didn’t even know Sara had had you.”

  She stared at him, making him feel uncomfortable, as if he should know the right thing to say or do.

  “You want to forget about me now?” Anne said. “Just like you forgot about Sara.”

  “You think that?” He looked at her. “I never forgot her. And I won’t forget you.”

  “You don’t even know me. You said that yourself.”

  He swallowed. “Tell me everything about yourself,” he said. “And then I will.”

  He tried to concentrate on what she was saying, but the whole time he felt as if he were watching a movie of his life, the way it might have been, as if he had gotten up and left the theater to get something, and when he had come back, he had missed so much of the story, it wasn’t quite making sense to him, and his mind was trying to patch in what was lost.

  “You would have raised me,” Anne said, shaking her head. “It would have been such a different life having you and Sara as my parents.”

  “It would have been a harder one,” he said. “Two young kids, no money, struggling. We wouldn’t have been able to give you half of what your parents did.”

  She blinked at him. “How do you know?” she said quietly. “How do you know h
ow it would have turned out?” Helpless, he shrugged.

  “Can I stay here for a while?” she asked. “Just until I figure out what to do?”

  “I don’t know if that’s going to be possible,” Danny said quietly.

  “Why not?”

  “Because legally you can’t. Because I have a family. And so do you.”

  “Family! I don’t even know what that means anymore!” Anne jumped up, digging in her pockets.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, and she turned from him, her face pinched.

  “I’m checking how much money I have.” He saw the crumpled bills, and then he saw the panic in her face. “Don’t look at me like that,” Anne said. “You don’t have to worry. I’ll be out of your hair in ten minutes. I’ll find someplace to go.” She crouched down and searched out her sneakers under the couch, tugging them on, tying the knots so fiercely one snapped in two.

  He touched her shoulder for the first time, this slight young girl. “You can stay here tonight,” he told her and her whole body relaxed again.

  “I could get to like this den,” she said hopefully.

  Charlotte made a simple dinner. Hot dogs. French fries. Grape juice. “Comfort food,” she said cheerfully, and all Danny could think was, well, who was getting comforted? Certainly not Charlotte, who averted her eyes every time Danny tried to meet them. And it sure as hell wasn’t Anne, who picked at her hot dog and maneuvered her fries about the rim of her plate. No one talked about Danny being Anne’s father, or Anne running away. Instead, Charlotte kept up a patter about the weather (God, the weather!), about how it was supposed to rain again. “I won’t have to water the lawn, then,” Danny said, and instantly felt ridiculous. Only the baby remained sunny, settled next to Charlotte in the carriage, babbling his own secret conversation.