Never Come Back

by David Bell

  “I need you to do this for me,” I said. “I know I can trust you.”

  “You know I’ll be your loyal pup,” he said.

  “Something like that.”

  The restaurant came into sight. The parking lot was full, and through the large windows I saw a number of diners sitting at the tables. I wouldn’t be alone, not by a long shot.

  “Are you sure you don’t need to call the police?” Dan asked.

  I guided the car into an empty space. I looked around and didn’t see Gordon Baxter anywhere. For all I knew, he wouldn’t make the trip. He could have been a crazy coming out of the woodwork just to antagonize a crime victim’s family.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “But make sure you check in with me in an hour.” I paused. “I appreciate it. Really. I know I can be a pain, but I need you to do this for me. Please?”

  “Of course,” he said. “One hour. Got it.”

  I hung up and climbed out of the car.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Gordon Baxter sat at a table near the door of the McDonald’s. A Styrofoam cup of coffee rested in front of him, the steam rising toward his face. I bypassed the counter and went to the table, but I didn’t sit. I didn’t know what I was going to hear from this man. I didn’t know whether I wanted to hear it at all.

  He looked up at me, his face benevolent. He pointed at the empty chair across the table. “Have a seat,” he said. “Or are you getting something to eat?”

  I sat down. I kept the phone in my hand. I wanted it to remind me of my deadline with Dan. One hour.

  It was lunchtime, and the tables on either side of us were occupied. The chattering buzz of conversation went on all around us, punctuated by the occasional scream of a child or a shout from an employee in the kitchen. Gordon Baxter sipped from his cup.

  “What would you like to know?” he asked.

  “You’re the one who showed up on my doorstep,” I said. “You must have something you want to say to me.”

  “Fair enough,” he said. “But in order to tell you why I came by your apartment, I’m going to have to give you some background. Maybe we’ll both get the information we want.”

  I didn’t say anything. I waited for him to go on.

  “Like I said, your mom and I were high school sweethearts.”

  I interrupted him before he got going. “And just so you know, I told my friend where I am right now. He’s going to come looking for me in an hour if I don’t call him.”

  Gordon Baxter considered me. Some of the benevolence drained out of his face, and he tilted his head to the left. “Your mother wasn’t very trusting either,” he said. “She had that streak in her, that quality that told her a person had to prove their trustworthiness to her.”

  “That’s fine,” I said, standing up. “I don’t want to hear this stuff.”

  “So you don’t want to hear about your mother’s past?” he asked. “You don’t want to know her?”

  His questions stopped me. I hated that it had worked. I settled back into my chair.

  “Your mom told me that about you,” he said. “She thought you were tough to get through to.”

  “You talked to my mother about me?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “You were in touch with her recently?”

  “I’ll get there,” he said. “But you’re going to have to let me get there the way I need to.”

  “Fifty-five minutes now,” I said, looking at my phone.

  “Okay,” he said. “Like I said, we were high school sweethearts. And we got married around graduation. We were young and dumb, but young and dumb people used to get married back then. Our generation did that a lot. We were living over in Haxton, where we both grew up. That’s how I know Paul as well. We all grew up over there and went to school together. It sounds really quaint and all-American, and I guess it was.”

  “Why didn’t Mom ever tell me about you?”

  “I have my guesses.”

  “There’s no shame in being divorced,” I said. “You got married young and you split up, right?”

  “It’s more complicated than that.”

  “Why did she hide that from me?” I asked, pushing him for the truth.

  “You would have to ask her, but I guess you can’t do that now.”

  “How do I even know you are who you say you are?” I asked. “I see no proof.”

  “I know about you being in graduate school,” he said. “I know about your brother, about Ronnie. I know your mother had high blood pressure. I know about Paul and how he’s retired and has a bit of a heart condition.”

  I was already shaking my head. “Most of that stuff you could learn in the newspaper. This is a small college town. Everybody knows something about somebody. So what?”

  “You’re right,” he said.

  He stopped with that simple statement, and I didn’t know what he meant.

  “Right about what?” I asked.

  “What I’m saying,” he said. “It doesn’t prove anything.” He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket. He brought out a small white rectangle, and only when he held it up did I realize it was a photograph. A fragile, yellowing snapshot. He held it in the air between us, the plain white back facing toward me. “You could wait and ask your uncle,” he said. “Or you could look at this.”

  I lifted my hand, but he pulled the photo back from me.

  “Not so fast,” he said. “I want you to look at this, and if you accept it as proof, then I want to know you’re really going to listen to everything I have to say.”

  “Just show it to me,” I said. “And you’re down to fifty minutes.”

  He held the photo out, and I took it.

  My hand shook a little as I turned it around. I didn’t know what I would see. The photo showed a man and a woman. She wore a plain wedding dress, short sleeved. It flared at her waist. The man wore a dark coat and tie. They stood close to each other near a three-tiered wedding cake, each holding a glass of champagne. I recognized both of them despite the passage of time. The man was a younger and thinner version of Gordon Baxter. His hair was fuller and darker, the face less round. But it was him.

  And the woman was Mom. Unmistakably. She looked young, even stylish. Her skin smooth, her eyes bright.

  She looked like me.

  She wore a half smile, one that spoke of something between insecurity and fear. Gordon had his arm around her, pulling her close to him with his free hand. She wasn’t hugging him back. She couldn’t—her upper arms were squeezed close to her body, her free hand clutching the champagne.

  It was Mom. So young, so beautiful. I’d never seen her quite like that before.

  “What do you think?” Gordon asked.

  I kept staring at the photo. I tried to keep it together despite the emotion that slowly rose in my throat. My vision started to swim a little. I blinked my eyes a couple of times, fighting off my feelings.

  Gordon reached out and took the photo.

  “Do you believe me?” he asked.

  I couldn’t speak. The photo confirmed everything I had been thinking—that I really didn’t know my mother. Not only had she not told me about her recent life, but she hadn’t told me about any of her life. She was a stranger to me.

  But why?

  Gordon slipped the photo into his pocket. I wanted to reach out for it and take it back. I wanted to study it longer. What if there was something there that told me what I needed to know about my mother?

  “So you’ll listen now?” he asked.

  “I still don’t know if whatever you tell me is the truth,” I said.

  “You can confirm it all with your uncle,” he said. “I’m sure you called him on the way here, right?”

  I didn’t answer. I looked at the top of the table.

  “Do you want to remind me of how much time I have left now?” he asked.

  “What happened with you and my mom?” I asked.

  “You’re not married, are you?” he asked, but didn’t wa
it for an answer. “You’re not. I know your mom was worried about that, about whether you’d ever settle down and have a normal life.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “I’m only twenty-six.”

  “Your mom worried about it. I could tell. When you’re married to someone and you share certain experiences, a bond forms that really never goes away. You’re tied to that other person whether the relationship is the same as it once was or not. That’s what happened with your mom and me. Even after all those years, there was still something there. A connection, something we shared. That was there for us, even in the time before she died.”

  “You were in touch with her?” I asked. “Recently?”

  “Yes. We stayed in touch off and on over the years. Even during the time you were growing up. Like I said, we’re from the same place. We know many of the same people.”

  “Did my dad know about you?” I asked.

  “He did. He had to. When you get married, you have to disclose any previous marriages you may have had.”

  “Did you ever meet my dad?” I asked.

  “In passing once,” Gordon said. “I even met you one time, although I’m sure you don’t remember.”

  “When was this?” I asked.

  “You must have been about five, maybe six. You were out with your mother and your brother. It was in the shopping mall here in Dover. I was there, and by chance we all ran into each other. Your mother introduced me to you as an old friend. Do you remember?”

  I thought about it but couldn’t summon the memory. Who knows how many times I went out with Mom? And even though she didn’t have a lot of friends, she still knew people. As a child, I always felt as if I was being introduced to some new person, usually with my mother gently nudging me to remember my manners, look people in the eye, and say, “Pleased to meet you.”

  “I don’t,” I said.

  Gordon took a sip of his coffee, apparently draining the cup. He pursed his lips as though the dregs of coffee at the bottom of the cup were particularly bitter.

  “That was tough for me,” he said. “Seeing your mother with her children.”

  I didn’t immediately process what he was trying to say. Then I thought I understood. “Is this because you and Mom didn’t have any kids?” I asked.

  He looked into his empty cup. “I should really get some more coffee.”

  “Is that it?” I asked.

  He didn’t say anything. I knew he wanted me to think he wasn’t saying anything because whatever was on his mind was too troubling to talk about. But I sensed there was something else at play as well. There was a practiced quality to his reluctance, something that told me he wanted me to ask the question. That he needed me to press more.

  I gave him what he wanted only because of my intense desire to know.

  “Did you try to have children?” I asked.

  “We had a baby girl,” he said, his voice low.

  I tried to let that sink in. “A baby?” I said, repeating the word, my voice low and husky.

  Gordon nodded. “Yes.”

  “Did—” I stopped. Then I went on. “Did you lose the baby?”

  “She wasn’t a baby,” he said. “Not anymore. I think of her that way, though. As my baby.”

  “How old was she?” I asked.

  “She was fifteen years old,” he said. “She was fifteen when she was taken away and murdered.”

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Gordon Baxter took his empty coffee cup and stood up. He carried it with him to the counter, leaving me to sit alone at the table and digest the bombshell he had just dropped on me.

  A child. My mother had had another child. Which meant I had a half sister.

  Had a half sister. She was dead. Murdered. Just like Mom.

  But I couldn’t fix my mind on my dead half sister for very long. Instead, I found myself thinking of my mother. Not only had there been something else I didn’t know about her—she’d been married and she’d had a child before Ronnie and me—but she had lost that child. Violently. My mother had carried around with her one of the gravest losses a person—a mother—could suffer.

  And yet she had never told me about it. She had never mentioned it, talked about it, not even hinted at it. Not with me. She’d carried that burden with her silently, suffering in secret.

  I looked around the restaurant. A couple two tables down fussed over their baby. College kids laughed and joked as they inhaled French fries and hamburgers. Life went on. People were just living their everyday, mundane lives. Could any of them imagine the things I was finding out, the truths that were being revealed to me?

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gordon returning. He held his fresh cup of coffee as he deftly weaved between the people coming and going. He sat back down at the table, then added a sugar packet to the cup and stirred it with a small red straw.

  “She was fifteen,” Gordon said. He removed the straw and sucked a drop of coffee off the end. “Just started her sophomore year of high school.”

  “Was she your only child?”

  He nodded. “Yes. We tried to have another but couldn’t. Your mother really wanted more. I guess it makes sense that she had children when she married your father.”

  “What happened to this… to your daughter?” I asked.

  “Beth,” he said. “Her name was Beth.”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  He nodded. “Elizabeth, but we called her Beth. Your mother liked that name, I guess. Or she felt she was naming you as a tribute to her lost daughter.”

  “You’re lying to me.”

  “Remember, you can verify all of this when you have the chance,” he said. “If you wanted, you could take your phone, the one I know you have in your hand underneath the table, and call your uncle. You could call him right now, and he would verify all of this. It’s true. I’m not making anything up.”

  My mom, my whole family had always called me Elizabeth. Never Beth. Never Betsy or Betty or Liz. Elizabeth. And when anyone tried to shorten my name—a friend, a teacher, a neighbor—my mother corrected them. “Elizabeth,” she would say. “She goes by Elizabeth.”

  Was that why? She had named me after her deceased daughter, but couldn’t go all the way and call me by the same exact name? Was that why I was always Elizabeth? My mouth felt dry, almost cottony. I swallowed, trying to bring moisture back to my mouth.

  Gordon said, “Beth didn’t get along very well with your mother. Her mother. She was a teenager, and she had some problems.”

  “What year was this?” I asked.

  “Beth died in 1975.” He sipped the coffee. The baby at the table near ours started to cry. I watched the mother lift it from its high chair and pull it close, gently soothing it with whispered words. “It wasn’t that unusual to be a rebel back then, at that time. And there were a lot of things for young people to get involved in. I’m sure you can imagine.”

  “Are you talking about drugs?” I asked.

  “Drugs, yes.”

  “That wasn’t unique to the seventies,” I said. “Kids can still do that now.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Of course. But there was something in the culture then, something that almost required it of young people. A lot of them were getting high and dropping out. Kids ran away. You know, they’d just up and quit school and decide to move somewhere else, somewhere more exciting than Ohio. Oregon. California. Who knows? Beth was becoming one of those kids. She was troubled. And she was a troublemaker. She had some run-ins with the police. Minor stuff up to that point. She ran with the wrong kind of crowd. Certain kids from the school who were also into the drugs and the drinking and the partying. Some of the kids were older. I knew that on a few occasions she came down here and hung out on campus, going to parties with older kids and who knew what else.”

  “I’m sorry, but I’m not sure that behavior is that unusual for a teenager whether it was in 1975 or today. Some kids party and run around with a faster crowd. It’s normal teenage rebellion. I did some of those th
ings in high school and certainly in college.”

  “About two months before Beth was killed, your mom found something in her room.”

  He paused, letting the words hang in the air.

  “What did she find?” I asked.

  “She found a bag of drugs and a couple of hypodermic syringes,” he said. “Real, hard drugs. Heroin.”

  I didn’t say it out loud because I didn’t have to, but I understood his point. Heroin was a major step up. It wasn’t just teenage rebellion and mischief.

  “What did Mom do?” I asked.

  “We did what any parent would do,” he said. “We sat her down and we confronted her. We told her, in no uncertain terms, that she was not to bring that kind of thing into our house ever again. We laid down the law, the way parents are supposed to in a case like that.” His voice took on a firmness, a conviction that hadn’t been there before. It sounded like these were the words he truly believed. “You know, back then parents were much more comfortable laying down the law like that. We could say to a child, ‘It’s my way or the highway.’ It was a better way to raise a child.”

  “Did you try to get her help?” I asked.

  “Help?” he said, his voice dismissive. “We didn’t used to believe people with drug problems needed help. We used to believe in an application of will. If the kid couldn’t do it, then the parents did. I still believe that.”

  “She was fifteen,” I said. “Don’t you think she deserved a break?”

  “I knew her,” he said, his voice cold. “She was my daughter. I knew how to raise her.”

  I sensed a dead end, a point at which Gordon Baxter and I were not going to agree. And I really didn’t care to push him—I hadn’t come for a debate about parenting styles. I wanted to learn about my mother’s life.

  “So what happened?” I asked.

  “She ran away,” he said.

  “I thought you said—”

  “She came back,” he said. “She was gone for a few days, probably crashing at a friend’s house. Or God knows where. It drove your mother crazy with worry. I don’t think Leslie slept the whole time Beth was gone. When Beth came back, things just got worse. She was skipping school. Coming home late. If we grounded her, she snuck out.” He sighed. “One night the police brought her home. She had snuck out and gone to a party. When the police broke up the party, they found out Beth was underage, and they brought her home to us. What could be worse for a parent than to have the police bring your child home in the middle of the night?”