All She Ever Wanted (11 page)

May Elizabeth’s brakes squealed as she skidded to a stop near the pillared entrance. It was growing dark, and the wooded, unlit cemetery looked spooky. Some of the graves were one hundred and fifty years old, including that of Sarah Hawkins, whose ghost was rumored to haunt the grounds at night. Even spookier, Sarah had been our age when she’d died.

“We’d better go home,” May said. Her voice sounded shaky. “My mom gets mad if I ride my bike after dark, even with a headlight and reflectors.”

“What kind of a detective would be afraid of an old graveyard?” I asked, cutting to what I figured was the heart of the problem. “Nancy Drew wouldn’t be afraid of ghosts. Remember
The Haunted Bridge
? Come on.”

I pedaled through the entrance and followed the winding dirt road deep into the cemetery, using the dust cloud from Mr. Hayworth’s car as a clue to guide me. I was pretending to be brave, but I was trembling inside. It was a very delicious feeling.

May’s father had pulled his car to a halt way in the back, parking near the edge of the cemetery where the woods began. Another car was parked in front of his—a Volkswagen Beetle. I slowed to a stop a short distance away, half-hidden behind the Moore family’s giant monument. My heart thumped with fear and excitement. I signaled for May to halt, too, and held my fingers to my lips to warn her to be quiet, but her mouth hung so slackly that she looked incapable of speech. I wondered if I looked as wideeyed as she did.

Mr. Hayworth opened his car door and climbed out, nervously glancing around. The spy in the Volkswagen got out, too. I could tell that it was a woman by her shape and her bouffant hairdo—and there was something familiar about her, even at this distance. I figured the pair would quickly exchange documents and hurry away, but instead they did a very surprising thing. They wrapped their arms all around each other just like lovers do at the end of a good movie—and they kissed! Right there in the cemetery! I heard May Elizabeth gasp.

When the kiss ended, Mr. Hayworth glanced all around again, then opened the rear door of his car. He guided the woman spy into the back seat, then climbed in beside her and closed the door. A moment later their heads sank out of sight.

I tried to make sense of the scene, adding all the clues together just like Nancy Drew would do when solving a mystery. I thought I remembered seeing someone driving a Volkswagen Beetle all around town. Then it came to me: It was my teacher, Miss Pfister. Yes! That’s who the familiar-looking woman had been! But Miss Pfister wasn’t a Russian spy. She was a young, pretty, unmarried, sixth-grade teacher at Riverside Elementary School. What was she doing at the cemetery in the back of a car with May Elizabeth Hayworth’s father?

Then I realized what.

May Elizabeth must have put all the clues together at the same moment that I did, because I heard a crash as her bicycle fell over. I turned in time to see her sink to the ground as if all the strength had gone out of her legs. She covered her face with her hands and wept. I didn’t know what to do.

It seemed like hours passed as May huddled in the road, crying uncontrollably, and I stood beside her, twisting my hands.

“May Elizabeth…? ” I finally whispered. “May? We better go home.”

She drew a deep, shuddering breath, as if preparing to scream—but she didn’t. Instead, she leaped to her feet, grabbed her fallen bicycle and jumped on it, pedaling out of the cemetery as if Sarah Hawkins and all of the other dead people had risen from their graves and were chasing after her. I don’t know how May could see where she was going through her tears.

She didn’t say one word to me all the way home, and when we reached her house she dropped her bicycle on the front lawn and ran inside, slamming the door behind her. I gazed numbly at her house for a long time, wondering if I should go inside and talk to her or not. What on earth would I say?

I finally wheeled Ron’s bike around to the garage and put it away, then went back for May Elizabeth’s bike. I felt like a criminal and didn’t know why. I was slinking down the driveway, heading home, when I heard Mrs. Hayworth calling me.

“Kathleen! Kathleen, wait!” I turned around but couldn’t meet her gaze. “What happened to May Elizabeth? Why is she crying like that? Kathleen, please. You have to tell me what’s wrong.”

“I don’t know. …” I said with a shrug. But when I remembered how Mr. Hayworth and Miss Pfister had kissed, I began to cry, too. Mrs. Hayworth gently gripped my shoulders.

“I think you do. Please, honey. I’m not angry with you, I just want to help you and May. But I can’t help if I don’t know what’s wrong. Please… did someone hurt you or her?”

Oh, yes. We were hurt. My throat felt so tight that I could barely get the words out. “We were pretending to be detectives. …” I began. I told her how we had followed Mr. Hayworth’s car from the factory. I told her where he had gone and what we had seen. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done. When I finished I felt sick inside.

Mrs. Hayworth’s face had turned very white. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. “Please don’t mention this to anyone else, Kathleen. Please,” she begged.

“I won’t. I promise.” She drew me into her arms for a long hug. Then she went back inside.

My mother started yelling at me as soon as I got home. “Since when do you take off without telling anyone where you’re going? Where have you been?”

I let myself get angry in return so I wouldn’t cry. If I did, Mom might start asking questions that I didn’t want to answer. Besides, as soon as Mommy started yelling, Annie had started crying loudly enough for both of us. After a lifetime of practice, my brothers had learned to ignore any and all yelling, even when it was directed at them. They appeared catatonic as they sat on the floor, staring at the bobbing TV.

“I was with May Elizabeth,” I said, sounding sullen. “Since when do you care?”

“You watch your mouth, young lady. You’re grounded for staying out until after dark. What are you doing running around until all hours of the night, anyway?” She snuffed out her cigarette then reached into the pack for another one.

I looked her straight in the eye, my anger building. I needed to know the truth. “Where’s Daddy?” I asked. Mommy looked surprised by the sudden change of subject.

“He’s away on business. And that’s too bad for you, isn’t it? He’s not around to take your side and spoil you rotten like he always does.”

“Where does he work?”

“I told you—he’s a traveling salesman. … Listen, you leave your father out of this. You’re still grounded. You can’t go over to your rich friend’s house for a week. You hear me?”

“You told me before that Daddy was a trucker.”

“Well… he was. Now he’s in sales.”

I could tell by the way that my mother glanced away as she blew smoke toward the ceiling that she wasn’t telling the truth. I was furious with Mr. Hayworth for lying to May and her mother, and furious with my parents for lying to me. I made up my mind to solve the mystery of my missing dad all by myself, no matter how ugly the truth turned out to be.

“What company does Daddy work for? What does he sell?”

“Don’t you take that tone with me. I’ve had about all I can take from you, Kathleen.”

“I want to write him a letter. What’s his address?”

My mother wrote a letter to him once a week, and she always made me fill a page of lined notebook paper, telling him what I was doing in school. Daddy sent letters back to us, and Mommy would read parts of them out loud to us, but Daddy never said anything that would provide a clue to his whereabouts. I had to find out his return address.

Mommy shook her finger at me, and the ribbon of ash on the end of her cigarette dribbled onto the couch. “If you think you’re going to get out of trouble by writing a letter, you’ve got another think coming! Now, go to your room!”

“
My
room? Ha! That’s a joke!” I stomped away, longing to vent my anger by slamming the bedroom door. I didn’t dare. It would probably fall off its hinges.

I pulled out a piece of notebook paper and started composing a letter to my father:
Dear Daddy, How are you? Fine, I hope
. I had to be careful not to mention being grounded or to plead with him to take my side against my mother because I knew she would read it—and she would never send it to him if I did.
School is fine. I’m still getting A’s. …
My tears started falling again when I remembered Miss Pfister’s betrayal, but I kept writing, determined to solve this mystery.
I miss you, Daddy. When are you coming home?

When I finished, I walked out to the living room and handed the letter to my mother. “I’m sorry I stayed out after dark,” I said. It was the truth. I was also sorry I had decided to become a detective and follow Mr. Hayworth into the cemetery, so my heartfelt apology came easily. “Will you mail this to Daddy for me?”

“Fine.” She took the letter from me. Her eyes never left the drifting TV screen.

“If you want, I can print the envelope myself,” I told her. “We learned how to do it in school last year.”

“You don’t have to. I’ll put your letter in with mine.”

This dead end frustrated me. I went back to my room and racked my brain for another idea. If I could just keep my mind focused on finding Daddy, I wouldn’t have to picture Miss Pfister kissing May’s father. I wouldn’t have to remember how devastated May had been or how Mrs. Hayworth’s arms had trembled as she’d hugged me.

I was still thinking about how to find my dad when Annie drifted into the bedroom a little while later and lay down on our bed, yawning. None of us had a fixed bedtime. My brothers might sleep in their bed at night or they might sleep on the living room floor in front of the TV. In our house, you slept wherever you fell asleep and nobody ever bothered to move you.

“You need to brush your teeth before you go to bed,” I told Annie.

“I don’t want to,” she whined. Annie couldn’t even say “hello” or “good-bye” without whining.

“Well, at least put your pajamas on,” I said.

“I don’t want to.” She turned toward the wall and fell asleep.

I kept the light on, still trying to plan my strategy. When I heard Uncle Leonard come home a little while later, I crept down the hallway toward the living room so I could hear what he and my mother were saying. At first they made a lot of stupid small talk, but when Mommy said, “Will you mail this for me tomorrow?” I hurried into the room as if I were on my way to the kitchen to scrounge something to eat. I saw him take an envelope from my mother and put it into the pocket of his ratty overcoat. He tossed the coat over the back of a dining room chair.

I hoped that he wasn’t going to stay up all night writing manifestoes because I was exhausted from the evening’s traumatic events and I wasn’t sure how much longer I could remain awake. My mom went to bed while I was fixing myself a can of tomato soup. I couldn’t find a clean bowl and there was no room at the table to sit down, so I leaned against the sink and ate the soup out of the pot. By the time I finished, my uncle had turned off the TV and was pulling his blanket and pillow from behind the couch to make his “bed.” He tossed the unraveling afghan that Daddy got at the thrift store over my sleeping brothers on the floor.

“Good night, Uncle Leonard,” I said on my way back to my room.

“Night,” he grunted. Nothing was “good” when you were a Communist living in a capitalistic society.

I put on my nightgown and brushed my teeth, then turned off the light and stood near my bedroom door, waiting for my uncle to fall asleep. I knew that if I got comfortable I’d fall asleep myself, and I couldn’t allow that to happen.

After a very long time, I heard Uncle Leonard snoring. The house was dark and shadowy, reminding me of my earlier trip into the cemetery. I almost changed my mind when I remembered what we had discovered there. But I was May Elizabeth’s best friend, and it was only fair that we both find our missing fathers on the same night. I tiptoed into the living room, careful not to make a sound, and fished the letter from my uncle’s coat pocket. It was too dark to read the address. I went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door a crack so the light would come on. The odor of sour milk drifted out as I read the envelope:

Donald Gallagher # K21633–277 County Correctional Center Bensenville, New York

I slammed the refrigerator door shut as if that would make the horrible truth vanish with the light and the stench. My daddy was in
jail
? He had a
number
?

For a long moment I stood frozen, trying to comprehend it. Then the envelope fluttered to the floor as I fled to the bathroom and threw up the tomato soup I’d eaten. I felt as though my heart had died and turned to stone. My wonderful, laughing daddy really, truly was a thief. He had been caught and sent to prison. How many other times had he been locked away behind bars when he’d gone missing? I understood why May Elizabeth hadn’t been able to stop crying, because for a long time I couldn’t stop, either. In fact, I cried myself sick and couldn’t go to school the next day.

When I did return, I felt so ashamed of who I was that I kept my chin tucked against my chest, unable to meet anyone’s gaze. May Elizabeth missed three days of school, and when she came back, I found out she’d transferred into the other sixth-grade classroom across the hall. I saw her on the playground at recess, standing alone near the jungle gym. She was usually so animated, but now she looked like a windup toy with a broken spring. I went over to stand alongside her.

“You okay?” I asked.

“No… I’m afraid my parents are going to get a
divorce,
” she said tearfully.

I remained silent for a moment as we both grieved, then I said, “Don’t feel bad. I found my missing dad, too. …He’s in jail.”

“Oh, Kathleen!” May gave me a hug—a long, shaky one like her mother’s—then we walked away from each other so we both wouldn’t start bawling.

We never discussed it, but we scrapped our plans to open a detective agency after solving our first case. I never read another Nancy Drew mystery, either. We both grew up that spring of 1962, our innocence gone, our childhood at an end.