The Last Secret (18 page)

She sits back down. Instead of being relieved, she keeps expecting the phone to ring. Just because he didn't answer doesn't mean he's in
Boston with Ken. Oliver hates talking on the phone and Ken knows that. He has to take calls at the paper, but at home he'll just let the phone ring.

Drew is trying to blow his nose again. The cut on his cheek has healed, leaving only a hairline scar. Nora notices the rash of pimples on his face and neck. The worst ones are on his forehead, like hard red boils. She wonders if his prescription has run out. He needs a haircut and his sweatshirt is stained. Is her unhappiness blinding her to everything around her, she who has always had little patience with people who let their troubles consume their lives?

“Will you stop that? Please?” Chloe begs with a long sigh.

“Drew has a cold,” Nora says sharply. The last thing she needs right now is their arguing. “He can't help it.”

“Well, he can go in the other room and do it, can't he?” Chloe says.

“Maybe you should, Drew. If it's bothering your sister,” she says. Has their bickering gotten worse lately or is she just more sensitive to it? Stress fractures. Hairline cracks, all the little breaks. Before the big one.

“Everything bothers her,” Drew mutters.

“Well, at least I don't go around having fights with people. Brawls, I should say,” Chloe sniffs.

Drew keeps chewing, his gaze heavy with warning. “So how come you got early dismissal today? Where'd you go?”

Chloe's face drains of color. Nora puts down her fork. She asks Chloe what time she was dismissed. Chloe isn't sure, maybe around one or two, she thinks. No, it was morning, eleven, it said on the sign-out sheet, Drew explains. Why? Nora asks. Where did she go? And how, without a note?

Finally, Chloe admits forging Nora's signature on the dismissal note. But it wasn't just to skip. It was for a good reason. Jen had a doctor's appointment and she didn't want to go alone.

“So why didn't her mother take her?” Nora asks.

“Because … she couldn't,” Chloe says with a meaningful stare at her mother.

“Yeah, she probably forged her note, too,” Drew scoffs.

“What's wrong with Jen, is she sick?” Nora asks. Jen is Chloe's best friend. This year, anyway.

Chloe's eyes widen. She sighs in exasperation.

“Well?”

“I'd rather not talk about it right now,” Chloe says in that up-talking, singsong cadence Nora can't stand.

All right then, Nora says. If Drew will excuse them for a moment, they'll go into the den where Chloe can speak privately. The minute the door closes, Chloe explains that Jen was scared she had cancer. She had this weird mole that kept getting bigger. They're going to run some tests. Why wouldn't she tell her mother? Nora asks.

“Because of where it is.” She gestures to her groin. “She's embarrassed. You know how Jen is.”

“You're lying to me.”

“See! I knew you'd say that. I can't tell you anything!”

Nora opens the phone book. “I'm calling Jen's mother.”

“No! Jen'll never speak to me again. You'll get Mrs. Carnes all upset and then she'll hate me.”

“A risk I'll have to take, then.” She runs her finger down the column of numbers. “Or do you just want to tell me the truth? You were with Max, weren't you?”

Chloe weeps and begs her mother's forgiveness. It's true. He's going away for a three-month work-study in Costa Rica and she wanted to see him one last time before his flight. “I'm sorry, Mom. I'm so sorry.”

“Don't you know what you do when you lie, Chloe? My trust … you break my heart,” she says, fighting tears.
Especially after what your father's done to me
, she aches to say, hungry for her daughter's love and understanding.

“I know and I'm sorry,” Chloe cries, “but … but I'm gonna miss him so much. It hurts just to think about it.”

So much for my feelings, Nora thinks, wiping her eyes, relieved in a way. No matter what disaster is going on with her parents, Chloe's life is still firmly on its normal track, with teenage tunnel vision obscuring all but her own troubles. As it should be, Nora thinks, though
it doesn't make her feel any better. Just more alone. On the outside, looking in—at her own life.

It's late afternoon
and she's just returning to the office after a two-hour wrangle with Duncan Turner, president of Franklin Memorial Hospital. His cooperation is crucial to the success of the
Medical
supplement. Because they've served together on so many civic and charitable committees and because the supplement will be a great public relations venue for the hospital she expected their meeting to be brief, a formality, if not a courtesy call. But as it turns out, Duncan is a punctilious control-monger, at least in matters concerning the hospital. He is insisting on final approval of every article. Her suggestion that they interview someone from housekeeping was met with surprising disdain. Janitors and cleaning ladies, apparently not the image President Turner wants out there. Doctors, department heads, he'll decide and send her the names. Oh yes, and nurses, he agreed when she mentioned them. She hadn't realized the extent of his vanity when it concerns his public persona. She'll have to be careful.

“That guy. Hawkins. He was just here again,” Hilda says the minute Nora comes through the door. “I told him you weren't here, but he said you keep calling, telling him to come in. He said he'd try the house.”

“The house!” she cries, then tries to hide her alarm. “God, he's a pest. I don't even know what he wants,” she says, dialing the home number on the way into her office and closing the door with her hip. No answer. She tries Chloe's number. No answer. Dials Drew's. Not having heard anything of Eddie in a week, she'd convinced herself that he'd tired of his sick little game and moved on.

“Hey, Mom!” Drew answers breathlessly on the sixth ring. “In the driveway,” he says when she asks where he is.

“Doing what?”

“Basketball,” he grunts, and in the background comes the running thunkthunkthunk of a ball being dribbled.

“That's nice.” She's glad. Even though his cold is better, he's been
so unhappy these last few weeks, leaving the house only for school. Because he's turned them down so often lately, his friends have stopped calling. “But don't forget about your ribs. You don't want to aggravate anything.”

“I won't.”

Hearing a voice, she hunches over her desk. “Who's that? I just heard someone. Who is it?”

“That guy you know. Mr. Hawkins. We're shooting some—”

“You let him in the house?”

“No. I got off the bus, and he—”

“Put him on the phone!”

“But, Mom, we're—”

“Put him on the phone! Now, Drew!”

“She wants to talk to you,” she hears Drew say.
She
, not
my mother
, but
she
, as if they've been discussing her.

“Nora!” Eddie Hawkins croons in her ear. “I've been waiting for you.”

“I'm only going to say this once. You get out of there, right now! Because I'm calling the police.”

“I wouldn't do that. Not a good idea. Too many questions.”

“I'm on my way. I'm almost there,” she says, hurrying out past Hilda who steps back so quickly she must have been listening at the door.

“Hey, take your time,” he oozes. “Don't rush on my account. Please.”

As soon as she gets out of the car, she tells Drew to go inside, she has to talk to Mr. Hawkins for a minute.

“That's okay. I'll just keep shooting,” Drew says, dribbling then spinning with a quick jump shot.

“Yeah!” Eddie pumps his fist. “Nothin' but net!”

“No, Drew. Now. Inside. This is … business.”

“I'll come back some other time, Drew.” Eddie pats the glowering boy's back. “Work on our three-point shots.”

Drew kicks the basketball out of his way, just hard enough to let her know he's upset. Last night he and his sister had another terrible
argument. Chloe is still mad at him for telling on her. And unbelievably, Ken sided with Chloe. His first loyalty should always be to his family, he told Drew. Drew's muttered retort got him sent to his room for the night. As soon as the side door closes, Nora demands to know what Eddie thinks he's doing, coming to her home, talking to her son. Instead of answering, he asks if they can go inside, he's freezing. The back of his jacket flaps in the wind. He blows into his cupped hands.

“Trying to intimidate me is one thing. But I won't have you stalking my—”

“One-on-one it's called.” He grins.

“Look, Eddie, whatever you think happened to you because of—”

“Whatever I think!” His laugh is a bitter bray. “It's not what I think. It's what happened, goddamnit! That's what this is about. Not what I fucking
think
happened.”

“All right then.” She speaks slowly, acutely aware of his wringing hands. “Because of what happened. That's why you're here. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry for whatever you've gone through. But that was twenty-six years ago. I don't know what you want from me. You said it was to protect me, well, I appreciate that, in one way, but … you were trying to rob him. I mean, that's … that's what really happened.”

“What
really
happened was you split the fucker's skull in two. And then you took off running. And who ends up in shackles? Poor Eddie. The poor sick bastard tryna help him.”

“No.” Horrified, she can only shake her head. “No. That's not true.”

“It's not? Jesus Christ, then one of us is awfully damn messed up,” he says, tapping his temple. “And it sure as hell ain't me.”

For days afterward,
she forces herself to remember that night. Some details she has forgotten. The truck driver's name. Tom, all she remembers. He seemed so much older, as did most adults then, especially men, all of that murky universe of inconsequential, middle-age people. The company name on his truck: red lettering? On the cab door or on the side of the trailer? Did he ever say what freight he was
carrying, where he'd been, where he was going? Probably. She remembers him talking a lot. A nice man. Soft-spoken in spite of his gruff manner. But what did he actually tell her? Did she listen or even care beyond diesel fumes and the sobering horror of the bloody scene she was fleeing? She was so sick to her stomach he had to keep pulling off the highway to let her out. Strange, the things she does remember, prickly weeds at her ankles as she dry-heaved in the gravel, then climbing back up into the big rig's rumble, like his voice, a regretful, damning drone. They drove a long time before he suggested she call home.

“No. I can't.” She couldn't face the shame of even talking to her mother much less having to stand in her stern presence. Once again, she had failed her mother, soiled her father's memory. All she wanted was to die.

“Sooner or later you're gonna have to,” he said.

“Why? Why can't I stay with you?” she asked, holding her sides.

“Hey! I got kids your age.”

“A ride, that's all I meant.”

He finally talked her into letting him call her mother. He did most of the talking. It was some comfort, hearing him assure her mother she was fine … a little frazzled maybe, but none the worse for wear.

“Things kids do … Yeah, I know … Been through it with my own.” Did he say that? Or is she filling in the blanks, sanitizing the story, because the truth is so foul? Maybe he wasn't kind and paternal. Maybe he came on to her up there in the dimly lit cab, rubbing his hand on her thigh, making her even more sick to her stomach. How long was she with him? Through that night, anyway. She remembers waking up with a start when he pulled off the highway, blinded for a moment by the sun's glare, then seeing all the other trucks in the parking lot. Noisy and bright inside the bustling diner, every stool filled, a shock after the quiet of the night's cloistered cab. The smell of coffee and bacon. Cigarettes. They didn't sit at the counter. In a booth: that, she remembers. She wouldn't look at him. He seemed uneasy watching her eat. Or maybe with his scrutiny she was uneasy, ashamed. Scrambled eggs and coffee. Limp toast. Why that detail, why thin toast on a greasy white plate and not the name of the town or if there'd been
a pipe in her hand, but her lip was cut, which had to have been the blood caked under her nails, willing it to be the only blood, hers, as she stared into the filmy restroom mirror with a wad of wet paper towels pressed against her swollen mouth, while the knob rattled and turned, until finally, he banged on the locked door, shouting for her to come out. He knew she was in a bad way, but he was on a tight schedule, six deliveries to make. There was a pay phone, he said. She'd tell him the number but only if he talked first. When he finally handed her the receiver she began to cry.

“Mom.” For a moment all she could say. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry,” she surely must have said. Sorry for everything, she meant. All the lies and disappointment. And poor Mr. Blanchard, though she couldn't say it then.

“Just come home. Please. Please, come home.” That, she remembers with the same urgent clarity of her mother's voice. Dusk when he dropped her at the bus station. Her mother wired money ahead for the ticket. And for food along the way. A few days after she got home, her mother insisted she write him a thank-you note. Imagine the etiquette of a proper thank-you note from a fugitive, fleeing a crime scene. Her stomach turned writing it. She was too ashamed to tell her mother much of anything. Just that Eddie Hawkins had turned out to be a lot different than she'd first thought. And that there'd been a fight. In his call, Tom had alluded to it, so she had to.

“Did he hurt you?” her mother asked.

“No.” She cried.

“Should I make an appointment with Dr. Reisman?” Might she be pregnant?

“No!” She didn't think so.

Her mother must have mailed the thank-you note. Where to, though? It was never mentioned again.

And so it's always the same. Hazy, unfocused. She'd been so young, and certainly intoxicated, drinking all day in the brutally hot car. In needing to forget, had the details slipped away? Or been altered to suit her conscience? Secrets, dreamed so many times, the dream is now both defense and barrier. Her head pushed down, the car door opening;
then Eddie shoves him back, the man swings the pipe, and Eddie knocks it away. But now whose hand wields it? Eddie's? Or hers? No. No. She wasn't capable of such an act. Not then or now.