Secrets She Left Behind

Praise for Diane Chamberlain

Before the Storm

“This is powerful stuff…it is certainly as compulsive and issue-led as Jodi Picoult with whom she is being compared. I couldn’t put it down.”

—The Bookseller

“Chamberlain lays out her latest piece of romantic suspense in a shattered chronology that’s as graceful as it is perfectly paced…her engrossing prose leads the way to redemption.”

—Publishers Weekly

The Bay at Midnight

“This complex tale will stick with you forever.”

—Now Magazine

“Emotional, complex and laced with suspense, this fascinating story is a brilliant read.”

—Closer

“A moving story.”

—Bella

“A brilliantly told thriller.”

—Woman

The Lost Daughter

“A strong tale that deserves a comparison with Jodi Picoult.”

—www.lovereading.co.uk

Secrets She Left Behind
Diane Chamberlain

ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES

For the families of the missing

Acknowledgements

Many people pitched in as I wrote Secrets She Left Behind, helping me understand everything from the juvenile justice system to the plight of a family when someone “goes missing” to the geography of Topsail Island.

For answering my many questions about the police response to a missing adult, my thanks go to Sergeant Art Cunio and Chief Mike Halstead of the Surf City, North Carolina, Police Department. My fictional police department will never measure up to yours!

For helping me understand the impact on a family when a loved one disappears, thank you to Project Jason founder Kelly Jolkowski and Project Jason volunteer Denise Gibb. You two give families hope.

For their unflagging support, thank you to my favourite booksellers, Nancy Olson of Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh and Lori Fisher of Quarter Moon books in Topsail Beach.

For always being there, ready and willing to brainstorm at a moment’s notice, thanks go to my Scribbler buddies: Mary Kay Andrews, Margaret Maron, Katy Munger, Sarah Shaber, Alexandra Sokoloff and Brenda Witchger.

For allowing me to use their Topsail Island homes for my research trips, thank you to Susan Rouse and Dave and Elizabeth Samuels.

For writing Topsail Island: Mayberry by the Sea, my favourite book about the area, thank you, Ray McAllister.

For their various contributions, I’d also like to thank Jean Beasley, Ken and Angie Bogan, Sterling Bryson, BJ Cothran, Evonne Hopkins, Kate Kaprosy, Lottie Koenig, Holly Nicholson, Glen Pierce, Adelle Stavis and Roy Young.

For listening patiently to my story ideas, reading my first drafts, being my resident photographer, smoothing my furrowed brow when I hit a snag in the plot and cooking when I’m on deadline, thank you to John Pagliuca.

As always, I’m grateful to my editor, Miranda Indrigo, and my agent, Susan Ginsburg. I’m lucky to have you two in my corner.

Chapter One

Andy

I SAT ON MISS SARA’S COUCH AND KILLED ALL THE MEGA Warriors. I could usually kill them better, but her TV was way littler than ours and I was sick. That’s why I was in Miss Sara’s trailer. Only I wasn’t supposed to call it a trailer. “It’s a mobile home,” Mom reminded me when she brought me here this morning. Even though she sometimes called it a trailer, too.

Things were different since the fire. Mom said I should call Sara “Miss Sara” like I did when I was little. It’s politer. Miss Sara used to hug me and be real nice and Mom’s best friend. Since the fire, Mom and her hardly even talk. The only reason I was in the mobile home was because Mom was desperate. That’s what she said to Uncle Marcus this morning.

I was still in bed, tired from getting sick from both ends all night long. Uncle Marcus slept over, like he does a lot. I heard Mom say, “I’ve tried everybody. I’m desperate. I’ll have to ask Sara.” Uncle Marcus said he could stay home with me and Mom said, “No! Please, Marcus. I need you with me.”

“I can stay alone,” I called, but it came out quiet on account of being sick. I was sixteen; I didn’t need a babysitter. I was sure I was done barfing, too. I couldn’t be sick anymore because Maggie was coming home today. I wanted to jump up and down and yell “Maggie’s coming home!” but I was too tired. I could only jump up and down in my imagination.

I heard Mom on the phone with Miss Sara. “Please, Sara. I’m sure it’s just a twenty-four-hour bug. I know it’s a huge favor to ask, but I can’t leave him alone. It’ll only be for a few hours.” In the before-the-fire days, Mom would say, “Can you watch Andy today?” and Miss Sara would say, “Sure! No problem!” But this wasn’t those days anymore.

After a minute, Mom said, “Thank you! Oh, thank you so much! We’ll drop him at your house about ten-thirty.”

I pulled the blanket over my head. I didn’t want to get up and get dressed and go to Miss Sara’s trailer. I just wanted to go back to sleep till Maggie got home.

I brought my own pillow with me to the trailer. In the car, I leaned against the window with my head on it. Mom kept turning around from her seat. “Are you okay, Andy?”

“Mmm,” I said. That meant yes, but I was too tired to open my mouth. I knew she wanted to reach back and touch my forehead. She was a nurse and she could tell if you had a fever by touching your forehead. Nurses are very smart like that.

“Just think, Andy,” Uncle Marcus said. “When we pick you up at Sara…Miss Sara’s this afternoon, Maggie will be with us.”

Free, I thought. Maggie would finally be free. I hated visiting her at that stupid prison.

At the trailer, I laid down on Miss Sara’s couch with my pillow. Miss Sara got a blanket and Mom covered me over. She got to put her hand on my forehead then. She gave Miss Sara ginger ale and crackers for me. I started falling asleep as Mom said, “I can’t thank you enough, Sara,” and things like that.

Then she left and I fell asleep for a long time. I woke up and Miss Sara was walking across the living room. She looked right at me. She was carrying a big box with a picture of a pot on it. She stopped walking and put it on the floor.

“How are you feeling?” she asked. She had some lines on her forehead and by her eyes. So did Mom, but not as many.

“’Kay,” I said. My mouth tasted icky.

“You ready for some ginger ale and crackers? Think you can keep them down?”

I nodded. Except for feeling tired and kind of shaky, I was fine. I could’ve stayed home alone, no problem.

I sat up and Miss Sara brought me ginger ale in a glass with ice and crackers on a plate. Her eyes looked like she’d been crying. They were red how your eyes got. She smiled a funny smile at me. I smiled one back at her. People sometimes cried when they were happy and I knew that’s what was going on. Mom had red eyes all week. Miss Sara was probably as happy about Maggie coming home as we all were.

I drank some ginger ale, which tasted good. Miss Sara carried the box outside. When she came back in, she said, “Do you want to play some of Keith’s video games?” Which is how I started playing Mega Warrior.

Now I shot another Mega Warrior and then a Super Mega Warrior, which are the ones with the arrow things on their heads. At least it was a school day and Keith wasn’t home. Keith was one of the people I couldn’t save at the fire. Mom said he could actually die at first, but he didn’t. He got scars, though. His hands and his arms look like they have maps on them, only without the country names. One of his hands is scrunched up, kind of. Part of his face has that map look on it, too. He got held back and now we’re both juniors. He hated me even before I couldn’t save him. I felt sorry for him, though, because of his scars.

The phone rang in the kitchen. I could see Miss Sara pick it up. She made a face.

“You said no later than one-thirty, Laurel!” she said. Laurel was my mom.

One of the regular warriors killed my littlest man. That happened when you forgot to concentrate, like I was doing because I wanted to know what Mom was saying.

“All right,” Miss Sara said. She hung up the phone without saying goodbye, which was rude.

I wasn’t doing so good at Mega Warriors now, but I had good determination and kept trying.

Miss Sara came in the room again. “Your mom said she won’t be back till around four-thirty,” she said.

“Okay.” I killed two Super Mega Warriors in a row. Bang! Bang! Then one killed me.

“Andy? Look at me.”

I looked at her face even though I didn’t stop pushing the controller buttons.

“I need to run to the store,” she said. “Keith’ll be home soon. When he arrives, I need you to give him this envelope, all right?”

She put one of those long white envelopes on the coffee table. It said Keith on it.

“Okay.”

She was in my way. I had to move my head to see the TV.

“Andy!” Miss Sara said. “Look at me!”

I stopped pushing the buttons. She was using an I-mean-business voice.

“Did you hear me?” she asked. “What did I just say?”

“Mom won’t be here until…later.” I couldn’t remember the time she said.

“And what else?” Miss Sara used to be so nice. She’d turned into another lady this year.

“You’re going to the store.”

“And this, Andy.” She picked up the envelope and kind of shook it in front of my face. “What did I say about this?”

“Give the mail to Keith,” I said.

“It’s very important.”

“I’ll give it to him.”

She looked at her watch. “Oh, never mind. I’ll put it where he’ll see it.”

“Okay,” I said.

She walked in the kitchen, then came back again. “All right,” she said. “I’m going now.”

“Goodbye.” I wished she would just go.

I started playing again when she left. Then I got thirsty and my glass was empty. I walked into the kitchen to get more ginger ale. I saw the mail that said Keith on it on the table. She said it was important. What if Keith didn’t see it there?

I took the envelope back in the living room and stuck it in my book bag so I couldn’t forget to give it to him. Then I sat down again to kill some more warriors.

Chapter Two

Maggie

THEY MOVED ME FROM MY CELL HOURS LATER THAN I’D expected because of some paperwork issue Mom had to straighten out. I was afraid they weren’t going to let me go. There’d been some mistake, I thought. A prison official would show up at my cell door and say, Oh, we thought you were in prison for twelve months, but we read the order wrong. It’s really twelve years. It’s amazing the things you can imagine when you’re alone in a cell.

I sat on my skinny bed with my hands folded in my lap and my heart pounding, waiting. An hour. Two hours. I couldn’t budge. Couldn’t open the book I was reading. Just sat there waiting for them to come tell me how twelve months was a mistake and I couldn’t get out today. I deserved the twelve years. Everyone knew that, including me.

But finally, Letitia, my favorite guard, came to get me. I let out my breath like I’d been holding it in for those two hours and started to cry. Outside the bars of my cell, Letitia’s face was nothing more than a dark, wavy blur.

She shook her head at me, and I knew she was wearing that half sneer it took me a few months to recognize as a kind of affection.

“You crying?” she asked. “Girl, you cried the day you come in here and now you crying the day you leave. Make up your mind.”

I tried laughing but it came out more like a whimper.

“Let’s go,” she said, unlocking the door, sliding the bars to the left, and I thought, that’s the last time I’ll ever have to hear that door scrape open. I walked next to Letitia as we started down the broad central hall between the rows of cells, side by side like equals. Two free women. Free. I needed a tissue, but didn’t have one. I wiped my nose with the back of my hand.

“You’ll be back!” one of the women called to me from her cell. Others hooted and hollered. Cussed and shouted. “Yo, bitch! Gonna burn some more kiddies, huh?” BB they called me. Baby Burner, even though the people who died in the fire were two teenagers and an adult. I didn’t fit in. It wasn’t just that I was white. There were plenty of white women in the prison. It wasn’t that I was young. Sixteen was the age at which you were tried as an adult in North Carolina, so there were plenty younger than me. It was, as Letitia told me the first week I got there, that “they can smell the money on you, girl.” I didn’t see how. I didn’t look any different from them, but I guessed everybody knew my story. How I’d laid a fire around a church to let my firefighter boyfriend shine in the department. How I didn’t set the fire when I realized kids would be in the church, but how Keith Weston lit a cigarette, tossing the match on the fuel I’d poured without realizing it was there. How people died and burned and had their lives totally screwed up. They all knew the details, and even though some of them had murdered people, maybe sticking a knife in their best friend’s heart, or they sold drugs to junior-high kids or robbed a store or whatever, they stuck together and I was the outcast.

At the beginning of the year I’d thought about Martha Stewart a lot, how even though she was a rich white woman, she made all these friends in prison and they loved her. Adored her, even. How she came out on top. I told myself maybe that’s how it could be with me.

As Letitia and I went down the wide corridor between the cells, I remembered the first time I’d made that long walk. The hooting and name-calling. I didn’t think of the women as people then. They seemed like wild dogs and I was afraid one of them would break loose and run after me. Now I knew better. They couldn’t get out. I learned it wasn’t when they were in their cells that they could hurt me, but out in the yard. I was beaten up twice, and for someone like me who’d never even been hit, it was terrible. Both times, it was a girl named Lizard. She was six feet tall with thin, straggly, almost colorless hair. She was skinny and her body seemed out of proportion to the long arms and legs she could wrap around you like strands of wire. She let me have it, for no reason I could think of except that she hated me, like so many of the others hated me. I wasn’t good at getting beaten up. I didn’t fight back well. I cowered, covering my face with my hands, while she pounded my ribs and tore handfuls of my dark hair out by the roots. I had one thought running through my mind: I deserve this. You see people getting beaten up in the movies and TV all the time. There’ll be cuts and some blood, but you don’t get to feel the fear while it’s happening. The not-knowing-how-bad-it’ll-get kind of fear. Or the pain that goes on for days. Letitia saved me both times. Then I was “Letitia’s pretty baby.” LPB. They had initials for everything. A lot of the initials I never did figure out because I wasn’t part of the in crowd. I wasn’t the only outsider, though. Not the only one getting picked on. I wasn’t the weakest by far. They’d find the ones who were least able to defend themselves and move in for the kill. All I could think was, thank God Andy wasn’t the one to land in prison. He would never have survived.

I got over the whole Martha Stewart fantasy real fast. After the first couple of days, I didn’t even try to make friends. I kept to myself, reading, thinking about how I was supposed to be in college at UNC Wilmington this year. Maybe a business major, which seemed totally ridiculous to me now. Business? What did that matter, really? Who could I help with a degree in business? What good could I do for anybody but myself and maybe some blood-sucking company? I tried to keep a journal, but I threw it away after a couple of months because I couldn’t stand rereading what I’d written in the first few days about Ben and how I still loved him even though he betrayed me. How I did something so stupid out of love for him. How I killed people. I took lives. I wrote those words over and over on four or five pages of the journal like some third-grade punishment. I’d touch the latest cut on my lip from Lizard or the bruises that crisscrossed my legs and think these are nothing.

Letitia led me into a room that was the closest thing to freedom I’d seen in a year. It was the room where I’d checked into the prison, but it didn’t look the same to me now that I was facing the windows instead of the door that led to the cells. There was a long counter, a few people working at desks behind it. There were orange plastic chairs along one wall. The windows looked out on a sky so blue I barely noticed the rows of barbed wire at the top of a tall chain-link fence. There was something else out there, too: a crowd on the other side of the fence. News vans. People with microphones. People carrying signs I couldn’t read from inside the room. People yelling words I couldn’t hear, punching the signs in the air. I knew that the crowd was there for me, and they weren’t there to welcome me home.

“Yo, girl,” Letitia said when she saw them. “Sure you don’ wanna stay here wit’ the devil you know?”

Letitia was a mind reader. I was shaking so hard my teeth chattered. There was a kind of protection I had in my cell that I wouldn’t have once I walked through the prison gate.

“You sign over here, Lockwood.” A man behind the counter handed me a sheet of paper. I didn’t bother reading it. Just scribbled my name. My hand jerked all over the place.

I spotted my mother and Uncle Marcus on the sidewalk leading up to the building. Delia Martinez, my tiny but tough lawyer, was with them, along with two guards, helping them push through the crowd. I reached for the doorknob.

“It’s locked, girl,” Letitia said. “They goin’ buzz ’em through. Just hold on.”

I heard the buzzer. One of the guards opened the door, and Mom and Uncle Marcus burst into the room, Delia behind them.

“Mama!” I said, though I’d never called her “mama” before in my life. We crashed into each other’s arms, and then I started crying for real. I held on to her, sobbing, my eyes squinched shut, and I couldn’t let go. I didn’t care who was watching or if anyone thought I was holding on to her for too long. I didn’t care if I seemed nine instead of nineteen. I didn’t care if Mom had had enough—though I could tell she didn’t care about anything either. It felt awesome, knowing that. Knowing she’d hold me as long as I needed to be held.

Uncle Marcus hugged me when Mom and I finally let go of each other. He smelled so good! If anyone had asked me how Uncle Marcus smelled, I would have said I didn’t have a clue. But now that I could breathe in his aftershave or shampoo or whatever it was, I knew I’d been smelling that scent all my life. His hand squeezed my neck through my hair and he whispered in my ear, “I’m so glad you’re coming home, babe,” which started me crying all over again.

“When we go out there, Maggie,” Delia said when I finally let go of Uncle Marcus, “you don’t say a word. Okay? Eyes straight ahead. No matter what you hear. What anybody says. No matter what questions they throw at you. Not a word. Got it?”

“Got it.” I looked over my shoulder at Letitia, and she gave me her weird sneer.

“Don’t ever wanna see you in here again, hear?” she said.

I nodded.

“Okay,” Delia said. “Let’s go.”

The guards led us out, and the moment my feet hit the sidewalk, the people went crazy. I could see some of the signs now: Life for Lockwood. Murderer Maggie.

“Eyes straight ahead,” Delia repeated, her hand on my elbow.

Mom’s car was parked right outside the gate so I wouldn’t have to walk very far through the crowd. Still, when we got close to the car, the camera crews threw microphones toward us on long poles. They shouted so many questions I couldn’t separate one from another, not that I planned to answer any of them. I nearly dived into the car, Mom right behind me. Delia got in front, and Uncle Marcus jumped in the driver’s seat.

People pressed against the car as Uncle Marcus slowly drove through the crowd. The car swayed and shook, and I pictured the mob of people lifting up one side of it and rolling it over, crushing us. I put my head down on my knees and protected it with my arms—the crash position for flying. I felt Mom lean over me, covering me like a blanket.

“All clear,” Uncle Marcus called as we turned onto the road.

I lifted my head and the angry shouts of the crowd faded away. Would they follow us to our dead-end street in North Topsail? Surround our house? Who would protect me then?

I could hear Delia and Uncle Marcus talking quietly, but not what they were saying. After about a mile, we pulled to the side of the road behind a black Audi.

Delia turned around and reached for my hand. “I’m getting out here,” she said. “Call if you need me. You stay tough.”

“Okay,” I whispered, thinking that I wasn’t the tough one in the car. Delia was, and I owed my puny twelve-month sentence to her. She’d gotten a bunch of charges against me dismissed or reduced. I had mandatory counseling ahead of me, where I guess I was supposed to figure out why I did what I did so I never did it again. The fire had been a one-time deal. No question there. I didn’t feel like talking to anyone about the whole frickin’ mess. I wasn’t sure what I needed, but I knew it had to be some kind of total overhaul, not a few sessions with a shrink. Then I had three hundred hours of community service. No college for me for a while. Restitution to the families, but Mom was managing that by taking money out of my inheritance from Daddy. How did you pay families for their dead kids?

You’d think after a year in prison, we’d have a lot to talk about, but it was quiet in the car. Sometimes there’s so much to say that you don’t know where to begin.

I’d seen my mother and Uncle Marcus a couple of times a month while I was in prison. Each time, they sat closer together on their side of the table. I knew Uncle Marcus had loved my mother for a long time and I was glad she’d stopped with the ice-queen routine. They were probably lovers by now, but I didn’t want to go there. It was strange enough that my mother was dating my father’s brother.

“How’s Andy?” I asked. I saw my brother about once a month, enough to know he’d grown at least an inch this year, which only made him about five-one. He was filling out a little more, though. He was swimming with the Special Olympics team in Wilmington now and he had a girlfriend named Kimmie. I hadn’t met her, but I was nervous about anyone who could possibly hurt my brother, who had fetal alcohol syndrome.

“Actually,” Mom said, “he had a stomach bug all night.”

“Oh, no.” I hated to think of him sick.

“I hope we don’t all catch it now,” Uncle Marcus said. “Especially you, Mags. Nice homecoming that’d be.”

“Is he home alone?” I asked.

“I left him at Sara’s,” Mom said. “We’ll have to stop there and pick him up.”

Could that be any more bizarre? Sara babysitting Andy while Mom picked me up? Mom’s words just hung there in the car. “You and Sara are friends again?” I asked finally.

Mom sighed. “It’s a little better between us,” she said, “though I wouldn’t use the word ‘friends’ to describe our relationship. I couldn’t find anyone else this morning and he was really so sick I didn’t want to leave him alone. Sara wasn’t thrilled about it, but she said yes.”

Mom looked older than I remembered. I hadn’t noticed it during her visits, but now I could see that the skin above her eyes sagged a little. She’d cut her dark hair short, though, and it looked good. Actually kind of cool. Our hair was the same color, but mine was much thicker and wilder, like Daddy’s had been. I had it in a long ponytail, which is how I wore it the whole year in prison.

“I don’t think it’ll ever be the same between Sara and me,” Mom said. “I’ve let it go, though. My end of it.” I knew she meant the part about Sara having an affair with my father while he was married to Mom. It turned out that my father was also Keith’s father. Surprise, surprise. Andy didn’t know that, though.

“But she’s still upset,” Mom said. “You know.”

Yeah, I knew. Upset about Keith getting burned in the fire. I didn’t blame her. I cried every time I thought about how I’d hurt him. “I won’t go in when we stop there. Okay?” I didn’t want to see Sara and I sure didn’t want to see Keith.

“That’s fine.” Mom sounded relieved, or maybe it was just my imagination.

We drove over the swing bridge that crossed the Intracoastal Waterway.

“Oh, the ocean!” I said, looking toward the horizon. The water was a blue-gray, the sky a bit overcast, but it was beautiful. I’d never take living on the island for granted again.

We were practically the only car on the bridge. Although I usually liked September on Topsail, when most of the tourists were gone and it felt more like home, the lack of cars—of people—suddenly made me realize I would stand out. If the summer crowds had still been there, I could blend in with them. Now, I would know everyone and everyone would know me. I felt sick thinking about the girl I’d been a year ago. The girl who hid out in the Sea Tender and who did crazy things for love. Who led a secret life.

“Mom?” I said.

She rested her hand on mine. “What, sweetie?”

“I’m going to drive you nuts at first,” I said. “I mean, I’m going to tell you everything that I think, okay? I need someone to tell me if I start thinking like a crazy person again.”

“You can tell me anything you like,” she said.

“Remember—” Uncle Marcus looked at me in the rearview mirror “—you’ll have a counselor, too, Mags. You can be completely open with her.”

We pulled into the trailer park and I scrunched down in the seat when Uncle Marcus stopped in front of the Westons’ faded gold double-wide.

“I’ll stay here with Mags,” Uncle Marcus said.

“I’ll just be a minute,” Mom said as she got out of the car.

Uncle Marcus turned in his seat to smile at me. “It’s going to be all right,” he said. His brown hair was really short. Shorter than I’d ever seen it, and he had amazing blue eyes that I’d loved my whole life. He was one of the best people I knew. I could always trust him to be in my corner no matter how I screwed up, and that thought made my eyes prickle.

I bit my lip. “I hope so,” I said.

“Here he comes.”

I sat up to see my brother fly down the steps from the trailer’s small deck and run across the sand. He pulled open the back door and flung himself toward me. I caught him, laughing.

“You’re free!” he said.

“Yup, Panda Bear,” I said. He seemed so much bigger. I brushed his thick hair off his forehead. “Now you’re stuck with me.”

Mom got back in the car, this time in the front passenger seat. “Everything okay with Sara?” Uncle Marcus asked her.

“She wasn’t there,” Mom said.

“She had to go to the store,” Andy said.

“I left a note, thanking her,” Mom said.

No one said it, but I knew why Sara wasn’t there: she didn’t want to see me any more than I wanted to see her.