When You Come Back Read online

  Mother and Dad became overprotective of me. I couldn’t go anywhere, not even into the yard without one of them hovering near me. I never rode a school bus again. Didn’t spend the night at a friend’s house until I was a senior and Mother finally stopped fighting me on the issue.

  If I was a weirdo, a freak before what happened, that day became a whole new way to torture me. Emma Graves is a witch. Emma Graves is the devil’s child. God took the other girls to heaven but not Emma. He left her in the woods to die.

  Nothing promises a screwed up adulthood like a crappy childhood.

  Pushing those old memories aside I exhale a big, fatigued breath as I roll along the dark streets of Jackson Falls proper. A good daughter would think how nice it is to be home. A good daughter would look forward to seeing her mother after all this time. But I have never been a particularly good daughter in my mother’s eyes. Or maybe the right phrase is “as good as Natalie was.” Oh, she loves me. I have no doubts. With Natalie gone and then Dad’s passing four years ago, we are the only family we have left. Still, we get along far better with a thousand or so miles between us.

  Fully aware of our tendency to grate on each other’s nerves, I don’t come home often. I make the obligatory call to her once each month—well most months anyway. I tell her about work. She tells me about senior yoga and Bunco and art classes at the community center. We rarely speak of Natalie. It’s too painful for her even now. At some point, maybe when I was about twelve or thirteen, Mother started to act as if our lives began after that day. I suppose it was her way of coping with the loss.

  As often and as hard as I had wished for Mother to love me more, I quickly learned that being the center of her universe was no easy task for me. I was no Natalie. Having passed the thirty mark three years ago, I’m no longer wounded when she never misses an opportunity to mention who has recently gotten married or had a baby, which is, of course, a dig at my single, barren status. All of this I endure without a scathing rebuttal because on his dying bed Dad made me promise to always be kind to Mother and never to ignore her.

  “She’s lost one daughter,” he said. “Don’t take another one from her.”

  “Thanks a lot, Dad,” I grumble.

  In a reluctant attempt to be the good daughter Dad wanted me to be, I called Mother a couple of weeks ago. She and her trio of besties were readying for their annual cruise. By now they had departed Mobile headed for the Panama Canal, Costa Rica, Mahogany Bay, Isla Roatan and Cozumel. With ten nights on the ship and another two visiting friends in Mobile, they will be gone for nearly two weeks.

  Which is why I decided completely out of the blue and utterly uncharacteristically to come back to Alabama.

  I need a break from my life but I’m not ready to share the ugly details with my mother. She already believes I have a drinking problem—like Dad’s sister Vivian, God rest her soul. She’s certain I failed to commit to enough therapy after the last tragedy to plague my life. When she learns the latest Emma Graves debacle she will only look at me and announce, “I told you so.”

  I can’t take it.

  Cannot take it.

  If that makes me a bad daughter, then so be it.

  I need some time to think away from Boston and my work there—assuming I still have a job. Terms like breakdown, PTSD and alcohol induced hallucinations were bandied about at the hospital during my forty-eight-hour mandatory stay—another something my mother will never, ever know about.

  The trouble is, I can’t go back to Boston until I figure this out. I’m trapped between a rock and a hard place and I simply cannot see a way to squeeze out of or around that tight, suffocating spot.

  All those years of hard work. A Master’s in Forensic Anthropology from Cal State. A Ph.D., for Christ’s sake, from Emory. Two years in Iraq exhuming remains from mass graves as well as surviving a terrorist attack and I have to go and lose my shit in a classroom full of snooty sophomores at Boston University. How screwed up is that?

  “Seriously screwed up.”

  So here I am, slinking home in the dead of night to hide and lick my wounds.

  2

  Towering Oak and Maple trees line Tulip Lane, one of the oldest streets in Jackson Falls. Each spring a river of tulips fills the space between the sidewalks and the street. The first week of May the Chamber of Commerce places a prestigious marker in the yard of the homeowner whose careful attention provides the most colorful and lushest display of the spring-blooming perennials. It’s an all-out war my mother has won for years.

  I slow and turn into the driveway of my childhood home. Like sentinels, more ancient oaks surround the Victorian style three-story. Even with nothing more than the light of the moon and a lone street lamp I can see that Mother has already supervised the planting of the spring annuals. Pink impatiens and white geraniums sit amid the ivy and creeping Jenny cascading over the sides of pots. More impatiens mixed with begonias lie in mounds around the mulched bases of rich green shrubs and blooming red Azaleas. Though the Hydrangeas haven’t bloomed yet, there are pink ones and white ones. In the middle of it all stands the Chamber of Commerce’s spring beautification award.

  I sigh. Nothing ever changes here.

  This house—the one Dad so loving restored that stands a mere three blocks from the school I attended growing up—became home a few months after that day. That day. Everyone still calls it that day. I imagine until something worse happens it will continue to be referred to in such a way. Then again, what could be worse than two children—teenagers, but children nonetheless—disappearing?

  No bodies, no remains, no evidence…not one clue was ever discovered.

  For years after Natalie disappeared, Sam lay on the front porch of the old farmhouse waiting for the school bus to bring her home. Each time it passed without stopping, he dropped his head to his paws and waited for the next time. Dad brought him to the new house over and over but he always trotted back to the farm to watch for Natalie. We visited him, fed and watered him every day. The last time, I knew as soon as we turned into the driveway that Sam was gone. He wasn’t on the porch to stand up and wag his tail in greeting. Mother explained that he’d gone to heaven and Dad buried him in the front yard under the Dogwood tree. We buried Natalie’s favorite teddy bear with him. From that moment I understood that my parents had decided Natalie was never coming back.

  It was the second worst day of my life.

  Now and again over the years a new detective or deputy who came on board with one of the local law enforcement departments opened the cold case and poked around. I ultimately received a call and I patiently repeated the same statements I made twenty-five years ago. Once in a while a hungry reporter looking for a story that pulls on the heartstrings noses into the case. To date nothing has ever come of the well-intended efforts.

  I wonder if the call I received just last month from a reporter putting together an anniversary piece somehow prompted my little meltdown in the classroom? Panic and anxiety hadn’t gotten the better of me like that since grad school. I stood in that lecture hall looking across the sea of faces and suddenly my hands started to shake and I couldn’t catch my breath. Rather than the slides from one of my better-known digs appearing on the massive screen, I saw my sister’s face…I saw the bus lying in the ditch. I felt the cold and the blackness of those dark, dark woods swallowing me up. Abject terror had me shrinking behind my desk, alternately shouting for help and sobbing like a child. The next thing I knew I was in a hospital with a light shining in my eyes and questions being fired at me like the rat-a-tat of a machine gun.

  I have no idea how I’ve fallen so far so fast in the past few months.

  Admit it, Emma, you are just screwed up, that’s all. Totally, completely screwed up.

  So travel weary I can hardly blink, I stare up at the grand house. The interior as far as I can see is dark save for the small lamp in the entry hall. That lamp has remained on at night for as long as I can remember. I’m not sure which of us is more afraid of the dar
k, Mother or me, but even now I keep a light on at night in my apartment. I’m certain the therapist I am supposed to be seeing again this week would exude copious reasons for this behavior. Dad used to say leaving the lamp on was for Natalie…in case she came home in the middle of the night.

  But she never did and eventually he stopped mentioning it.

  Dad didn’t show his grief the way Mother did, but he hurt just as badly. We all did. Natalie’s disappearance left a hole—a wide, gaping hole—that nothing or no one can ever fill. Life forced us to learn to walk around that hole. All of us but Sam. Dad brought that pup home to Natalie when she was three. Until he slipped away in his sleep at seventeen, he waited and watched for her to come back to him.

  We never had another dog after Sam.

  Still trying to work up the energy to get out of the car, I push the sad memories away and soak up the details of the wide, gracious porch that wraps the entire perimeter of the house. A small upper porch nestles against the turret where the spiral stairs lead up to the third floor that was once nothing more than a storage attic. My gaze rests on the window looking out onto the street from the space that became my private refuge. Though that window, too, is dark, I don’t need the light to know the dream catcher I hung there all those years ago still dangles behind the wavy glass just above my bed. Dad transformed the entire third floor into a place just for me. I think he understood even then that Mother and I needed a little distance between us.

  A lump swells in my throat but I ignore it. Just because I’ve come home under less than desirable circumstances doesn’t mean I’ve somehow failed myself, or the hopes and dreams my parents had for me. Recent events do not in any way define me or quantify the value of my work. Who doesn’t need a break occasionally? Two weeks is plenty of time to pull myself together. I can do this. Then I’ll figure out where I go from here. I’ve never been one to give up.

  I’m not about to start now.

  Emerging from my dusty car I inhale deeply. The air is thick with lingering humidity from the unseasonably warm Alabama day. I’ve been driving for twenty-four hours without stopping for anything beyond the necessary bathroom breaks and the inevitable road construction. My singular goal was to get here and hide. To that end, I turned off my cell phone and drove like a mad woman.

  “Not funny, Emma.” Most of the people in Boston who know me are no doubt fairly convinced that I am mad—as in the mentally unstable definition.

  I laugh at the irony of my dilemma. As fast and as far as I ran to escape my Natalie-less life in this little town, I guess I’m never going to outrun who I am: Emma Graves, the girl who likes digging in the dirt and prefers being surrounded by the dead more than the living. The one who came back when no one else did. A burst of air pushes from my lungs. A woman who is haunted by a past she cannot fully remember and yet cannot escape.

  I reach for my duffel bag in the backseat. Before I crash I’ll come out and hide my car around back of the house. I certainly don’t want any of the neighbors to spot my Prius with its Massachusetts license plates. The whole block would be wondering if Helen’s odd daughter was in for a rare visit. The widow Josephine Elders lives right across the street. Her only child, a son a year older than me, is a Baptist preacher. In the widow Elders’ eyes my family being Catholic condemns us to the fire and brimstone her son hails from his pulpit every Sunday. Then again, she feels the same way about most of our neighbors whatever their religious beliefs.

  Two doors down are the Noble sisters, old maids who are older than God and certainly wiser, in their opinions. The last time a new reverend at their Methodist church attempted to counsel them, they told him as much. There are other eccentric neighbors, but those are the most judgmental. I can hear them now. How long has it been since that peculiar girl came home? Three, four years? Not since her daddy’s funeral. The whole lot will want to be the first to catch a glimpse of the curious Graves child all grown up and too busy to visit her mama like a proper daughter should.

  Natalie would never have been so negligent.

  I have no desire to see anyone. People in small towns ask questions. They suffer from what my dad called nose trouble. After all these years, I absolutely refuse to become the latest hot gossip. Besides, they will only make up what they really want to say anyway. The truth is rarely as exciting as the industrious imaginations of those who populate the Jackson Falls grapevine.

  I climb the steps and cross the porch. The cushions on the swing beckon me. I consider collapsing onto the swing and calling it a night. But then any number of neighbors would come skulking around to see who is sleeping on Helen’s porch. The truth is, they won’t even need to see my car or me. They will sense the shift in the atmosphere, smell the scent of an interloper—the prodigal daughter returns. People do that in the south. Look out for their neighbors. And get into their business.

  Really get into their business.

  Deep in the bottom of my shoulder bag my fingers finally locate and clutch the house key. I shove it into the lock and twist. Wilting faster than one of my mother’s Hydrangeas in the hot afternoon sun, I suddenly realize exactly how tired I am. Forget the car, forget the neighbors, I need to lie down.

  I open the door and step across the threshold to see…my mother standing in the entry hall with my dad’s twelve gauge aimed at me.

  I blink, certain I’m experiencing another hallucination. She isn’t supposed to be here. The cruise…nearly fourteen days of solitude.

  “Emma, what’re you doing here?”

  The barrel lowers to the floor and Mother stares at me as if she, too, is struggling with the concept of delirium. The pink gown draping her slim body is edged in lace and looks completely incongruent next to the black steel of the shotgun. A couple of the pink foam rollers she has used for as long as I can remember dangle precariously from her white hair. In the background I hear Elizabeth Taylor’s voice. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is playing on the television in the living room. You can be young without money, but you can’t be old without it.

  “Well, I...” cannot under any circumstances tell my mother the truth—not right now. I am exhausted and overwhelmed and confused.

  “Oh my God.” Mother’s left hand flies to her throat. “Letty called you about the missing girls.” Her shoulders sag. “I should have called you myself, but—”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  Though the words are mine, my voice sounds like a stranger’s. Ice has filled my veins and my knees are suddenly unreasonably weak. From first grade through high school graduation Oletta “Letty” Cotton was my best friend, my only friend really. I grew up and ran as far from home as possible; Letty grew up and became the county sheriff. We’re still friends in that long-distance-remember-when way but we haven’t talked in ages.

  “What missing girls?” I press when Mother still hesitates.

  The fleeting image of Natalie and Stacy disappearing into the distance brushes my senses. Have the girls been found after all these years? Maybe Letty did call. My cell is still turned off. Wait, that makes no sense. If Natalie had been found, Mother would have called. Either way, obviously I should have kept my cell turned on.

  “Patricia Shepherd’s girl and Naomi Baldwin’s oldest,” she explains, though the names don’t ring any bells for me. “They left school on their bikes yesterday afternoon and no one has seen or heard from either one since. Every able man and woman in the tri-county area’s looking for them. You haven’t heard?” A frown furrows its way across her forehead. “I think it was on the national news last night. Surely you saw the endangered child alerts.”

  Totally absorbed in my own misery, I haven’t watched or listened to the news in days. Ignoring the tightening in my chest, I ask, “Are the police sure the girls didn’t just run away?”

  Kids do that now more so than when I was growing up. The Internet makes the world seem like such a small place. Running away should be easy, right? God knows I have worked incredibly hard to accomplish that feat. At some
point, I outgrew the ability to believe the concept of running away could actually work.

  But today’s kids are a different story. What they can find on the World Wide Web all on their own is bad enough, add to that the sheer number of disgusting pervs skulking around cyberspace in search of naïve prey and you have a recipe for disaster. Parents should be more terrified than ever. Another perfectly good reason not to have children.

  No one can take from you what you don’t have.

  My mother shakes her head, the loose pink rollers swaying adamantly. “Their bikes were found in the ditch on the side of the road. Someone took them, Emma. The whole town is scared to death it’ll be just like last time…”

  Her voice trails off. She needn’t say the rest. I am well aware of what happened last time.

  It was as if Natalie and Stacy climbed off the bus that day and simply vanished.

  But people don’t vanish…there is always something left behind. It’s the finding that something that often proves infinitely elusive.

  Truth is, even those who are found are never completely whole again.

  Here I stand, living proof of that very conclusion.

  “Is that why you didn’t go on your cruise?” I can only imagine how stunned the whole town must be. Having something like that happen once in such a small community is horrible enough, but again…now…after all these years?

  Mother carefully props the shotgun against the wall. “I planned to go. God knows it would have been nice to get away.”