Secrets She Left Behind. Diane Chamberlain

      I couldn’t ever remember seeing my mother take anything, except maybe cough syrup or vitamins.

      “Nothing.”

      “How about mental-health problems? Been a hard year for her and you both, with the fire and all. Do you know if she was depressed?”

      “Nah,” I said, but I wondered. How would I know? I didn’t think much about what this year had been like for her. “She’s not the depressed type.”

      “What does that mean?”

      “You know. She’s tough. If she went on one of those Survivor shows, she’d win.”

      “Some of those tough survivor types are cream puffs inside.”

      “Not my mother.”

      “Did you call any of her friends?”

      “Dawn Reynolds and Laurel Lockwood.”

      He raised his eyebrows when I mentioned the name Lockwood. Probably because of Maggie getting out of prison.

      I explained about Andy being sick and staying in our trailer while Laurel went to get Maggie. How Mom told him she was going to the store and just didn’t come back.

      “What store would she go to?”

      “I guess the Food Lion in Hampstead. I mean, I guess she meant food shopping. I don’t know where else she’d go.”

      He had his eyes on his notepad even though he wasn’t writing, and I figured he’d had enough of looking at my face.

      “Can you tell me the names of her other friends?”

      “She didn’t have a lot,” I said. I didn’t want her to seem totally pathetic, so I named some ladies she used to be in a book club with.

      “What church does she go to?”

      “She doesn’t.”

      “How about men? Was she dating anyone?”

      “No.” My mother didn’t date. I couldn’t even imagine it. I couldn’t even imagine her getting close enough to Jamie Lockwood to get pregnant with me.

      “Are you sure? Did you ever suspect she was—”

      “Trust me,” I said. “Especially this year. I’ve been her date. She made me her full-time job.”

      “You angry about that?” he asked. “You sound angry about it.”

      “Not angry,” I said. “Just…I don’t want to be babysat.” I noticed him looking into the living room, where the chair that had fallen on me was still on its side. I realized he might suspect me of something. Foul play. Whatever. Like if I was angry at her, maybe I’d hurt her. That pissed me off even more.

      “Have you looked around to see if anything’s missing?” he asked.

      “You mean, like someone broke in and stole something and she caught them and—”

      “It’s just a general question.” He stopped me. “Did she have a suitcase?”

      I didn’t know the answer. “She never went anywhere,” I said.

      “Well, everyone has a suitcase.”

      Actually, I didn’t have one. But, I supposed with all that time my mother spent in Chapel Hill when I was in the hospital, she must have owned a suitcase.

      “Can we take a look in her room?” he asked, getting to his feet.

      “Sure.” I tried to sound more cooperative, now that I thought he might be suspicious of me.

      We had to walk through the living room to get to her bedroom, and he whipped out a camera and took a picture of the chair on its side.

      “I was trying to do my exercises,” I said, reaching for the red exercise band I’d tossed on the sofa.

      “Leave that there,” he said. I dropped my hand and he snapped a picture of the band.

      “Like I said, she always helped me with the exercises, so I put the band around the leg of the chair and when I pulled on it, the chair fell over.”

      “Uh-huh.”

      We reached my mother’s room. It was small and neat. The bed was made—she was one of those people who made their bed the second they got up in the morning. She tried to get me to do the same, but gave up a long time ago.

      The cop stood in the doorway and looked around. My mother would’ve known if I’d moved my comb from one side of my bathroom counter to the other. But in her room, I was totally lost. I never went in there. I had no reason to.

      Officer Pryor opened her closet door. “Does this look like more or fewer clothes than she usually has in here?” he asked me.

      I leaned around him to look in the closet. “No clue,” I said. “I never…I don’t pay attention to her clothes.”

      He walked into her bathroom. “Toothbrush is here,” he said. “Did she have more than one?”

      “I don’t know.” Why would she have more than one toothbrush?

      “I don’t see any makeup bag,” he said.

      Makeup bag? “She didn’t wear much.”

      “How about a hair dryer?” he asked. “Did she have one?”

      “Nah. Her hair was really short.”

      He took a few pictures while I stood in the doorway, then he walked back in her bedroom and started opening the drawers of her dresser, one after the other.

      “Really not a lot in here,” he said. “Most women, especially if they live in a small space like your double-wide, have their dresser drawers so full you can’t get them open.”

      It bothered me that I was letting this guy paw through her stuff. Through her underwear drawer, for Christ’s sake. I was making way too much out of this. I expected her to come home any minute and say, “What are you doing? I told you I’d be out late tonight.”

      “I don’t see a suitcase anywhere.” He was still going through her dresser, like he might find a suitcase in there.

      “Maybe she told me she was going away for the night and I forgot or something,” I said. Though, where would she go?

      He headed back toward the living room and I followed him. He was looking all around the room while he walked. Taking everything in. “You’re what?” he said. “Eighteen?”

      “Yeah,” I said, though I wouldn’t be eighteen for a few months.

      “So, she didn’t abandon a minor.” He stood between the kitchen and the living room, his arms folded over his chest. He was staring at the couch. At the red exercise band. Did he think I tried to choke her with it or what? “It looks to me like she left of her own volition,” he said, “since there’s no suitcase—”

      “I told you. I’m not even sure she had one.” And she wouldn’t leave me! Did I have to club him over the head with it?

      “Look.” He reached into his pocket. Handed me a card. “I’m going to get someone out here to do a more thorough search. Don’t touch anything, all right? Don’t move that chair back upright.”

      “The chair doesn’t have anything to do with—”

      “Just don’t touch anything,” he said. “Do yourself a favor. Meanwhile, we’ll put a BOLO on her car.”

      “What’s a BOLO?”

      “A ‘Be on the Lookout’ bulletin. That’ll get authorities to keep an eye out for her. We’ll get Pender County to check the Food Lion parking lot and contact the hospitals.”

      “I already