Secrets She Left Behind. Diane Chamberlain

and every space in every parking lot for her old black Honda. Must’ve put a hundred miles on my car. Fifteen bucks’ worth of gas. I couldn’t keep that up. I had, like, a hundred bucks in my bank account. My mother’d let me keep the donations that trickled in from strangers in my name alone instead of to the fund Dawn had set up. I’d sped through it. After what I’d been through, I deserved that new cell phone, I’d told myself. I deserved the latest-generation iPod and the stereo for my wheels. Stupid. How was I going to eat when that hundred bucks ran out if she didn’t come back? My eyes suddenly burned. Shit. She had to come back.

      “It’s a team effort, Keith,” Laurel said. “What can we do, Flip?” She picked up a yellow notepad from the table and set it on her knees, ready to write.

      “There are some Web sites where you can put up a page for a missing person,” he said. “Not many legit ones for missing adults, so you need to be careful. Try ProjectJason.org.” He named a couple others, and Laurel wrote them down.

      “Maggie said she could do any of the Internet stuff we need,” she said.

      I looked at the toe of my sneaker at the mention of Maggie. Was everybody staring at me? I didn’t want to know.

      “You can make up flyers with her picture on it,” Flip said. “Along with her vital statistics, etcetera. Then hand them out.”

      “Hand them out where?” Sue Charles asked.

      “Everywhere,” Robin’s mother said. “Stores. Restaurants. The street.”

      “We’ve called the nearby hospitals,” Flip said, “but you can call all the hospitals around the interstates.”

      “She wouldn’t be on the interstates,” I said, but everybody ignored me.

      “Put my name down for calling hospitals, Laurel,” Dawn said.

      “Did we decide who’ll make the flyer?” Trish asked.

      “Maggie’ll do it,” Laurel said. “Then we can give each of you stacks of them to distribute.”

      “How about contacting the media?” Marcus asked.

      Oh, shit. Now the reporters would really be after me, but he was right. They had to get word out.

      “We’ve sent out a press release,” Flip said, “but any media contacts y’all have will help.”

      “This is so fucked up!” I said. “You hear about other missing people on the news all the time. Did their friends take care of getting them on TV? I don’t think so. I think the cops had something to do with it.”

      “Keith, hon.” Dawn put her hand on my shoulder.

      “Again, Keith—” Flip was so damn calm sounding “—the police are on this, but the more we can all work together, the better. In those instances where a missing person’s all over the news? Most times the families have hired a private investigator to generate a lot of media buzz for them.”

      “Like I can afford that!” I’d had enough. Everybody was staring at me. I couldn’t take it anymore. “Quit looking at me!” I stood up and walked to the door.

      “Keith!” Dawn said, but I ignored her. I needed to go outside. Get into the fresh air. I was just about to turn the door knob when I saw the news van still parked on the street. Damn.

      Everyone in the living room was calling to me by then, but no one was coming after me, and I was glad. My head spun, and I turned around and leaned against the wall, and that’s when I saw a pair of bare feet disappear into the upstairs hallway. Maggie? She’d been sitting up there listening the whole time? The thought creeped me out and I thought I was seriously going to puke. I headed for the bathroom under the stairs and locked the door behind me. I closed my eyes and leaned back against the door and this picture of a machete chopping off Maggie’s feet flashed into my mind. I breathed long and steady through my mouth so I wouldn’t get sick.

       Where was my mother?

      I pounded my fist against the door behind me.

       Where the hell was she?

      I started to cry like a total jerk-off, and I turned on the water so no one could hear me. In the mirror above the sink, I saw this kid who didn’t look like me. Half his face was tight and red and the skin was twisted into smooth planes and deep gullies and his hairline was all screwed up and it was all so damn unfair!

      “Keith?” It was Dawn. Right outside the bathroom. “You okay?”

      I knew if I tried to talk, my voice would crack, so I just grunted.

      “Flip wants to know if you have a more recent picture of your mom than the one you gave him at the trailer. Trish is going to do up another press release and she needs one.”

      I got a grip on myself. “Be out in a minute,” I said.

      “Okay.”

      I heard her walk away. I splashed water on my cheeks until I felt settled down enough to face them all again.

      Walking back to the family room, I thought of the pictures in the trailer. My mother had pictures of me—the pre-fire me—framed on the bookcases and her dresser, but the one I gave Flip was of both of us, taken on my twelfth birthday. Not exactly recent.

      “Keith,” Miss Trish said when I walked into the room. “Do you have a more recent picture of—”

      “No.” I cut her off. Then I felt like an asshole. She was only trying to help. “Sorry,” I said. “That was the only one.”

      “I might have a picture somewhere,” Laurel said. Good ol’ Laurel, coming to the rescue.

      “Me, too,” said Dawn. “I’ll look when I get home.”

      “You’ll need a good one for the flyer and the Web sites,” Flip said. He looked at me again. “How about your father?”

      My father? The question caught me totally off guard. I glanced at Laurel as I sat down again. I knew she knew about her two-timing dead husband. Marcus knew, of course. Probably Dawn, too. But did Flip?

      “What do you mean?” I asked.

      “Steven Weston.”

      Oh. That father.

      “I know your parents split up a long time ago, but did your mother stay in touch with him? Or did he stay in touch with you?”

      “No, man.” I rammed my hands into my pockets. I still felt kind of shaky and I didn’t want everyone looking at my jittery hands. “He was out of our lives.”

      “Do you know his whereabouts?”

      “No clue.” Steven Weston deserted me and my mother when I was a baby. I had military insurance because of him, but that was it. I’d never met him and never wanted to. “Me and my mother’ve always been on our own.”

      “Is it possible your mother was still in touch with him?” Flip was barking up the wrong tree. “Or maybe just recently got back in touch with him?”

      “Why would she?” I asked. “Believe me. He wanted nothing to do with us and we wanted nothing to do with him.”

      “I think Keith’s right,” Dawn said. “Sara never mentioned him at all.”

      The meeting went on like that awhile longer, with Flip saying what the cops would do and Laurel making her notes and divvying up the workload. I was tired when it was over. Tired and so damn frustrated, because my mother was somewhere out there and we’d been talking and arguing and getting nowhere except further and further from finding her.

      And the whole time, nobody said what they were all thinking. What I refused to think, myself. That my mother was probably dead. Nobody said a word about that at all.

      Chapter