Secrets She Left Behind. Diane Chamberlain

pots and pans were. The police lady told me to look at all the boxes to see if any of them looked like the one Miss Sara carried. I thought I remembered it perfect. It was red with a big silver pot on it. But when I saw all the different boxes, I got confused.

      “Maybe it was blue.” I pointed to a blue box. Then I saw a yellowy one with a funny pan on it, and my memory said that was it. “I think it was this one,” I said.

      “That’s an electric wok,” the police lady said. “I thought you said it was a big pot?”

      “What’s an electric rock?” I asked Mom.

      “Wok,” she said. “It’s a kind of pan. Is that what it looked like?”

      I moved my mouth back and forth like I did when I was thinking hard. I felt so mixed up with all those boxes. Maybe it wasn’t even a pot at all. I pointed to a red box that had a white square bowl thing on it. “Maybe it was that one,” I said.

      “A casserole?” Mom asked.

      I shook my head, because casseroles had lots of different food in them. I didn’t like them. I didn’t like food to touch.

      “Memories can play tricks on you sometimes, can’t they?” Mom said. It was her patient voice.

      “Can you narrow it down, Andy?” the police lady asked.

      I wasn’t sure what “narrow it down” meant.

      “Are there any you’re absolutely sure were not the box she was carrying?” Mom asked.

      “The little ones,” I said. “It wasn’t little.”

      The police lady’s cell phone rang. Mom and me waited while she talked. Mom winked at me.

      “Are you excited about Kimmie coming to dinner?” She used a quiet voice because of the police lady talking on the phone.

      “Yes!”

      Mom put her finger on her lips.

      “Yes,” I whispered. I wanted Maggie to meet Kimmie. Maggie wouldn’t come to swim practice because she didn’t like seeing people yet. That was why Mom said Kimmie could come to dinner.

      Kimmie told me, “I used to hate going to Matt’s swim practices, but now I can’t wait so I can see you.”

      When she said that, I hugged her. I wasn’t supposed to hug people besides my family, but I had to hug Kimmie then. She didn’t mind. She really didn’t. But she said I smelled like cigarettes. She said, “Please don’t smoke.” I threw my cigarettes away.

      “Mom?” I said now. She was looking at a can-opener thing.

      “What?”

      “Me and Kimmie hug sometimes, but she doesn’t mind so it’s okay. Right?”

      Mom kept looking at the can opener. It had a handle and she made it go up and down.

      “Where are you when you hug?” she asked.

      “The pool and her house and our house.”

      “In your room?” She looked at me in a way that told me I better say no, even though we did hug in my room once.

      “No,” I said. We were allowed in my room with the door open.

      “Hugging’s nice,” Mom said. “And Kimmie’s your girlfriend, right?”

      I nodded.

      “It’s okay to hug your girlfriend.”

      The police lady turned off her phone. “That was the manager,” she said. “No pots or pans have been returned in the last few days.”

      “So maybe it wasn’t from this store?” Mom asked.

      “Right. Or it wasn’t a pot or pan.” She tipped her head funny and looked at me. “Maybe it was actually a wok or a casserole or a potato peeler,” she said.

      “What?” I laughed. She was making a joke.

      “Or she never made it to the store,” she said.

      “Oh, don’t even say that.” Mom had on her worried look. She had it on a lot since Miss Sara went missing.

      Everybody was worried about Miss Sara. I got asked a lot of questions by the police and Mom and Uncle Marcus. Even Maggie asked me questions on account of the Web site thing she’s making. Everybody wanted to know what clothes Miss Sara had on. Things like that. I kept telling them I was too sick that day to remember.

      I told my friend Max about the questions and he said it was ’cause I was the last person who saw her. He said the police maybe thought I killed her and cut her up in bags. Like her head in a bag and her arm in a different bag. That was stupid. I told Uncle Marcus what Max said and he said, “Max is just yankin’ your chain.”

      The police lady looked at her watch. “I’m out of time,” she said. “Can you two go to some more stores on your own? Maybe the Bed Bath and Beyond and the Target?”

      Mom nodded. “Of course,” she said. I wished she said no so we could go home and wait for Kimmie.

      But we left the Wal-Mart and went to some more stores. I got more confused in every one of them.

      “I can’t do this anymore,” I told Mom when we walked outside from the Bed and Beyond store. It wasn’t just because I wanted to go home. My head hurt. Maybe I never even saw a box. Maybe I dreamed I saw it.

      “Okay,” she said. “You’ve been a good sport.”

      “You be the one to drive home,” I said. I didn’t feel like driving. I felt bad I messed up about the box.

      “Okay,” Mom said.

      We got in the car. Mom was an excellent driver. She could go real fast in the parking lot around all the cars and everything.

      “I’m sorry, Mom,” I said when we got to the road. “I lost the picture of the box in my head. You know my brain.”

      Mom smiled at me. “I love your brain, Andy,” she said. “Don’t worry about it.”

      But I was worried. Miss Sara could be chopped up in bags and I couldn’t even remember if she was carrying a pot or a pan.

      Chapter Twelve

      Keith

      I PARKED IN THE LOT OF THE HARRIS TEETER IN OGDEN. stupid to go all the way there with gas prices like they were, but I couldn’t face seeing people in the Food Lion. People would know me there. Want to talk. They’d ask if I knew any more about my mother’s disappearance, because now it was all over the news. All the time they’d be staring at me. It wasn’t like the people in Ogden wouldn’t recognize me—I wore my ID on my face. But at least there, they wouldn’t try to talk to me.

      I got out of the car, grabbed a cart and pushed it into the store, which was pretty crowded. I didn’t have a plan. No list. My mother always had a list and she stuck to it like it was the law. Man, I hated this. I bet it’d been five years since I’d been in a grocery store, and then only because I had to tag along with my mother. If I needed to pick up a snack or something, I did it at the gas station. But our refrigerator was almost empty now, and I was finally starting to get hungry even though thinking about that plate of food at Laurel’s still made me gag.

      That was another reason the cops thought my mother left on purpose. “Looks like your mom cleaned out the fridge before she disappeared,” one of them said to me. Screw him. I told him we never had much in the fridge to begin with, but I got the feeling he didn’t believe me.

      “She cleans out the fridge, but not her bank account?” I’d asked him. If I needed proof something terrible had happened to my mother, that was it. She never used credit cards, so she wouldn’t take off on purpose without cash. When I started thinking about that, the breathing-tube sort of