Secrets She Left Behind. Diane Chamberlain

like the bear? Something I could hold on to that made me feel kind of innocent, like a little kid who hadn’t meant to do something so wrong.

      I carried the bear around with me as I walked through the rest of the house.

      Mom’s room was a little different, mostly because of Uncle Marcus. His slippers were on the floor next to the bed. In her bathroom, his shaving stuff and toothbrush and deodorant and everything had taken over the counter around one of the sinks. While I was in her room, the doorbell rang a couple of times. I heard Uncle Marcus talking to whoever it was. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but I figured he was telling them to get lost. Leave us alone.

      Andy’s room was exactly the same in every way except one: it smelled different. The air seemed thicker or something. I’d been in the bedrooms of my male friends before I hooked up with Ben, and Andy’s room smelled like theirs did. No longer a little-boy smell. Slightly dirty socks. A little sweat. A little aftershave. It felt weird to be in there.

      “Do you want to see pictures?” Andy asked, sitting down at his computer.

      “Sure.” I pulled his desk chair next to him and hugged my arms across the teddy bear. “Do you have one of Kimmie?”

      “Yeah,” he said, clicking his mouse. He pulled up a bunch of pictures. “This is my Special Olympics team,” he said.

      There were ten of them, six boys and four girls, lined up in their bathing suits against a wall. At least seven of them looked like they had Down syndrome. Two of the boys looked totally normal. Then there was Andy. Cute, but much tinier than the rest.

      “That’s Matt.” Andy pointed to one of the boys with Down syndrome. “He’s Kimmie’s brother.”

      It was coming back to me. Mom had told me Kimmie was one of five kids, all adopted, all special needs. Kimmie wasn’t on the swim team herself, though. Just her brother.

      “And this is me and Kimmie.” Andy clicked on another picture.

      “She’s so cute!” I said. Kimmie stood a couple of inches taller than Andy. Her dark hair was coming loose from a long ponytail. Ethnically, I couldn’t even guess. Her eyes were sort of Asian. Her skin was nearly as dark as Letitia’s, but she didn’t really look African-American. She wore rectangular glasses and behind them, her eyes were very green. She was beyond cute, actually. She was beautiful. I wondered what her special needs were.

      “One of her legs is short,” Andy said as if he knew what I was thinking, which I knew he didn’t. “She was born with a funny foot. They did an operation but it made her limp.”

      “Are you in love?” I grinned.

      The tops of Andy’s ears turned red and I put my arm around him, hugging him with a giggle.

      “Yes,” he said.

      “Does she love you back?” She’d better.

      “Yes. She helps me. She keeps my stuff in her calendar in case I forget.”

      Mom had told me Kimmie’d taken on a sort of second-mother role with Andy, keeping track of his schedule, making sure he remembered things. That used to be my job.

      “I can’t wait to meet her, Panda,” I said.

      “Don’t call me Panda anymore,” he said. “It’s a baby name.”

      For a second, I felt like he was stealing something from me. But I got it. Panda was a baby name.

      “Okay, Andrew,” I said, and he laughed.

      Suddenly, there was a loud crash from downstairs, followed by a thud. Andy and I looked at each other, frozen like statues.

      “Laurel!” Uncle Marcus shouted from somewhere downstairs. “Call the police!”

      Andy raced out of the room before I could stop him. I followed him into the hallway, trying to grab his arm.

      “Don’t go down!” I said. He was too fast for me, though, and he went flying down the stairs.

      “Stay out of there!” I heard Mom yell at him. “There’s glass everywhere.”

      “Mom?” I called from the top of the stairs. “What happened?”

      “Stay up there, Maggie.” Mom came into view in the downstairs foyer. She was holding the phone to her ear and looking toward the family room. “Someone threw a…I don’t know what it is. A rock, Marcus?”

      Uncle Marcus answered her, but I couldn’t hear what he said.

      “A chunk of concrete or something,” Mom said. “Someone threw…Yes. Hello?” She spoke into the phone, and her voice was shaking. “This is Laurel Lockwood,” she said. “Someone just threw a piece of concrete through our front window.”

      I walked into my bedroom, the teddy bear clutched in my arms. Maybe I should have gone downstairs to help clean up, but I was too freaked out. Things like this didn’t happen on Topsail Island, and I knew it wasn’t any random act of violence. It was me they were after, but it was my family getting hurt.

      

      From my bedroom window after dinner, I could see two of the news vans still outside. What were they going to do, sit there all night? All week? I bet they loved seeing the cops arrive and watching Uncle Marcus put the storm shutters over the broken window.

      I closed my blinds. After a while, I got up the courage to turn on my TV and put on the news. Then I sat on my bed, waiting, my chin resting on the teddy bear in my arms. I didn’t have to wait long. Suddenly the screen was full of the people outside the prison, the ones shouting and holding signs.

      “Amid protests,” a woman reporter who looked no older than me said, “Maggie Lockwood was released from Kawatchee Women’s Correctional Institution today after serving a twelve-month sentence for the attempted burning of Drury Memorial Church in Surf City.” She went on for a minute about who I was and what I’d done. Then she started interviewing people in the crowd. The first was a dark-haired man who was so angry, little bits of spit flew out of his mouth when he spoke.

      “She gets twelve short months in prison and then goes on with her life like nothing happened!” he said.

      “I wish,” I said out loud.

      “My uncle is dead,” a young woman said. Her face was twisted into a mask of hatred. For me. “He was such a good man. And that girl just scoots out of here with her slick lawyer and everything,” she said. She had to be Mr. Eggles’s niece, since he was the only adult killed in the fire. I thought of my own uncle. Imagined him dead, the victim of someone like me. No! I shuddered, waving my hand in front of my face to erase the thought.

      Reverend Bill was on the screen then. I gasped. I so didn’t want to have to look at him! He stood in front of a brick church. The new Drury Memorial? Wow. Totally different. “Many people are angry,” he said. “We’ve managed to rebuild Drury Memorial. We’re nearly finished. But we can’t rebuild those lives that were lost or shattered, and that’s hard for a lot of people. I hope, though, that this can be an opportunity to practice forgiveness.”

      Forgiveness? Reverend Bill? What a hypocrite. He hated me. Hated my whole family.

      Someone knocked on my bedroom door.

      “Come in,” I said.

      Mom poked her head inside, glanced at the TV.

      “Oh, Maggie. Don’t watch that.”

      “It’s all right,” I said.

      “Come downstairs and have some ice cream with us. Chocolate-chip mint.”

      I shook my head. My stomach hurt. “Stay away from the windows down there,” I said. I was afraid that first chunk of concrete wouldn’t be the last.

      “Come on,” Mom insisted. “We want to be with you tonight.”