The Lost Daughter. Diane Chamberlain

the jocks walking toward their table. He was black, clean-cut and handsome, and probably seven feet tall. She’d see him around town from time to time, usually carrying a basketball. Sometimes she could hear him dribbling the ball even before she saw him.

      “Hey, Wally, what’s up?” Tim set down his glass and slid his palm across Wally’s in greeting.

      Wally shook his head in disgust. “That chick you saw me with the other night? She laid a bad trip on me, man,” he said.

      Tim laughed. “Tell me something new.”

      “You hangin’ at the Cave tonight?”

      “Not tonight.” Tim nodded in her direction. “This is CeeCee,” he said.

      CeeCee raised her hand in a small wave. “Hi,” she said.

      “Out to lunch with that hair, girl,” Wally said, in what she assumed was a compliment.

      “Thanks.”

      “All right, boss,” Wally said to Tim. “Check ya later.”

      They watched Wally walk away, his hand smacking the air as he bounced an invisible basketball.

      “Do you know everyone in Chapel Hill?” she asked.

      Tim laughed. “I’ve lived here a long time.” He picked up the sandwich from his plate. “You have to talk for a while so I can make a bigger dent in this thing,” he said. “Tell me about your mother. Were you close to her?”

      He was definitely social-worker material. He wasn’t shy about the questions he asked. “Well.” She ran the tines of her fork the other way on the pie and admired the checkerboard pattern she’d created. “My mother was an amazing person,” she said. “She knew she was going to die and she did her best to prepare me for it, although you can never really be prepared. I guess you know all about that.”

      He nodded as he chewed, his face solemn.

      “At first, she was really angry,” she said, remembering how her mother would snap at her for the slightest infraction. “Then she’d sort of … you know, swing between being angry and being down. And then she got very calm.”

      “DABDA,” Tim said.

      “Dabda?”

      “The five stages of grief. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.”

      “Wow, yes, that fits,” she said. “What’s bargaining, though?”

      “It’s like making a deal with God.” He wiped his lips with his napkin. “Dear God, if you let me get better, I’ll never do anything bad again.”

      “I don’t know if she did that,” CeeCee said. It hurt to imagine her mother trying to bargain her way out of the inevitable. “I did, though.” She laughed at the realization. “I was always promising God I’d be a good girl if he’d make her better.”

      “I think you were probably a very good girl.” Tim’s voice was gentle.

      She looked at her uneaten pie. “I’d expected a miracle would save her right up until the end. You know what she did?” She couldn’t believe she was going to tell him this. “She wrote me letters before she died,” she said. “There are about sixty of them. She put each one in a sealed envelope and wrote on it when I should open it. There was one for the day after her funeral, and then one for each birthday, and then there’d be some that were sort of haphazardly dated, for years when she thought I’d need a lot of advice, I guess. Like for when I turned sixteen, there was an envelope that said ‘Sixteen,’ then one that said ‘Sixteen and five days,’ and then ‘Sixteen and two months,’ and so on.”

      Tim swallowed the last bite of his sandwich and shook his head in amazement. “How phenomenal,” he said. “She was how old?”

      “Twenty-nine.”

      “Man, I don’t know if I could be that strong in her shoes.”

      She was glad she’d told him.

      “So you still have dozens of letters from her to open?” he asked.

      “Actually, no.” She laughed. “I opened every single one of them the day after her funeral.” She’d sat alone in the guest bedroom of an ancient great-aunt reading her mother’s words, many of which she’d been too young to understand, but not too young to treasure. She’d cried and rocked and hugged herself for comfort as she read them, feeling the loss deep in her bones. There was much in those letters she hadn’t understood. She’d skimmed over the advice about sex, too young even to be titillated by it. The words of wisdom on child rearing were meaningless to her. It didn’t matter that she didn’t understand them; she cherished every stroke of her mother’s pen. “I still have them, though.” The letters were under her bed in a box that had traveled with her from foster home to foster home. They were all she had left of her mother. “She always told me I could decide whether to be happy or sad,” she said. “When she got to the … what did you call that part of the acronym? Acceptance?”

      “Right.”

      “I guess that’s when she told me that she realized she could spend her last days being a miserable bitch—her words, not mine—or she could spend them being grateful for the time she and I had together. She made up this song about being thankful for the morning and the trees and the air. She said I should sing that song to myself every morning, and—” She suddenly clamped her mouth shut, embarrassed. She was saying too much, almost giddy with the relief of having an attentive listener.

      “Why’d you stop?” he asked.

      “I’m talking too much.”

      “Do you sing the song?”

      She nodded. “In my head, I do.”

      “And it helps?”

      “So much. I feel like she’s still there with me. So I try to be thankful for everything, including every hard thing that’s happened to me.” She looked down at her pie. She’d made a mess of it. “Whew,” she said. “I never talk this much. About my life, I mean. Sorry.”

      “Don’t apologize,” he said. “I like getting to know you better. And I think you were lucky to have that mother of yours as long as you did.”

      “I haven’t given you a chance to talk at all,” she said.

      “We have time for that, CeeCee.” Tim stared at her for a moment, then smiled. “I like you a lot,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone as positive as you are.”

      The compliment meant more to her than anything else he might say. If you were positive, you could do anything.

      He offered her a ride home after they left the restaurant. She climbed into his white Ford van, the overhead light giving her a glimpse of the mattress in the back, and her knees nearly gave out from under her. She wanted him to suggest they go into the dark cavern back there. She wanted him to be her first lover. But when he pulled up in front of the Victorian boardinghouse, he got out of the van and walked around to open her door.

      “I wish I could ask you in,” she said, as he walked her up the porch steps, “but we’re not allowed to have male visitors in our room.”

      “That’s okay,” he said. He leaned down to kiss her. It was a light kiss and she had to make herself pull away before she asked for more.

      “I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” he said. The porch light was reflected in his eyes, and he gave her hair a little tug, like the black woman had done at the bus stop.

      She returned his smile with a wave, then unlocked the door and raced upstairs. She wanted to tell Ronnie about this perfect night, even though her roommate would never understand why she felt such a thrill over being able to talk to someone the way she’d talked to Tim. Look at all she’d told him! He even knew she was a virgin. She could tell him anything about herself