The Lost Daughter. Diane Chamberlain

honest person, though. It would never occur to her that he was not.

       Chapter Four

       I have no idea what kind of girl you are now, so I don’t know what to say to help you and I hate that I can’t be there with you. I get so angry sometimes that I won’t be able to watch you grow up!

       Here are a few things you need to know. First, don’t have sex! But if you do, get birth control pills or condoms. You can get them at Planned Parenthood. Second, sex is not all it’s cracked up to be. The earth doesn’t move, especially not the first time, and any woman who tells you that it does is a liar. Third, don’t trust boys! Here are some lies they’ll tell you to get you to sleep with them:

       1) I never felt this way about anyone before.

       2) Of course I’ll still respect you in the morning.

       3) My balls (testicles) will turn blue and explode if we don’t make love.

       4) I promise I’ll pull out before I come.

       I can’t believe I’m writing this to you, my little twelve-year-old baby! It’s hard to imagine you’ll ever be old enough to need this advice, but for what it’s worth, there it is.

      THE ROOM SHE SHARED WITH RONNIE WAS NOT MUCH bigger than a closet. Their twin beds were perpendicular to each other, and two narrow dressers lined the wall, leaving barely enough room to walk across the floor. Two nights after her date with Tim, CeeCee came home after working a double shift.

      “Any messages?” she asked, her attention darting toward the phone. She’d seen Tim at breakfast that morning, but the coffee shop had been crowded and there’d been no time to talk.

      “Uh-uh, sorry.” Ronnie looked up from her bed, where she was painting her toenails. “But there’s a package for you.” She nodded toward CeeCee’s bed, where a small, square box wrapped in brown paper rested on her pillow.

      “Weird,” CeeCee said. It was rare for her to get mail. She picked up the package by the cord tied around it. Light as air. Her name and address were printed in black ink.

      “I shook it and it sounds empty to me,” Ronnie said. “How’d tonight go? I take it Tim didn’t stop in?”

      “No.” CeeCee sat on her bed and kicked off her tennis shoes. Her feet hurt and she massaged her toes through her kneesocks. “Is he ever going to ask me out again?”

      “I hope so.” Ronnie sounded genuinely sympathetic.

      “Why can’t I just ask him?” CeeCee pulled one end of the cord, but it was tightly knotted. “Why do we always have to wait to be asked? Can I borrow your nail clippers?”

      Ronnie tossed the clippers to her. “If he doesn’t ask you out again, he’s a cretin. You don’t want him.”

      Yes, I do. She had constant fantasies about Tim picking her up after her shift, driving to a park, someplace quiet and private, and making love to her on the mattress in the back of the van. “I should never have told him I was a virgin,” she said.

      “Well, that’s a no-brainer,” Ronnie agreed. She’d screamed so loudly when CeeCee told her about her “I’ve never had sex” comment that their landlady rushed in, afraid they were being murdered.

      CeeCee clipped the cord and ripped the paper from the package to reveal a flimsy white cardboard box. She lifted the lid and gasped.

      “There’s money in here!” she said.

      “What?” Ronnie set her nail polish on the windowsill and rushed to CeeCee’s bed. “Holy crap,” she said, peering into the box. “How much?”

      CeeCee pulled out the wad of bills and started counting.

      “They’re all fifties,” Ronnie said.

      “Six hundred, six-fifty,” CeeCee counted, shaking her head in disbelief. “Seven hundred, seven-fifty.”

      “Oh my God,” Ronnie said as the number grew. She grabbed the brown paper the box had been wrapped in. “Was there any name anywhere?”

      “Shh,” CeeCee said. She was up to twelve hundred and her hands were starting to shake.

      Ronnie watched in silence until CeeCee had counted one hundred fifty-dollar bills. Five thousand dollars. They looked at each other.

      “I don’t get it,” CeeCee said.

      “Maybe, like, your last foster mother sent it?” Ronnie suggested. “You said she was really nice.”

      “Really nice and really poor,” CeeCee said.

      Ronnie picked up one of the fifties, squinting at it as she held it up to the light. “Are there any marks or clues or anything on the bills?”

      CeeCee riffled through the bills and shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

      “Well,” Ronnie said, “when you were baring your soul to Tim the other night, did you happen to mention that you were penniless?” She was reading CeeCee’s mind.

      “But why would he do this?” CeeCee asked in a whisper.

      “That—” Ronnie gnawed her lip “—is a very scary question.”

      She poured Tim’s coffee the following morning. “I got a package in the mail yesterday,” she said.

      “A package?” He looked innocent. “What was in it?”

      “Money.” She set the coffeepot on his table and whipped out her order pad. “Tim, tell me the truth. Did you send it?”

      “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His blond, sun-lit curls gave him a soft, angelic look.

      “It was five thousand dollars.”

      Tim nodded as though impressed. “That would take you through a couple of years of college and then some, wouldn’t it?”

      She slapped her order pad onto the table. “It’s from you?” she asked.

      “CeeCee, settle down.” Tim laughed. “If it were from me, I wouldn’t tell you because I wouldn’t want you to feel obligated to me. I wouldn’t tell you because I’d want you to have it, no strings attached. If you and I broke up tomorrow, I’d still want you to have it. If I’d been the one to give it to you, that is.”

      If they broke up? He considered them a couple? She didn’t allow the elation to show in her face.

      “I’m getting angry,” she said, instead. “Tell me.”

      “Look, CeeCee.” He patted her arm. “Whoever sent it wouldn’t have done it if they couldn’t afford it, right? So, you need it. Just enjoy it. Buy me supper with it tonight. And put the rest in the bank the first chance you get.”

      They ate at a Moroccan restaurant, sitting on the floor in a small room all to themselves. Tim ordered a bottle of wine and, away from the eyes of their waiter, she drank from his glass. Soon the money was forgotten, and she felt relaxed and a little loopy. They told every old joke they could remember and sang songs from The Beatles’ White Album, which she knew because her mother had loved The Beatles. CeeCee told him about the time she saw The Beatles in Atlantic City at the age of five, because her mother’s friends had a bunch of tickets and they’d been unable to find a babysitter for her. It had been one of the most traumatic events of her early life. She couldn’t hear the music for the screaming of the fans, and everyone had stood on their chairs while she sat on the floor, her hands over her ears. Still, Tim was impressed. He’d never gotten to see them at all.

      She tried to pay for their dinners, which had been the deal, but Tim brushed her offer aside. She wanted to tell him, No more tips, ever, and that she would pay for everything