Grave Secret

Eighteen

TOLLIVER woke up the next morning feeling much better. He’d slept for twelve hours straight, and when he woke me up he let me know that he was full of energy. We had to be careful, but with me on top, sex was doable. Very doable. An absolute delight, in fact. And I thought the top of his head was going to fly off, he enjoyed it so much. He lay there panting afterward, as if he’d done the work, and I collapsed beside him, laughing in a breathless kind of way.

“Now I feel like myself,” he said. “Somehow it makes you feel even less like a man, when you’re bedridden and then you can’t even stand the physical part of having sex. Reduces you to a kid.”

“Let’s just get in the car and go,” I suggested. “Let’s go to the apartment. We could be in St. Louis in a day. You could ride that long, I bet.”

“What about staying here to visit more with the girls? What about finding out if my father was connected to the Joyces and Cameron?”

“Maybe you were right. Maybe we need to leave the girls to Iona and Hank. They’re stable, in every sense. We travel so much. We’ll never be a constant in their lives. And your dad? He’s going to hell anyway. If we drop all this, it’ll just take him a little longer. We could be free of him.”

Tolliver looked thoughtful. “Come here,” he said, and I put my head on his good shoulder. He didn’t wince, so that was all right. I stroked the part of his chest not covered with a bandage. Looking back on the time between my discovery that I loved him as a man and the time I found out he felt the same and we acted on it, I wondered how I had survived. We were incredibly lucky, and I knew there was a part of me that I found somewhat scary, the part that would do anything to prevent what we had from being jeopardized.

“You know what we ought to do,” he said.

“What?”

“We ought to take a day trip.”

“Oh, where to?”

“To Texarkana.”

I froze. “Are you serious?” I said, raising my head to look him in the eyes.

“Yeah, I am. It’s time we went back to just look around and let go.”

“Let go.”

“Yeah. We’ve got to realize that we’re not going to find Cameron.”

“I’ve got some things to tell you about that.”

“Oh?” His voice had an apprehensive edge. If I hadn’t liked what he’d said, he was going to dislike what I had to say even more.

“I made some calls yesterday,” I said. “And I got some calls. While you were asleep. I’ve got to tell you about them.”

An hour later, Tolliver was saying, “That woman was wrong? All the time they were looking for the wrong thing? She was just mixed up?”

“She never said she saw Cameron clearly, only that the backpack was there after she saw a blond girl get into a blue truck,” I said. “Who knows? So we’re back to square one. In fact…” I thought for a second. “In fact, that throws the whole timeline off. She said Cameron had been picked up thirty minutes before I talked to her, and I set out to look for Cameron almost exactly at five o’clock. But now we can be pretty sure Cameron was picked up by someone even earlier.”

“She left the school at four, right?”

“Right. That’s what-oh, her friend, what’s her name-Rebecca. That’s what Rebecca said. But she also said that maybe the time wasn’t on the nose. They’d worked all last period decorating the gym and kept going after school was out. I’d always thought she stood around in the parking lot talking to one of her friends, but now I’m assuming she went straight home. You were at work at the restaurant. Mark was driving between his job at Taco Bell and his job at Super Save-a-Lot.”

“A seven-minute drive,” Tolliver said automatically. We’d talked about it so often.

“Your dad was at Renaldo Simpkins’s place from around four to six thirty. My mom was passed out, as usual.”

We looked at each other. With the timeline changed, Matthew’s ass wasn’t as covered as we’d thought.

“No matter what I think of him, I don’t want to believe it,” I said.

“We do need to go to Texarkana.”

“Let’s call the doctor’s office and see what his nurse says.”

The nurse said no. The nurse said Tolliver needed to stay in the hotel room. No matter how many precautions we said he’d take, she said no. She was glad that he felt much better, but he would tire as the day went on.

Of course we could simply have ignored her strictures and done what we wanted, but I was against that. I suspected she was right to say no, and though I would have been glad if Tolliver had been up to traveling, in all conscience I didn’t want to get some hours’ drive away from the hospital and have some kind of emergency. Certainly there were doctors in Texarkana, certainly there were hospitals, but common sense said the hospital and doctor who’d treated him initially would be best.

We sat looking at each other. We had few choices: postpone the drive to Texarkana until Tolliver was better, ask Manfred if he was in the area and could go with me, or ask Mark if he could take a day off work to ride with me. “Here’s a novel thought: I could go by myself,” I said. Tolliver shook his head vehemently. “I know you can, and I know you’d do fine,” he said. “But when it’s about Cameron, we both should go. We’ll wait today, and tomorrow, if we have to. Then, no matter what, we go.”

It was good to have a plan of action, excellent to have Tolliver feel up to forming that plan. Iona called and invited us over to supper at their house, if Tolliver was feeling up to the excursion. He nodded, so I told her we’d be glad to come. I didn’t ask if we could bring anything, because I couldn’t imagine what we could bring and she always turned me down anyway, as though anything I brought into their house would be suspect. The day was boring, restless, and interminable.

Finally we went down to the car, with Tolliver moving very carefully. I drove to Iona and Hank’s house with great care, trying to keep the car away from bumps. That’s not easy in Dallas, and I was glad we stuck to city streets instead of getting on the interstate in the early evening traffic.

That area on the east side of Dallas is one big suburb. There are all the stores you can find in any suburban area in the country-Bed Bath & Beyond, Home Depot, Staples, Old Navy, Wal-Mart-and after you see one sequence of them, they start to repeat in another area. On the one hand, if you wanted to buy any item you could think of, unless it was too exotic, you could find it. On the other hand… we saw these same stores all across America. We traveled a lot, but unless the climate was radically different, it was hard to tell one part of the urban landscape from another, though a thousand miles lay in between.

Architecture was going the same way as the chain stores. We’d seen Iona and Hank’s house from Memphis to Tallahassee, from St. Louis to Seattle.

Tolliver was telling me all this again as I drove, and I was glad it was such a familiar complaint that I only had to say, “That’s right,” or “True,” from time to time.

The girls were full of questions about Tolliver’s bandage and what had happened to him. Iona had told them he’d been shot by someone who’d been careless and had a gun accident, so she and Hank could impress our sisters with the need for safety. Hank had a gun, he told us, but he kept it locked up and the key hidden. Since they were trying to be the best parents on earth, he and Iona had instructed the girls from an early age in the gun safety rules. I appreciated that, but to me it would have been more to the point to discuss gun control. However, that didn’t jibe with Hank’s ideas about being a true American, so that idea was not one that made an impression on my aunt and uncle.

After Mariella and Gracie had gotten used to having Tolliver around in his sling, they went off to do their usual things. Mariella had homework, Gracie had a song to learn for chorus, and Iona was finishing up the cooking. Tolliver and Hank went into the family room to watch the news, and I offered to help Iona by taking care of the dishes that had accumulated as she cooked. She smiled and nodded, and I rolled up my sleeves and got to work. This is a job I don’t mind. I can think while I do it or talk to a Chore Mate or simply take pleasure in a job well done.

“Matthew was by here today.” Iona was stirring a pot on the stove. She’d made chili. “He did call up several days ago, to ask if he could come by. We thought about it. He scared the girls the other day at the skating rink. We thought maybe if they saw him while we were around, they wouldn’t be so worried about it. And maybe he wouldn’t try to ambush them again, if he knew we’d be reasonable.”

This showed good sense on the part of Iona. I found myself nodding at her approvingly, not that she cared whether or not I approved of her. “I’ll bet he didn’t come just to hang around with the girls and visit with them. What did he want?” Matthew had been a busy bee. I wondered when he found time to work.

“He wanted to take some pictures of the girls. He didn’t have any recent ones. We did send him their school pictures, but he said they got taken away in jail. Those men will take anything.”

“Matthew is one of those men.”

She actually laughed. “Yeah, you’re right. Still, if he wants pictures of his daughters, I’m not going to stop him. Though they’re our daughters now, and we made sure he knew that.”

“Did he talk to them much?” I asked. I was curious.

“No,” Iona said. She went to the hall, heard that the girls were playing a video game in their room. She returned to her station at the stove. “That man, I don’t understand him. He was blessed with some wonderful children. Tolliver and Mark are both good boys; and he had you and Cameron for stepdaughters, both of you bright and pretty, and no drugs. Then he has these two girls. Mariella’s grades are going up. Aside from that one little running-away incident last fall, she’s doing good in school. Bless Gracie, she’s always a little behind her age group, but she’s not a whiner, not a complainer, and she works real hard on her schoolwork. But Matthew don’t seem to want to get to know them. He took the pictures, but then he talked to Hank and me. The girls don’t know what to make of him.”

“I know they don’t remember living in Texarkana.”

“Not really,” Iona said. “Sometimes they mention it, but they never talk about anything specific. Gracie was just a baby, of course, and Mariella was little more than a toddler.” She shrugged. “I know there were plenty of times my sister and Matthew weren’t there when you needed them.”

That was putting it mildly.

“I never said how glad I was you and Hank were willing to take them in,” I said, surprising even myself. “It must have been a real shock, going from no kids to two in the blink of an eye.”

Iona stopped stirring and turned from the stove to face me. I was drying the dishes and putting them on the counter for Iona to put away in their designated spots. “I appreciate you saying that,” she said. “Though I was glad to have them, and taking them into our home was the right thing to do. We prayed about it. That’s the answer we come up with. We love these girls like they were our own. I can’t believe we’re going to have another baby! At my age! Sometimes I feel like Abraham’s wife, seventy years old and with child.”

Until the meal was ready we talked about Iona’s startling pregnancy. We talked about her ob/gyn doctor, special tests she might need as an older first-time mother, and all kinds of pregnancy-related topics. Iona was happier than I’d ever seen her, and anything about her interesting condition was fun for her to talk about. I tried to concentrate on looking happy and asking the right questions, but underneath our conversation, I was worried about Matthew’s appearance at the house, about his taking pictures of the girls. He didn’t want photos of them for his own pleasure or because he was proud of having two such healthy daughters. Matthew never did anything that simple and straightforward.

Tolliver came to the table first, so he could get into position with his paraphernalia, and then Hank. The girls washed their hands and took their places, and Iona and I carried the food to the table. Iona had made chili and cornbread, and I’d grated cheese to sprinkle on the steaming bowls. We said grace before we ate, and then we enjoyed eating. Iona had none of the characteristics I associate with good cooks-she wasn’t passionate; she didn’t love fresh ingredients like all the chefs on TV; she’d never traveled much and she was suspicious of foreign cuisine. But her chili was wonderful, her cornbread mouth-watering.

Tolliver and I both had more than one bowlful, and Iona looked gratified at our praise. Mariella and Gracie were full of conversation about school and their friends, and I was glad to hear that both of them seemed to get along well with the other children. Gracie was wearing a green top that matched her eyes, so she looked like a little fairy, though her bold little nose hinted that she might not be a benevolent one. She was a funny little thing. She was really “on” tonight, telling little jokes she’d heard in class, asking Iona if they could have chili dogs the next night if any of the chili was left over. Mariella mentioned Matthew’s visit a couple of times, dragging it into the conversation as if it worried her. Each time, Iona or Hank would respond calmly, and I could see Mariella’s anxiety abating.

Tolliver and I left soon after we’d eaten, in deference to the girls’ evening routine. Our sisters were so excited by a discussion about what to name the baby that the topic of Tolliver and me getting married seemed to have slipped to the backs of their minds, to my relief.

I drove back to the hotel, and Tolliver sat in silence. Now that it was dark, I had to concentrate more on navigating, and we made one false turn before we got back. It was easily corrected, and soon I was helping Tolliver out of the car. I could tell he was tired, but he was moving better.

We were crossing the lobby when he said, “Hank said Dad took pictures of the girls.”

“That’s what Iona told me. I think they were smart to let the girls see Matthew with them both around, so they could kind of put him in perspective.”

“Yeah, that was a smart move,” Tolliver said, but not as though he was giving it any thought. “But why would he really want pictures of them?”

“I don’t think your dad is the kind of guy who puts pictures of his kids on Facebook, do you? So I can’t imagine.”

“Oh, I doubt he’d do that,” Tolliver said matter-of-factly. “Listen, you took care of the girls when they were little.”

“You know I did. Cameron and me. Especially Gracie, she was so frail.” The automatic doors swooshed open and we went into the lobby. The desk clerk was eating a cookie. She glanced up at us, then went back to her book.

“Do you remember when Gracie went to the hospital?” Tolliver said.

“Sure I do. I was scared to death. She was maybe three months old, still real little. Her birth weight was low, remember? She was so sick, and she had been running a temperature for four days. We’d been hassling your dad to take her to the clinic or to the emergency room. Mom was so out of it that she couldn’t go. No doctor would have let her leave with a baby in her arms. Your dad was really mad at us, but he got a phone call from some friend of his, and I guess the guy was repaying a loan or paying for some dope or something, because all of a sudden Matthew decided he would take Gracie. We barely had time to change her diaper and remind him how to buckle her in the car seat before he drove off. He took her to Wadley.”

“How do you know that?”

I unlocked the room door and pushed it open. “What do you mean, how do I know that? He took her to the hospital. He brought her back after a couple of weeks. They’d had her in ICU, so we couldn’t see her. He stayed with her. How could it not have been true? When he brought her back Gracie looked so much better, I could hardly believe it was…” I froze.

“You couldn’t believe it was Gracie, could you?” Tolliver said after a long silence.

I put my hand over my mouth. Tolliver carefully sat down on the edge of the couch.

When I could move, I sat down on the chair and our eyes met. “No,” I said. “I couldn’t believe it was Gracie. Her eyes were a hazy blue, but a few weeks after her stay in the hospital, they turned out to be green. So I figured she was older than most babies when their eyes change to their real color. And Matthew said that the doctors told him to put her back on just the bottle, even though she’d started to eat some baby food…”

“You took care of Gracie more than Cameron did.”

“Yeah, I did. Cameron was so busy that year, it was her senior year, and I was home more because of the lightning strike.”

“Were you still having trouble with the aftereffects?”

“Oh, yeah, you remember, I had trouble for months. Before I learned to cope. I had terrible headaches, and a lot of pain. But I did my best for Gracie and Mariella,” I said, knowing I sounded defensive.

“Of course you did. You kept all of us going. But my point is, there might have been things you didn’t notice because you were having so many physical problems and you were so distracted by sensing the dead people.”

That had certainly been a terrible time in my life. Teenagers are ill equipped to cope with a huge gaping difference between themselves and other teens. “Your point is that I might not have noticed some changes in the baby? You think Matthew left with one baby and came back with another. You’re saying the real Gracie is dead.”

He nodded. “It was Chip who came to the trailer some,” he said. “I’m pretty sure I remember him. Maybe Drex, too, but Chip for sure. He had some drug deals with my dad.”

“Oh, my God,” I said. “I thought they looked a bit familiar. And if one of them took Dr. Bowden out to the ranch that night, and they wanted to get rid of a baby without killing it…”

“They might have called Matthew, who had a real sick baby that wasn’t going to make it.”

“How could they? How could they imagine that Matthew would switch babies? Why would they want to, anyway?”

“If the baby was the biological child of Rich Joyce and Mariah Parish, then she would be literally worth millions.”

I couldn’t speak for a minute. “But why not just kill her, and then the millions would stay where they were? With the three Joyce grandchildren?”

“Maybe they didn’t want to murder an infant.”

“They were willing to let Mariah die when she could’ve been saved.”

“There’s a difference between letting someone die and killing someone. And between a grown woman who was pretty unscrupulous and an infant child. More practically, they might not have realized how close to death Mariah was until it was too late.”

I shook my head, dazed. “So, if this is true, what do you think Matthew did with the real Gracie, his real daughter? Do you think he deliberately left with her that evening and exposed her or something?”

“I have no idea, and I’m not sure I really want to know… though I think we have to try to find out,” Tolliver said, and he sounded like an old man. “But I wonder if he ever really intended to take her to the hospital.”

“The pictures?”

“He wants pictures of Gracie. He just took some of Mariella to give his story some weight,” Tolliver said.

“How did you figure this out?”

“He might have showed up at the skating rink thinking he could take pictures of the girls without us knowing, but we spotted him before he could do it, and the girls were scared of him. He’d already started trying to open communication with Iona and Hank by writing them a letter. When he didn’t hear back, he probably thought he could sneak around them. After that didn’t work out, he decided to try an open approach, and it worked. Iona and Hank wanted to demystify him so the girls wouldn’t be so freaked, so they acted like his visit was normal. They were doing the right thing, but they couldn’t imagine what his motives were.”

“What will we do?” I had my elbows resting on my knees, and now I buried my face in my hands. “I can’t wrap my head around all this. How did Cameron fit into all this? Was it just a coincidence that she went missing then?”

“Maybe we made the whole conspiracy up,” Tolliver said. “Maybe we’re as bad as those people who think JFK was shot by Martians.”

“I wish,” I said. “I wish.”

“I wonder if Mark knows anything,” Tolliver said.

“We could call him.”

“Yeah, but Dad’s staying there now.”

“Maybe he could meet us somewhere.”

“We’ll call him tomorrow. After we go to Texarkana.”

“You sure you’re up to that? You’re not nearly finished with the antibiotics.”

“I think I’m enough better.”

“Sure, Dr. Lang.”

“Hey, there are other things we need besides being super careful about my shoulder.”

“We’ll see what the doctor says in the morning,” I told him, and he called me bossy. It felt nice, taking care of him. As upset as I was about the suspicion and the uncertainty surrounding Tolliver’s dad, I felt a little proud that I had managed so far. We went to bed after some more rounds of fruitless discussion, and I don’t think either of us slept very well that night. When Tolliver did fall asleep, he talked out loud; he only does that when he’s really upset.

“Save her,” he said.