Never Come Back

Chapter Fifty-one

When the paramedics arrived on Beth’s street, they went right to work on Neal. I didn’t watch closely, but I saw them slide an IV into his arm and pump a clear liquid into his body. They checked his vital signs and lifted him onto a stretcher and into the ambulance.

The police took over from there. They inundated Beth and me with questions about the stabbing. Who was Neal? What brought all this on? What was my relationship to the victim?

I told them everything I knew, which wasn’t very much. But I made sure they understood one thing.

“The man who did this,” I said. “His name is Gordon Baxter.”

I waited in another hospital, this one in Reston Point. I didn’t even know its name. Beth sat beside me. We had no idea what was going on with Neal. They had rushed him into surgery before we arrived in the emergency room waiting area, and since we weren’t immediate family members, no one would tell us anything. We made our way to the surgery floor, where the waiting room looked more comfortable. There was coffee brewed and a plate of crumbling pastries and cookies. Maybe I was feeling paranoid or maybe the recent events in my life had diminished my capacity for hope, but I started to think the nurses who hustled through the hallways and the elderly volunteer at the desk were looking at Beth and me with barely disguised pity. I prepared myself for the worst.

A detective from Reston Point took our initial statements and told us to expect a call in the future. I gave him the names of Richland and Post, and he wrote those down with the enthusiasm of someone composing a grocery list.

“Did someone call his family?” I asked.

“We made the notification,” the detective said and then left.

A TV played with the sound down, some news show in which two heads argued back and forth. In the harsh hospital light, I saw Beth’s face more clearly. I saw the deep lines and the wear. Her eyes lacked any real spark of life. They looked tired instead. But despite all that, I saw the resemblance to Mom. And to me. Beneath the layer of frazzled and harried fear, I saw my mother’s steel. This woman—my sister—looked like a survivor, someone who had the scars from battle, but was ready to go another few rounds. No problem.

My phone vibrated in my hand. It was a text from Janie Rader. She and some of her girlfriends were going out for Saturday night drinks—did I want to come? Oh, Janie, I thought. How I wish I could just go out for drinks with the girls. How I wish…

“I guess you still have a lot of questions,” Beth said.

I put the phone away. “A few more.”

“I’m sorry about your friend,” she said. “Is he your—?”

“No,” I said. “Neal is one of my students. He helped me find you. My mind was just muddled with all of this stuff, and I thought the police would take too long. I asked him, and he found you for me.”

Beth shook her head. Her shoulders drooped. “I get the feeling this is all my fault. None of this would have ever happened if you weren’t looking for me.”

“I think it goes back a lot further than me trying to find you,” I said.

Something beeped above us, and a voice over the loudspeaker summoned a technician to the pediatric wing.

Beth said, “I think it all goes back to my father. He clearly wasn’t the man Mom thought she was marrying. He certainly wasn’t the man I thought he was when I was growing up. He sent me away. He did those awful things. He tried to kill your friend. And now… I can’t help thinking about Mom.”

“You think he’s the one who killed Mom?”

“I’m not sure I can allow my mind to go there,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s just too much to take in all at once.”

I understood what she was saying, but I hadn’t had any trouble going where she didn’t want to. And I hoped the police saw it the same way once they found out. I looked forward to updating Richland and Post with this piece of the puzzle. They wouldn’t be able to conclude anything else—Gordon Baxter killed Mom, just as he tried to kill Neal.

“Can you tell me something else?” I asked. “Can you tell me how you got back in touch with Mom? Did you not see her for a long time? How many years was it before you saw her again?”

“I just saw her again about six months ago,” Beth said. “After all those years, we finally reconnected.”

“How many years was that?” I asked.

“Thirty-seven,” she said.

“Jesus,” I said. I couldn’t help myself. “Thirty-seven years. Jesus. How did that happen?”

“I want to be clear—it might have been thirty-seven years before I saw her again. But I thought about her all the time over those years. Every day, in fact. At first, I stayed away because… I’m ashamed to admit it, but Gordon was right. I wanted to get out of Ohio. I thought Haxton was too small for me. I was starting some kind of great adventure, I thought. I went away. I found work. I met people, and I partied it up. I picked up the phone more than once, meaning to call Mom. I bought postcards and even started to write them. But I never followed through.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t want to go home. And I thought if I started talking to Mom she’d beg me to come back. And then there was Gordon. He made it sound like Mom would be in danger if I made contact with her. I didn’t really believe his story that Mom was involved with the movies and whatever else he was doing, but I knew she was there, with Gordon. I didn’t know if she knew and turned a blind eye, or if she might really get hurt. I didn’t want to risk it. And the more time passed, the easier it was to not make contact. Or I guess I should say, the harder it would have been to make contact. You know what I mean?”

“Sure.”

“And then after six or seven months of being free and wild, things got worse for me.”

“How?”

She looked at the floor.

“If you don’t want to get into it—”

“I do,” she said. “Remember—” She reached out and placed her hand on mine. I accepted the gesture, but still felt uncomfortable with it. “We’re family now. At least to some extent.” She took her hand away. “I got into drugs,” she said. “Not just a little. And not just holding on to bad things for one of my wild friends. I went all in. For several years, I was a mess. I did things to support my habit, things I really wouldn’t want to talk about, but you can guess what they must be. In fact, whatever you can imagine, I did more than that. And worse. You asked me why I went so long without talking to Mom. That was a big part of it.”

“What was? The drugs?”

“The shame. I didn’t want her to see what I had turned out to be. Everything she warned me about, everything we fought about, I turned into that. And then some. And this happened over and over again. I relapsed many times over the years. I’ve been to rehab more than once. It finally took the last time, about five years ago. I’ve been to jail… you name it.”

“Married?”

She nodded. “Three times. Four kids. Yes, you have four nieces and nephews you didn’t even know about. And I’m a grandmother. Six grandchildren, if you can believe that.”

“Wow,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say.

“The grandchildren,” she said. “They really helped lead me back to Mom. When I saw them so young, so vulnerable, something kicked in. I guess I realized I was getting older. Time was passing. I’d moved back here, to Reston Point. I’d lived in Ohio once before, about twenty years ago. I lived in Akron. I even thought about coming over and looking for Mom then. I checked the phone book and everything. She’d gotten married by then and had a different name. You couldn’t just look on the computer like you can now. And I thought… I guess I thought she had a new life and maybe she didn’t want me to come back and remind her of all that stuff from the past.”

“You know she wouldn’t have thought that,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “I was afraid of Gordon too. I wondered what would happen if I did see him again, so I stayed away. Eventually I realized Mom wouldn’t care about any of that. I tracked her down in Dover. I just used one of those services you pay for on the Internet. They found her, and I called her… and…”

Beth lost it then. She didn’t even have time to raise her hands to her face. The tears poured out and her body shook with the sobbing.

I looked around. Only one other family sat in the waiting area with us, an elderly man and a middle-aged couple. They all turned to look when Beth started crying, then looked away again when they saw me scrambling to find tissues. I grabbed a box and brought them to Beth. While she tried to stem the tide of her tears, I placed my hand on her back and gently rubbed. It didn’t feel as awkward as I would have thought. I felt for this woman. I didn’t want to see her suffer. And I couldn’t imagine the pain she was experiencing over first losing her mother as a teenager, then briefly having her back as an adult only to lose her again so suddenly. If we were going to have a grieving contest, I decided Beth won by a mile. It wasn’t even close.

She composed herself. She used the tissues to wipe her tears and snot away. The other people in the waiting area had gone back to their own worries and problems. I sank back into my chair. I felt tired, mentally and physically. And I still hadn’t been back to Dover to see Ronnie. Maybe Dan was still there, or maybe Paul had returned to the hospital. But maybe Ronnie was there alone, wondering where I was.

“I feel guilty,” Beth said. “So very guilty.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“But I should,” Beth said. “I should have done something to stop him once I saw him again. More than anyone else, I knew the kinds of things he was capable of. And I should have tried to stop him from hurting Mom.”