He doesn’t answer immediately. I realize this is not at all what he was expecting.
“And the police have told you that’s not possible,” he says slowly. “That she was already dead when you were in that grave. That she’d likely been dead for hours before you were dumped.”
How carefully my doctor had read everything about this case.
“Yes. But she was alive in the field. She was nice. I could feel her breath in my face. She sang. And she was in the church choir, remember?” Begging him to believe me, and I am only telling him the least crazy part. “She told me her mother’s name. She told me all of their mothers’ names.”
I wish I remembered them.
Tessa, present day
I am waiting for the morning bomb to go off. Or not. I have made coffee and buttered a piece of bulgur-banana bread, listened to Charlie blast music in the shower, loosely sketched an appliqué design for the tutu, thought about how lucky I am.
Because, make no mistake, I am terrifically lucky. If I ever forget, the Susans remind me, in chorus. And the bread isn’t half-bad.
“Mom!” Charlie’s shriek carries easily from inside her room. “Where’s my blue jersey?”
I find Charlie in her underwear, hair slapping around like wet red string. She is tossing her room, a rabbit’s nest of dirty clothes.
“Which jersey?” I ask patiently. She owns two practice uniforms and four game uniforms. The uniforms were “required to play,” cost $435, and three of them looked exactly alike to me.
“Blue, blue, blue, didn’t you hear me? If I don’t have it for the scrimmage, Coach will make me run. He might make the whole team run because of me.” Coach. No last name necessary. Like God.
“Yesterday, he threw Katlyn out of practice for forgetting her red socks. She was so embarrassed. And it was just because her mom washed them and accidentally stuck them in her brother’s baseball basket. He’s on a team called the Red Sox. Duh.”
I pull something blue out of the tangle of clothes on the floor. “Is this it?”
Charlie is now spread-eagled and lying faceup on her unmade bed, deciding whether the world is ending. She cranes her neck slightly in my direction. I note that her backpack is open on the desk, unpacked, biology homework still flayed out. The digital clock on her dresser says nineteen minutes to go before my friend Sasha and her daughter pick her up for school.
“Mom! No! It’s the one with the white number and that cool edging at the bottom. The practice jersey.”
“Yes, I should have read your mind. Have you looked in the washer? Dryer? Floor of the car?”
“Why does this have to happen to me?” Still staring at the ceiling. Not moving. I could say, I’m done. Good luck. Walk out. When I shouted that very same question of the world at the tender age of sixteen, “Coach” would have seemed like a wasp to swat. Hard to believe I’d only been two years older than Charlie is now.
The very best thing about landing in that grave? Perspective.
So I peer through this morning’s prism: a science test looming in second period, an a-hole of a coach who probably could have used more childhood therapy than I got, and a telltale tampon under my foot.
I consider the clawed tiger on the bed, the one wearing the zebra-printed sports bra-the same tiger that every Sunday night transforms into the girl who voluntarily walks next door to help sort Miss Effie’s medicine into her days-of-the-week pill container. The one who pretended her ankle hurt one day last week so the backup setter on her volleyball team would get to play on her birthday.
“It was a really kind gesture,” I had told her that night when she explained why she did not need the ice pack. “But I’m not sure it was such a good idea.”
Charlie had performed her usual eye roll. “Mom, you can’t let the wrong stuff happen all the time. There is no way Coach would have ever let her play. And she set three points right after that. She’s just as good as me. I’m just two inches taller.”
I can’t count the times that Charlie has offered me her bits of tempered wisdom along with a little frightening Texas grammar.
“Dry your hair, get dressed, pack up,” I order. “You have a little over fifteen minutes. I’ll find the jersey.”
“What if you don’t?” But her legs are in motion, swinging over the side of the bed.
Eight minutes later, I find the jersey behind her hamper. White number 10 on the back, nearly invisible edging along the bottom. Strong odor of sweat and deodorant. Apparently, she’d made a half-hearted effort to put it where it belonged. No wonder we hadn’t found it.
I stick it in her duffle by the front door and check for red socks. Two short honks chirp from outside.
Charlie appears. “Did you find it?”
“Yep.” She looks so perfect to me that it hurts. Damp curls that hadn’t been sacrificed to a Chi Ultra flat iron springing up like tiny flames. Lip gloss only, so the freckles are out. Jeans, plain white T-shirt, the St. Michael charm that she never takes off nestled in her throat. Her father mailed it last Christmas from overseas, a design from James Avery, the kingpin of tasteful Christian fashion accessories. He started selling his stuff out of a two-car garage in the Texas Hill Country in 1954. Now, six decades later, his jewelry is both holy and pricey.
But for Charlie, this piece of metal out of a Kerrville factory isn’t a status symbol. It is a talisman, a sign that her daddy, in the guise of a sword-carrying saint around her neck, will keep her safe. Keep all of us safe. Lucas had worn the good luck charm as long as I’d known him, a gift from his own mother the first time he went to war.
“You’re good to go,” I say. “You look especially pretty. Good luck on your test.”
She slings the duffle over her shoulder and glances over my breakfast offerings on the table by the door.
“Nice try, but not takin’ the booger bread.” She slips the granola bar and the banana into the side pocket of her backpack. Another toot of the horn. Effie will be peering out her living room window at this point.
“This day sucks.” Charlie spins out the door, leaving the air charged and a chaotic trail from the bathroom floor to her room.
I catch the slamming screen in time to toss a wave to Sasha, whose face is hidden by the harsh glint of sun off the windshield of the familiar blue minivan. The glass is black, impenetrable. I can’t tell if she is waving back.
That doesn’t mean I need to run out and check that she isn’t bleeding on the ground, out of sight, behind the live oak, tossed out of the vehicle while she waited patiently for Charlie. That a stranger, with all of Effie’s stolen diggers stacked in the trunk, isn’t necessarily behind the wheel, about to drive my fire-breathing angel off to hell.
I shut the door and lean back against smooth, cool wood. Breathe in deep. Hope that other, more normal moms harbor similar out-of-control thoughts about their children’s safety.
I wrap up the rejected slice of Effie’s bread, generously lathered in strawberry cream cheese, and stick it in the refrigerator. Lunch, maybe. Wash up my coffee cup and set it to drain.
For the next ten minutes, the erratic whirring of the sewing machine breaks the silence. My foot, pressing the pedal. Fingers manipulating satin. Stop. Start. Stop. Start. The background noise of my childhood before Mama died.
Not the scrape of saw against bone.
My mind is not traveling in a row of tiny perfect stitches. It is skipping, out of order, to the places he has planted black-eyed Susans. My eyes close for a second and the stitches derail and zigzag like a train off track.
The list I’d made a couple of days ago is taped to the bottom of the vegetable drawer. Shades of Miss Effie.