I took a deep breath and opened the door.
Chapter Forty-six
I stepped onto the porch. A light wind blew down the street, cool and crisp. It raised goose bumps on my arms and neck, but beneath my clothes I felt hot and clammy. A trickle of sweat ran between my shoulder blades. I lifted my hand and rang the bell.
I waited. I turned and looked back at Neal. I saw the outline of his black SUV in the fading light, but I couldn’t see him. I turned to ring the bell again, but before I could, I heard the lock turn on the other side of the door. I swallowed hard again and waited. I felt like an unprepared actor caught in the glow of the stage lights, except my stage light was a grimy little bulb on somebody’s porch, the globe filled with the summer’s dead bugs.
The door opened, and there she was. If time travel existed, I would have sworn I had gone back twenty years, to the time captured in photos of my childhood. Before me stood a replica of my mother from that time. A little rougher around the edges certainly, a little more worn by whatever life had thrown at her, but a nearly exact version of my mother. I stepped back, so far I almost fell off the porch. I kept my eyes locked on that face. My doubts and questions faded. This woman was certainly related to me. She had to be my half sister.
The woman—Elizabeth Yarbrough—raised her hand to her mouth when she saw me. Even though I was just partially illuminated by the porch light, and even though I hadn’t showered all day and had woken up from my nap only an hour earlier and must have looked something like a homeless person, she seemed to understand who I was as well. She probably saw the same ghost in my face that I saw in hers.
She pushed the screen door open, but didn’t speak right away. I wondered whether she would shoo me away, send me packing because I had violated her privacy. But when she spoke, her voice carried a welcoming tone. “Come in,” she said. “Come in.”
So I shook myself out of the past and moved forward. I stepped into the small living room. A thick odor hung in the air, as though something greasy had been cooked recently. The blinds were all closed, the walls painted dark green. The furniture looked heavy and stained, and children’s toys were scattered around the room; I had to look where I stepped.
“Do you have children?” I asked.
Children. My nieces or nephews. More relatives. Who knew how many people I didn’t know about?
“I do,” Beth said. “But these belong to my grandchildren.”
“Wow,” I said. “Grandchildren.”
“I’m quite a bit older than you,” she said. “A different generation, really.”
I didn’t know what to say.
Beth didn’t offer me a chair or anything. She stared at me from across the room. Her feet were bare, and she wore tight jeans and a loose sweater. She was thin, like Mom and like me. Her hair was colored somewhere between red and brown, with a hint of gray showing at the roots. She folded her arms across her chest and shifted her weight from one foot to the other.
“I always knew we’d meet,” she said. “I hoped we’d meet. Mom wanted—”
She stopped herself.
Mom. My mom. Before that day I had heard only one other person call my mother by that name. Would I now have to get used to sharing that word with someone else?
“Can I sit?” I asked.
“Yes, please.”
We both sat, on opposite ends of the couch. I still held the phone in my hand with Neal’s number ready to go.
“I guess you just want to ask me a bunch of questions,” Beth said. “I guess you want to know everything.”
“Yes. Everything,” I said. “You called me on the day of Mom’s funeral, didn’t you?”
“I did. Yes.” Beth nodded. Her voice was a little rough, like a smoker’s. “I didn’t think it was right for me to go, especially since you didn’t know about me. I didn’t think that was the time. I almost went anyway. I got dressed. I put on makeup. I was ready to drive down there, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Mom was already gone at that point, and it would only make things complicated for you.”
“And did you call the lawyer?”
“I’m not trying to chisel money out of anybody,” Beth said. “I don’t want you to think that.”
“But you called him?”
“I just wanted to know where I stood, that’s all,” she said. “You know, I didn’t have anyone else I could ask. I didn’t think I could approach you. I wasn’t sure.”
“How did you know the lawyer’s name?”
Beth hesitated, then said, “Mom told me. She told me when she changed the will. She said if anything ever happened to her, that’s who to call. Mr. Allison.”
“Did she expect something to happen?”
Beth raised her arms and hugged herself as though a cold breeze had blown through the room. “I don’t know,” she said. “But there were a few times I talked to her, right before she died, when it seemed like she did think something was about to happen. And then it did.”
Then why didn’t you do something? I thought to myself. Why didn’t anyone do anything?
“Okay,” I said. “Questions. I guess I’ll just start with the big one. Both your father and—”
“My father?” Beth asked. “How do you know him?”
“He came to my apartment,” I said. “He told me all about you. About a lot of things. He said you were supposed to be dead, that you disappeared one day when you were fifteen, and you never came back. The police said there was a serial killer in this part of the country then, some guy named… Rodney—”
“Rodney Ray Brown,” Beth said, her voice thin.
“That’s it. Gordon said you were dead. Murdered. But apparently you’re not. So what happened?”
“My dad,” Beth said. She shuddered; this time it didn’t seem to be from the cold, but from the thoughts that were crossing her mind. Thoughts of her father? “I didn’t disappear,” Beth said. “Disappear makes it sound like I was taken—like someone kidnapped me, you know? It wasn’t like that. Not at all.”
“Then what did happen?” I asked. “If you weren’t kidnapped and you weren’t dead, why did you stay away for so many years? Why didn’t I know about you until now?”
Beth closed her eyes. She took a long time answering. When she opened her eyes again, she looked right at me. “I chose to stay away all that time,” she said. “I wanted to get as far away as possible from that sick, disgusting house. I didn’t ever want to go back.”
Something wormed around in my gut. It felt like the worm had teeth and was starting to gnaw on my insides. I didn’t know how to ask the question. But I pressed on. There was nothing to lose now.
“Did Gordon…” I let my voice trail off. “Did he… sexually abuse you?”
Beth shook her head. “No, he didn’t do that. It was nothing like that.” She paused. “I’d like to say it was worse, but when you talk about these things, it’s tough to make those comparisons.”
“Then what happened?” I had the same feeling then that I’d had in the car during the ride over with Neal. I had to know, but I just didn’t want to know.
Beth forced an awkward smile. “This is the time I would reach for a glass of wine or something.”
“Do you have some?”
She shook her head. “I quit drinking. I quit all of that stuff. But sometimes I really want it.”
“If you don’t want to rehash a bunch of stuff, that’s okay,” I said. But I didn’t mean it. I had come all that way for the rehashing.
“That’s nice of you to say. But you want to know, don’t you? You really don’t want me to stop now, do you?”