My childhood could be a complete fraud. My DNA, an especially sick, twisted double helix formed by a stripper and a hit man.
Mama and Daddy could be champion liars. Kidnappers. Sadie might not be my real sister.
When a sharp pain jabbed me in the chest, I stood up and sucked in some slow, ragged breaths, opening the refrigerator for something to do, for some way to avoid a trip to Panic City.
A twelve-pack of Dr Pepper sat in the front. Whenever in Texas, I lived by Dr Pepper’s 1920s slogan: “Drink a bite to eat at 10, 2, and 4.” It was inspired by a long-dead Columbia University scientist who determined we had a natural drop in energy at those times of the day. I added a Pepper between the a.m. hours of six and eight whenever necessary. It was 7:08 a.m. according to the rooster clock above the old gas stove, which used to crow on the hour until Daddy figured out a way to shut him up.
I popped the top of a can and drank an icy, luscious, sweet sip, my legal alternative to crack cocaine. The thirty-nine grams of sugar ran straight to my bloodstream, respectable only if you compared it with the fifty grams in a can of Orange Crush. Maddie shared these numbers in a born-again manner during a brief stint when she drank only water at the behest of one of her TV pop-star princesses. A true McCloud girl, she returned to the Dr Pepper fold in two weeks.
As my blood pressure dropped to an acceptable level, I pulled my purse off the floor and dug out my phone. Three messages waited on my voicemail.
The first, from the Fort Worth police. Jack Smith’s arm was not broken, just sprained. His attackers had made bail. The two men explained the encounter as a case of road rage, claimed that Jack had cut them off on I-35, then flipped them off. They’d followed him to the parking garage for “a conversation” and Jack had made the first move.
I didn’t believe it for a second but it was a pretty good story because we lived in Texas, where the rules weren’t always clear to people. I made a mental note to call the police and get the real names of Jack Smith’s attackers. In Texas, Bubba wasn’t derogatory. It was affectionate. It could be a nickname for anything.
I didn’t like that I’d pissed off two violent strangers who carried around a picture of me and were now free.
The second voicemail, from Sadie, was short: “Call me after your Dr Pepper.” The rooster said it was still a little early for that.
The third was Jack Smith himself. He asked whether I’d mind dropping by his hotel sometime this morning. No explanation.
Sorry, Jack, I have other plans today.
As an afterthought, I checked my email, which I was stuck doing on my phone until wireless internet and cable were set up at the ranch. I didn’t much like reading email on a tiny screen; I’d meant to go through it on Sadie’s laptop last night but forgot because, as Granny would say, things took a turn.
I glanced at fifteen new messages with familiar addresses. Chicksaddlery, Equineglobe, Texaslonghorns, Potterybarn, Amazon, iTunes. Delete. Delete. Delete. Delete. Delete. Delete.
Eventually I’d weeded out all but five emails. Four were from staff at Halo asking how I was doing. Kind, concerned. I would miss these people.
The last email fell into neither category. Not obvious spam, not personal. The address was madddog12296@yahoo.com.
Subject line: Don’t let this happen to your loved one.
If an exclamation point had been tagged at the end, I would have immediately dismissed it as an ad for drunk driving or Lap-Band surgery.
But there wasn’t, and I opened it.
The message was a yawning square of empty white. No words. No picture of a smiling, size 12, Lap-Band surgery graduate holding up a pair of circus-tent jeans.
My finger hovered for a second before I clicked the attachment. My phone screen filled with a pixelated blur. I closed out the screen and tried again. I got the same garbled mosaic of tiny tiles.
Nothing, I told myself. Nausea began a dance in my gut. An email lost in space, meant for someone else.
Still.
How easy would it be to trace the email or to sharpen the focus? I could email the image to my laptop, but I didn’t have the necessary software. Or the skills, for that matter. I didn’t want to involve a commercial photo lab.
Or the police. Not yet.
If it was nothing, I could look foolish. If it was something, I lost control.
Once you went official, the game changed forever. Not always a good thing, Grandaddy said.
How clearly I heard his voice in my head these last few days.
The panic was awake again, stretching and yawning and curling inside me like a predatory eel.
I’m a psychologist, I reassured myself. Not a frightened girl.
I once won a collegiate prize for a thesis on Alfred Hitchcock and the cinematic techniques of the modern-day stalker.
I could play this game and win.
I knew the rules.
Even in my head, it sounded hollow.
I glanced at my watch, flexing the fingers on my left hand, an involuntary habit ever since the cast was removed all those years ago.
I needed to pull myself together.
Mama was waiting.
CHAPTER 8
I turned in to a parking spot in front of the Good Samaritan Center, my mind entangled in the past, suddenly bothered about Mama’s desk, about the day she caught me trying to unlock the middle drawer with a bobby pin.
I was nine and had just spent a weekend in bed with Encyclopedia Brown and the flu. Mama’s usually gentle fingers left red marks on my arm and a dime-sized bruise that took a week to fade.
Later that day, she apologized with a package of Hostess cupcakes and a Coke with crushed ice. Her eyes were bloodshot, like she’d been crying. She apologized, but she also made it clear I was not to do this again. Ever.
In my rearview mirror, I watched a man in a cowboy hat emerge from a black pickup. He seemed oblivious to my presence, but I waited until he entered the nursing home before I got out of my truck.
Jesus, I couldn’t start living like this, afraid of every tall man in Texas with a cowboy hat and a black truck. I’d be certifiably nuts in a few hours.
For the last year, Mama had lived in this building among a sad cast of people. The outside looked like an adult Disneyland, with a grandiose arched entrance and golf-course coifing of flowers and trees. Fake lily pads danced on the surface of scattered ponds. Wrought-iron benches waited for company that rarely came.
All of it cleverly disguised the reality of the place once you hit the door: another L-shaped hospital ward where people came as a last resort. Expensive wallpaper, nice furniture, and pretty paintings on the walls didn’t make a bit of difference when there was only one way out.
Once Mama really started to lose her mind, Daddy hired a live-in nurse at the ranch, but the property was too vast and Mama liked to roam. After one final midnight search for her on horses and four-wheelers, he gave in.
The rancid perfume of Lysol and urine rushed at me as the glass door slid open, an odor that couldn’t be covered up no matter how much money you threw at it. Specifically, $82,000 a year-the cost of keeping Mama snug with skilled nurses and therapists who specialized in dementia.
Our family’s money was like a nice warm blanket folded at the end of the bed, dependable, always there, but not something to be used unless you really needed it. Unless it was really, really cold. Daddy hammered that into us at a young age. Our ancestors broke their backs to work the land we inherited, he’d remind Sadie and me.
Every time I walked in here, I said a grateful little prayer to those ancestors. Today, I was also praying that the man from the pickup was already ensconced in a room with a favorite aunt, reminding her patiently for the hundredth time who he was.
Instead, his towering form leaned against the reception desk, his back to me. He was genially chatting up a white-haired volunteer with a freshly coiled perm. His body language was languid, but I’d seen plenty of languid men throw a fast punch. I changed direction and strolled toward a familiar female figure sitting in a wheelchair in the center of the reception area.