Before the Storm (43 page)

start…leaving parts out, I…” He leaned back in the chair and

looked at the ceiling. “The thing is, your mother should hear

all this first.”

“She doesn’t
know?
”

He shook his head. “And I was going to wait at least until

after the hearing tomorrow, because she has enough on her

mind. Is she in Raleigh?”

I nodded. “She might be on her way home by now.”

“Where’s Andy?”

“His team has a special practice today and he was getting a

ride there. I’ll pick him up later.” I was getting antsy.“You can’t

leave me hanging until after you tell Mom,” I said.

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“Right. I know.” He gave the saltshaker a few more back-

and-forth taps. “Well, it’s true,” he said simply. “I’m the only

one who knows everything that happened, Mags. I never

wanted Keith to find out. I sure never wanted you to find out.”

“How can Keith know, but nobody else?”

Georgia Ann brought our teas and tossed a couple of straws

on the table. “Food’ll be up in a jiffy,” she said.

Uncle Marcus waited until she walked away again. “Well,

he doesn’t know everything.” He unwrapped his straw and

dropped it into his tea. I didn’t touch mine. “You know how

your Dad died, right?”

“The whale.”

“Yes. And I know you’ve probably heard old-timers’ suspicions that I had something to do with it.”

I shook my head. No way.

“Well, some people thought that.”

“Is that why Reverend Bill is so weird about you?”

“Partially, yeah. And he didn’t like Jamie because Jamie’s

brand of religion didn’t fit with his.”

“I don’t get why anyone would think you had something to

do with Daddy dying, though.”

He poked his straw up and down in the tea. “Well, first

of all, it wasn’t the right season for whales to be off the

coast,” he said. “Plus Jamie and I didn’t always get along

when we were young, so some people thought maybe

I…that I killed him.”

“That’s totally ridiculous,” I said.

“You’re right. It is. We
did
have a fight on the boat, though,

and that’s the part nobody knows about. Not Keith. Not

anyone, except you and me.”

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Georgia Ann showed up with his beach dog and onion rings.

The smell of them turned my stomach.

“Y’all need anything else?” she asked.

“We’re fine,” Uncle Marcus said.

“You holler if you do now, hear?”

Uncle Marcus sipped his tea as she walked away. “While

Jamie and I were on the boat,” he said, “he told me he was in

love with Sara and wanted to divorce your mom so he could

marry her.”

“No
way,
” I said.

“I’m sorry, Mags. He did. And he told me he was Keith’s

father.” He took a bite of an onion ring, the onion pulling from

the batter. I tried to be patient while he chewed it.

“I never told anybody about that conversation, because I

figured the secret would die with Jamie,” he said once he’d

swallowed. “He’d been giving Sara money for child support,

and once he died, that stopped, of course. I wished that he’d

never told me, but he did, and I couldn’t sit back and watch

Keith who was only what…six at the time? I couldn’t watch

him grow up with nothing when I knew he was Jamie’s son,

as well as my nephew. So, what I did was start a trust fund for

him with forty thousand dollars of my own money.”

“Get out!”

“I wrote a letter about it to Sara and gave it to her with a

check. Wrote something like, ‘This is Keith’s college fund. I

know Jamie loved you and wanted to provide for you and Keith.’

I wanted to let her know that I knew. That I got that she was

grieving, too, but wasn’t allowed to show it. I felt sorry for her.”

“What about for
Mom?
”

“I felt sorry for your mom, too,” he said,“but the thing was,

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she didn’t know the truth. As far as she was concerned, Jamie

died her loving husband. Sara, on the other hand, had lost

someone she had to pretend she was only friends with.”

“How can you sound so sympathetic about her?” I nearly

shouted. “She’s Mom’s best friend, and she was…” I couldn’t

even say it.

“I know it’s hard to understand, Mags. I was angry at first,

too. Angry enough to fight with your father. People make

mistakes, though. And their feelings change over time.”

I thought of Ben, trying to imagine my feelings for him

changing. Impossible.

I took the wrapper off my straw so I’d have something to

play with. I wadded the thin paper into a tiny ball and squeezed

it between my fingertips. “So, I still don’t get why Keith is

talking about this all of a sudden,” I said.

“Sara kept my letter,” Uncle Marcus said. “She stuck it with

the account information someplace where Keith stumbled

onto it. He found it the morning of the lock-in, which explains

why he was so mean to Andy that night.”

“He said things about me being rich when I saw him at the

hospital.”

“Well, you
are
rich. You live on a tidy inheritance from

Jamie, plus his life insurance kept you and Andy and your

mom going for quite a few years. Sara and Keith had very little,

and even though I was thoroughly pissed at your father for what

he did, I couldn’t let his son end up with nothing.”

I looked out the window at the sound. The rain had stopped,

at least for now. “I always thought Daddy was perfect,” I said.

“I don’t understand how he could do something like that.

Cheat on Mom and his family that way.”

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“You know, Mags, he was a great man in a lot of ways. A

really good father. He had high standards for himself. I almost

never heard him curse, not as an adult anyway. He stuck by

your mom when she got pregnant with Andy even though she

wasn’t much fun to be around. Neither was I,” he added

quickly. “We were both drunks. I lived next door at the time

and your mom and I drank together and were pretty bad for

each other.”

I nodded. I knew Uncle Marcus was a recovering alcoholic

like my mother, but I’d never imagined him and my mother

getting drunk together. It was totally impossible to picture

either of them drinking at all. Together? No way. My mother

was such a cold fish around him. Suddenly, though, things

started to make sense.

“Did Mom think…was she one of the people who thought

you might have killed Daddy?” I whispered.

He nodded.“I…” He hesitated.“I really liked your mom and

she knew it. She thought that was motivation for me to…get

rid of your father.”

“Oh, Uncle Marcus, that’s insane!”

“Damn straight.” He took a bite of his hot dog, washing it

down with a swallow of tea. “So I guess the moral of the story

is, we’re all fallible,” he said. “We all screw up at least once in

our lives.”

Some of us were more fallible than others, I thought.

“Do you know about your Mom’s depression?” Uncle

Marcus asked.

“Just that she says she medicated herself with alcohol.”

“Right,” Marcus said. “After you were born, your mom fell

into what’s called a postpartum depression. Hormones out of

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383

whack, which sometimes happens to women after they have

a baby. Anyway, we thought she was upset at being a mother

or whatever.Your dad tried to help her, but she wouldn’t see

a counselor or anything, and she wanted…they decided to

separate for a while.”

“They separated? I didn’t know any of this.”

“He moved in with Sara and the man she was married to at

the time, Steve. Steve was gone a lot in the service, and I guess

your dad and Sara…comforted each other.”

“Oh, ick.” I cringed.

“Mags.” He covered my hand with his on the table. “Please,

babe. Be an adult about this.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll try. Where was I

while he was living with Sara?”

“You were with him.Your mother could hardly take care of

herself. Sara helped him with you. Even though I was angry

with him at first, I think they really needed each other.”

“He was going to
leave
us, though,” I said. “Leave Andy and

me.” I felt a tear roll down my cheek before I even knew I was

crying.

“No, he planned to be there for
all
his children.” He covered

my hand again. “You were his baby girl, Maggie. The person

he was closest to. He adored you. He was both father and

mother to you for your first three years.”

That explained so much. “I still feel so attached to him,” I

admitted. “I think about him a lot. I remember him so well

from when I was little, but I hardly remember Mom at all. Like

she wasn’t there.”

“She wasn’t, really, but don’t blame her either, okay? She

became a very good mother to you and Andy once she got

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sober, so there’s no use blaming her or Sara or your dad for

any of this now. It’s in the past and everyone’s tried to move

on.”

“If Keith told
me,
” I said, “he might tell
Mom.
” She wouldn’t

be able to take it. I thought my father had been perfect, but

Mom thought he walked on water. “You said she has no idea.”

“I know, and I’m going to tell her, but not yet. Not with the

hearing tomorrow. So keep this between us for now.”

“What if Keith calls her?”

“I don’t think he can manage a phone right now.”

I remembered his bandaged arms, the metal rods sticking

out of his fingers.

Uncle Marcus’s pager suddenly went off, and he was on his

feet in an instant, wrapping his food in a napkin. “Gotta run,

babe,” he said, dropping a ten dollar bill on the table.“You okay

for now?”

I nodded, and watched him head for the door. Then I stood

up to leave myself. I didn’t want to have to talk to Georgia Ann

again.

My phone jangled on my hip when I got outside. A text

message from Ben.

Had fite w/ D. She’s on rampage. Keep ur cool. ILU, B.

THE RAIN WAS COMING DOWN IN BUCKETS BY the time I left

Raleigh and I knew I had a miserable drive ahead of me. It was

after four, and I’d just hung up on Dennis. I couldn’t remember

another time when I hung up on someone, but I was furious.

I was starting to hate him, and that’s a bad way to feel about

the man who holds your son’s life in his hands. First, it took

him two hours to return my phone call when he
knew
I was

trying to find someone to help us tomorrow at the bind over

hearing. Second, even after I told him about my nearly two

hour long meeting with the neurologist in Raleigh, he still

didn’t think it was worth talking to the man himself.

“I told you, it’s an overused defense, Mrs. Lockwood,” he

said. “It’s lost its punch.”

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“Well, it hasn’t been overused in Andy’s case!” I shouted into

my cell phone. “You’re not using it at all?”

“Once the case reaches the trial level, then the neurologist’s

testimony could be helpful in negating intent.”

“But he’ll be in adult court by then!” That’s when I hung up.

I knew I was going to start crying or cussing or both. Shartell

didn’t seem to get it. Andy wouldn’t survive in jail. He simply

wouldn’t.

I was still crying twenty minutes later when my cell phone

rang. I hoped it was Shartell, having reconsidered, although I

knew that was unlikely. I answered my phone.

“Hold on,” I said quickly into the mouthpiece. I put the

phone on my lap and drove through the spiking rain to the

shoulder of I-40. I picked up the phone again as I came to a

stop.

“Hello?” I hoped it wasn’t obvious that I’d been crying.

“Laurel, this is Dawn.” Her voice sounded strange. Tight.

Scaring me. I was afraid Keith had taken a turn for the worse

and she was making the calls for Sara. The rain thrummed on

my roof and I turned the volume up on the phone.

“Is everything okay?” I asked.

“That depends on your definition of okay,” she said.“Where

are you? What’s that noise?”

“It’s rain. I’m driving back from Raleigh. What’s going on?”

“I’m calling because I think you need to know what your

daughter’s up to.”

“Maggie?” I asked, as though I had more than one daughter.

“She’s having an affair with Ben. He’s been cheating on me

with her.”

“Maggie?”
I repeated.

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“It’s been going on since they started coaching together.”

“Dawn, what makes you think—”

“Ben told me everything. He says he’s trying to end it with

her, but he’s taking his sweet time about it.”

“Maggie doesn’t even date,” I said.

Dawn laughed. “They’re doing a lot more than dating,

Laurel.”

I was quiet, thinking of the time I watched Maggie comfort

Ben in the emergency room. “He’s…how old is he?”

“Twenty-eight. A mere eleven-year difference.”

“Did he start it?” I felt a rare emotion—an overwhelming