Finding Us (Finding #2) (15 page)

“Yeah. I wish you were here,” she whispered.

“Me too, baby.” I stepped outside on the balcony to get some air. The air felt different in California. It felt wrong almost, like I was missing the air in Georgia. I knew I was where I was supposed to be for me, but who was there for Maggie? It was my job to protect her, to make her feel safe and loved, and here I was on the opposite side of the continent. “Tell me what happened.”

She sobbed through the whole story about Christmas gifts and files and pictures before falling silent again. There were no words coming from her, but I could hear her harsh breathing, like she was trying to keep her emotions from spilling out everywhere. She hated crying. She hated showing weakness of any kind, but she did. For me and Max, she let herself go, and neither of us was there when she needed us.

“I’m so sorry, baby.”

She sniffed a little before her voice sounded stronger, more determined. “It’s fine. Thanks for listening. I think I need to go.”

“Maggie?” I wasn’t ready to hang up with her yet. Her sudden resolve worried me, and I was kicking myself for not telling Max to fly down there to be there for her. Even worse I hated myself for flying to LA with the band instead of spending Christmas with the girl I claimed to love above all others.

“I love you, Parker Pryce,” she whispered with an air of finality.

“I love you too, Maggie, with my whole heart. I’ll call you in a few hours, ok?”

“Sure,” she said and then the line went dead. Dread filled me, and I knew without a shadow of a doubt I wouldn’t be talking to Maggie again that day or perhaps the next.

Max

In all the years I have known Jim Miller, I had only heard him lose his temper over one thing: Maggie. He never raised his voice to anyone unless they wronged her. This was different though. Jim seemed afraid. Something really bad had happened, and I was guessing Karen was behind it all.

My parent’s and I stepped in the house behind Jim after I had arrived the day after Christmas. Maggie hadn’t been answering her phone, and no one had seen her since Christmas morning. Jim had called me last night, but what really made me worry was when Parker told me I needed to fly down and help Maggie. He said he was trying to find a way to get home, but it could be another day before he could get to her. I didn’t know what would have Jim and Parker that worried, but I was going to get to the bottom of it.

Inside their expansive living room we found Eliza and Carolyn sitting around the huge Christmas tree surrounded by paper. Their mess from Christmas was still out a day later. The Miller house was always pristine thanks to the hard work of Eliza and insistence of Karen.

Both Carolyn and Eliza had been crying and refused to look up at us. Karen was nowhere to be seen. My mother took off towards the kitchen presumably to find her. My dad followed Jim into his office, so that left me with Eliza and Carolyn. Eliza darted out of the room towards her bedroom on the first floor.

When it was just Carolyn and me, I looked around and asked, “What happened?”

She sniffed and tried to wipe away the tears. “She told her the truth.”

“What truth?” I asked almost fearing the answer.

Carolyn just pointed to a box before she left the room. Moments later I saw her car go by the front window. She had left and everyone else had scattered. I was alone in the midst of their Christmas.

I looked down at the box that was flipped upside down on the floor. Blue paper sat next to it, and the top was gently leaning against the chair that Maggie sat in every year to open her gifts. I could see her there peeling the paper back carefully like she liked to do. She even opened her gifts timidly, like she was afraid of what’s inside. It seems that this time she had a reason to be afraid.

I reluctantly lifted the box and found two files. The first had Maggie’s name printed on the tab. The second had the name Mary Leigh Anderson on it. I flipped it open and found a picture of the woman I assumed was this Mary person. It could have been Maggie in the picture. Her face was so similar to Maggie’s. The woman’s hair was pulled back revealing a round face with large brown eyes. She had a wide smile just like Maggie’s.

The next page was an autopsy report, which I found strange. Why would an autopsy report be wrapped in a box? I read the “cause of death” line and started putting it all together. Her cause of death was an amniotic fluid embolism. While I didn’t know exactly what that was, I knew enough from my mother’s experience trying to have another baby that amniotic fluid had something to do with pregnancy. This woman was pregnant when she died.

I was missing something, but I just hadn’t put it together quite yet. I opened Maggie’s file. There was the missing piece of information. Her birth certificate was sitting right on top. Next to “mother’s name” it didn’t say Karen Miller. It said Mary Leigh Anderson. Margaret Anne Miller was born to James Stewart Miller and Mary Leigh Anderson.

This didn’t make sense. The twins were born before Maggie, and they were very clearly Karen’s kids. Were they not Jim’s, or did he have an affair? I wondered if my parents knew the answers, if they could fill in the blanks. Then I realized there was one person in this house who knew everything about everyone. She tended to fade into the background because of her quiet nature, but that didn’t mean she didn’t hear things.

I stood up from the floor prepared to go talk to Eliza when my father came into the room and said, “We need to go, Max.”

My dad was not a man to be argued with. I learned that lesson too many times over the years, so I followed him out of the Miller’s house and back home. For the next few hours I sat in my room wondering what was happening in the house next door. I wondered where Maggie was and if she was ok, which was kind of dumb on my part. Of course she wasn’t ok. Who would be ok after finding out everything you knew was a lie? It wasn’t just that it was a lie; it was the fact that Karen tortured Maggie for years, and for what? Because she wasn’t her daughter? That wasn’t Maggie’s fault. Maggie didn’t lie about who gave birth to her.

This was some Christmas.
Merry Christmas, Maggie. Karen isn’t your mother.

Maggie

I had snuck in the back of the house in the middle of the night like I was on autopilot. It wasn’t the first time I had snuck back into the house after spending time on my green, the eighteenth green, where I did my best thinking. Clarity and peace never came though. Usually I could find some semblance of harmony amongst my thoughts given enough hours staring at the stars, but that night I couldn’t get past the whirlwind of emotion inside my head.

Besides the fact I was trying to make sense of years of lies and discordance, I was also trying to figure out how I felt about my mother not being my mother. Some stranger I never knew and never would know was the woman who brought me into this world. The only conclusion I found was the fact that all my years of feeling lost, feeling like I didn’t belong, suddenly made sense.

Talking to Parker didn’t help either. Our relationship was more of a source of stress rather than solace, and the idea that he was so far away living his dreams made the emotions swarm within me like a tornado making best friends with a hurricane. I couldn’t deal with it all.

My drive back to Atlanta was silent. The radio was off and my brain was so busy that I hardly remembered the drive back. It was good that Daddy had filled up my car the day before because I don’t think I would have even realized if I were running low on fuel.  Once I was back in my house I didn’t feel any better. It had seemed empty here since Parker left with Grady’s band. The silence was eerie and lonely. While I welcomed it in the car, my mind begged for a distraction in the empty house.

I tried to run at the gym. My mind ran faster.

I tried to study. The words blended together creating a mess of black and white.

I tried to watch a movie, read, sleep, cook…I tried anything to keep me from focusing on the discomfort inside of me. Finally I gave up and focused on the news of my real mother. It occurred to me then that I left the box behind. I knew nothing about this woman.

That thought stuck with me as I lay there thinking about everything I had learned. I decided that even if I couldn’t get to know my real mother personally, I could try to get to know the woman she was. I climbed off my bed and searched for my phone. I found it turned off on the passenger seat of my car. After letting it turn on and ignoring the alerts telling me I had messages, I dialed the one person who I needed to hear explain everything.

“Maggie!” He said sounding breathless when he answered the phone.

“Daddy. I think I want to hear the rest of the story now.”

“I’m on my way, kid.”

Just like that I had made my first decision on my own to start figuring out who I really was.

Parker

I called and sent texts and nothing. It went straight to voicemail and all of my texts went unanswered. Max hadn’t seen her, but he filled me in briefly about what he found when he arrived at the Miller’s house. Maggie was gone and no one had heard from her.

We were at the studio professionally recording our first song when my phone buzzed in my pocket.

Max: Jim just left like a bat out of hell. Guessing Maggie called.

Me: You know where she is?

Max: No. You coming home?

Me: Trying to get a flight out tonight.

Max: Cool. I’ll pick you up. Text me the time.

Me: Thanks. Let me know if you find out anything else.

Grady hadn’t exactly been on board with me leaving the night after we started recording, but he couldn’t really complain after I had dropped everything to travel with him. Maggie needed me, and he knew she was my priority. Now if we could only convince the suits who were managing the band to change the recording schedule, I could be on my way to Maggie in a matter of hours.

Max

My dad wasn’t talking. I searched for my mom, but she was MIA. She must have still been over at the Miller’s because she was nowhere in our house. Once Dad was locked back in his office, I went back over to the Miller’s and entered through the garage. Carolyn’s car was still gone. Maggie’s car hadn’t been there since I arrived, but Eliza’s car sat in its usual spot, which meant I might be in luck.

Inside the house was still silent, like death. It was like the house knew something bad had happened. It was dark outside, but the lights that were set on timers were on in the house. I quietly walked back in the living room where I found a sniffling Eliza cleaning up the remnants of their Christmas morning.

“Hey Eliza,” I said quietly as I picked up some paper to help her out. “Tell me what happened.”

She sniffed and dropped the bag to wipe the tears from her face. I wasn’t surprised Eliza was trying to play off her emotional state with pleasantries. Women in this household were experts at pretending everything was hunky dory when it was anything but.

“Come on Liza. I know some of what happened. Don’t try to sweep it under the rug. You’re not like Karen.”

She snapped ramrod straight. “No, I’m most certainly not anything like that woman.”

“What happened yesterday? I saw the box, but it didn’t all make sense.”

“Did you see the card?” She asked.

“What card?”

Eliza walked over to the box that was now put together and sitting in Maggie’s seat. She lifted the lid and pulled out a white envelope and handed it to me. I sat down in the matching chair and read the card.

Dear Margaret,

You are an adult now, so I think it is time you know that you are not my real daughter. Your father had an affair a couple of years after the twins were born. That affair resulted in you. Your mother died during childbirth, so you were brought to your father to be raised. I agreed to raise you as one of our own out of the goodness of my heart, but it is time you grew up and stopped taking from this family. Hopefully the information enclosed in these files will give you everything you need to move on.

Sincerely,

Karen

It was as bad as I thought. Jim had an affair. Sure, it was wrong of Jim to cheat on his wife, but come on. It was over twenty years ago and definitely not Maggie’s fault. Karen Miller was way out of line doing something like this to Maggie. That woman was a heinous bitch, and I couldn’t believe such an abominable person had raised someone as good as Maggie.

I slipped the card back in the envelope and turned back towards Eliza. “Explain all of this to me because I really don’t understand.”

She picked up the box and waved me over to the sofa. I sat down next to her as she pulled the files out of the box. Before she opened them, she explained, “Jim was close friends with my husband, Sam. They grew up together and then Jim gave Sam a job right after we got married. When Sam died, Jim offered to take care of me, but I didn’t want charity. I offered to work for his family instead. See, the twins were just two years old, and they were a handful. Karen was really struggling and until I offered to help, Jim wasn’t willing to hire a nanny for his stay-at-home wife.”

“You were a nanny for the twins?”

“Not exactly. I took care of the house like I always have, but Karen couldn’t handle the girls. I tried to help her, but her expectations were unreasonable for two-year-olds.”

“How did Maggie come into the picture?”

“Jim and Karen’s marriage was a shambles when I came along. They were even sleeping in separate rooms. Months after I started helping, Karen started getting herself together. Their marriage seemed to improve, so much so that Karen became pregnant again. She was so sure it was a boy that she had the nursery decorated for him. Unfortunately, she lost the baby. She never even found out if it was a boy or a girl.”

“That blue and white nursery in all the pictures wasn’t meant for Maggie.”

“No, it was meant for Jim and Karen’s baby. After her miscarriage that room was closed off and forgotten about. Jim and Karen’s marriage went down hill, and eventually they separated. Depending on who tells the story, Jim may or may not have had an affair. I don’t have an opinion on the matter, but I do know that he was madly in love with Mary Leigh.”

“Did you know her?”

“Yes. She was Sam’s younger sister.”

“What?” I was shocked to find this connection. She handed me a picture of the four of them. It was Eliza, Sam, Mary Leigh, and a younger, skinnier Jim Miller sitting on a boat. I briefly wondered who took the picture, but Eliza started explaining the situation.

“She was my sister-in-law. We stayed close after Sam died because we were each other’s only family. Neither of us had living parents. Mary Leigh was beautiful and happy. She was the total opposite of Karen. The way she lit up a room when she walked in was remarkable. She loved music and played it all the time for her pregnant belly. What’s funny is she always joked that Maggie would be a soccer player because she kicked so much in the womb.”