Little Girl Gone (30 page)
Later Frankie and Rick put Glory to bed together as they always did, Frankie sang to her, and the baby’s eyes never left her face.
Across the crib Rick interrupted. “You only got pregnant to please me. You never wanted her.”
“I wanted to wait.”
Rick was ten years older than she and had felt the need to hurry. Probably because of this, he had taken to fatherhood immediately; but until Glory was almost a year old Frankie had only gone through the motions. Accustomed to being good at everything she committed to, she was determined to master the skills of a good mother in much the same way she had learned to block and kick a soccer ball, by repetition and an effort of will.
She had felt foolish making conversation with a baby who didn’t understand a word, but she did as all the books said she should, pointing out and naming things until her conversational skills deteriorated to the simplest sentences, just nouns and verbs with a modifier tossed in when she was inspired. She read all the recommended childcare books and followed all the prescriptions for a happy healthy baby. Eventually and without Frankie noticing how it happened—by hourly, daily increments, she supposed—the love had come. Now, like Rick and the rest of the family, she was completely smitten with Glory, who was certainly the brightest and prettiest baby who had ever lived.
“You wanted a baby and I wanted you to be happy,” Frankie said. “I love her now. Isn’t that what matters?”
Glory followed the conversation, her sleepy eyes looking back and forth between her mother and father.
“Anyway, I’m doing it for her.”
“That is such a load of crap.” Glory’s eyes opened wider. “How can you even say it? You should be gagging on the words.”
“Rick, there were children on those planes. Glory could have been one of them.”
He exhaled in disgust.
Rick was doing fast and furious sit-ups on the far side of the bed, his toes tucked under the chest of drawers. He jumped to his feet and faced her. The tendons in his neck stood out like the roots of an old tree.
“Just tell me why.”
“Don’t poke your finger at me.”
“I want to hear the truth. No more bullshit.”
“I’m not lying.”
“Frankie, don’t you know yourself better than that? Have you so little insight?”
He used his condescending, I’ve-lived-longer-and-know-more-than-you voice, and her desire to cooperate froze.
“I told you. I’m doing it for her.”
“The hell you are. You’re doing it because you’re a twenty-five-year-old woman who’s still trying to get her father to love her.”
On the soccer field if someone elbowed Frankie out of the referee’s line of sight, she waited for the right moment and got her back. In games and life, the impulse to retaliate came to her as naturally as breathing. But this was Rick and part of her understood his anger and even sympathized with it. If their positions had been reversed, she too would be confused and heated; however, she would eventually accept his decision to serve and defend because she had been raised to believe that this was what military families did when the country was threatened.
“It would be different,” she said from the closet doorway, “if it were you who wanted to go.”
“But it’s not me, Frankie. It’s you, the mother of my daughter.”
“I’m a woman, so I don’t get to do what my conscience tells me? There has to be some deep dark Freudian explanation?”
“Shall we pursue that idea? Do you think you’re up for that conversation?”
She ignored his challenge. “This war is about who we are as a nation.”
“Stop.” He held up his hand. “If we’re going to talk about this, you have to do one thing for me. Stop the spin. Stick to the truth. You enlisted because you’re the General’s daughter and you’ll do anything, even leave your family to fight in some godforsaken desert, just to hear him say you’re a good girl and give you that look.”
“What look?”
“The one he gets on his face when he starts talking about his father and his uncle and grandfather. All the bully Byrnes who risked their lives so America can be free.” He looked disgusted. “If you knew how tired I get of listening to that crap.”
His vehemence stung her. “I thought you loved my father. He loves you.”
Rick laughed. “But he’d love me so much more if I were a Marine.”
They had always talked in the dark. It had been their way from the beginning.
“What are Glory and I supposed to do without you?”
He was calmer than he had been, more hurt than angry. But this was harder to bear. She wanted so much for him to understand.
“On the plane that hit the Pentagon there were a bunch of kids on a National Geographic field trip. And there were two little girls. Sisters. I imagine I’m their mother and I know they’re going to die and I can’t help them.”
He rested his index finger on her mouth. “Just stop. It isn’t your fault those children died and it’s not your job to save the world.”
“Your folks live in Massachusetts, Rick. We’ve flown in and out of Boston ourselves.”
“There are dozens of flights every day.”
“But it could have been us. We could have been at your folks and had Glory with us….” She sagged under the weight of the images. “It can’t happen again. Ever.”
War was men’s business and the General knew how to call in favors. Though he could not undo her enlistment, he made sure that after officers’ training and the Basic School, his daughter was separated from her unit and posted to the small finance office at the Marine Corps Recruitment Depot in San Diego, about twenty minutes from Ocean Beach. Most nights she was home from the shop in time to fix dinner. She became a fixture at the MCRD, and every day it rankled, it gnawed, it galled her that while her friends were in Iraq and Afghanistan, she was a paper pusher in her hometown.
Glory was just finishing first grade when the opportunity arose for a ten-month deployment in Iraq, what the Marine Corps called Temporary Additional Duty. Frankie would be posted to a Forward Operating Base as part of a joint effort to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. She told herself, she told Rick and her father, that the TAD was only ten months.
“I have to do this.”
Rick looked grim and clenched his jaw. The General stopped talking to her.
LSO BY
D
RUSILLA
C
AMPBELL
The Good Sister
Bone Lake
Blood Orange
The Edge of the Sky
Wildwood
“When is the last time you cheered out loud for a character in a novel? That’s what I did as I read Drusilla Campbell’s LITTLE GIRL GONE. The complex relationships between Campbell’s richly drawn characters took me on a psychological roller coaster that tested my expectations, my values, and my heart. This story of tension and triumph is a perfect book club selection. Don’t miss it!”
—Diane Chamberlain, bestselling author of
The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes
“Nobody gets to the marrow of human flaws and frailties better than Drusilla Campbell. In LITTLE GIRL GONE, you are immersed in the lives of people you think you’ll never meet and come to care deeply about what happens to each of them. This is a compelling story that won’t leave you alone even after you’ve turned the last page.”
—Judy Reeves, author of
A Writer’s Book of Days
“Should be on everyone’s book club list.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“A novel about motherhood, sisterhood, and even childhood… In a novel which examines the sometimes devastating effects of postpartum depression, Campbell has managed to humanize a woman whose actions appear to be those of a monster rather than a mother. Through her sister’s eyes, we are able to understand and even empathize with Simone Duran, a woman who has failed as both a wife and mother.”
—T. Greenwood, author of
The Hungry Season
“Can you have sympathy for a woman who attempts to murder her children? The way Drusilla Campbell tells her story, yes, you can. Even more important, in this unflinching look at family relationships, postpartum depression, and the complex lives of the characters, especially the women in this book, you can come to understand how such an unthinkable act can happen. Make no mistake,
THE GOOD SISTER
is a painful story, but it is also a story that will carve away at your heart.”—Judy Reeves, author of
A Writer’s Book of Days
“The pull of family and career, the limits of friendship, and the demands of love all come to vivid life in
WILDWOOD.
”—Susan Vreeland,
New York Times
bestselling author of
Girl in Hyacinth Blue
To receive special offers, bonus content, and news about our latest e-books and apps, sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us at
hachettebookgroup.com/newsletters
Praise for Drusilla Campbell’s Novels
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by Drusilla Campbell
Excerpt of
The Good Sister
© 2010 by Drusilla Campbell
Excerpt of
When She Came Home
copyright © 2013 by Drusilla Campbell
Questions for Discussion copyright © 2010 by Hachette Book Group
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Grand Central Publishing
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
www.twitter.com/grandcentralpub
First e-book edition: January 2012
Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
ISBN 978-0-446-57601-7