Catch Me (Detective D.D. Warren, #6)(84)

“She’s not dead, Charlene. Least, not last I knew.”

“What?”

“Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant,” my aunt stated, and her tone was different now, testing.

“I don’t understand.”

“Do you want to understand?”

“Why do you keep asking me questions like that!”

“Because from the first moment I arrived at the hospital, that’s what the doctors advised me to do. I was not to tell you what happened, but to give you love and support until one day, when you felt safe enough, you would remember on your own.

“I’ve waited twenty years, Charlene, never knowing if this might be the week you’d suddenly bring it up or, worse, if this might be the day she would magically show up. It’s been a lonely vigil. Stressful, too. But I did it, because that’s what the doctor said. And I don’t have kids, Charlie. I don’t know what’s right or what’s wrong for an eight-year-old girl. The only attempt I had at child rearing was the years I spent trying to rein in my baby sister, and we both know how well that went.” My aunt’s voice broke off, the first tinge of bitterness I’d ever heard from her. Then I noticed a sheen in her eyes that had nothing to do with the lighting.

I’d hurt her. I’d made my aunt cry.

Immediately, I wanted to take it all back. I was sorry I’d brought up my mother. I was sorry I’d left New Hampshire. I’d do anything, say anything, return home. I just wanted my aunt to be happy. She was all I had, and I loved her.

And in the next second, I realized how warped that was. How quickly I’d fallen back into the trap—appeasement at all costs. Loving too little and holding on too tight.

Worst part was, my aunt didn’t even expect me to appease her. She simply sat there, shoulders squared, jaw set, awaiting my next question.

“If my mother’s alive,” I ventured, “why hasn’t she ever contacted me?”

“I don’t know.” She hesitated. “I always figured she would. If not in person, then by mail. Then later, when all this Internet and e-mail and Facebook nonsense started, I worried about that, too. But nothing that I’ve ever seen, or you’ve ever said.”

“Nothing, not a single word from her,” I agreed, and took a moment to digest that.

“Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant,” my aunt said again.

“Did I hurt her?” I asked, and my fingers were unconsciously moving across my left side, the top of my thigh, the back of my hand. I couldn’t help myself.

“We don’t know. When the EMTs arrived, they found you on the floor, seriously injured. In fact, they assumed you were dead.” My aunt spoke the words flatly, having obviously spent the past twenty years turning them over in her head. “There was no sign of your mother in the house.”

“She ran away?”

“The police put out an APB for her. Especially…after the other discoveries they made.” She paused, stared at me again. When I didn’t respond…“To date, they’ve never found her, and I would know if they did. There are charges pending against your mother, Charlene. Serious criminal charges. Which may be why she’s never appeared in person. I’m sure she knows I’d toss her sorry ass in jail the second she did.”

I blinked, caught off guard by the vehemence in my aunt’s voice. It occurred to me that I’d spent most of my life fearing that one day I might turn into my crazy mother. Hence the need to forget, avoid, fail to confront. If I didn’t remember, I couldn’t feel. If I couldn’t feel, I couldn’t lose my mind. Now I wondered if perhaps I didn’t carry a trace of my resilient aunt. A woman who looked, who saw, who endured. A survivor.

Given the date, I would like to be a survivor.

“Do you remember getting your driver’s license?” my aunt asked suddenly.

I was startled by the change in topic, nodding faintly.

“You wanted your license to read Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant. And when you were told it couldn’t be done, you became upset.”

“I thought it was stupid you could list only one middle name. That if it was supposed to be legal ID, it should carry my full legal name.”

“No,” my aunt said.

I frowned, stared at the floor. And I remembered suddenly, being at the DMV in Tamworth, where you had to go in person to get your first license. It should’ve been fun and exciting for a teenager, except I was red-faced, sweating, nearly panting from a pressure I couldn’t explain. My aunt was talking to me, murmuring something low and calm except I couldn’t hear her. My head was on fire, my skull threatening to explode into a thousand bits. I was going to cry, I was going to scream. I mustn’t cry, I mustn’t scream, so I fisted my hands into my eye sockets to hold in the pain. Then, when that didn’t work, I walked over to a wall and beat my head against it, as if that external force would drive out the internal agony. I pounded my forehead hard enough that two uniformed state troopers came running out with their hands on their holstered weapons.

Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant. My driver’s license needed to read Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant. It hurt too much to have it any other way. To be anyone else.

“I got sick,” I whispered. “I had to leave.”

“I finally got you to the car,” my aunt filled in. “I drove you home, I put you to bed. Then I stayed awake all night, waiting for you to come back down, waiting for you to talk to me, to tell me what you remembered. But you didn’t. At seven A.M., you appeared in the kitchen and informed me that if you couldn’t have both names on your license, then you would accept Charlene Grant. You never spoke of it again.”