The Return(94)

I hesitated, wondering how to make sense of such a terrible tragedy. Finally, I said, “Callie, I’m sure they know it wasn’t your fault.”

“You’re wrong,” she said, her tone suddenly rising. “You weren’t there. I heard them talking one night, and they were saying that if I hadn’t been on the phone, then Roger would be alive. Or that maybe if I’d called 911 right away, they might have been able to save him.”

I tried to imagine how devastating it must have been to overhear those words.

“That doesn’t mean they stopped loving you,” I offered.

“But it was my fault!” she cried. “I’m the one who went outside to talk on the phone and left him alone and every time they looked at me, I knew what they were really thinking. And then…everything started going bad. My dad got laid off, my mom got skin cancer, and even though they caught it in time, it was just one more thing. Finally, my dad found another job, but we had to sell our house and Tammy and Heather were really upset because they had to leave all their friends. All I could think was that I set it all in motion and suddenly I knew I had to leave. If I left, then things would eventually return to normal.”

I wanted to tell her that layoffs happen and that anyone can get cancer; I wanted to explain that in stressful situations, arguments are far more likely. But Callie wasn’t ready to hear any of those things just yet, because blaming herself allowed her to feel some control over all of it.

“So you decided to run away.”

“I had to. I went to the bus station and caught the first one that was leaving. I went to Charlotte first, then Raleigh, and after that, I caught a ride with a man who was heading toward the coast. I ended up in New Bern.”

“Where you slept in my grandfather’s barn and he found you.”

“I didn’t have any money and I was so tired and dirty by then,” she said, sounding impossibly old for her age. “I hadn’t showered in days. He found me the following morning.”

“My guess is he probably offered you breakfast.”

For the first time since I’d been in the room, she cracked the weariest of smiles. “He did. He didn’t seem angry at all. He just asked who I was and I accidentally told him my real name, but then Callie popped in my head, so I told him it was my middle name and asked that he call me that instead. So, he said, ‘Okay, Callie, I’ll bet you’re hungry. Let’s get you some grub and get your clothes cleaned up.’ He didn’t ask me a lot of questions. Mostly he talked about the bees.”

“That sounds like him.”

“When I finished eating, he asked me where I was going. I didn’t know, so he told me he’d get clean sheets on the bed in the guest room and that I could stay until I figured it out. It was almost like he’d expected me to show up. I can remember that one morning, after he’d given me breakfast, he asked me to help him with the bees. He put me in one of the suits but he wouldn’t wear one himself. He told me they were his friends and they trusted him. I thought he should have said it the other way around—that he trusted them, but he didn’t. I still think that’s kind of funny, don’t you?”

I smiled. “I do. But he used to say the same thing to me.”

She nodded. “Anyway, after a couple of weeks, he told me about the Trading Post. When I said that I’d never worked in a store before, he said it wouldn’t matter. So we got in his truck and he walked in with me, and pretty much convinced Claude to give me a job. Then, after I’d saved a little bit, he kicked in some more money so I could move into the trailer. Helped me move in, too, not that I had a whole lot to move. But he had some extra furniture, just like Claude did later after the trailer burned down.”

She’d told me a lot that I hadn’t known, though none of it surprised me.

“Did he really give you my grandmother’s social security number?”

After a moment, she shook her head. “No. I found the card in a box under the bed the first night I was there. I’m sorry for taking it, but I didn’t know what else to do. I knew my parents might find me if I used mine.”

“How did you learn that?”

“TV,” she said with a shrug. “Movies. That was also the reason I didn’t bring my phone, and rode the bus, and changed my name.”

“Pretty smart,” I said with a touch of admiration.

“It worked,” she said. “Until you figured it out.”

“Can I ask a couple more questions?”

“Why not?” She seemed resigned. “You’ll probably find out everything anyway.”

“Why did you pick the name Callie?”

“Because I’m originally from California.”

“No kidding?”

“I was born in San Diego. My dad was in the Navy.”

Another detail I didn’t know, but one that probably wasn’t important.

“How did my grandfather know you were sick?”

“Oh, yeah. I’m not even sure I was sick then. Or maybe I was. I don’t know. Anyway, I fainted when I was helping him harvest the honey. When I came to, he told me I’d scared him practically to death. He tried to get me to go to a doctor, but I wouldn’t. I thought they would ask too many questions. Which turned out to be right, you know.”