Hidden Pictures(89)
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A few days before Halloween, I answered the phone and was shocked to hear my mother’s voice. She said my name and immediately burst into tears. Apparently she’d been following our story on the news and she’d spent weeks trying to reach me—but with all my efforts to avoid the media, I’d made myself impossible to find. She said she was proud of me for getting sober, and she missed me and would I please consider coming home for dinner? I kept my composure just long enough to ask “When?” and she said, “What are you doing right now?”
My mother had finally quit smoking and she looked great, and I was surprised to learn that she’d remarried. Her new husband, Tony—the man I’d glimpsed on the ladder, clearing leaves from the gutters—was a gem. They had met in a support group after Tony lost his son to methamphetamines. He had a good job managing a Sherwin-Williams store and he channeled all his excess energy into home improvement projects. He’d painted every room in the house and repointed all the bricks out front. The bathroom was completely renovated, with a new shower and tub, and my old bedroom had been converted into a fitness room with an exercise bike and a treadmill. The biggest surprise was learning that my mother had started running! All through high school, Beth and I could never drag her off the couch, but now she was pacing nine-minute miles. Now she had Lycra shorts and a Fitbit and everything.
My mother and I sat in the kitchen and talked all afternoon and late into the night. I was prepared to tell her the whole story of the Maxwells, but she already knew most of the details. She had a giant folder stuffed with printouts of stories she’d read on the Internet. She’d clipped every article from the Inquirer and pasted them into a scrapbook. She said she’d become a minor-league celebrity, that all my old neighbors were so proud of me. She’d kept a list of all the people who’d called the house hoping to reconnect with me—friends from high school, old teammates and coaches, my housemates at Safe Harbor. Mom had dutifully recorded all their names and numbers. “You should call these people, Mallory. Let them know how you’re doing. Oh! And I nearly forgot the strangest one!” She crossed the kitchen to her refrigerator and lifted a magnet to retrieve a business card: Dr. Susan Lowenthal at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. “This woman actually knocked on my door! She says she met you in some kind of research project? And she’s spent years trying to track you down. What the heck is she talking about?”
I told her I wasn’t really sure and then I put the card in my wallet and changed the subject. I still haven’t mustered the nerve to call the phone number. I’m not sure I want to hear what Dr. Lowenthal has to tell me. I definitely don’t want any more public attention or celebrity.
Right now, I just want life to be normal.
* * *
By late July—a full year since we left Spring Brook—I was getting ready to move into a sober-living dormitory at Drexel University. I was thirty months clean and feeling great about my recovery. After a year of deliberating next steps, I’d settled on going to college and studying to become a teacher. I wanted to work in elementary education, preferably in a kindergarten classroom. I reached out to your father for the hundredth time and asked if a summer visit might be possible. And this time, miraculously, your doctors said okay. They felt you were adapting well to your new life and agreed it could be healthy for us to reconnect.
Adrian suggested we turn the visit into a vacation—our first big trip together. We’d kept in touch all through the year as he finished his classes at Rutgers. He graduated in May and got a job at Comcast, in one of the big skyscrapers in Center City Philadelphia. Adrian proposed that we visit you in upstate New York, then continue north to Niagara Falls and Toronto. He packed a big cooler full of snacks and made a playlist of driving songs and I brought a bag of gifts to share with you.
You lived west of Seneca Lake in a town called Deer Run and your new neighborhood was nothing like Spring Brook. There were no Starbucks or strip malls or big-box stores—just long stretches of forests and farmland, with houses few and far between. The last mile of our trip was down a winding gravel road that led to the gates of Baroth Farms. Your father and uncle raised goats and chickens, and your aunt sold milk, eggs, and cheese to wealthy tourists on the Finger Lakes. Your new home was a sprawling two-story log home with a green shingled roof. Goats were grazing in a nearby pen, and I could hear chickens clucking in the barn. The whole place felt oddly familiar to me, even though I was certain I’d never been anywhere like it.
“Are you ready?” Adrian asked.
I was too nervous to answer. I just grabbed my bag of gifts, walked up the steps to your front door, and rang the bell. I took a deep breath, bracing myself for the shock of seeing you as a little girl. I was afraid of having a weird reaction, something that might embarrass you or me or both of us.
But your father answered. He stepped outside onto the porch and welcomed me with a hug. He’d put on some weight, thank goodness. Maybe fifteen or twenty pounds. He was dressed in crisp denim jeans, a soft flannel shirt, and black boots. He started to shake Adrian’s hand—but then he hugged him, too.
“Come in, come in,” he said, laughing. “It’s good you are here.”
Inside, the house was all warm woods and rustic furniture, with big windows overlooking bright green pastures. Your father led us into the Great Room, a sort of living-room-kitchen-dining-room with a massive stone fireplace and stairs winding up to the second floor. There were playing cards and jigsaw puzzle pieces scattered all over the furniture. Your father apologized for the clutter; he said your aunt and uncle had been called away on a business emergency, and they’d left him with all the children. I could hear everyone playing upstairs, shrieking and laughing, five young voices talking at the same time. Your father seemed exasperated, but I assured him it was fine. I said it was great to know that you had friends.