Cross My Heart, Hope to Die (18 page)

The young male nurse, bespectacled and prematurely balding, looked up from his computer screen. The reflection from his monitor made twin glowing squares in the lenses of his glasses. “Can I help you?” he asked.

She clenched her fist around the strap of her messenger bag. “I’m here to visit Becky—I mean, Rebecca Mercer.”

He gestured to a sheet of paper attached to a clipboard. “Sign in.”

The page was depressingly blank. Emma printed Sutton’s name neatly. The nurse stepped out from behind the desk and read the inscription with a raised eyebrow. “You’re the daughter, right?”

What was the right answer?
Sort of. Used to be
.
Just genetically
. Instead she just nodded.

“She’s been asking for you,” he said, jerking his head to indicate she should follow. Emma trailed behind him. “That’s all any of us can get out of her. ‘I want my daughter.’”

Which one?
Emma wondered.

There was a large social room on their left, a half dozen people visible through the windows. Their eyes were trained on a TV tuned to
Dancing with the Stars
. A bathrobe-clad girl only a little older than Emma stood swaying in time to the music. A middle-aged woman sat by the window, her head in her hands. One of the patients in front of the TV, a man with gray, greasy hair curling down over his neck, looked into the hall and gave Emma a wink. His grin was missing several teeth. Emma hurried after the nurse, swallowing her almost palpable fear. For a moment, she wanted to run back to the elevator, back to Sutton’s car, back home. But she had to do this. She had to talk to Becky.

I drifted behind Emma, wishing I could warn her to be careful. This was not a good place. Maybe I was more sensitive now that I was dead, or maybe I was just feeding off of Emma’s anxiety, but all around me I could feel sadness and rage and fear. It was even stronger now than the first time we’d come here—emotions buffeted me from all sides. I felt like a raw nerve.

“Sutton?”

A hand curled around Emma’s bicep. A scream caught in Emma’s throat. For a split second she was sure it was the gray-haired man from the social room, and a shudder of revulsion swept through her. But then her eyes refocused.

“N-nisha?” she asked.

Nisha’s red-and-white striped uniform was immaculate, and her thick hair had been pinned up in a French twist. A few feet away rested a cart loaded with outdated magazines and beat-up paperbacks. Her lips parted in surprise. “What’re you doing here?”

Emma swallowed hard. She hadn’t planned on being seen by anyone she knew. How could she have forgotten that Nisha volunteered here? Ahead of her she could see the balding nurse waiting impatiently for her outside Becky’s room. She leaned toward Nisha’s ear.

“I’m … visiting a friend. But this has to be a secret. Please don’t tell anyone you saw me here. I’ll explain later.”

Nisha nodded. She opened her mouth as if to say something else, then seemed to change her mind. Emma turned back toward the male nurse, acutely aware of Nisha’s eyes on her as she walked away.

Becky’s room hadn’t changed, except for the addition of a small vase full of irises and yellow roses on the side table. Emma wondered if Mr. Mercer had brought them. A fluorescent light flickered and buzzed overhead, and from the tiny attached bathroom came the erratic
plink
of a dripping faucet. A tray of mushy food sat untouched on the counter.

Becky sprawled across the bed, asleep. She was wearing flannel pajama pants and an oversized Arizona Wildcats T-shirt instead of the hospital gown, and her hair had been washed and combed, her fingernails scrubbed. But her complexion was still ashen and marked with deep shadows. Emma noticed that she wasn’t tied to the bed—that had to be a good sign, right?

I felt a low boil of emotion roiling off Becky’s mind. It was hard to sense what she was feeling—everything was all mixed up in her head. But through the confusion, one burning thought came through louder than anything else, repeated over and over like a chant.
I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for what I did
.

“You have thirty minutes,” said the nurse. He nodded at Emma and retreated down the hall.

Emma pulled out Sutton’s iPhone, opened the voice recorder app, and pressed
RECORD
, then gently nudged the door shut with her foot. Becky’s eyes fluttered open when she heard the
snick
of the latch falling in place, her gaze darting around like a wild animal’s. She tried to sit up, but she seemed weak and uncoordinated. Then she saw Emma. Her eyes bulged.

“It’s you,” she croaked. “Emma.”

“No,” Emma said softly. “No, my name is Sutton.”

“Oh.” Becky’s eyes went glassy as she laid her head back against the pillows.

Emma took a step toward the bed. A chemical, medicinal odor came off her mother’s body. She bit her lip. “How long have you been in town?” she asked, keeping her voice low and controlled.

“A while,” Becky slurred.

“What have you been doing here?”

A slow, strange smile crept across Becky’s face. “Watching you, of course.”

I shivered, looking down into that ravaged, slack face. Watching her because she knew she was Emma? Watching her to make sure she played me? Watching her and putting threatening messages under Laurel’s windshield, choking her in the Chamberlains’ kitchen?

Emma clutched the rail. “When was the last time we talked?” she asked. “When did we see each other last, I mean?”

Becky’s mouth twisted downward. “When you were five years old, Emma.”

The fluorescent light flickered again, its electrical hum deafening in the silence. Emma leaned over the bed. “My name is Sutton,” she insisted softly.

But Becky’s head rolled from side to side on the pile of pillows, her eyes far away. “You used to love doing my scavenger hunts when you were little. Did you like the one I left you at the hotel, Emma?”

“I’m Sutton,” Emma said again, but Becky ignored her.

“Remember the princess dress I bought you at Goodwill? You used to dance around the motel room.” Becky raised her hands as if she were directing music only she could hear. “You’d twirl around and around and around … so pretty.”

Emma focused on breathing slowly, carefully. If she didn’t, she might scream, or burst into tears.

“You were a good little girl, Emmy, but a bad little girl, too. You were too much to handle.” A single tear rolled down Becky’s sunken cheek.

Emma gritted her teeth. “I’m Sutton,” she said. “My name is Sutton. So one more time. When was the last time you saw me?”

Becky edged up on the pillow. “At the canyon,” she said, her voice suddenly steady, the words no longer slurred. “That night at the canyon.”

Her hand grabbed Emma’s forearm, her nails cutting into Emma’s skin. A scream tore from Emma’s throat as she tried to pull away. Becky’s fingers clenched, her face staring and blank. Bubbles of foam gathered at the corners of her lips and trickled down her chin.

“Help!” Emma screamed. She fumbled to pry Becky’s fingers away, but it was like a bad dream—Becky’s grip just got tighter and tighter. The door flew open and nurses quickly flocked into the room. The man who’d escorted Emma earlier helped release her wrist. “She’s convulsing,” he shouted at the others as he pushed Emma back toward the doorway. Emma saw one woman deftly preparing a syringe, flicking it with her forefinger.

The place where Becky had squeezed Emma’s arm throbbed, and I could feel it, too. Then, without my willing it to happen, the heat of my birth mother’s touch blossomed into a memory. A memory of that night in the canyon, when I’d met Becky for the first—and last—time …

19

The woman’s smile broadens as she reaches out her hand to help me to my feet. “Hello, Sutton. I’m your mother. Becky,” she singsongs again. “It’s so nice to meet you.”

I stare at her outstretched palm. Something tells me not to take it. I try to get up on my own, but I stumble again, my shirt snagging on a branch behind me. I immediately curse my decision to come back here to this pitch-black, end-of-the-earth place. Why didn’t I go to Nisha’s, or call a cab to take me home?

I sneak a peek at the woman who claims to be my mother and take in her tangled hair, her glowing eyes, her jittery mouth. My stomach tightens the way it does when Thayer and I watch horror movies. The air crackles with tension
.

“It’s okay,” Becky croons softly, kneeling down to me. Sticks and leaves cling to her torn clothes, as if she’s been wandering in the desert for days. Then I see a shallow gash across her forehead and a smear of blood on her cheek
.

“What happened to you?” I ask, pointing. My voice is pitched too high, like a scared little girl’s
.

Becky’s hand flies to her wound. “Oh. Just an accident.” She giggles cagily. “A little stumble.” But it doesn’t look like a cut from a stumble to me. It looks like the type of gash a steering wheel might make if one’s head were to bash into it after ramming into a seventeen-year-old boy
.

Down in the subdivision, the thumping party music stops abruptly. It’s suddenly so silent I can hear my heart pounding in my ears, the quick and panicked sound of my breathing. The woman in front of me shuffles a little closer. “Sutton,” she whispers, and reaches out an arm to stroke my cheek. “Look at you. You’re so beautiful.”

I want to jerk away, but I feel paralyzed. Her hands are cold, sandpapery. I can smell her sour breath. “You’re so beautiful,” she says again, the woman who thinks she’s my mother. But she
isn’t.
She can’t be. My mother is someone else, someone beautiful and soft and tragic. Not this dirty mountain woman, this freak. For whatever reason, my father—or whoever he is—lied to me. Maybe he just wanted to mess with my mind
.

Finally, my muscles cooperate, and I pull away. “I—I have to go,” I say, climbing to my feet. “My ride’s waiting.
”

Becky chuckles. “You don’t have a ride.” She’s on her feet in an instant. She’s quicker than I would have expected. “I saw your grandfather drive away.”

I blink. “You’ve been watching me?”

She nods. “Oh, sweetheart, I’ve been watching you for years.” Her voice is soothing, as if she’s singing a lullaby, but her words are twisted. “I watched you when you were learning to swim, when you were a little girl. Wearing Mickey Mouse water wings for the longest time. I saw when you dyed your hair blond in junior high. I was at the regional tennis meet last year—I saw you play. You’re amazing. And I saw you run off with that boy tonight—Thayer? Is that his name?”

The world feels unsteady under my feet. She knows everything. All this time, this weirdo has been a face in the crowd, an unwelcome guest in my life. White anger surges through my whole body. “You had no right,” I hiss
.

Becky recoils as if I’ve shoved her. “Of course I do. I gave you life.”

There’s something so matter-of-fact about the way she says it, that in that moment, I realize she’s telling me the truth. I let the idea wash over me. It just makes me even sicker. “That gives you even
less
of a right,” I growl. “You watched me instead of caring for me. And now you just show up randomly, in the desert, in the dark, alone, and drop this on me? What the hell is
wrong
with you?”

Becky squares her shoulders defensively. “This isn’t how I planned it,” she pleads
.

But I’m riled up. I want to hurt her. I want my words to burn. I’m furious at everyone who lied to me—my dad, my mom, and this woman most of all. “You’re no mother,” I spit, the words dropping into the silence with a sizzle, like acid. “You’re a liar, and I hate you.”