Stand Alone (37 page)

Justine nodded slowly.

“Not yet,” she said darkly.

Rooster looked confused.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Justine had enjoyed another evening around the campfire. She wasn’t so sure it was safe to have a fire inside the warehouse, but the rest of the crew shrugged it off. They’d been having fires there for ages, and nothing had burned except what they put in the barrel. It was kind of cool to sit around it, talking, telling tall tales of skaters they had seen or heard of and the marvels they could perform. Sometimes there were personal stories or questions, but they seemed okay with Justine brushing off any questions about her past life. They were all pretty laid-back and accepting. After a few nights, Justine had stopped being worried that they were going to pry into her origins or try to find out her real name or where she went when she wasn’t with them, and started to just relax and enjoy the atmosphere.

As several of them started to nod off around the fire, Justine stood and stretched.

“I’m gonna knock off,” she advised.

The others started to break up as well, murmuring their good-nights and heading in different directions. Justine glanced around to see where everyone was headed, and lay down on her mattress. About five minutes passed, and then the stillness was broken by hoarse screams. Everyone turned on their phones and flashlights to see what was going on. Squints stood on a crate a few feet away from the mattress that he occasionally occupied when he didn’t go home for the night, his eyes wild, gasping for breath.

“What’s the matter, Squints?” Blondie demanded. “What happened?”

“A snake!” Squints yelled. “There’s a snake in my bed!”

“There are no snakes in here,” Blondie told him sternly. But she didn’t get closer to check.

Smothering a smile, keeping her face as blank as possible, Justine moved closer.

“I don’t see anything,” she observed.

“It’s there! Under the blanket!” Squints gasped, pointing a shaking finger.

“There are no snakes,” Blondie repeated.

Justine caught the edge of the blanket and teased it gradually back, until the coils of the snake were revealed. Everyone gasped.

“There is a snake,” Squints pointed out to Blondie, his voice cracking. “You see?”

Justine carefully reached for it and picked it up, holding it out toward Squints as it started to wrap itself around her arm.

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of a little snake,” she taunted.

“Keep it away from me!” he hollered.

“Didn’t you tell me they liked to come in here to eat the mice? And that I shouldn’t worry about it?” Justine questioned. “Even the venomous ones?”

“Is that one
  
…
 
venomous?” Squints squeaked.

Justine chuckled.

“This little guy? He’s just a little boa. They’re constrictors, not vipers. If he eats enough mice, maybe he’ll get big enough to squeeze you while you sleep
  
…”

“Keep it away from me!” Squints repeated, his voice choked with tears.

Justine went back to her own bed with it, and wound it round an artificial tree she had recently installed in her bedroom area.

“It’s best to just put up with them,” Justine said sweetly, and lay back down to go to sleep.

Squints just stood there on the crate whimpering and staring at her as the rest of the crew mocked and teased him, and then eventually went their separate directions, leaving him to settle into bed on his own. Rooster walked over to Justine’s room and examined the boa wrapped around the tree, stroking its smooth scales in the darkness.

“Nicely done,” he told her. “Very well-played.”

Justine smiled and said nothing.

She had been with the gang for a while. A few weeks, by the time she tracked him down. Justine took a deep breath, and rang the doorbell. She had waited until Cliff Bywater had returned to the house after work, parking his car in the garage. Then she gave him a little bit of time to get settled before intruding. Let him have a chance to greet his new wife and other kids. They made a nice little family. They actually had a white picket fence surrounding the front yard. Probably a dog in the back yard and a cat sunning itself in an upstairs window. She hated him for having another life. For giving life to her and then abandoning her to live her life out with Em. If he had been there for them, things would have been different. As it was, he had consigned her to a life of misery, living alone with Em.

After she rang the doorbell, it was a few moments before there were any sounds of anyone coming to answer it. Justine’s heart raced. She was going to see her father. Really see him, and find out who he was. In her previous like, she had never really thought much about her father. She had wondered about her real mother, not believing that it could really be Em, but she had never fantasized much about a father. That had never been part of her ponderings. It was always the absent mother, the mother who was not Em.

One of the kids opened the door. A small, blond-haired boy. He opened it and looked at her through the screen door, saying nothing. Waiting for her to say what she wanted.

“Uh—is your dad here? Cliff?” Justine said, licking her dry lips nervously.

He turned and yelled over his shoulder.

“Dad! It’s for you!”

There was a yell back, indistinct, asking who it was, probably. Justine waited nervously, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, wishing that he would just come, just give her a chance to speak her mind and be done with it. Eventually, Cliff Bywater came walking down the hall to the door. He had dark wavy hair. Brown eyes. A pleasant face, with wrinkles around the eyes. Em’s ruggedly handsome type. He smiled at her questioningly.

“Uh—can I help you?” he questioned through the screen, as if she was a complete stranger to him. If she was his daughter, shouldn’t he at least know who she was? Recognize the family resemblance?

Justine gulped.

“My name is Justine Bywater,” she said baldly. He just stared at her blankly. “I’m—uh—I’m your daughter,” Justine said, forcing the words out.

He stood there, still silent, still blank. He shook his head slowly.

“You’re not Justine,” he said.

Justine should have expected that. Should have expected the denial. No, he wasn’t her father. No, she wasn’t his daughter. She was just a nobody. Her face got hot, and she gritted her teeth to hold back the angry reaction that threatened to boil out of her.

“I am too!” she insisted. “I’m your daughter.”

“I don’t know who you are. My daughter died when she was just a toddler.”

Justine heard the words, but they didn’t make any sense. She felt a wave of vertigo and had to put her hand on the door to steady herself and keep her feet.

“What?” she breathed.

“You’re not Justine. My daughter Justine died. I buried her. I don’t know who you are, but you are not Justine Bywater.”

“But
  
…
 
but you’re Cliff Bywater. In Burbank. You’re on my birth certificate.”

He sighed.

“Maybe you’d better come in,” he said, shaking his head. He opened the screen door and ushered her into the living room, where Justine collapsed onto an armchair. She stared at him, trying to figure it out, trying to figure out what he was saying, what was going on.

“You’re Cliff Bywater,” she said.

“Yes.”

“And you
had
a daughter named Justine.”

“Yes, I did. But she died. A long time ago.”

Justine got out her phone and opened up the photo of her birth certificate. She passed it across to him.

“This is you,” she said.

He looked at it for a long moment, and passed it back to her.

“Yes, that’s me,” he agreed.

“That’s my birth certificate.”

“No, that’s my daughter Justine’s birth certificate. You are not her.”

How many years had she been insisting that she wasn’t Justine? That Em wasn’t her mother? This was the first time that someone actually agreed with her, and she didn’t know what to do about it. And if it was true—then who was she?

“But
  
…” she was at a loss.

“Who were you raised by?” Cliff questioned after a period of silence. “Did you have a father, a mother? Who pretended to be the people on this birth certificate?”

“Em,” Justine said. “Just Em. She raised me as her daughter. She said that
  
…” Justine trailed off, searching for the words. There was so little she could say to explain the situation. Her whole life was dissolving before her eyes. She had abandoned that life, left it behind, started a new life, the kind of life that she and Christian had dreamed about. But she didn’t realize that she was still attached to the old story. That it still meant something to her, gave her roots, a foundation.

“Tell me about Em,” Cliff ordered. “Emma is the woman that I was married to. But was that who raised you, or did someone else take her name, and Justine’s name?”

“Emily,” Justine corrected. “Her name is Emily, not Emma. But mostly she’s just called Em. She was
  
…
 
I don’t know. Do you want me to describe her physically, or what? She’s shorter than me. Dirty blond hair. Sometimes shoulder length, sometimes shorter. She’s pretty
  
…
 
She’s petite
  
…
 
I don’t know.”

“What’s her job? What is she doing these days?”

“She’s a bookkeeper. She works at a little accounting firm, and then she takes some clients on her own as well
  
…”

“Family? What about her parents? Does she keep in touch with them?”

“No. I never knew that she had any family. I figured they were all dead. She never talks about her family.”

“Or about me, I’d guess.”

“No. I just found the birth certificate
  
…
 
you know, snooping through stuff. I never even knew that I had a father
  
…”

“Well, you still don’t. I’m not your father.”

Justine shook her head.

“I don’t know what to think of that.”

He shook his head.

“And I don’t know what to think of you. Imagine someone coming to your doorstep claiming to be a person that died thirteen years ago. It’s bizarre.”

Cliff’s wife came into the room, and smiled tentatively at Cliff and Justine.

“Uh—hi. Honey
  
…
 
?”

Cliff looked at her, and looked at Justine.

“This girl claims to be Justine,” Cliff said. “The baby that died.”

The woman looked at Justine with surprise and fascination.

“But
  
…
 
that couldn’t be, could it? You went to the funeral. You saw
  
…
 
she was dead.”

“Yes,” Cliff agreed evenly. “She was dead. This isn’t Justine. But she seems to think that she is.”

“Oh. Um
  
…” she looked at her husband, not knowing how to react. “Dinner’s ready
  
…
 
do you want
  
…
 
maybe she would like to join us for supper?”

Cliff shook his head.

“I think we’ll just keep this between her and me for now. Can you just make a plate for me? I’ll eat later.”

“Okay,” she agreed. She nodded to Justine, her eyes wide with interest, and then backed out of the room. Cliff shook his head and sighed.

“That was awkward,” he commented. “So tell me about your life with Emma. She was a good mom?”

Justine swallowed, and looked for words.

“Well
  
…
 
I dunno. I guess. She always pretended to be a good mom. She always said that she was. But
  
…
 
I wasn’t
  
…
 
really
  
…
 
happy or anything.”

“Oh?” he looked surprised at this. “She was such a devoted mother to our little Justine. I just assumed
  
…
 
that she’d be a very caring, loving mother.”

“Everybody said she was,” Justine said, as if that excused it. As if it even made sense.

“Do you have a picture of her? So that I could see if it was really
  
…
 
my Emma?”

Justine shook her head. She turned on her phone and scanned through the pictures, but she already knew that she wouldn’t have any of Em. She had pictures of Christian, pictures of places she liked to skate. Pictures of her birth certificate or other things that were meaningful to her. But nothing of Em. How stupid was it to not take a picture of Em, for identification purposes? Why hadn’t she ever thought of that? She pulled out the locket, and showed him the picture and lock of hair of baby Justine. Cliff came close and examined it in silence, turning it over in his hand, then let it fall back to her chest.

“That was my baby. But she’s not you.”

“What happened to your baby?” Justine questioned finally. “Why did she die?”

“She got very sick. She went to the hospital, and the doctors worked very hard to figure out what was wrong with her. Em was devoted to her. She was at the hospital every day, for hours at a time. The doctors would think that they were onto something, think that they had Justine’s symptoms under control, and then she would suddenly get worse again, and they wouldn’t know what was going on. As hard as we tried to make her well
  
…
 
Well, there just wasn’t anything that could be done.”

“That’s like what Em said happened to me, but then I just got better one day.”

“But the real Justine didn’t. She died.”

“Were you there
  
…
 
?” Justine asked tentatively. “When she died?”

“No.” He looked away, his smile disappearing into a long, thin, frown. His eye wrinkles pointed down instead of up. “No, I wasn’t. The stress of a sick child
  
…
 
it’s very hard. Hard on everybody, and hard on the marriage. Our marriage didn’t survive. I left. I had to. Justine was everything to Emma. I wasn’t important. Our life wasn’t important. Our marriage wasn’t important. Justine was the only thing, the focus of her whole life. And she just kept getting sicker, and sicker.”