What a Mother Knows (31 page)

Towering columns of corn flashed past the old Mercedes in hypnotic stripes of green. Elyse's knuckles were clamped white on the wheel, but not a word was wasted between them. An hour had passed since Michelle stepped down from the airplane stairs and stuck her heels in the soft tarmac. Each breath still held a familiar torture, as if she'd never escaped this iron lung of heat. Fifty miles outside Columbus, the land was still as flat as when she was a kid, cruising all day on her ten-speed. Now, night was falling and the devil had caught up. She was at her mother's mercy.

They sped past a cluster of spotted cows, then the unmistakable aroma of fertilizer whooshed in with the hot air. Michelle rolled the window up and peeled her white T-shirt away from her chest. She jiggled the lever of the broken air conditioning vent, then opened the purse on her lap for something to fan herself with.

The envelope that Becca had given her after the trial was right on top. She pulled out the check and read her name above the dollar amount: $2,000,000. Michelle couldn't help smiling. She'd never seen so many zeroes. She waved it a few times, but the flush of shame only made her feel hotter. She pulled out her pen and signed it:
deposit to the Children's Shelter c/o The Noah Butler Trust.

“What do you have there?” Elyse asked.

“Just something I need to mail,” Michelle said. She put it back in her purse, then unlatched the glove compartment. When the door swung down, spilling the contents, Elyse stiffened beside her. “Sorry. I was looking for something to wedge the vent open.”

“We're almost there.”

“No, I can reach,” Michelle said.

“Have it your way,” Elyse said with a sigh. “There's mail for you, too—a reminder for a PCR appointment with Dr. Palmer. What is that?”

“A kind of therapy,” Michelle said, stifling a smile. She spotted her name on the reminder card printed with the address of a “clinic” at the Columbus Hilton where they'd planned to meet. She leaned down against the seat belt and extended her right arm just enough to pick it up between her fingers.

“Must be effective,” Elyse observed.

Michelle nodded. She saw Elyse's furtive glance and followed it down to the mess. She leaned forward and spied a postcard of the Great Barrier Reef in a plastic sleeve labeled Australia. Michelle raised her eyes slowly toward her mother. “You sent the postcards?”

Elyse kept her eyes on the road. Michelle knew by the firm line of her mother's lips not to press further in this prickly heat. She hoped to find out soon enough. The last fallen item was a brochure for the Elyse Deveraux School of Dance. Michelle fanned herself for a moment. “Mind if I use this?”

Elyse glanced over. “
Non
.”

Michelle winced at how she'd dismissed the sample Elyse had brought to show her in California, when she'd just returned home from the hospital. She could apologize, but it was time to start fresh. Even her mother was looking ahead, her eyes fixed on the vaporous mirage rising from the road before them.

Michelle studied her mother's Degas-style portrait on the cover. For the first time, it inspired pride instead of anger. When Michelle opened it, she looked more closely at the glossy pictures. The collage of children caught her eye, especially one brown-eyed baby in a tutu.

“Is this a picture of me?” Michelle asked.

Elyse smiled. She slowed at the next corner where a cloud of mosquitoes circled the cottontails, then turned right past Kern's, the general store where Michelle used to stop for apple cider. The wooden fence along the parking lot was skirted with a banner of red, white, and blue.

“Any of this look familiar?” Elyse asked.

“All of it,” Michelle said, fanning her damp face with the brochure. Independence Day was huge in Ohio. Police vans with bullhorns prowled the riverside at dawn to wake the sleepy neighborhoods. Children dressed like Betsy Ross and Abe Lincoln rode on crepe paper–covered floats pulled by tractors in the parade. There wasn't a whole lot else to do when the heat hit 100 besides swim, catch crawdads, or hitch a ride down the Scioto River on a ski boat.

Michelle marveled as they passed an empty fireworks stand and tunneled into a shady road of maples. Before leaving for college, she'd helped wire the skinny saplings to tall sticks. The middle-class houses looked like mansions now, especially the brick colonial where she grew up. She wondered about the real estate value but could barely think beyond her throbbing heart.

Elyse parked on the circular driveway, then walked around to open the passenger door. Michelle peeled herself off the leather seat and climbed out. She tugged her damp shirt from her dark jeans and smoothed her frizzy hair. She was so nervous it felt like her brain was buzzing. Then the sound rose until she recognized it as the cricket's summer song. Not Drew's crickets—hers. Drew's obsession had seduced her from the beginning, with the familiar sound of home.

Elyse popped the trunk to get the suitcases, but Michelle heard music drifting from the backyard and didn't wait. She slapped a gnat on her neck, then followed the path past the trellis of scarlet roses climbing up the side of the house. The lawns joined without fences into a common carpet of green. A cluster of fir trees filtered the shouts of children playing down by the creek. Michelle rounded the corner and spied red and green balloons tied to the porch rail.

Nikki stood by a picnic table, a backlit dream come to life. She turned down the tune on the CD player, a love song Michelle recognized from the Roadhouse album. Then she picked up her camera from beside the silver Christmas tree on the table and tossed the strap over her head before stepping down the wooden stairs. Michelle started to run. She wanted to sweep her daughter off her feet, just like in the commercials she used to produce. But Nikki held her camera up like a shield between them, click-click-clicking with each step closer.

The sound made Michelle pause. Panic overwhelmed the impulse and her stomach cramped with regret. She spoke as loudly as she could over the lump in her throat. “Looks like a party.”

The sun dove for cover behind the house. Loss flickered in the dusk between them, along with the first real fireflies Michelle had seen in many years. When the porch light clicked on, she could see Nikki more clearly, dressed in an Ohio State tank top and a denim skirt. Her brown hair was cut short without care.

“You look good,” Michelle said, instantly aware of how little her opinion mattered, how silly her words must sound.

Nikki stopped a few feet away and lowered her camera. “So do you.”

Michelle reached her with her good arm, inhaling the rancid scent of bug spray, her favorite perfume as of right now. Nikki was an inch taller, and she'd lost more than the weight she gained in Hawaii. Michelle would fatten her up with potato salad and peanut butter Buckeyes—all the local delicacies. She studied her daughter's face, but for the first time, Nikki's eyes were unreadable.

“I missed you,” Michelle said, or thought she said. Her voice sounded strange, because the lump in her throat had grown to feel like a concrete dam choking back her words. She heard children whooping like Indians and wondered if they still used that term for the Wyandotte—or if they were Native Americans now—but frankly she didn't care. There were a million other thoughts stacked in her head and if she pulled one out they would scatter like pickup sticks and she might lose hold of her baby, finally back in her embrace.

“Mama!” a little girl cried.

Michelle answered in her head, like when a child calls across a toy store and every nursing mother's milk bursts in sticky circles beneath her blouse. A moment later, a ragtag parade of children in party hats scampered over the rise, followed by a matronly woman in a housedress.

Nikki broke away to snap pictures like a babysitter on duty. Michelle couldn't tear her eyes from Nikki's face, her confidence with the camera aimed at the children skipping across the lawn. Nikki scooped up a crawler in a pink tutu and straightened her birthday crown. She gave the squirming child a squeeze, then spun her around and lowered her slowly, until she could stand by herself on the soft grass. “There's someone I want you to meet. Mother, this is Noelle.”

Michelle blinked at the girl's brown eyes, framed by long lashes, familiar from the brochure—and beyond. She collapsed to her knees and knelt at eye level, steadying herself with her good hand. Noelle. After a moment, she found her voice and glanced up. “Christmas in July?”

Nikki nodded. She held her daughter against her knees and removed the birthday crown to finger-comb her hair.

“Happy birthday, Noelle,” Michelle said. “I like your tutu.”

“Mine!” Noelle cried. Nikki laughed.

The porch light blinked on. The sliding door opened, and Elyse appeared with a pile of gifts.

“Nana!” Noelle tried to pull away from her mother.

“This is your Nana Michelle,” Nikki said, holding her there. “She's a present, too. The one we've been waiting for.”

Noelle stopped wiggling and scrunched her eyes at Michelle.

“Happy birthday,” Michelle said again, blinking back tears.

Noelle rubbed her tiny fist against Michelle's right hand. Her sparkly pink nails were clenched around a toy.

Nikki nodded for Michelle to take it. “I think it's a present for you.”

“Thank you,” Michelle said, but her reach was slow. Something fell and rolled a foot away. She clenched her teeth against the pain to reach farther, finally closing her weak fingers around the muddy figurine. She rubbed the dirt away to see a painted ballerina in the blue tutu. It was the smallest nesting doll.

Noelle put her arms around Michelle's neck in a stranglehold, her warm breath tickling her ear. Michelle's arm tingled as she lifted it up inch by inch, reaching to wrap both arms around Noelle's tiny back. She hugged her so tightly that she forgot to breathe; she could inhale this child instead.

Noelle broke away and toddled a few steps toward her mother. Nikki immediately adjusted her camera and aimed like an expert. Click-click-click.

Michelle ignored the noise. “You shot the brochures?”

“And portraits. You'd be amazed how much parents will pay.”

“No, I wouldn't,” Michelle said.

After a dozen steps, Noelle fell down. She looked up at her mother, ready to cry. Instead, she broke out giggling. Nikki grasped her tiny hand and pulled her back up to a stand. She twirled her slowly, like the ballerina in her music box.

“You used to twirl like that,” Michelle called to her daughter.

Elyse stepped up quietly behind Michelle and helped her up. “So did you.”

The woman in a housedress emerged from the porch with a tray. “Who wants cake?” she called.

The children squealed and scrambled to the stairs leading up to Elyse's deck. After the woman set the lopsided cake on the picnic table, she looked up and waved. It was Noah's mother. Michelle had never seen the woman smile, but it was a beautiful sight. She waved back.

Elyse picked up the birthday girl and carried her over to the garden hose, calling the other children to join them and wash their hands.

Michelle caught up to Nikki, confused. “My mother knew the whole time?”

“No, not until after Hawaii. I didn't show for a while, and I ate so much poi on that pirate boat that I convinced myself I was just getting fat. But after a few more months, it got too hard to zip the wetsuit and keep those stripes straight. I knew I had to find a doctor. I got desperate.”

“So you sold drugs?”

“It's not like it sounds. When I saw you that last time in the hospital, it was awful. Nana told me to say good-bye. I had to get away from it all. I swiped some of Daddy's pills to feel better, but I was throwing up so much in Hawaii, pretending to be seasick, that I knew I shouldn't take them, so…”

“You're lucky you weren't arrested.” Michelle scolded herself for the tone.

“I know. And by the time I was ready to deal with being pregnant, it was too late to do anything but wonder if the baby would look like Noah.”

This time, Michelle was more careful. “Did you love him?”

“Not like I love her,” Nikki said, glancing back at Noelle.

Michelle understood exactly.

“I wanted to tell you first, but as soon as I heard you woke up, I read about the lawsuit online and I was afraid.”

“So you called Nana?”

“I was afraid Daddy would be furious. I had the baby here, but…” She fiddled with her camera strap. “When he kept calling about your rehabilitation, Nana's boyfriend warned her to be careful about other people nosing around. I had to make myself scarce.”

Michelle noted the stickers from San Francisco and Chicago on Nikki's camera strap, cities where the echo of Elyse's name would still rate a bunk backstage. “That must have been rough.”

Nikki shrugged. “One of the ballet teachers helped out. And Noah's mother. I'd hinted about being pregnant in a postcard, but I didn't get in touch again until Noelle was born and I got desperate. She sent money as soon as she could. She has a vested interest.”

“So do I!” Michelle heard her voice rise with frustration, but she couldn't stop the volcano of emotions from erupting. “You must have heard that I was out of the hospital. Why didn't you at least call? And I don't mean to leave a message.”

“Because you would have found me!” Nikki tried to hold back her tears. “People have been searching for me almost from the beginning—Dad and Noah's father and lawyers and reporters and fans—my own brother has no idea that I follow him as a school friend on Facebook. Then you learned I was missing—and within weeks, you were so close I could hear you calling my name!”

“In Key West?”

Nikki nodded, then lowered her voice and continued. “I wanted to answer, I really did. But all those people were keeping tabs on you. If you'd found me, everyone else would have found me too, then they would have found Noelle. And I couldn't let that happen.” She looked up and met Michelle's eyes. “I'm sorry.”