Chapter 23

Ginger

 

 

“Are you here to kill me?” Tara’s question wasn’t at all what I was expecting from my best friend’s lips. I almost laughed at the notion. But so much had happened, so many lies had been unearthed that I shouldn’t have been surprised when she asked it.

I couldn’t quite remember why I had come here after the way things had ended between us and my last words to her, telling her to leave and never come back. Maybe it was because I didn’t mean what I said. Maybe it was because I was ready to tell her the truth. Maybe it was because home felt emptier than ever before and I couldn’t stop staring at the spot where Benny’s body had fallen. Where he bled out and took his final breaths.

Or maybe it was because of the voicemail I stumbled upon. A final message from Benny I hadn’t heard yet. The last message he would ever send me, three minutes and fifteen seconds long. My breath had caught as I pressed play, then I hung up at the twenty-second mark as he rambled on about what kind of tea I wanted from the grocery store. When I got to the part about whether I preferred mint oolong or chai, I couldn’t listen as I broke down.

Benny had grown up to become a difficult man, a selfish man, but goodness still coursed in his veins. It was my fault he had turned out that way. I had given him too much, doted on him too much, everything was too much about Benny. It was bound to ruin him.

But by blood he belonged to me, and me to him. He would always be the little boy whose chubby arms squeezed my neck before bed, the son who laughed so heartily at Shel Silverstein’s silly poems.

As Tara stood before me, I suddenly felt all the nostalgia and all the loss heavy on my soul as I wept and mourned and embraced it all. My tears represented a pain I couldn’t release with words, and a fear I couldn’t articulate of losing Benny’s hugs, his laughter, all future memories forever. My tears honored what we had as mother and son. And they watered a hope that one day it wouldn’t hurt so bad. Maybe tomorrow I’d make it past twenty seconds, but today wasn’t that day.

How did I get stuck here on this vale of tears as the mother whose son died before her, again? It was so unnatural that it physically tore at me. I could still remember being a hip mom wearing leg warmers and crop tops, carrying Cole on my hip with Benny’s hand folded in mine. Gone were the neon miniskirts, replaced with a black conservative calf-length jacket dress to wear to my firstborn’s funeral that I didn’t want to plan.

Standing in Tara’s home, sunlight streaked through the room, striping her with its brilliance. It had been cruelly warm and bright today, shining a light on the shadows I wanted to hide in. I’d already suffered through so much darkness, though. I knew better than to let it consume me, so I went outside to try to embrace that cruel sun instead. That’s when I decided to do the only thing that could free Chris. So I ended up on Tara’s front lawn. Then her porch. And now across from her in the living room.

“I came to talk to you.” Pulling a wadded-up tissue from my sleeve, I dabbed at my wet eyes.

“Fine, let’s talk,” Tara stated.

I moved toward the sofa and invited myself to sit. Tara stepped into the kitchen and returned holding a piece of paper. She unfolded it and held it out.

“First, I want to know what this is.”

I took the paper and skimmed it. It was the original letter that I had left at the Loving Arms Children’s Home with my little boy. The Bloodsons—Christies, rather—must have given it to Chris after all. And he had kept it all these years. My heart felt oddly warm.

“I…I don’t know what to say.”

“I’d say why don’t you put the gun down?”

I hadn’t even remembered I was holding it until now. I stood and lifted the pistol up to hand it to her, when Tara took off running for the kitchen. My instinct was to stop her. To explain.

“Tara, stop!” I yelled like a mother chiding a misbehaving child. I was old enough to be her mother, after all, and in a twisted way, I had always thought of her as my daughter.

She darted around the center island, grabbing a kitchen knife from the block. She waved the tip back and forth to keep me at bay. One of Dad’s funny sayings sprang to mind—“Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight”—but it was hardly the time or place for jokes.

“Stay away from me,” Tara warned, “or I swear I’ll cut you!”

“Tara, do you realize what you’re doing? The knife that killed Benny was from that same set. Put it down. Please.”

She darted her eyes at the knife, then back at me. “No. I don’t trust you. I have to protect myself. You came here to shoot me!”

I gently rested the gun on the countertop and backed away. “Tara, c’mon, you’re my best friend. Why would you think I’m here to kill you?”

“Because all you’ve done is destroying me and my family.”

“What? Why would you say that?”

Tara scowled at me like I’d just drowned a sack full of puppies in the river. It hurt like the dickens, seeing the trust we’d spent sixteen years building crumble into dust. Then she tossed the knife down and began massaging her temples with her fingertips. I wondered if she had a migraine coming on.

“Whatever trouble Benson got caught up in, I know Chris wasn’t part of it,” Tara said. “But somehow he got dragged into a murder investigation because of you.”

She wasn’t being fair to me at all. “Because of me? I didn’t point a finger at your family, and I didn’t know you were going to stupidly leave the murder weapon sitting out in the open in your kitchen.”

“That’s beside the point, Ginger. A best friend wouldn’t let my husband take the fall for something he didn’t do. You could have defended him. You could have told the cops that you’re the one who put the knife in my hand. But you didn’t. Instead you let me look guilty and my husband go to jail. You’re no friend to me anymore.”

I didn’t know how to prove myself to her. I’d never been good at proving myself worthy—not worthy of being a mother, or a wife, or now a friend. I’d never been good enough, period. The father of my children left me because he thought I was worthless. Corbin Roth chased me out of my own home because he thought I was worthless. Social Services didn’t think I deserved to get my own flesh-and-blood son back. Benson had been trying to put me in assisted living so he wouldn’t have to deal with me. Maybe they were all right. Maybe I was worthless. For a long time I believed them. Until Tara.

Tara had reminded me that my value wasn’t wrapped up in beauty. It wasn’t in my waistline. It wasn’t in how full my lips were or taut my skin was or big my hair was, because those things ebbed away. Skin loosened with time. Pant sizes grew. Hair thinned and grayed. But my true worth, my power, my identity, was encompassed in something bigger than my ex-husband, or Corbin Roth, or where I lived, or what job I held. It was in what made me Ginger Mallowan, daughter of a hot-tempered mother and stubborn Irish father. Tara had always seen beneath my aging skin, my one-of-a-kind fashion sense, my frizzy hair, my silly movie quotes, and she loved me for me.

But now she saw me just like everyone else did. And I wasn’t sure I could survive that.

“I would never hurt anyone, Tara. You have to know this. Especially not your family.”

Tara watched me carefully, looking for the slightest provocation to attack me with her rejection. “That’s not what the restraining order I saw in that box of yours shows. Apparently you were stalking Chris’s parents.”

Of course she had only one glimpse of the much larger picture and would judge me solely on that. It’s what everyone did, didn’t they?

“Oh. You think you figured it all out, huh?”

I had never meant to keep my beef with the Bloodsons a secret. In fact, I spent over a year trying to expose them to get my son back. But the Bloodsons had money and power, while I had unfairly earned a bad reputation as a slut who had to get married and became a deadbeat mom after my no-good husband left me. There was no winning for someone like me.

“I don’t know what to think,” Tara said. “You tell me. My husband is in jail and I feel like you’re the one who put him there. You let him take the fall because you knew he would—because now he has some twisted sense of obligation to protect you, his biological mother, even though you’re the one who gave him up.”

“Only part of that is true. I did give him up, but I had good reasons at the time. My husband had left me, I was struggling financially…and another kid was more than I could handle on my own. A few months after I left Chris on the steps of the Loving Arms Children’s Home, I changed my mind. I knew it was the wrong thing to do. I agonized over it, nearly guilt-tripped myself to death. So I went back to the foster home and told them who I was, what I had done, but they refused to help me. They told me it had been a closed adoption and I’d have to go through the courts to resolve it.”

“Why wouldn’t they cooperate?” Tara asked.

“Probably because Mayor Bloodson was the president and his wife the director. Plus, I get how it looked—some crazy lady claiming to have left a child on their steps. I guess I wouldn’t have trusted me either. But when I saw that picture in the newspaper and recognized my child, I figured out who had him—Louis and Elizabeth Bloodson. So I looked them up in the phone book and got a home address. I tried pleading with Louis to give me my son back, that it was all a mistake, but he refused. Instead, he made me look like a psycho-stalker. Filed a restraining order against me. Eventually they changed their last name and moved, and I couldn’t find them for years until their car accident made the news. I recognized them immediately, and that’s when I found out their new last name. But by then Chris was an adult, and you two were starting a family.”

I didn’t like the way Tara’s eyes widened and her hand inched toward the knife that sat on the counter between us. “You were watching us?”

I couldn’t lie, not this far into the truth. “I had only driven by your house a couple times when I saw the For Sale sign—the kind with one of those realtor’s brochure boxes on the front—in the yard of the house next to yours. When I took that brochure, it was the first time I felt like I had control over my life. I had saved my money from selling my beach house, so I had the down payment I needed. My only regret was that I couldn’t pass down the beach house property to one of my kids, like my parents had done for me. But anyway, when the house next door to yours went up for sale, it felt like…destiny, living next to the son I never got to raise. Then I saw you two had a baby, and I wanted to be near my granddaughter. But you, Tara, you were the reason I fell in love with your family. They were all strangers to me until you welcomed me like a long-lost friend.”

Tara didn’t say anything for a long while, letting her gaze drop to the counter where at least her hand wasn’t itching for that knife. I used to know what she was thinking, always able to read it on her face, but right now it was blank, terrifyingly empty. When Tara finally spoke, her voice sounded limp with exhaustion.

“Why didn’t you just tell me the truth? Or tell Chris the truth? Why hide it all this time?”

“I didn’t know if his parents ever told him he was adopted. I had no idea what information they had shared with him, but I didn’t want to destroy any chance of a relationship by blowing up his life. I figured I could be the sweet lady next door that helped you out when you needed it, played with your daughter, made you home-cooked meals when you were working late…and I got everything I wanted all these years. I didn’t need him to know the truth because what we had was enough for me.”

My explanation was weak, I knew, but it was what it was.

“Then why did you make up some story about a child abduction, Ginger? You chose to give Chris up, but you played the victim of a kidnapping. Do you know how twisted that is? Or was it just to save face?”

“I can’t…” The words moved through me, unable to form a full thought. I could never explain why. It would hurt too much.

“Ging, I’m not here to judge why you gave Chris up. It happens. But you lied to me, when I thought we were friends.”

“We are friends.” Or were, at least.

“Then why did you bring that gun here with you?”

I chuckled, because the thought of using it on my best friend—or former best friend; I had no idea where we stood anymore—was truly laughable.

“Only to give it back to its rightful owner, Chris. He lent it to me when that lurker showed up because he was worried about me getting mugged. I had used it the night of Benny’s murder to scare off the intruder, knowing full well I wasn’t going to hit anyone. See, I used to go rabbit hunting with Daddy and he taught me to how to handle a gun. I’m a good shot, even at my age; I aimed wide on purpose.”

“That doesn’t explain why you lied to the police about it.”

I had hoped to avoid this question, but there was no getting around it. I had lost any right to my secrets. “Well…I don’t know how to put this, but I have a felony record, so I’m not allowed to own or discharge a firearm.” I could count on my fingers and toes how many times that rule had been drilled into me by my father after I was released from jail.

The aftershock of this news nearly bowled Tara over. “You’re a felon?”

“It was the seventies, and I was caught with pot. It was a bogus charge. Everyone was getting high back then, but the judge was a hoser and wanted to make an example of me, so he charged me with a Class 1 felony, possession of marijuana.”

“Did you go to jail?” Tara asked excitedly, as if it was a piece of juicy gossip, not my actual life we were talking about.

“You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?” I couldn’t help but grin. “I was sentenced to a year, but I got out early. Anyway, I obviously couldn’t admit to the police that I’d fired a gun or else I’d be going straight back to the slammer. Which is why I’m returning it to you. It’s not safe for me to keep it in my house. I don’t need it anyway, since I’m on my way to turn myself in to the police.”

“You’re turning yourself in?”

Tara’s gaze was scrutinizing. It didn’t matter what she thought of me anymore. All that mattered was that Chris would go free. I had given him up with the sole desire that he should have a better life than I could give him. I couldn’t protect him back then, but I could now.

“Just promise me you’ll take care of your family and never let them go, Tara. That’s all that matters. Can you do that?”

“Not until you tell me how my knife was used to kill your son.”

I had come to discover over the years that Tara was almost as relentless as I was, but she was proving her mastery right now.

“Would you believe anything I told you?”

“I don’t know. You said you intentionally missed the shot—was that because it was Chris?”

“Do you think it was Chris who killed Benny?” I asked.

“No, of course not.”

I heard it all over her weak reply: Tara wasn’t being honest with me, or herself. The way she nervously twirled her ponytail around her finger was her tell. I knew her better than she knew herself. I’d known her since she was a twenty-year-old new mom while I aged out of motherhood and yearned for grandmotherhood.

Tara trusted me for sleep training advice for baby Nora. She trusted me to babysit toddler Nora so she and Chris could have a date night. She even trusted me to take preteen Nora to the beach when the ranch demanded more time from her. For sixteen years she trusted me with her family and her friendship. So why didn’t she trust me now?

“Well, I need to get going,” I said, steeling myself for the inevitable. “I want to get this over with. I’ll make sure none of this comes down on you, I promise.”

I headed outside hoping Tara would at least try to stop me, but she didn’t. She followed me to the front door, standing in the opening while I made my way down the sidewalk streaked with sunlight. I didn’t want to turn around and watch her let me go. But I had to. I had to know what she was thinking. So I turned. And I saw her back. Darkly poetic as I felt her turning her back on our friendship.

As I reached the clearing that crossed into my property, a figure stood in the brush on the other side of my yard, hidden, but not well enough. The lurker! Somewhere between spotting him and chasing him I had forgotten my age. Forgotten what my body was capable—or rather, incapable—of. It felt like I could have a heart attack and die, but I also never felt so alive. And so I ran toward him, screaming, “Hey, you! Stop, you dirty pervert!”

I picked up speed; I was so close, definitely gaining on him! But my muscles and bones had long ago lost the willpower to hold a sprint. I pushed myself across the grass, losing more and more ground to this sicko who apparently ran marathons on the side. I bitterly regretted this chase-down, as my body burned with each stride and my muscles tore with each pump. But when I stepped into a groundhog hole I hadn’t seen, that regret turned to dread as I watched myself fall.

The world tipped on its side, sending Deadnettle Drive into a tailspin. A moment later I heard a devastating crack as my skull smacked against the ground, then the gray street and the blue sky and my green yard turned black.