As soon as the door closes, I pick up my phone and scroll through my contacts for Jackie Knight. I don’t hesitate and within two rings she answers.
“Hello?”
She sounds exactly the same as she did a year ago when I told her I was moving out of the dorm, promising to give her my new phone number once I was settled. Her voice still had that faint Southern accent she had tried to snuff out during her college years in Arizona.
“Jackie?” My voice is shaky and a bit thick with phlegm from the yogurt. I clear my throat and I hear a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line. “Jackie, it’s Claire.”
“I know,” she whispers, and now it’s obvious she’s crying and it instantly makes me want to cry.
“Jackie, I’m so sorry I haven’t called.”
“Are you okay? Please tell me you’re okay.”
“I’m fine. I promise. I’m okay.”
“Oh, thank God.” She whispers this a few more times and my chest aches with the thought of what I’ve put her through.
She doesn’t hate me.
“Claire, honey, please tell me you’re coming home for your birthday.”
“Not tonight. I have plans. But I’m staying the night in Raleigh and I want to come see you in the morning. Is that okay?”
“Is that okay? Honey, you don’t have to ask if you can come here. This is your home. You are always welcome here.”
For a moment, I can’t breathe. I’m reminded of how much I loved living with Chris and Jackie. Even the boyfriends Jackie dated were always sweet and respectful. She never settled down after divorcing Chris’s father when he was six. She always insisted she was too picky, but the truth is she’s too strong-minded and independent. She won’t take shit from anybody, which is why I fully expected her to be pissed at me. This tearful acceptance is possibly worse.
“I’ll be there in the morning,” I say as the front door opens and Adam walks in wearing jeans and a black Rip Curl T-shirt that hugs his ripped chest.
“Claire?”
“Yeah?”
“I can’t wait to see you.”
“Me, too,” I whisper before I hang up.
Adam waits for me by the door wearing a crooked smile that melts my heart. I tuck my phone into my back pocket and stuff my two expired IDs into my other back pocket. I go to him and wrap my arms around his waist as I rest my cheek against his chest.
“Thank you for taking me today.”
“I haven’t even taken you yet. How do you know this isn’t an elaborate ruse to get my hands on your trust fund?”
I lean my head back and look into his eyes, ready to butter him up. “You have the most gorgeous light-green eyes I have ever seen on a human being.”
“That’s because they’re full of dollar signs.”
“If I give you all my money, can you take me to see my foster mother tomorrow morning?”
“Tell you what, I’ll let you keep the money if you let me have an extra slice of birthday cake tonight.”
“Deal.”
“And you know what I mean when I say birthday cake.”
“Of course I do. That stuff with the frosting.”
He leans down to kiss me, stopping right before our lips touch. “The frosting’s the best part.”
After checking in on Cora, we hop into the truck with no suitcase this time. Adam insists we can sleep naked in the hotel room and I really have no problem with this suggestion.
All the local radio stations seem to be obsessed with playing Chris Knight songs this morning so I’m extremely grateful when Adam lets me put my music on again. I need to listen to something that will calm my nerves. I find an old classical music playlist I made for meditating and hit play.
“Really?” he asks, cocking an eyebrow as he casts me a sideways glance.
“I haven’t meditated today. I need something to help me relax.”
“Only because it’s your birthday.” We sit in silence for a few minutes before he sighs. “Claire, I need to ask you something.”
“Sounds serious.”
“This foster mother we’re going to see tomorrow… does she know why you dropped out of UNC?”
“She doesn’t even know I dropped out.”
“Oh.”
He’s silent for a moment and I take the opportunity to gaze at all the highway signage displaying all the names of streets I haven’t seen since before Senia moved in. It’s been more than two months since I’ve been to Raleigh. Every mile we drive brings me closer to knowing the truth about the trust fund my mother left me, and closer to the lies I’ve been running from for the past year.
“Can I ask you something else?” he says, and something about the way his voice goes a little too high on the last word makes me think he’s nervous about this question.
“Go ahead.”
“This guy that you were with before me, what was his name again?”
“I never told you his name.”
“Right. Well, does he live in Raleigh?”
I pause as I try to figure out where this is going. Does he want to know if there’s a chance we may run into Chris or does he want to track him down and try to find out my secret from him? Or, maybe, he thinks Chris is the one who broke my heart and he wants to beat the shit out of him. I’m going to assume it’s the first one. That’s the safest conclusion to jump to.
“We’re not going to run into him. He left Raleigh right after we broke up last year.”
“Did you break up with him?”
He’s fishing. He’s asked similar, but more vague, questions over the past few weeks, but they’ve been ambiguous enough for me to dodge them or answer them without giving too much away. For instance, last week he asked if I had ever been cheated on. A few days before that he asked how many guys I’ve had sex with. When I told him I’ve only had sex with one other guy, he got a glimmer of hope in his eye. He seemed to be pleased to know that I’m practically virginal and to have me just a little more figured out.
“Yes, I broke up with him.”
“This is the same guy who was your first?”
“Why are you asking these questions all of a sudden?”
“I just feel like I should know these things before we get to your ‘hood. I’m not a Raleigh guy. I grew up in and around Carolina Beach before my parents moved to Wilmington five years ago when I went to Duke. I don’t have a lot of friends in Raleigh. I just want to make sure I’m not caught by surprise.”
He thinks we’re going to run into someone, not just Chris, who may give him a hard time about being with me. Maybe he even thinks Jackie’s going to give him a hard time. He may be right about that. When Chris and I broke the news about our relationship to Jackie shortly after my eighteenth birthday, she wasn’t surprised—she was ecstatic. Something tells me she won’t be so ecstatic to see me with Adam.
“Look. When we go to my foster mother’s house tomorrow, you’re going to have to stay in the truck. I really wish I could introduce you to her, but I just don’t think it’s the right time.”
“Really?”
“Really. She doesn’t know I dropped out. She doesn’t know what happened after I dropped out. And she doesn’t know about you. She’s very protective and opinionated. I have a lot to talk about with her tomorrow. I want to ease her into everything that’s happened. I don’t want her to dislike you just because she’s pissed at me.”
He raises his eyebrows as he keeps his eyes on the road stretched out before us like a silver sword delivering us into the belly of the beast. He’s not pleased with my explanation of why he can’t meet Jackie. But this is only because he doesn’t understand that I’m saving him the grief of too much information. The less he knows about who Jackie is, the less he knows about who Chris is. The less Adam knows about Chris, the less chance he’ll have of being intimidated by the fact that not only is Chris Knight my ex, but I’m the inspiration for so many of the Chris Knight songs he loves.
I take a deep breath and prepare myself to make the biggest mistake I’ve made in a very long time. “Okay. How about this? When we get home tomorrow I’ll tell you everything—but not until then. I just want to enjoy my birthday.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know I don’t. I want to.” Just speaking these words aloud dials up the anxiety inside me and I draw in another deep breath. “I need to.”
He reaches across the console and grabs my hand. “I’m ready when you are.”
Chapter Seventeen
Relentless Revelations
We walk into Northstar Bank and I instantly remember it. I remember the lobby with the speckled brown tile, the high ceiling, and the enormous wood and glass chandelier. I remember the offices to my left where my mom brought me once when I was six or seven. Did she bring me with her when she set up the trust account?
I walk through the doorway on my left into another small reception area and the receptionist looks up from her computer screen with her eyebrows raised and lips pursed as if my mere presence annoys her.
“Can I help you?” she finally says.
I try not to roll my eyes as I say, “I’m here to see Henry Owens.”
“Is he expecting you?”
“I’m pretty sure he’s been expecting me for thirteen years.”
She picks up her phone and dials an extension. “Henry, you have—”
“Claire Nixon,” I say as she looks up at me questioningly.
“—Claire Nixon here to see you.” She glances at my shorts quickly as she listens to Henry speak. “Got it.” She hangs up and the smug look on her face makes me dread what she’s about to say. “He’s in the middle of something. He said you’ll have to wait a while since you don’t have an appointment.”
This time I can’t stop myself from rolling my eyes as I turn around and take a seat next to Adam on the tweed armchairs that look like they’ve been here since the eighties.
Adam grabs my hand and gives it a squeeze. “You’ve waited thirteen years. You can wait a few more minutes.”
“Take your wisdom and get outta here.”
He smiles and kisses my cheek. “Want to hear a joke while you wait?”
Honestly, I’m already nervous as hell. I don’t think a corny joke is going to calm my nerves, but I can’t resist the urge to hear him bomb. I look at him for a moment before I answer because I can’t believe how lucky I am. Some moments are made for showing us who our true friends are, and in this moment I realize Adam is my friend. My true friend. He drove 135 miles to prove that to me today. I don’t feel like I deserve him, but I’ll do my best to keep him. And someday I’ll find a way to repay him.
“Go for it,” I say.
He squints at me because he knows my mind is elsewhere. “Okay. Dirty or corny?”
I glance at the receptionist who appears to be enthralled in whatever she’s looking at on her computer screen, but she’s only eight feet away.
“Better go for corny this time,” I mutter.
“Okay. Knock, knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Olive.”
“Olive who?”
“Olive You.”
“I think I just threw up some fruit and yogurt in my mouth.” His eyes widen as he pretends to be offended and I smile. “Where are my manners? Come on in. I’ve been waiting for you all my life, Olive You.”
“You’re not just saying that ‘cause I said it, are you?”
“Nope. I mean it. Honestly and truly. Olive You with all my mushy red pimiento heart.”
“Now I just threw up in my mouth.” He grins as leans in to kiss me when I hear someone call my name. I turn and find a thin gentleman, maybe late-forties, with graying brown hair, a gray suit, and a kind face.
“Are you ready, Claire?” he asks, and I nod as I rise from the chair.
Adam stays close behind as I follow Henry down a corridor of cubicles. He turns right at the end of the corridor and heads for an open office door. We enter the office and he waves at a couple of chairs identical to the ones in the lobby. He takes a seat in his leather desk chair and rests his elbows on top of a manila folder in the center of his desk.
“First of all, Claire, I just want to say that I’m very sorry about your mother. She was a friend of mine in high school and I was devastated to hear about her death and even more saddened to know the circumstances.”
He’s probably referring to the fact that I was locked in that trailer with my dead mother for nearly two days. I should be angry that he’s brought this image into my mind, but he does look genuinely saddened.
“Thank you,” I say. “But I’m not here to talk about my mother’s death. I’m here to talk about this trust account. I want to know where the money came from.”
“Of course. Do you mind closing the door?” he asks Adam, who’s closest to the office door.
Adam doesn’t even have to stand from his chair in this tiny office to push the door softly closed.
Henry opens the manila folder and his eyes scan the contents as he flips through the pages. “I have hundreds of deposits here. They’re all electronic funds transfers from a single donor.”
“Not my mother?”
He shakes his head solemnly and I almost want to reach across the desk and strangle him to spit it out.
“Who?” I ask as I lean forward in my chair.
“I’ll need to see some identification first, as we discussed.”
I look over my shoulder at Adam and he pulls out his wallet as I slide my two expired IDs out of my back pocket. I lay them flat on the desk and Adam lays his driver’s license and a credit card next to mine. Henry examines all four IDs for a moment before he slides them back across the desk.
“Well, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, your mother is the grantor for the trust and she requested that you not be granted access until your twenty-first birthday.” He heaves a sigh as he gazes at the folder in front of him. “She wanted you to be provided for.”
The way he says this makes me think my mother knew she wasn’t going to live very long. I’m sure most drug addicts feel this way at some point, but something feels off about this whole situation.
“Are you saying my mom killed herself?”
Henry looks up from the folder looking confused. He thought I already knew this.
“Oh, God,” I whisper as I bury my face in my hands. “I can’t believe this.”
“Your mother loved you, Claire,” Henry insists.
Adam rubs my back as I press the heels of my hands against my eyelids; trying to push back the memory of the hours I spent hiding from my mother’s dead body. I think of how my legs ached as I stood in the crack between the refrigerator and the wall. How I convinced myself more than once that if I came out of my hiding place, this time she would be alive. How I pissed myself because I was too afraid to walk through the living room to go to the restroom. How the policeman who found me cried as he carried me out of the trailer. All this time I thought it was an accident. I thought my mother made a mistake, a miscalculation. Even after everything I went through before that policeman found me and in all the foster homes after that, I never hated my mother. Until now.
I sit up and wipe the tears away from my face. “Who’s the donor?”
The lines at the corners of his eyes deepen as he contemplates the answer to this question. He glances at Adam then back at me. “I think you might want to be alone when you hear this.”
Adam begins to stand and I put my hand on his knee to stop him. “Henry, you just told me my mother committed suicide,” I say incredulously. “Do you really think anything you tell me now is going to be more devastating than that? Who’s the fucking donor?”
Henry looks back and forth nervously between Adam and me as if we’ve just pointed guns at his head and asked him to open the bank vault. “Yes, I do think this news will be quite devastating, but I’ll respect your wishes if you want your friend here with you.” My leg starts bouncing uncontrollably as I wait for Henry’s next words. “Your father is the donor, but—” He puts a hand up to stop me from speaking when I open my mouth. “—before you accuse your mother of keeping you from your father while taking his money, there’s something you need to know.”
The few bites of yogurt I ate three hours ago are swirling in my belly as my stomach twists in knots from the anticipation.
“Claire, your mother was raped when she was seventeen by one of her cousins.”
I knew her uncle repeatedly raped her from age nine to fourteen, but she never told me anything about her cousin.
“Are you sure you don’t mean she was raped by her uncle? Because she told me about that.”
Henry shakes his head. “It was the son of the same uncle. Claire, your mother was a good person. She trusted too many people too much.”
“Until she didn’t trust anybody at all,” I say, beginning to understand why my mother kept me locked away in that trailer and why she was so adamant about teaching me how to stay safe.
Then another realization hits me. We were talking about the donor on the trust account before Henry told me my mother was raped by her cousin.
“Oh, God,” I whisper, and I double over in my chair, suddenly feeling as if a ten-ton slab of concrete is crushing my chest. “He’s my father.”
Adam slides off the chair and kneels in front of me. “I think we should leave.” He lifts my chin and takes my face in his hands. “You don’t need to hear any more of this shit.”
“My mother never told me any of this,” I whisper as he swipes his thumb across my face to brush away the tears. “He raped her and she still took his money.”
I grab Adam’s hands and pull them away from my face, but I hold tight to them as they rest in my lap.
“She did it because she wanted you to be taken care of,” Henry insists.
“Two hundred and seventeen thousand dollars.” Just saying the words aloud makes me feel filthy. “Why would he give her so much money?”
Almost as soon as I speak the words I know the answer. It was hush money to keep her from turning him in. It had to be. She used her pain to extort money from him. She gave up the chance for justice so that I would have a chance at a better life.
“I don’t want that money.”
Adam stares fiercely into my eyes. “You don’t have to take a single penny of it. Let’s get out of here. You don’t need this shit, especially not on your birthday.”
“You know we can’t legally keep this money. The money will just sit here collecting interest,” Henry informs me, as if I care. “She wanted you to have the money.”
Adam stands up and scoots aside so I can stand. Henry looks up at me from his desk with a sad look in his eyes. He’s disappointed that I can’t take the money my mother intended for me. I wonder silently if he ever had a relationship with my mother. How could someone so kind and straight-laced as Henry be so fiercely protective of a heroin addict who committed suicide and extorted money from her rapist?
I know my mother had a hard life. I didn’t know anyone who’d had a more difficult life than her. But that was no excuse for what she did. She left me homeless, drifting from one family to the next, never staying anywhere long enough to form any true friendships. Maybe she thought she was doing me a favor by tearing herself out of my life. Maybe she thought I would end up with a good family right away. She didn’t know it would take eight years for me to arrive on the Knight’s doorstep.
“I just have one more question,” I say as Adam and I reach the office door. “If my mom knew she was going to kill herself, why didn’t she call the police before she did it? Why didn’t she send me to the neighbors or something? Why did she make me stay there with her?”