Covenant Child

  Eloise and Deke sat at the sticky table, deeply engaged in some serious conversation. Two of Deke’s hunting dogs slobbered over a couple of cans of tuna that Deke had put on the floor. The room smelled like Deke’s chicken slime, tuna fish, and dog odor.

  Nausea gripped my stomach and clawed into my throat. I fought it back and went to my bedroom, locked the door, and lay down.

  Lizzie must have finished our shift, even though she planned to be an heiress by sundown, because she didn’t come in until after three.

  When she came in, I heard Deke calling for me to come out. “We need to talk to you girls. Come on out here now.”

  I would almost rather have been beaten, but I got up and took my time changing out of my waitress uniform. I pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and slipped my feet into my flip-flops, since I couldn’t stand the thought of walking across that floor in my bare feet.

  Lizzie already sat at the table, and she looked up at me. I avoided her eyes and cleared out a chair that was piled up with newspapers.

  “It’s your eighteenth birthday today,” Eloise announced, as if we didn’t know it. “Ain’t that something?”

  Lizzie’s eyes were dull. “Yeah. Really something.”

  “We’re excited for you.” I wondered why Deke had chosen today to wear his work boots into the house. I felt like telling him to take them off and put them on the porch where they belonged. “And now it’s time for you to come into your own.”

  I perked up. This was the part I was real interested in.

  “We got you an appointment with a real good lawyer up in Yazoo City.We told him about your case, and he thinks it’s a sure thing.”

  Lizzie slid her hand into her pocket, and I knew she was closing it around that cell phone. “Tell me something, Deke,” she said. “Tell me why our inheritance is so important to you.”

  “Well, I’m not gonna lie to you. The truth is, we figure we’re all in this together. We’re a family, and families help each other. We took you in when you was nothing but orphans, and all these years, we’ve took good care of you. Now it’s your turn to take care of us.”

  Lizzie’s eyes flashed to mine. See?

  I ignored her. “When’s the appointment?”

  “Two weeks from today, and you don’t have to worry about a thing, because we’ll go with you.”

  Lizzie’s cheeks reddened, and I could hear her foot beneath the table, beating out a staccato beat. “What if we didn’t have to sue her? What if this Amanda Holbrooke person just offered to give us the money?”

  Deke and Eloise looked at each other, then Eloise pinned us with her glare. “Have you heard from that woman?”

  Lizzie’s face was flaming. “I’m just saying that maybe we don’t have to fight for it. Maybe we don’t have to spend money on a lawyer, or wait a long time, or split it with you, or do anything at all. Maybe all we have to do is just take it.”

  Eloise shot up. “You know more than you’re telling. She has talked to you. What did she do? Call you at the SOS?”

  I looked down at my hands. Maybe, if I told Eloise what had happened, she would be able to talk some sense into Lizzie. I drew in a deep breath and decided to go for it. “We talked to her today, Eloise. She invited us to live with her.”

  Eloise sprang up. “You can’t listen to her lies! She’s been living high on your money since your daddy was laid in the grave. She knows you have a claim to it, and there’s no telling what she might do to trick you out of it! She’s expecting a lawsuit now that you’re of age. She might even kill you to keep you from winning.”

  “If we have a claim to it, Eloise, then how come we grew up living here?” Lizzie’s plans seemed to have given her a new kind of courage. “Amanda said you got ten million dollars to take care of us. So where is it? Did you gamble all of that away?”

  Deke sent his chair flying back with a crash. “We didn’t get that money all at once! The better part of it went to lawyers and taxes. The rest was eked out in payments, but it wasn’t enough! You shoulda had the whole Holbrooke fortune, but that stupid commie judge gave it to her. She probably paid him off!”

  Lizzie got up herself, facing off with him. “Then what makes you think the courts would give it to us now?”

  “Because you’re grown now. A good lawyer can find the right grounds for a suit. We can afford the best, ’cause he’ll get a cut. This time we’ll take a settlement. It could be huge.”

  “That’s how I want it,” I said. “I want it on my terms. I’m tired of depending on other people.”

  Lizzie just got up from the table and slammed herself in our room.

  “You go talk some sense into that girl.” Deke was as mad as I’d ever seen him sober. “Don’t you let her mess this up now. We’ve waited too long for this.”

  I didn’t feel like talking to Lizzie right then, so I left the trailer and went to sit by the Secret Tree. I sat there, thinking, until it started to get dark.

  When I got back to the trailer, Deke and Eloise were gone. I went into my bedroom and saw Lizzie lying on our bed with her back to me.

  “I’m still going,” she said.

  “Then you’re a fool.”

  She flipped over and looked at me. “I think you’re the fool.”

  “You’re just lazy, that’s all. You just don’t want to do what it takes to get the whole thing, so you’re willing to settle for a little bit on her terms. But it won’t be any different than it was being here with Eloise and Deke. You’ll be like a dog, slurping up the crumbs she throws you while she spends our inheritance on herself.”

  Lizzie shook her head. “That’s not how it’ll be.”

  “How can you think it’s as simple as she said? That all we have to do is hop in the car with her and ride off into the sunset?”

  “Maybe it just is.”

  “It’s not, okay?” I started getting undressed, because I was feeling really tired and I wanted this day to be over. I guess I thought, too, that if I could just get Lizzie to go to bed, maybe she’d forget about that phone in her pocket and Amanda waiting with her engine running, and just go to sleep. Maybe she’d wake up tomorrow and forget we had a choice.

  “I’m going to bed.” Lizzie looked at me as I pulled my shirt over my head, threw it to the floor, and pulled on the grungy T-shirt I slept in.

  “When you wake up, I’ll be gone.” She got off of the bed, and I got in.

  I lay down, my face to the wall.

  “I love you, Kara.”

  That made me madder than anything she could have said. I sat up and squinted at her. “Then why would you do this to me?”

  “Do it to you? How could you deprive me of it if it turns out to be true? How could you want me to stay here in this? How could you want to stay?”

  “I’ll get out of here my way! I can wait until the money’s mine. I don’t need lies and promises. I don’t need dangling carrots and magic carpets that can be pulled out from under me. I can get there on my own.”

  Lizzie started to cry, and she climbed up next to me and put her arms around me. I got stiff as a board, but she wouldn’t let go. Soon the hardness in my bones seemed to melt, and I laid my head on her shoulder and cried like a little baby.

  “Don’t go, Lizzie. I can’t stand to see you go.”

  “And I can’t stand to leave you.”

  “I always envisioned us going together somehow, getting on that train and riding off into our future.”

  Lizzie’s hold on me tightened. “We can do that tonight.”

  “But wouldn’t it be better if we could get the money for ourselves, then go where we wanted, do what we wanted?”

  “Where would we go, Kara? Amanda’s offering us all of that. I believe that she loved our father. That he wanted her to raise us. I believe she’s watched us from a distance all these years, waiting for us to come home. I believe that she has our best interests at heart. That my only future is with her.”

  I pulled away from her, weary of the fight
, and lay back down, with my knees pulled up to my chest. She sat there, looking down at me, but I was finished.

  “I’m going to sleep, Lizzie. Birthdays are hard on a person’s soul.”

  “Kara, she said to call her tonight, before Eloise and Deke get wind of it. If they get to the casino, surely they’re going to hear that she’s here in town.”

  “I’m going to sleep now, Lizzie.”

  She sat there watching me. When I didn’t turn back over, I felt her slipping away. I couldn’t tell if she was sitting or lying down next to me, but I wanted desperately to know. If she lay down, maybe she would fall asleep and Amanda would leave.

  But I couldn’t look. All I could do was hope that she would still be there when I woke up.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  A little while later, I heard Lizzie packing a few things into a Kroger bag. I lay still, pretending I didn’t hear, but then she slipped out of the room and I couldn’t pretend anymore. I got up and jerked on my jeans.

  I heard her in the living room, talking on that telephone Amanda had given her. “Uh, Amanda? It’s Lizzie. I’ve decided to come.” Her voice was broken and hollow sounding, and I could tell she was crying. “But Kara won’t come with me. I don’t know how to convince her.”

  There was a pause, and I listened, hoping Amanda would say that it was a package deal. That she wanted both of us or neither of us could come.

  After all, it made sense if it was her intention to get us both out of her way. Whether it was just to keep us under her thumb where we couldn’t file lawsuits and take her money, or to kill us like she’d killed our parents, I didn’t know. But if that was her intention, I figured she would want us both. It wouldn’t work if only one of us came.

  But she must have told Lizzie to come without me, because then Lizzie said, “I don’t want you to come here. Eloise and Deke could come home, and there’s no telling what they might do. There’s a gas station about a block down from the truck stop. It’s closed right now and doesn’t open until seven. I’ll be waiting there. It’ll only take me about fifteen minutes to get there.”

  It was real. She was really going to go.

  I stood there for a minute, feeling this awful sense of betrayal. I couldn’t believe my Lizzie, who had lived the same life I’d lived, who had dragged herself through all the muck of our pasts, who had always been there for me . . . would leave me now. I tried to imagine standing on my own, drudging through this life without her.

  And at that moment I hated Amanda Holbrooke more than I’d ever hated anyone.

  I heard Lizzie slip out the front door, and my chest grew tight as panic shivered over me. I couldn’t let her go the way we had left things. I stepped out into the night. I didn’t see her from the porch, but I knew that if she was going to that gas station, she would have to take our path through the woods. I went around the house and saw the faint glow of her flashlight moving through the trees.

  It was a full moon that night, and everything had a faint blue glow. The autumn wind had the slightest bite to it, and I shivered as I followed her.

  I started to cry as I ran toward her. She must have heard me coming, for she turned around. I saw the tear stains on her face, the mascara smeared under her eyes, her pink nose, her purple lips.

  We stood there among the trees, staring at each other as the minutes ticked by.

  “You’re really going?” I asked finally.

  “I have to,” she said.

  I had already begged her to stay, given her all my arguments and opinions. Logic wasn’t going to change her mind. Nothing was.

  I smeared the tears across my face. “Well, I’ll walk you to the gas station. We can say good-bye there.”

  “I’m going to miss you.” Lizzie thrust herself into my arms and clung, like it might be the last time. I clung back, my face twisted as I buried it in her hair, finally letting all the despair of our separation wail out of me.

  After a moment, Lizzie pulled back. “I’ll get there and see whether it’s better. And if it’s true, I’ll let you know. Then you can come.”

  I shook my head. “I’ll never go with her. She stole my mother and then my father, and now she’s stealing you. I hate her, and I don’t want anything to do with her. Ever.”

  Lizzie started to walk, shining that flashlight ahead of her, and I followed behind. My legs seemed as heavy as steel beams, and my heart ached, raw and exposed. We tromped through the woods, winding through the path we knew so well, until the sleepy gas station came into sight. The limo was already coming off the highway, its headlights shining onto the small building.

  I stopped at the edge of the woods, and Lizzie handed me the flashlight and gave me one last hug. Then I stood there alone as she headed toward the light. The limo pulled onto the pavement. Amanda got out of the car and threw her arms around Lizzie, rocking her back and forth, looking for all the world like a mother who hadn’t seen her child in too long.

  She didn’t look dangerous or threatening, but I knew those were the worst kind.

  “Where’s Kara?” I heard her ask Lizzie.

  Lizzie pointed to where I stood, but I stepped behind the trees and blended into the shadows.

  Amanda got the box with the pearl necklace she had given me and set it on the pavement. “I know you’re there, Kara. I love you and I want you, too. I’m leaving your necklace because it was a birthday gift, and I want you to have it.”

  She turned back to Lizzie. “Let me have the phone.” Lizzie pulled the phone out of her pocket, along with its adapter cord, and handed it to Amanda. She set it on the box and stepped away.

  “Kara,” she called, “use this phone if you need to call. My number is programmed in. Just call, and we’ll come back for you. Anytime, night or day.”

  I stood there, mute, without the heart to answer. Finally, I watched Lizzie climb into that limo. Amanda got in behind her.

  I wept into my hands as the limousine pulled away, taking my sister with it.

  For a minute, I couldn’t think, couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything. I just stood there, feeling like an orphaned child who didn’t know her way home. I cried for a long time, right out loud. If anyone had come along, they would have thought a wounded animal lay dying in the dirt.

  Death would have been a relief.

  I stepped across the pavement, feeling as if my tears had bled me dry . . . as if lead weights had been strapped to my limbs and I didn’t have the energy to pick up my feet. I got to the box and the telephone and lifted them and started back through the woods.

  Instead of going back home, I ventured from that dark path to the one leading to our Secret Tree. Holding the flashlight between my chin and chest, I moved aside the leaves that covered our treasures in the hollow and pulled out one of the Ziploc bags that still had some room. I stuck the necklace box and the phone inside it.

  I don’t know why I did it. I had no intentions of ever thinking of either of them again. If I’d encountered a garbage bin along the way, I might just as easily have tossed them in that. But I stuck the bag back down into the Secret Tree and covered it with the leaves.

  I had stopped crying by that time. My nose was stopped up and my eyes stung and my head ached. I reached the trailer and went back in. It was desperately quiet.

  I went to Deke and Eloise’s medicine cabinet and found the pills he used for hangovers. I took two of them, then went back to my room. I kicked off my jeans and lay down on our bed. Pulling her covers up to my chin, I felt something under there, pressing against my leg. I reached down. It was Eliza, Lizzie’s doll.

  She had forgotten it, and I knew she would be sorry.

  I wished I could run after that car and give it to her, but it was too late. So I just held that doll close against me, the way she had done when she was little and we’d mothered our dolls together. Slowly, the drugs kicked in, anesthetizing my pain and drawing me into a shallow sleep. I dreamed of running through the woods, calling Lizzie, trying to save her, screaming her name.


  But she didn’t answer. She was already too far away.

  TWENTY-NINE

  About a week after Lizzie left, Judd Sargent, my boss at the SOS, brought me a letter from Lizzie. I was surprised that she had sent it to me there. I didn’t want to read it in front of a bunch of gawking idiots, so I stuffed it into my apron pocket and waited until my shift was over. Then I went to the Secret Tree and opened it there.

  It was written on pink stationery, with pretty little squiggly things in the margins and the name Lizzie Holbrooke embossed in gold at the top. It had a faint, sweet smell, not like she had doused it in perfume or anything, but like it had simply wafted on the air she breathed.

  I wondered if my letters back to her would smell like the chicken plant.

  I got comfortable against the stump of the Secret Tree and started to read.

  Dear Kara,

  I had to write to you at the truck stop because I didn’t think you’d get the letter if Isent it to the house. Amanda told me she has been sending us letters and gifts for years, and we’ve never gotten any of them. The dolls—Eliza and Missy—were from her. I’m not sure why Deke and Eloise let us have them. The rest of the things she sent us either got thrown away or sold.

  So I decided that I’d go through the truck stop, because I figured Judd wouldn’t have any reason to keep your mail from you.

  Kara, you should see this place. Everything she said was true. She lives in a house that’s the closest thing to a palace I’ve ever seen, and she decorated my room like something out of a magazine. She has pictures all over the place of us when we were babies, stuff that belonged to our dad, and photo albums. We must have been the most photographed children alive back then. They must have recorded every move we made. Imagine being loved like that.

  There’s a little playhouse in the back that she moved here when she inherited our grandfather’s mansion. She says that Daddy made it for us, and we sat inside it today and went through the photo albums. It all feels like another life, one I had no part in. But it’s all there, in living color. You and me and Daddy and Amanda. And it’s real.We looked like the happiest family.