Covenant Child

  I don’t know what came over me right then. I wasn’t all that brave, and I spent a lot of time worrying about getting in trouble or making Deke mad. But before I had the chance to talk myself out of it, I grabbed that box from her, pulled up my shirt, and stuck it down in the waistband of my pants. I pulled the shirt down, and you couldn’t even see that I had anything under there.

  Lizzie sucked in a breath. “Kara!”

  “You want it or not?”

  She thought about it for a moment, then looked back down at the clothes. She grabbed a red dress with matching socks and stuffed that into her pants.

  Then we carefully walked back to the front, looking real innocent. The cashier had gotten off the phone and looked down at us, eyes narrowed. “Can I help you?”

  I had to think fast, because I was afraid that she would see the guilt on my face, or that Lizzie might burst into tears and spill her guts. I grabbed a yo-yo out of the bin closest to me and held it up. “How much is this?”

  “Dollar ninety-nine.”

  I acted like I was disappointed, just crushed that I didn’t have the dollar ninety-nine. I put it back and in a sad voice said, “Come on, Lizzie.”

  Lizzie had her arms crossed over her stomach, looking very suspicious, so I opened the door and shoved her out. The girl behind the counter never knew a thing.

  We didn’t say a word to each other until we got back to the tracks, and when we were sure that no one had come running after us, we began to celebrate.

  “That was easy!” Lizzie jumped up and down. “Eliza’s gonna feel so much better.”

  “We’ll share the red dress. It’s only fair, since I took the pink one for you.”

  “Missy can wear it on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and Eliza can wear it on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday.” Lizzie always liked to have things organized. She couldn’t stand to have things uncertain.

  “Maybe we could go back and get another one,” I said. “Maybe we could get one for every day of the week.”

  Lizzie liked that idea and began to prance in her beauty pageant style, waving at her admirers. I leaped on ahead of her, feeling a whole lot better about that stupid dog and what he had done to her doll.

  That was the beginning of our shoplifting career. It was like a door opening into a whole new world . . .

  A door that beckoned us across its threshold, then shut to keep us from getting back out.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Around the time we were nine, something happened that all those scientists who study twins would have loved. I came down with chickenpox, so I had to stay home from school. Normally, Lizzie would have stayed home, too, since she never liked to go anywhere without me, but that day was picture day, and it was important to her to get her face in the yearbook where everyone could see.

  She got all fixed up that morning, wearing stolen makeup that she didn’t quite know how to apply and a glittery blouse she had taken from Wal-Mart a couple of weeks earlier.

  “It’s not fair.” I scratched at my bumps. “I wanted my picture, too. I hate chickenpox.”

  “You can use my picture. We’re just alike.”

  “Only I never would have worn such a flashy shirt. I was gonna wear that Western shirt with the fringe under the arms.”

  Lizzie gave me that poor-little-tasteless-Kara look. “It has a big stain right on the front of it. That’s why somebody gave it away.”

  “I don’t care. It wouldn’t have shown in the picture. Now there’ll be an empty place in the yearbook where my face ought to be.”

  “I’ll tell them to put ‘See Lizzie Holbrooke’ under your name.”

  She bopped off to school, leaving me itching and feverish, while Deke and Eloise slept their gambling night off.

  I was watching Jerry Springer about midmorning when I got this pain in my arm. I yelled out and clutched it. Don’t ask me how I knew, but this awareness came over me, and I knew without a doubt that Lizzie had been hurt . . . that she was crying.

  I ran out of the house in the T-shirt and leggings I’d slept in and tore through the woods until I made it to the school. A crowd was huddled on the playground, and I headed straight for it.

  “Lizzie! Lizzie!” I pushed through the people and found her sitting on the ground, crying and holding her arm. It was clearly broken.

  Her pretty shirt was stained and torn. I sat down next to her on the dirt. “What happened?”

  “I fell off the slide. It hurts, Kara!”

  “You’re telling me,” I said, because my arm still ached in exactly the same place.

  “Kara Holbrooke, you’re just infecting the whole school.” Our teacher, Miss Monroe, jerked me to my feet. “You get on back home now.”

  “What about Lizzie?”

  “We’re taking her to the emergency room. That arm’s sure enough broke.”

  “I’m going, too,” I said.

  “No, ma’am, you’re not.”

  I crossed my arms and tilted my chin. “Yes, ma’am, I am. And if you don’t hurry and take her, I’m gonna tell Deke and Eloise to sue the school for pain and suffering.”

  I’d been watching too much LA Law and knew just enough about lawsuits to be dangerous.

  My threat must have sounded real, though, because no one called my bluff. They just loaded us both into a car and took us to the emergency room in Yazoo City. We didn’t have a phone at home, since the phone company had written us off as a bad risk, so they weren’t able to reach Deke and Eloise. One of the janitors from the school went to our trailer personally to find them, but they must have been sleeping so deep that they never even woke up.

  We had a big adventure as they casted Lizzie’s arm, feeding us suckers and trying to keep the patients away from me so they wouldn’t catch chickenpox.

  When we got back home, Eloise sat at the sticky kitchen table without her wig, drinking black coffee.

  “Lizzie broke her arm.”

  Eloise screwed up her face and examined the cast. “Girl, who put this on your arm?”

  “A doctor,” Lizzie said.

  “What doctor?”

  “Some doctor at the emergency room.”

  “You went to the hospital?” She got up and stormed back to get Deke. “Deke, get up! Them teachers took Lizzie to the hospital and ran us up a bill.” She came back and stared down at us, like we’d just burned the house down or something. “What’s the matter with you? We can’t afford no emergency room.”

  “They couldn’t find you,” I said. “Her arm was real bad.”

  By now, Deke had come from the back, sleepy-eyed and clutching his head. “What fool thing caused you to break your arm?”

  “I fell.” Lizzie was in no mood for long explanations.

  “Well, I’ll tell you one thing. That school had better pay every penny of that bill, ’cause I ain’t shucking out a dime. I can promise you that.”

  I ushered Lizzie into our room, and the two of us curled up on the bed as Deke and Eloise railed in the next room.

  TWENTY-TWO

  We celebrated our tenth birthday by stealing The Boxcar Children from the library and Lizzie’s favorite necklace from the Wal-Mart in Yazoo City when we went with Eloise on one of her rare shopping trips. Because Lizzie feared that Eloise would find the necklace and keep it for herself, we set out to find a hiding place in our woods.

  I thought of the perfect place. There was an old dead tree a few yards from the path that led to the railroad track. Weather must have split it in half, because no one would have chopped it six feet up, then left the trunk lying there on the ground. Lizzie and I used it often as our stage.

  Lizzie would perform her talent competitions there, and I would perform my makeshift gymnastic routines as if it were a balance beam. The trunk of the tree had rotted down the side, leaving a hollow hole inside that only we knew about.

  We named it the Secret Tree and anointed it our official hiding place. Lizzie hid her necklace there in a Ziploc bag she’d dug out of the trash at school
after some kid had thrown it away in his wadded lunch bag. I wasn’t ready to leave my book. Instead, I curled up on a bed of rotting leaves and read until the light got too dim, while Lizzie acted out an entire play she had made up on the spot, performing every part with as much passion as if she’d been on Broadway.

  When it got too shadowy to read, we started home by way of the Goodwill bin on Fourth Street, where we occasionally found treasures that hung from the depository hole or were left in boxes on the ground outside it.

  We found an old lace slip, and Lizzie acted as if she’d found a bolt of Parisian lace. “I can make a veil with this! Look, Kara. We can be brides.”

  I usually didn’t get excited about the things that rang Lizzie’s chimes, but I have to admit, I liked this idea. She draped the lace bottom of the slip over her hair, and I pictured myself in it. I dug into the box for more prizes and came up with a white, flowing lady’s nightgown.

  “Why would anybody want to throw this away?” I held the soft fabric against my face.

  “Maybe it’s somebody rich who got all new stuff.”

  I shot her a yeah, right look. “There’s nobody rich in Barton.”

  We found a pair of high-heeled shoes with curled-up soles, an old sweater with fur around the collar, and a glittery handbag with some of the sequins falling off.

  Delighted with our finds, we shook the contents out of a garbage bag leaning against the bin, piled our treasures in it, and hurried back to our Secret Tree. We stuffed everything inside, then covered it with leaves so no one happening along would notice it.

  When we got back to our trailer, we were in a great mood and singing “Happy Birthday” to ourselves . . .We came out of the woods and noticed right away that Deke and Eloise’s car was gone, but another, ritzier car was parked on the gravel drive.

  Curious, we went around the trailer and saw the woman standing on the porch, knocking on the door.

  “Nobody’s home, lady,” Lizzie called out.

  The woman swung around and caught her breath at the sight of us. You would have thought she’d seen two little red-haired ghosts wandering up, because she burst into tears. “Lizzie! Kara!”

  I hung back, suspicious, but Lizzie took a tentative step up the porch steps.

  The woman stooped down to get eye level with us and took Lizzie’s hand. “Look at you,” she said with a quivering voice. “You’ve grown so much.”

  Lizzie just gave her a blank look, and I inched up behind my sister. The woman reached for me. “Kara, you’re so beautiful.” She touched my long curls. “I’m glad they haven’t cut your hair.”

  How in the world could she tell us apart? Eloise and Deke were always getting us mixed up. I frowned, trying to figure it out. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Amanda,” she whispered. “Don’t you remember, honey?”

  Amanda Holbrooke! I stiffened and looked at Lizzie, and she looked back with a pained expression, like we’d just walked into some kind of trap. We hadn’t expected the Amanda Holbrooke, who’d stolen our fortunes, to look as pretty as this woman did . . .

  Nobody in Barton dressed like her. She had on a bright yellow dress and a shiny gold chain around her neck. Her earrings had yellow and orange and red in them, and they dangled around her cheeks. Her hair was blonde and soft and swept down to her shoulders, and she smelled like heaven.

  “It’s your birthday,” she said to both of us. “Ten years old.” She dabbed at the tears in her eyes. “How did you celebrate?”

  I didn’t think we should tell her that we had stolen a book and a necklace, or dug through the Goodwill bin. For all I knew, she had come to trick us into confessing.

  “I don’t know,” Lizzie said.

  Amanda straightened and reached for a bag she had left beside the door. “I brought you presents.”

  Lizzie’s eyes rounded, and she smiled over at me. She was so easy, but I knew better. I hung back, watching the bag for something cruel to jump out.

  Amanda pulled out a package wrapped in glittery paper and tied with a shiny gold ribbon. She handed it to me, then got Lizzie’s out and gave it to her.

  I was nervous opening it, and I couldn’t stop looking up at the woman and wondering how she knew that I was Kara and Lizzie was Lizzie, and how she knew about our birthdays, and why she had come to bring us presents. But as suspicious as I was after all we’d been told, I couldn’t resist the shiny package.

  Lizzie got into hers first and let out a loud yell as she saw the Special Edition Barbie in a frilly, golden evening gown. “Wow!”

  I tore into mine then and saw that I had another one, only with a different dress. I looked up at Amanda.“She’s pretty.” I didn’t mean to smile at her.

  I heard tires on the gravel then and turned around to see Eloise and Deke pulling into the driveway behind the woman’s car.

  Amanda’s face changed. “I have to go.” She bent down to look into both of our faces. “I love you, sweethearts. Happy birthday.” She kissed us both and hugged us real tight.

  Eloise jumped out of the car. “Call the police, Deke! That woman’s trying to kidnap our children!”

  Amanda just ignored them and started down the porch steps. “My phone number is on the cards in the bag. Keep it, girls. If you’re ever in trouble, call me.”

  I stared down at her as she started to her car, trying to ignore Deke’s hollering and Eloise’s nasal accusations. Eloise was so upset that her wig had turned almost backward on her head. Deke started trudging toward Amanda, chicken slime making a sucking sound on the dirt as he walked. “We got a restraining order against you the last time you tried to kidnap these girls, woman!”

  She seemed not to hear him as she got into her car. They were blocking her in, so she put the car into drive and made a U-turn on our lawn, drove past both of them, and back out onto the street.

  “That’s Amanda Holbrooke?” I asked as Eloise raced into the house to call the police.

  “That’s her, all right,” she said. “The woman who killed your daddy.”

  I looked down at the Barbie in my hands, but she wasn’t as beautiful as she’d been a few minutes earlier. I didn’t know why the woman who killed my daddy and stole my fortune would have given me a doll like this. All I knew was that I didn’t want it anymore.

  There was a big commotion in the house then as Eloise got the police there. They filed a report against Amanda Holbrooke.

  Eloise didn’t notice the presents Amanda had brought us, and even though I didn’t want them anymore, I knew they might be of some use. Lizzie and I managed to keep them hidden until we could take them to the Secret Tree. I found the card the woman had mentioned, opened it, and read her cursive scrawl.

  I’m always here if you need me, it said. Her number was written in big letters under her name.

  “I thought she was nice,” Lizzie said, combing her Barbie’s hair. Mine lay on the bed, neglected and unloved.

  “She’s not nice, Lizzie, if she killed our daddy.”

  “She didn’t look like a killer.”

  “They never do.”

  “Well, if she did it, then how did she do it? And why did she do it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m gonna find out.”

  That night, when the police were gone and Eloise and Deke had finally settled down, I ventured into the tiny living room and asked the question that had been plaguing both me and Lizzie.

  “How did she kill our daddy?”

  Eloise rarely had time for our questions, but tonight she devoted her full attention to it. Deke joined her and sat down in his sock feet, still reeking of chicken guts.

  “Truth be told, she killed your mama, too. Our precious daughter, rest her soul. And then she killed your daddy, and would have killed you, too, if the police hadn’t stopped her.”

  Deke jumped in. “She was trying to get you on an airplane and take you to some country where they don’t care if people kill kids.”

  I couldn’t picture a woman who
smelled like that trying to kill us. Fear shivered up my back at how close we’d come to being killed just this afternoon. “Why did she want to kill us?”

  “Sit down, Lizzie,” Eloise said to me, but I hardly noticed she’d mixed us up again. I was too stunned at the tone of her voice. It was almost gentle. “You, too, Kara,” she said to Lizzie.

  Lizzie came and sat down next to me on the torn-up ottoman.

  “You girls are probably old enough to know the truth by now,” Eloise said. “You see, your grandfather was Paul Holbrooke. He was a real rich man. Had billions of dollars.”

  “Practically lived in a castle,” Deke added.

  “That’s right.” Eloise nodded. “And he had a son named Jack, who was your daddy.”

  It sounded like a fairy tale in which I was a character. I hung on every word.

  “So see, your daddy was rich. And he married your mama, Sherry, who was our girl. But just shortly after she had you, she died in a car wreck. Nobody ever proved it, but I’ve always known that woman Amanda killed your mama so she could finagle her way into your daddy’s life. She wanted his money, see, and so she made him fall for her and she married him.”

  It took a moment for my mind to catch up with her story. “That Amanda lady was married to my daddy?”

  “That’s right. She married him, and lo and behold, next thing you know, your daddy turns up dead, along with your rich grandma and grandpa.”

  “Plane crash,” Deke said. “Only we know that she did something to make it crash. Put a bomb in there or messed with the engine . . . we don’t know what. All’s we know is they’re dead, and she gets all their money.”

  A strange sense of injustice swelled inside me, as if something important, something I needed, had been taken from me.

  “Well, we come to get you as soon as we could.” Eloise dabbed at her eyes, but I didn’t see any tears. “We knew that the money rightfully belonged to you two girls, and that she’d just as soon kill you as look at you to make sure that nobody got in her way.”

  “We even went to court to try to get your money,” Deke said. “By all rights we should be living in a mansion and driving limousines and flying to Paris once a week to shop. But that woman managed to finagle that money away.”