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My mother’s tone softens. In her voice is something I haven’t heard in years—concern.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me this, Quincy?”
“I shouldn’t have had to,” I say. “You should have seen that something was wrong.”
“But you looked fine.”
“Because you forced it on me, Mom. The pills and the refusing to talk about it. That was all because of you. Now, I’m—”
I don’t know what I am.
Screwed up, obviously.
So screwed up that I could tally for my mother the many ways in which I’ve failed as a human being. I’m likely in trouble with the police. I’m possibly harboring Lisa’s murderer in an apartment I could only afford because my friends were butchered. I’m addicted to Xanax. And wine. I pretend I’m not depressed. And angry. And alone. Even when I’m with Jeff, I sometimes feel so unbearably alone.
What’s worse is that I never would have realized this without Sam crashing into my life. It took some prodding on her part, of course. All those tests and dares and nudges to reveal something about myself, to remember tiny details of something I’m all too happy to have forgotten.
Then it hits me. Hard. I’m like a nail just struck by a hammer—brittle, quivering, sinking deeper into something from which there is no escape.
“Mom, what did Lisa sound like on the phone?”
“What do you mean? She sounded like I imagined her to sound.”
“I need specifics,” I say. “How did her voice sound? Hoarse? Raspy?”
“I really didn’t notice.” My mother’s confusion is evident. I picture her staring at the phone, befuddled. “You’re the one who talked to Lisa all those years ago. I don’t know what she’s supposed to sound like.”
“Please, Mom. If you can think of anything.”
For the last time, my mother lapses into a deep silence. I clutch the steering wheel, hoping she’ll come up with something. And while she’s failed me many, many times in the past, in this instance, Sheila Carpenter comes through.
“There were a lot of pauses,” she says, ignoring the irony coiled in that statement. “Lisa would talk, then pause. And with each pause, I heard a little exhale.”
“Like a sigh?”
“Quieter than that.”
It’s all I need to know. In fact, it tells me everything.
“Mom, I need to go.”
“Will you be all right?” my mother asks. “Tell me that you’ll take care of yourself.”
“I will. I promise.”
“I hope that whatever’s going on, I was able to help.”
“Yes, Mom,” I say. “Thank you. You helped more than you’ll ever realize.”
Because now I know that those pauses my mother had heard definitely wasn’t sighing. It was the sound of someone smoking.
Which means she hadn’t spoken to Lisa.
My mother had talked to Sam.
Curious, inquisitive Sam. She knows more than she let on. She’s known it all along. That’s why she showed up out of the blue. It wasn’t to connect with me. It wasn’t for money.
She’s trying to find out everything she can about Pine Cottage.