“These clippings have seen better days. They’re originals. And who would do something like this, anyway? It’s not a threat. It’s not like somebody could blackmail me with the story of my birth. It’s already out there. So, now what do I do?”
Samantha was examining each charm for a better look. “What can you do?”
“I can wait for whoever did this to reveal themselves. Maybe they’ll contact me directly, or maybe they’ll leave my mother’s diary or childhood photo albums on my desk.”
“This was strange enough, although maybe they will contact you. Maybe this was just to get you in the mood to hear the truth.”
“It’s been a week now. I think if they were going to contact me directly, they would have.”
Samantha looked up, having gone through all the charms. “So waiting’s probably not going to answer your questions.”
“I can try to find her myself.”
Samantha nodded, as if she was waiting for more.
“You know I’ve never looked. There was no reason I’d be more successful than the pros who looked at the time.”
“But now you have this. A bracelet of clues.”
“A good way to put it. Although are they good enough clues? And do I want to know?”
“I can’t answer the first question, and I don’t think you can, either, until you try to follow the trail. But can you answer the second? Because you’re the only one who has to.”
“It’s been years since I wished I knew the full story. Whoever left me in that hospital sink was probably young, probably terrified and definitely self-centered enough to worry more about what might happen to her than what would happen to me. She wasn’t checked in as a patient, so the experts guessed she came to the hospital in the final throes of labor, and from all signs, she had me in the same room where she abandoned me. I decided that’s all I ever really needed to know. But now?” She took the bracelet out of Samantha’s lap.
“Now your curiosity is piqued.”
“I look at you and at Edna, and I wish I could warn you about all the minefields in my family’s past. Wouldn’t you like to know if diabetes or breast cancer are common in the family so you can be extravigilant? Or a hundred other things? We can never know about your dad’s biological family, but maybe we could solve half the equation.”
“It would be nice, sure, but is that what’s most important? Don’t you need to put this first chapter of your life to rest? You say you have, and I think you’ve done everything you could. But now you have another chance to learn what you need to know, once and for all.”
“Then you think I should pursue this?”
“As long as you realize it might be a dead end. It’s not much to go on. But if you did discover something important, wouldn’t that be the best birthday present you could give yourself?”
Edna came to the doorway. “Your timer’s going off.”
Georgia realized she could hear beeping from the kitchen.
“Would you turn off the oven?” Samantha asked her daughter. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
Edna disappeared again.
“Thanks,” Georgia said. “I’ll give it more thought.”
“Nothing can top the bracelet as a subject, but before everything else gets away from us, have you given any more thought to teaching Cristy to read? If she’ll let you?”
Georgia was surprised her daughter had waited this long to ask, but Samantha was a patient woman. “I’m not sure she’ll be willing. She’s very closed off to the world right now.”
“That makes sense, don’t you think? The world closed her off, for a crime she says she didn’t commit.”
“Sam, don’t you think that’s what most inmates say? It’s part of a pattern. If they don’t admit to a crime, they don’t have to take responsibility.”
“I do know that, of course. But there’s more to this story than we know. She admits to one shoplifting offense as a teenager, but not to the one that landed her in Raleigh.”
“Whether she did it or she didn’t, do you have any real sense she wants her life to change?”
“Who can say but her?”
Georgia asked the question that most puzzled her. “What did you see in this girl that convinced you to help her? You told all of us the facts, but I don’t think you ever got down to the heart of it.”
Samantha laughed softly. “Nothing like a mother.”
“It might help me decide.”
Samantha hesitated, then she rested her hand on her mother’s knee. “I saw me. I looked into Cristy’s eyes and I saw a girl at the crossroads, just the way I stood at that same crossroads in my own life after I ran that car into a ditch. The feeling, the impact—they’re not something you ever forget. And I’ll tell you truthfully, I didn’t necessarily see that in the eyes of the other inmates I taught. But I sure saw it in hers.”
“Mom!” Edna shouted from the kitchen.
Samantha got to her feet. “You’ll think about it?”
“No,” Georgia said. “I guess I’ll do it. I’ve stood at a few crossroads myself. Cristy will need all the help we can give her to figure out which direction to go.”
Chapter Eleven
BY SATURDAY JACKSON hadn’t returned. Cristy still didn’t feel secure—she wasn’t sure she would ever feel secure again—but she had stopped jumping at every noise. Each evening since his visit she had checked windows and doors to the point of obsession, and now she slept on the sofa in the living room, where she would know immediately if someone tried to break in.
Despite her fear she was praying that, having delivered his message, Jackson was confident he had scared her into both submission and silence. Also, if Sully really had warned him to leave her alone, Jackson would know the deputy had his eye on the situation, making it more difficult to come after her.
The rain had slowed on Tuesday, and by Wednesday she had ventured out for her first walk alone. As a child she had been fearless, escaping the parsonage as often as possible to explore the streets and fields of Berle. In those days she had always trusted her ability to find her way home, but now she had to force herself to range a little farther every day. She kept busy on the walks gathering interesting dried weeds and grasses, using stem cutters Betsy’s daughter had sent, and arranging the cuttings in a motley assortment of vases and pots.
On Friday she managed to pull her car out of the barn and drive a few miles on the rural road, the smooth pull of the steering wheel under her hands a reminder of Jackson.
The first time she had met the man who’d almost destroyed her, she had been visiting his father’s “pre-owned” car dealership. Pinckney Motors was a rite of passage for Berle teenagers, an expansive lot just outside the city limits where everyone went to buy their first car.
Cristy’s first had come years later than most. Passing the written driver’s test had been a significant hurdle, which she had finally surmounted by asking for an oral one, despite a realistic fear that the word would get out. The next hurdle had been saving enough money to buy a car outright, since once she quit school her parents had washed their hands of her, and she had no credit to get a loan. She was almost twenty-one before she managed to save enough to buy something reliable. Until then she had used Betsy’s delivery van, but buying her own car? That was a dream come true.
The