But I didn’t know where he had gone. Not that I would have told them anyway if I did.
I saw that Paul and Lily loved my Lily very much. And Lily, she loved Calla, too. They were a real family. My Lily, she barely knew me anymore. The times they came to call, there in that home between Omaha and Lincoln, she hugged me because Mrs. Zeeger told her to hug me, but otherwise she held back, eyeing me like the stranger I was. I could tell by her eyes that she had some vague recollection of me, a hazy memory from a dream, all but obliterated in the morning light. The last time she saw me I was eight years old. The last time she saw me, I was happy, carefree, smiling.
It was Louise Flores who told me what happened to the Wood family. About how things weren’t quite right in Mrs. Wood’s head. “The funny thing about delusions,” she said more to herself than to me, as she packed up her files and paperwork, considering her job done, just like Ms. Adler and her list of things to do, “is that a person can act relatively normal while they’re having them. Their delusions aren’t entirely out of the realm of possibility.” She tried to explain it to me, a post-traumatic something or other kind of thing, about how Mrs. Wood was probably never okay after her father died, she said, and then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, she got sick with cancer and had to abort her baby.
She couldn’t have any more kids. And Mrs. Wood, well, she wanted kids. And that thought made me feel sad ’cause Mrs. Wood was the nicest anyone had been to me in a long time, and never for a minute did I think she was a bad person. I thought she was just a little bit confused.
From time to time I received a note in the mail there in that group home with no name, no return address. Just random facts scribbled on scraps of paper.
Did you know you can’t sneeze with your eyes open?
Did you know camels have three eyelids?
Did you know a snail has 25,000 teeth?
Did you know sea otters hold hands when sleeping so they never, ever drift apart?
*
Read on for an extract from THE GOOD GIRL by Mary Kubica
EVE
BEFORE
I’m sitting at the breakfast nook sipping from a mug of cocoa when the phone rings. I’m lost in thought, staring out the back window at the lawn that now, in the throes of an early fall, abounds with leaves. They’re dead mostly, some still clinging lifelessly to the trees. It’s late afternoon. The sky is overcast, the temperatures doing a nosedive into the forties and fifties. I’m not ready for this, I think, wondering where in the world the time has gone. Seems like just yesterday we were welcoming spring and then, moments later, summer.
The phone startles me and I’m certain it’s a telemarketer, so I don’t initially bother to rise from my perch. I relish the last few hours of silence I have before James comes thundering through the front doors and intrudes upon my world, and the last thing I want to do is waste precious minutes on some telemarketer’s sales pitch that I’m certain to refuse.
The irritating noise of the phone stops and then starts again. I answer it for no other reason than to make it stop.
“Hello?” I ask in a vexed tone, standing now in the center of the kitchen, one hip pressed against the island.
“Mrs. Dennett?” the woman asks. I consider for a moment telling her that she’s got the wrong number, or ending her pitch right there with a simple not interested.
“This is she.”
“Mrs. Dennett, this is Ayanna Jackson.” I’ve heard the name before. I’ve never met her, but she’s been a constant in Mia’s life for over a year now. How many times have I heard Mia say her name: Ayanna and I did this... Ayanna and I did that... She is explaining how she knows Mia, how the two of them teach together at the alternative high school in the city. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” she says.
I catch my breath. “Oh, no, Ayanna, I just walked in the door,” I lie.
Mia will be twenty-five in just a month: October 31st. She was born on Halloween and so I assume Ayanna has called about this. She wants to plan a party—a surprise party?—for my daughter.
“Mrs. Dennett, Mia didn’t show up for work today,” she says.
This isn’t what I expect to hear. It takes a moment to regroup. “Well, she must be sick,” I respond. My first thought is to cover for my daughter; she must have a viable explanation why she didn’t go to work or call in her absence. My daughter is a free spirit, yes, but also reliable.
“You haven’t heard from her?”
“No,” I say, but this isn’t unusual. We go days, sometimes weeks, without speaking. Since the invention of email, our best form of communication has become passing along trivial forwards.
“I tried calling her at home but there’s no answer.”
“Did you leave a message?”
“Several.”
“And she hasn’t called back?”