The Good Daughter: A gripping, suspenseful, page-turning thriller. Alexandra Burt

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СКАЧАТЬ car, and my high school diploma—a pretty meek start for a life on my own. There were regrets about that night: I had fought with my mother, and I had never said good-bye to Bobby.

      I felt panic rise up. The streets felt alien to me, yet I drove on until I reached Amarillo. The city was depressing, with nothing but dust and yellow grass, far away from everywhere and close to nowhere. I found work the very next day and a place to stay. Help Wanted signs at motels were plenty along the two major highways running through town, and my mother had taught me well: the right motel and the right owner, and you can offer free work for a week in exchange for a room. One week’s worth of work for the room each month, cash for the next three weeks of work. I knew that many employers didn’t mind turning a blind eye to the fact that I insisted on getting paid under the table.

      I got a second job at a nearby motel, and after a year of saving every penny, I felt confident I was in a good place. One day, on my way to my second job, a tapping and slapping sound under the hood made me pull over. The car, by then sixteen years old, was no longer fixable. The next day I went to apply for a car loan, for a used older model Subaru—though it was still better than what I had—but I needed my social security number.

      “I’m sorry we can’t process the application,” the car salesman said. “Do you have your card on you?”

      “I think I lost it,” I lied.

      He scrambled through the papers. “You might want to go to the social security administration office downtown.”

      “How about I pay you cash for the car?” I hated to use every penny I had saved up, but I needed transportation. I haggled some, paid for the car. I never went to the local social security office. It was just like it had always been, the old and familiar hurdle that was paperwork.

      I worked more jobs to save more money and eventually moved out of the motel. I knew better than to try to rent an apartment, but I waited for a sublet to come available—there’d be no credit checks, no paperwork, and no contracts to fill out. I lived in a three-bedroom apartment with two other women: a flight attendant and a pharmacy student from Ecuador.

      I thought about starting my own residential cleaning business, but I knew the business license would never happen. Again, there’d be paperwork. There were better jobs I qualified for over the years—cruise ships taking off from Galveston—but I needed a passport. I kept my head down, never forming lasting friendships or getting seriously involved with anyone. Fifteen years passed, and I saw myself going nowhere but down a lonely, dead-end road of minimum wage jobs and double shifts.

      I thought about returning to Aurora, but those moments passed. I thought about my childhood, and those thoughts lingered. My early years remained sketchy at best; I couldn’t name my favorite childhood food, stuffed animal, board game, friend, place, or person. Glimpses emerged, yet none of them could be verified; there was no attic stuffed with trunks and boxes holding dolls and toys and old bicycles. When my mother and I did move, we started completely from scratch; no phone calls to left-behind friends, no letters, no Christmas cards. Everything was final, never to be revisited.

      I imagined myself twenty years from now and I panicked. I needed a social security number, a birth certificate, and proper documentation so I could emerge from the shadows of my bleak existence.

      With those thoughts, I got on the same highway that had led me to Amarillo and I went back to Aurora. The trunk was filled with hardly more than I had left with fifteen years before. On the highway, I folded the visor down, and in the mirror I saw my reddened face. I was going to appear back in my mother’s life the same way I had left; one minute there, then gone, then back again.

      I had questions. The kind of questions that, once raised, demanded answers.

      Sitting in the ER, I want to apologize to Bobby for ignoring him all these months.

      “You okay?” His words pull me out of my lulled state.

      I attempt to speak, but my voice fades into unintelligible croaks.

      I hear a gurgling sound from the water dispenser and he holds my hand steady as he places a cup of cold water in it.

      “Drink this.” He raises his hand and brushes my wet hair out of my face.

      Water spills over my hands. I remember the creek. There’s that odor, the one I smelled in the woods. Sweet and pungent—roadkill is what comes to mind, a recollection of hiking and coming across a deer cadaver, weeks old, dissolving in the heat. All blood leaves my face and I grip the paper cup so tight that I nearly crush it.

      “Maybe you should spend the night in the hospital? You look horrible. You don’t seem well at all.”

      “I’m fine. Really, I am. How’s your dad?” I ask to change the subject. I wish I looked more put together, hair done, makeup, a shower.

      “You know, he’s old.” Bobby pauses for a moment, and a shadow falls over his face. “He’s not the man he used to be.”

      A nurse behind the counter turns up the volume of the TV mounted to the wall. Bobby and I both look up, glad to be distracted.

      There’s mention of breaking news about the girl from the woods coming up and immediately a vision of the tree line appears out of nowhere and my mind pops like an overheated lightbulb. The hand of a dead woman with red fingernails. There’s no sense in fighting the image of her fingers prodding through soil layers, a hand stealing a glimpse of the underworld.

      “You’re shaking.” Bobby waves his hand in front of me as if to fan me some air. “You look like you’re about to pass out.”

      “Is she alive?” I haven’t dared ask but I must know.

      “Yes, barely. She’s in a coma.”

      I’m back in the woods, bent over her body. Someone dug a hole and shoveled dirt on top of her. Buried her alive. How long ago? A day? Hours? Minutes, even? The possibility that someone watched me discover her—stood behind a nearby tree, his boots covered in soil, his heart beating in his chest, sweat on his brow, watching me—is mind-boggling. I manage to wipe the thought away like a determined hand removing fog from a bathroom mirror.

      “You’re right, I look awful,” I say. My reflection in the glass doors that lead into the emergency room speaks for itself.

      “How are you supposed to look after falling into a creek and busting your nose?”

      “I need to call my mother,” I say. It’s been hours since I took off running; she must be frantic by now.

      “They sent an officer over. She was a bit … well, a bit feisty about the police coming to the house. Took a lot of convincing to get her to open the door. What’s that all about?”

      I ignore his question. I imagine the doorbell ringing, a suspicious Who are you looking for? through the closed door, an insistent Are you Memphis Waller?, her silence on the other side, the officer attempting to convince her to open up. Did This is about your daughter prompt her to let her guard down? Did the entire conversation happen through a bolted door, or did she reluctantly allow the officer inside, just to regret her lack of vigilance?

      “Do you know who the woman is?” I ask.

      “She’s still unconscious. We can’t interview her,” Bobby says. “We haven’t IDed her yet either.” Bobby hesitates СКАЧАТЬ