The Secret Life of Ceecee Wilkes Part 47

I guess you can see that I can't let go of my anger toward Timothy Gleason or your mother. They were in it together. Your mother has said as much. She may have been "only" sixteen, but she was old enough to know right from wrong, and she made the wrong-and very illegal-decision at every turn. (By the way, sixteen is NOT considered a minor in the North Carolina legal system, so that argument is moot.) People have to pay for the choices they make. It doesn't matter whether they're someone's mother. It doesn't matter if they have a terrible illness. That doesn't exempt them from paying their debt to society. I could never share your e-mail with Dad. It would hurt him to know you feel this way. He adored my mother. He never remarried or seriously dated anyone after her death. He devoted himself to taking care of me and grieving for her. Even though I can somewhat understand your feelings, he would never be able to and I don't want to say anything to him to make him dislike you. He thinks you're beautiful and perfect.

So, sisters can disagree and still love each other, right? I feel lucky to finally have a sister with whom I can disagree!

Love, Vivian

Chapter Sixty-Five.

"Dru told me you asked Ken to leave." Her mother sat on the other side of the Plexiglas, the phone to her ear. She'd had her first injection of her medication and already looked a little better.

"I did," Corinne said.

"How are you managing alone?"

"So far, so good. I now have the most intricate alarm system on the block. And I changed all my locks."

Ken had come back the night before, ostensibly to pick up more of his things, but really to beg her to take him back. The divorce from Felicia would be final in a couple of weeks, he said. They could be married the next day if she wanted. But although she'd had to have a friend do her grocery shopping for her, and she'd had to take a taxi to the jail rather than drive, she wasn't going to budge.

"I'm proud of you, Cory," her mother said.

"I think I'm ready to see a therapist," Corinne said. "I'm starting a new position in September and it involves travel around Wake County and I want to do it, but I don't see how I can if I can't even drive to the grocery store."

Her mother nodded with a smile. "Good for you," she said. "What's the new position? And how will the baby fit into taking a new job?"

Corinne described the job and the child-care arrangements she was looking into for the baby. "I'm scared I can't pull this off," she said.

"Talk about stress," her mother agreed. "But I think it's great you're giving it a try and great that you're planning to find a therapist. You want someone who-" She stopped herself. "Do you want me to tell you what I think you need or let you figure it out on your own?" she asked.

Corinne smiled. "Good catch, Mom," she said. "But please tell me. All I know is that I don't want to have to go back through my childhood and pick apart every little incident, like I did with the woman I saw when I was in college. Especially now that the whole world knows how my childhood started."

"You're right," her mother said. "You don't need that. You need someone who'll work fast and focus on your fears. You're very strong right now and you need someone who will make good use of your strength."

Corinne recognized her mother's "therapist voice," and for the first time in years, she didn't recoil from it.

"So how do I find someone?" she asked.

"Call Valerie," she said, referring to a family friend who was also a student counselor at the university. "Ask her to do a little research to find someone for you in Raleigh."

"Can I get well enough by next September?" she asked. "I've been so screwed up for so long."

"You're not screwed up, honey," her mother said. "Not in the least. You have something to work out. Everybody has some issue to work out. Yours just gets in the way more than most. And look at all you've accomplished in spite of it. You'll need to work hard. The therapist won't be a magician, but if you get the right one and you put your mind to the task, you can do it." Her mother looked delighted to be giving her guidance. She switched the phone from one hand to the other. Corinne knew that her hands ached when she held the phone too long. "Here's my two cents' worth of advice for now," she said. "Can you think of a time you felt really brave?"

"No." She laughed.

"A time when you felt self-confident and in control?" Her mother wasn't taking no for an answer.

Corinne leaned her head back and studied the ceiling, thinking. "In the cla.s.sroom," she said. "I know what I'm doing in front of twenty kids."

Her mother smiled. "That would have most people shaking in their boots," she said.

"I love it," Corinne said, and she meant it.

"The next time you're afraid of something, remember how you feel in front of a cla.s.s of kids. Remember everything about it. How the cla.s.sroom smells and sounds and especially that calm feeling you have inside."

"It's more like an excitement," Corinne corrected her. "A good excitement."

"Even better. Remember that positive excitement you feel and try to carry that feeling with you into the new situation. Think of this as a mantra-'Carry the confidence.' Say that to yourself when you're afraid of something, and let it remind you of how you feel in front of a cla.s.s of kids."

"Hmm," Corinne said. "Is this advice from Counseling One-O-One?"

Her mother shook her head. "It's something I learned way before I was in college," she said. She grew quiet, her smile fading.

"Mom?" Corinne didn't like the sudden change in her.

"Oh, Cory," her mother said.

"What's the matter?"

Her mother let out a sigh. "Of all the skills and techniques I learned as a counselor, that one..." She hesitated again.

"What's wrong?" Corinne asked.

"I've used this technique for so long, I'd forgotten where I learned it," her mother said finally. "Before I helped kidnap Genevieve...your mother...Tim and Marty Gleason and I spent the night with some friends of theirs who were living underground, for a reason I never did know. The woman-her name was Naomi-talked to me about guarding your mother. I said I was afraid and she told me to think about a time I felt brave and take that feeling into the situation with me. It worked. It helped."

Corinne leaned away from the Plexiglas, horrified.

"Of course, since that time, I've learned much more about the technique," her mother said. "I've learned to make it much more elegant, but the basics are still the same. Take that old calm, confident feeling with you into the new situation. I used it or a variant of it with clients all the time." She knit her eyebrows, looking hard at Corinne. "I used it for evil during the kidnapping," she said. "Now you can use it for good."

The idea sounded more palatable when put that way. "I'll try," she said. "When you used it for...the kidnapping, what did you choose as the time you felt brave?"

"Staying with my mother while she died."

"Oh, Mom. You were only...twelve?"

Her mother nodded. "I was brave then," she said. "And that's the feeling I'm using to get me through every day in here."

Corinne stared at her small, courageous mother. There was so much about her she didn't know. So much she'd never taken the time to know. What if her mother was locked up forever and she never got the chance?

Chapter Sixty-Six.

A FedEx delivery woman was on the front steps of the house when Corinne got out of the taxi after visiting her mother. FedEx delivery woman was on the front steps of the house when Corinne got out of the taxi after visiting her mother.

"Glad I caught you," the woman said as Corinne walked toward her. "You need to sign for this." She held out a package about the size of a shoe box. Corinne noticed the Charlottesville return address as she signed the form.

"Thanks," she said, handing the clipboard back to the woman.

She carried the package into the house and opened it in the kitchen. Inside were three small boxes and an envelope. In the envelope was a short note from Irving Russell and a check for three thousand dollars.

If you won't take your money in one lump sum, I hope you'll take it in bits and pieces, he'd written. he'd written. The contents of the boxes belonged to your mother. The contents of the boxes belonged to your mother.

For a brief, surreal moment, she felt perplexed over how he had gotten hold of anything belonging to her mother. Then she realized he was referring to Genevieve.

She opened the first box to find an emerald-and-diamond ring. The second held a sapphire necklace. The third, a strand of seed pearls. The jewelry was exquisite, and she spread it out on the ceramic tile top of the kitchen table. She studied it for a while, wondering if she could ever wear it. She wanted to. She wanted to feel the jewelry that had touched her birth mother's skin against her own.

The check lay in the center of the table, and she pulled it toward her, studying Russ's illegible signature. Would he forgive her if he knew what she was about to do with his money? Would Genevieve?

It was growing dark out, so she checked all the doors and windows in what had quickly become her evening ritual. Then she sat down on her bed and dialed her parents' number.

"Hi, Dad," she said, when Jack answered.

"Hi, sweetheart," he said. "I hear you saw Mom today. She's thrilled that you're visiting her, you know."

"She looked a little better."

"Finally got her meds," her father said.

Corinne hesitated a moment, then plowed ahead before she changed her mind.

"I have three thousand dollars I want to contribute to Mom's legal expenses, Dad," she said. "And, also..." She tried not to think about the confines of the witness stand, the tension of a courtroom. "I want to testify in her defense."

Chapter Sixty-Seven.

Talking to Jack was one thing. Talking to her biological father would be another. It took her until nine o'clock that night to get up the nerve. She sat at the kitchen table, the jewelry still displayed in front of her, and dialed his number.

He answered the phone himself.

"h.e.l.lo, Russ," she said, "this is Corinne."

"Corinne! Hi!" He sounded excited to hear from her. "Did you get the package?"

"Yes, and thank you very much. The jewelry is beautiful."

"I thought you'd like to have something that belonged to your mother."

"Did she wear these pieces a lot?" She fingered the emerald ring. She felt anxious. She should have tried that carry-the-confidence technique in this conversation.

"The sapphire necklace most of all," he said.

"I love them," she said. "And I'm very grateful for the money. But I need to ask you something."

"What's that?" he asked. "I hope you know you can ask me for anything."

She doubted he'd still feel that way when he heard the purpose of her call.

"I know." She drew in a breath. "I've been talking to my..." She wasn't sure how to refer to Eve. Adoptive mother wasn't accurate. "To Eve," she said. "And I've realized that she was very young when everything happened, and I really don't want her to suffer." She cringed, worried that her words sounded hollow and somehow insulting.

Russ didn't respond right away, and she guessed she was right.

"Have you forgotten what she did?" he asked finally.

"No, of course not," she said. "But I also can't forget all the years she's been my mother."

"You yourself said she'd been a bad mother."

"I don't think I said that," she said. Had she? "I think I said that her overprotectiveness caused me problems, but that's not the same as being-"

"Has someone gotten to you?" Russ interrupted her. His voice was sharper now. "Has her attorney called you? Or your adoptive father?"

"No." She felt as if she were shrinking. Her voice grew smaller as his grew louder. "No one's gotten to me," she said. "I'm just calling to ask you not to be too hard on her. I know you're furious at her and I understand that," she added quickly, "but I-"

"I'm disappointed, Corinne," he said, and she shut her eyes.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I don't think I'm expressing myself very well."

"I'd like you to think about what it was like for me to lose my wife the way I did," he said. "What it was like for Vivian to lose her mother that way. How it was for us to live with uncertainty for twenty-eight years. And most of all, I'd like you to think about what it was like for your mother-your real mother-to die that way and that young. Imagine being eight months' pregnant and being kidnapped and going into labor with a teenaged kidnapper the only person there to help you. And you know you're at high risk for dying, as is your baby. You imagine all that, all right? Then call me back and tell me how you think I should treat your so-called mother."

The line went dead. Ouch. Ouch. She was no match for him, and her mother's attorney would probably be no match for his. She was no match for him, and her mother's attorney would probably be no match for his.

She lay in bed that night, her hand on her belly and did what he'd asked her to. She imagined herself five months from now, when she'd be eight months' pregnant. She imagined being stolen from the parking lot at Carolina by two strange young men, driven in the dark hours to a cabin in the woods and left in the care of a sixteen-year-old girl. She imagined herself going into labor, but found it very hard to get in touch with what that would be like. It didn't matter, because the person she found herself feeling sorriest for was the teenage girl, in so far over her head that she had no idea what to do.

Chapter Sixty-Eight.

Dear Corinne, Dad and I are hurt and confused. We understand that you still care about Eve Elliott, but how can you testify for her when we are trying so hard to have justice served in the wrongful death of my mother? Your mother. I don't understand this. I'm asking you to refrain from testifying for her so that justice can be served.

Vivian