Lovely Wild Read online

  He flinches at that, which makes Mari happy and sad at the same time. She knows the flavor of fear. The weight of frustration. Those are longtime friends. But anger? She’s worked very hard in her life to keep anger far from her. It’s never served her purpose. Now she wonders how she could never have known its power.

  “I want to know this. I have memories, Ryan. Of this house. Of what happened here. Of what I was.”

  “You were a little girl,” Ryan says gently, “who had the misfortune to be neglected and abused. None of it was your fault, Mari. And now look at you. You’re a strong, beautiful woman. A good mother. A good wife.”

  “I ate scavenged food I fought the dogs for. I hid from people because my gran had made me so afraid I’d be taken away. I lived in filth, Ryan. I remember those things and yet so much of it is blurry.”

  “Maybe it’s better if it’s blurry.”

  She shakes her head. “How can I stand knowing you know when I don’t!”

  “Fine.” He doesn’t say it angrily this time, but in resignation. “I’ll leave the files. I’ll take the kids to my mom’s but only for a few days. And when I come back, we’re going to talk about all of this. We’ll talk about what happened at work, about the book, whatever you want to talk about. We’re going to make this okay, Mari. I promise you.”

  Ryan has always been her prince. He has promised her so many things in her life and always made them happen. She wants to believe him this time, too.

  But she doesn’t.

  Still, Mari nods. She turns her cheek when he moves to kiss her, but she allows him to hug her. Ryan sighs.

  She doesn’t follow him to bed. She waits until he leaves and then turns to the stacks and boxes of folders and files. She doesn’t look up when he murmurs good-night.

  Instead, she starts to read.

  FORTY-ONE

  GRANDMA CALDER’S HOUSE smelled like the candles she liked to burn year-round. Vanilla, sugar cookie, apple pie, pumpkin spice. All the sorts of treats she never actually baked. Underneath it, the hanging odor of cigarettes she always said she was quitting but never did. Kendra breathed it in and wanted to pinch her nose closed, but didn’t because Grandma was hugging her so close.

  “Kendra, sweetie. My God, you’ve grown. Look at you. You’re going to be as tall as your dad. And Ethan, c’mere and give your grandma a kiss.” Grandma kissed and hugged them both, then turned to their dad. “Ryan.”

  “Hi, Ma.”

  She offered him her cheek. His kiss looked as if it pained both of them. Kendra hoped she never felt that way about her kids—or her parents. Though the truth was, she sort of felt like that about her dad at the moment.

  Something had gone down, she didn’t know what, just that her parents had been fighting and now her dad had put on this big, fake smile and dragged them here to his mom’s house. Grandma liked to call them a lot and send emails, usually stupid forwarded jokes or warnings about urban legends she could’ve easily disputed by looking them up on Snopes, but they usually only visited her every couple of months. Every once in a while Kendra and Ethan might stay the weekend while their parents went away on a grown-ups-only trip, and there’d been a few times when they were younger that Kendra by herself had gone for a whole week, then Ethan after her. Never at the same time, because Grandma said it would overwhelm her. It wasn’t that Kendra didn’t love her grandma, she just didn’t really like the way Grandma treated her mom.

  “I bought cookies. They’re in the kitchen—go grab some,” Grandma said to Ethan. To Kendra, she said, “I suppose you don’t eat cookies anymore?”

  “Of course I do, Grandma.”

  Grandma’s brows rose. “I thought all teenage girls were obsessed with diets.”

  “Only ones with eating disorders.”

  Grandma snorted. “Please tell me that’s not you, Kendra Jean.”

  As if. “No, Grandma.”

  “Go on, then.”

  Ethan had already jumped ahead, and Kendra followed him. She knew an invitation to get lost when she heard it. She slowed her steps when she got to the hall, though, listening.

  She didn’t hear what her dad said, but her grandma was a little deaf and therefore thought she needed to talk extraloud.

  “Well, what do you expect from her, Ryan? I warned you.”

  “Ma. Not now, okay? Jesus.”

  “I’m just saying, how can you be surprised?”

  Kendra’s dad’s voice dipped again. She realized she’d totally stopped. If either her grandma or dad shifted a little bit to look down the hall, they’d see her eavesdropping. She took another couple steps.

  “Can’t you just enjoy this visit, Ma? Do you have to bring up the past over and over again?”

  “Watch your tone with me, Ryan. I’m your mother.”

  “And Mari’s my wife,” Kendra’s dad said. “No matter what happened in the past, no matter where she came from and what she was.”

  “You’re just like your father.” It was clear Grandma didn’t mean this as a compliment. “Well, I suppose you should come in. Have a cup of coffee. We can go out to that new place for dinner, if you want. That buffet place.”

  “Sure, Ma. Whatever you want.”

  At the sound of that, Kendra ducked quickly into the kitchen. “Hey, brat, don’t eat all the cookies.”

  The monkeybrat looked up with crumbs around his mouth. “I miss Chompsky.”

  “He’s staying behind with Mama.”

  “To protect her?”

  “What does she need protection from, doofus?” Kendra snagged a cookie.

  “Whatever ate the peacock. That’s why Daddy said we needed a dog, remember?” Ethan rolled his eyes, making it obvious who was the real doofus.

  “Whatever.” Kendra poked him. He poked her. They’d have gone at it, but then their dad and grandma came into the kitchen and both of them pulled their hands back, acting innocent.

  “Not too many cookies,” their dad said. “Apparently your grandmother’s taking us to the Belly Buster Buffet.”

  That sounded disgusting, but gave Kendra an excuse to escape upstairs with her suitcase to the small sewing room with the daybed that was always hers during visits. She heard the mutter of her dad’s voice in the room next door and pressed her ear to the wall to listen.

  “Mari. It’s me. I wish you’d answer. Anyway, we got here okay. The kids are fine.” There was a long, long pause. “I know you have every reason to be pissed off at me. But I want you to know that no matter what, I do love you. I always have. And not because you were something I had to steal from my dad or a prize or anything like that. I love you for who you are and who you were when I met you. Not whoever you were before that. I love you. Call me, babe. Bye.”

  Blinking, Kendra sat back, uneasy. That’s what happened when you listened to private conversations. You heard things you didn’t like. What had her dad done?

  And why did everyone keep talking about what had happened in the past? Rosie, the manager at the Red Rabbit, Grandma...now Daddy. It wasn’t the best thing in the world to have your mom give birth to you in a bathroom, but it wasn’t like women didn’t have babies in weird places all time. There was a whole TV series about it on the Discovery Health Channel.

  Somehow, Kendra didn’t think that’s what everyone was going on about. Something worse had gone on in her mother’s life. Which was probably why she never talked much about it. But what was it?

  What could possibly have been so bad?

  FORTY-TWO

  THERE’S TOO MUCH information. Someone—Ryan, she thinks by the familiar handwriting on the labels—has sorted through all this material to put it in chronological order. But there’s still too much. Boxes and boxes of notes, written by Dr. Leon Calder. Printouts and handwritten letters back and forth between him and colleagues. Test results. Scribbled pictures Mari doesn’t recognize and yet knows she must’ve drawn because her name is on them. Report cards, height and weight and immunization records. The daily menu from the hospital,