to tell me something. Then she closed it. "I wouldn't say that. You never know when a lead will pop up. I wouldn't string you along. You know that's true."
I nodded.
"It's always in the back of my mind," Victoria said. "All those years ago, when I came by your trailer and talked to Tolliver... I was just a rookie cop. I thought I could find her quick, and make a name for myself. That didn't happen. But now that I'm out on my own, I still look for her, everywhere I go."
I closed my eyes. I did, too.
Chapter Seven
AFTER Victoria left, I sat down on the chair next to the hospital bed. My right leg felt wobbly. It's the leg the lightning traveled down that afternoon in the trailer when the thunder was rumbling outside. I'd been getting ready for a date; it was a Saturday, or a Friday. I discovered I no longer remembered all the circumstances, which was a real shock.
I did recall I'd been looking in the bathroom mirror while I used a hair curling rod, which was plugged into the socket by the sink. The lightning came in through the open bathroom window. The next thing I knew, I was flat on my back, half in and half out of the little room, and Tolliver was performing CPR, and the EMTs were taking over, and Matthew was yelling at them in the background. Mark was trying to shut him up.
My mom was passed out in their bedroom. I could see her sprawled across the bed if I turned my head to the left. One of the babies was screaming, probably Mariella. Cameron was standing pressed to the wall in the hall, her face soaked with tears and her expression distraught. There was a strange smell in the air. The hairs on my right arm were little crispy flakes. Nothing about me seemed to work.
"Your brother saved your life," the older man bending over me said. His voice sounded far away and it buzzed.
I tried to respond, but my mouth wouldn't work. I managed a tiny nod.
"Thank you, Jesus," Cameron said, the words almost incoherent because she was so choked up.
That scene in the trailer seemed more real to me than this Dallas hospital room. I could picture Cameron so clearly: long straight blond hair, brown eyes like Dad's. We didn't look that much alike, even a quick glance would tell you that; our faces were different shapes and so were our eyes. Cameron had freckles across her nose, and she was shorter, and her build was more compact than mine. Cameron and I both made good grades, but she was more popular. She worked at it.
I think Cameron would have managed much better if she hadn't been able to clearly remember the nice house in Memphis where we'd grown up, before our mom and dad had gone to hell. That memory also made her struggle to keep us up to a standard she held in her head. It made her crazy if we didn't look neat, clean, and prosperous. It made her nuts if anyone even suspected what our home life was like. Sometimes that frantic desire to keep up appearances at school made Cameron a little hard to reason with. To live with, truth be told. But she was absolutely loyal to her siblings, both step and full. She was determined to raise Mariella and Gracie as she deemed fit according to her shadowy memories of our respectable past. Cameron worked constantly to keep the trailer looking clean and orderly, and I was her deputy in that struggle.
Seeing Victoria had raised a lot of ghosts. While Tolliver slept, I remembered the years I'd expected to see my sister everywhere we went. I'd imagined that I'd turn around in a store, and she'd be the clerk who was waiting to ring up my purchases. Or she'd be the prostitute we passed on the street corner at night. Or she'd be the young matron pushing a stroller, the one with the long blond hair.
She hadn't been.
Once I'd even asked someone if she was named Cameron, because I was suddenly convinced that the young woman was my sister, a little aged and worn. I'd frightened her. I'd had to walk away quickly, because I'd known she would call the police if I said one more word.
In all those fantasies, I'd never once explained to myself how Cameron had gotten launched in this second life of hers, or