Taking Terri Mueller Read online

  Terri stood frozen by the door.

  “You don’t know what you’re saying, Vivian.”

  “Things have changed, time has passed. I feel very strongly about this. I love Terri—”

  “Yes, and so do I. For god’s sake, do you doubt that?”

  “Then tell her the truth.”

  “No,” he said again. “Vivian—I can’t.”

  “Then maybe I should.”

  There was silence. The hairs all over Terri’s arms stood up.

  “You’ve never betrayed me. You can’t now.” Her father’s voice was low. Was he crying? She couldn’t bear to hear any more and closed the door.

  SEVEN

  “Hand me that wrench, will you, Terri?” Phil Mueller was lying on his back on the floor, his head inside the sink cabinet.

  “Do you have enough light?” Kneeling, she poked the lead light farther under the sink.

  “Fine.” Her father grunted as he twisted the wrench around the trap.

  “Should we let the landlord know we have a leak?”

  “Are you kidding? We’d be lucky if it got fixed by next spring.” He crawled out from under the sink. “That should do it, but put the pan under again, just in case—”

  “Daddy.” She meant to speak sharply to get his attention, but the words came soft and slow. “I heard you and Aunt Vivian talking.” He was washing his hands with the R&O Soap from the blue tin. “I heard you,” she said. “Sunday night—before Aunt Vivian left. I heard you talking . . . I heard what you said.”

  “You heard us?” There was a shy smile on his face. Was it a smile? It caught her by surprise and it hurt her as if the smile were saying, Please protect me.

  “Daddy . . .” Oh, this was so hard to do. Should she be saying these things? But if she didn’t, then it would all just keep going endlessly around in her head. “I know something is wrong,” she said. That sounded so bold. “I think something is wrong,” she said, softly. “Please, if it is, tell me? If you did something . . . I don’t care what you did—”

  “Nothing is wrong, nothing is wrong,” he said. He put damp hands on her shoulders. “Do you love me?”

  Why did he ask that? He knew. But he waited for her answer. She nodded.” Yes.”

  “Then that’s all that matters. It’s worth everything.”

  What was worth everything? What was the “everything”? She had spoken so softly. Maybe he hadn’t really understood what she said. “I heard you,” she said again. “You and Aunt Vivian. She said you should tell me—”

  He cut her off. “That conversation wasn’t meant for your ears. It was private, between me and Vivian. Were you eavesdropping? I’m disappointed in you!”

  She could hardly breathe. “I wasn’t eavesdropping!” Behind him, on the counter, the TV was on. Little figures danced on the screen, throwing out their arms, all of them smiling. In the background someone was singing, “Ain’t life wunnerful? Wunnerful? Wunner . . . fulllll!”

  “You’re only thirteen,” he said. “There are a lot of things in life you don’t have to think about yet. Enjoy your life now, Terri, there’s a long time ahead of you when things won’t be nearly as much fun for you as they are now.”

  “I can’t have fun if you’re in trouble.”

  “I’m not in trouble,” he said. His voice softened. “You can rest easy on that, honey. Look, you overheard something and you’re jumping to conclusions. I think we should end this discussion.” He turned away to dry his hands. “Just forget what you heard, Terri. Just forget it, honey. That’s the best thing to do.”

  That was Wednesday night. She didn’t “just forget it.” She couldn’t. He’d always said they shared everything. She had believed it. Didn’t everything that affected him affect her? They were a family. But he had secrets from her. Was he protecting her from something bad or ugly?

  She remembered a long-ago hot spring day (she’d been eight or nine), a traffic jam, cars stopped on a highway. They had walked forward. She saw the flashing lights. She saw the police cars. She saw the grey car crumpled like a piece of paper. She saw feet sticking out from beneath that crumpled paper car.

  “Look, Daddy—”

  “Don’t!” He pulled her against him, covered her eyes, turned her, walked her away. Then, only then, she understood that she had seen death. Dead Feet. She stumbled along next to him, her face buried in his waist, her heart beating so softly and heavily inside her chest. A Dead Person. Dead like her mother. “Don’t think about it,” her father said. “You don’t have to think about it.”

  But she had thought about it. Yes, even then, when she was a child. Now she was thirteen, and he was still saying the same thing to her. No good, she thought.

  Friday night he went out to visit Nancy. Terri stayed home. About half an hour after he left she went to her father’s room and took the grey metal box down from the closet shelf. She pressed the latch. It was locked. She pressed it again, harder.

  She heard something in the hall and stopped, her heart jumping. What if her father walked in on her? Okay, she just wanted to see her birth certificate again. She’d asked him to let her have it. She would take good care of it. It was the only thing she knew of that linked her to her mother.

  “Kathryn Susso Mueller,” she said out loud. “Kathryn Susso. Kathy.” Or maybe she had been called Kate? Or Cat? She pushed at the lock again, then put the box back. She felt restless and strange.

  In the kitchen she bit into an apple. Maybe she was hungry? But after two bites she was full.

  In the living room she fell down on the couch. A cloud of dust and dog hairs rose and settled. Barkley grinned hopefully at her. He wanted to play. Terri closed her eyes and tried to see her mother. A tall, handsome woman . . . It wasn’t enough. So many things she didn’t know, would never know unless someone told her. But who? Her father wouldn’t talk about Kathryn.

  Kathryn. She loved the name. She said it again. “Kathryn.” Kathryn had been killed in her car by another driver. Had he been drunk? She hated that man, whoever he was. Where was he now? What if she met him someday and knew he was the one who had killed her mother?

  She sat up, clutching a pillow. She would want to kill him! Barkley poked his head against her hand and whined. “No, Barkley, honey, not you.” She put her arms around his neck. What if her father had felt this way after her mother’s death? What if he had found the driver and killed him?

  She jumped to her feet, turned on the TV, immediately turned it off. She had never seen Phil angry enough to even raise his voice. What had he said to her the other day? I’m disappointed in you. That was the way Phil got mad. But yet, the thought made so much sense, would explain so many things, that she kept thinking about it.

  Say her father just hit the man. And the man slipped, fell, and cracked his head on the pavement. Died. Became a Dead Person. That would be murder. Manslaughter. What had Aunt Vivian said? You have to tell her. She’s got to know sometime . . .

  “Oh, Barkley.” She put her face against his familiar stinky dog smell. “Oh, Barkley.” Her father, a murderer. It would have meant jail for him. And there she would have been, four years old, with no mother and no father.

  Rather than let her be orphaned, had her father decided to run? To go away with her? To disappear before the police came for him? Wasn’t that it? It would explain everything. All the moves they’d made, and what her aunt had said to him, and why he didn’t want her to know about any of it. “Oh, Barkley,” she said again.

  On Saturday, Terri and Shaundra shopped in the Mall for a birthday present for Shaundra’s mother. They looked at scarves, sprayed perfume on their wrists, and checked out the beads and rings in The Carousel. Finally Shaundra settled on wooden wind chimes which she said her mother could hang outside her bedroom window.

  They went into Wendy’s for lunch, taking a booth near the back. “What a relief to have that over with,” Shaundra said. She poured ketchup on her burger. “You’re sort of super-quiet today, Terri. You okay?”


  “Yes, sure. I have things on my mind.”

  “All the cares of the world. Tell Aunt Shaundra your troubles, my child.” She grabbed Terri’s arm. “Terri, there goes George Torrance!”

  “Where?” Terri’s face warmed.

  “Over there, walking past the pretzel shop. Oh my god, he’s stopping to buy a pretzel.”

  “Don’t point, Shaundra.”

  “I’m not pointing. Do you think he sees us? Do you see him? Do you see him?”

  “I see him,” Terri said. “He’s with Christopher.”

  “Isn’t he darling?” Shaundra said.

  “George or Christopher?”

  “Both of them!”

  “I thought you said George had greasy hair.”

  “I’ve changed my mind. I think he’s very nice. I was talking to him the other day, and I decided I’m going to do everything I can to bring you two together.”

  “Shaundra! You didn’t say anything about me?”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not that dumb.”

  Terri slid her bracelets up and down her arm. “Shaundra—we are best friends, aren’t we?”

  “Yes, of course.” Shaundra bit into her hamburger. “That’s why I like George now.”

  “Yes, but I don’t mean that. We should be able to tell each other anything, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” Shaundra said with her mouth full. “Aren’t you going to eat?”

  Terri took a small bite of her cheeseburger. “I want to ask you something. What if someone you thought you knew everything about . . . really knew . . . what if you found out that person did something that was, that was bad?”

  Shaundra leaned forward. “Terri, are you in trouble?”

  “No, not me. Someone else. What if it was your father that did the something bad—”

  “He did,” Shaundra said. “He divorced my mother!”

  “I mean something much worse.”

  “What’s worse than that? Murder?”

  Terri set her bun down on the plate. The smell of the fried potatoes rising from the paper cone made her feel nauseous. She pushed them away.

  “Hey, Terri—” Shaundra slid down in her seat. “Are you sick or something? You don’t look too good.”

  “Shaundra—if I tell you something, will you swear never to tell anyone?” Shaundra nodded. “You’ve got to swear,” Terri said. Shaundra nodded again and held up her hand. Terri didn’t want to think about her father by herself anymore. She told Shaundra what she had overheard and what she had figured out. It was hard to say. “I think . . . my father killed that man.” She wanted to call the words back.

  “Terri, do you really think it happened that way?” There were little dots of sweat on Shaundra’s upper lip.

  “I don’t know—” She felt like crying. “I don’t know, but what else could it be?”

  “Oh, god,” Shaundra said. “That’s terrible.” She leaned forward. “I’ve heard my father say there’s murder in everyone’s heart. I thought that was gross, but maybe it’s true. Oh, Terri. I don’t know what to say.”

  Terri turned her head. “Don’t say anything. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  “All right, we won’t then. We’ll talk about other stuff. I’ll tell you about my seven loves.”

  “Seven?” Terri managed a weak smile. “I thought it was six.”

  “There’s a new one. Rory Ross. Isn’t that sweet?”

  Terri smiled, a forced smile. She hardly heard anything Shaundra said. Had she made a bad mistake telling Shaundra her father’s secret? If the police found out, they would come for him. She pushed aside the cold cheeseburger. The congealed meat spilling out of the bun looked like blood. Where was her father now? Home? With Nancy? Doing their shopping? It didn’t matter. If the police wanted him, they’d find him. She had told Shaundra too much. Shaundra’s father was a policeman.

  What if Shaundra said to him, Pop, I have a friend who thinks her father killed someone a long time ago. And what if Shaundra’s father, the detective father, said, This sounds like an interesting case . . . and came with a gun and handcuffs . . .

  “Daddy.” Her lips silently formed the word. Daddy, you’re right, I don’t have to know . . . whatever you did, keep the secret. Don’t tell me. I don’t care. Let’s just go, let’s leave this town, let’s go right now so they won’t ever find you . . .

  “Terri. Terri?” Shaundra shook her arm. “What’s the matter?”

  “I was just . . .” Her palms were soaked. “I was just thinking . . . Shaundra, you won’t ever say anything about my father to anyone?”

  “I told you I wouldn’t, Terri.”

  “Not anyone?”

  “I won’t. I promise you. I won’t! Please don’t feel so bad. Maybe it’s not what you said at all. You know, you said yourself your father couldn’t hurt anyone.” She put her hand over Terri’s and Terri felt comforted for the moment, and close to her friend.

  EIGHT

  “Okay, class,” Mr. Higgens said, “settle down.” Tall, gaunt, with strings of wispy hair plastered to his skull, he was Terri’s favorite teacher. “I hope you have all come prepared to write an article for our newspaper. Remember, the paper we’re going to put together in the next couple weeks will include everything covered by a regular newspaper. Features, sports stories, cartoons, plenty of columns. Who’s going to be our Ann Landers? Volunteers? No? Lizbet?” He grinned fiercely at a big blonde girl sitting near the window. “We’ll call it Dear Lizbet.”

  “Not me,” Lizbet said, reddening.

  “We’re going to put out a newspaper,” Mr. Higgens went on, unperturbed, “and it’s going to be interesting. Nothing boring for us. Our articles are going to be written with verve, style, and wit. Everybody ready to be witty and stylish? Not to speak of vervish?”

  Terri laughed along with everyone else, enjoying Mr. Higgens’ performance. He rubbed his hands together. “Now, to sell this paper, what we really need is a nice juicy murder story on page one to grab our readers.”

  Terri’s enjoyment vanished abruptly. For a few moments she had managed to forget about her father. Now it all came back. A feeling of frustration and nothingness swept over her. She sat up rigidly. She had to think, not drown in a sea of self-pity. This morning, Shaundra had said, “Grown-ups want you to turn off your mind. Thirteen? So what? They think thirteen is still sucking your thumb.”

  At home, Terri’s father acted as he always did . . . but, perhaps, not exactly. She’d caught him looking at her a bit more keenly than usual, almost measuring her. Was he wondering if she had followed orders? Forget it, Terri, he’d said.

  She doodled on notepaper, wrote “Daddy,” and next to it, “Terri,” then cartooned a little tyke clutching at her father’s knee with an amiable grin. “I am your typical good little girl,” she wrote in a balloon over the little tyke’s head. Then, a few strokes of the pencil and the little tyke’s grin turned a shade evil. The little tyke was up to no good—Daddy better watch out!

  “All right,” Mr. Higgens was saying, “we can democratically elect an editor”—applause from the class—“or I can in typical, tyrannical fashion appoint myself. I appoint myself. Call me Ace. And remember, all you Woodwards and Bernsteins, we need feature stories. Terri, are you with us today?”

  She looked up, nodded. “I’m here.”

  “I have a feeling you were mulling over an idea for a feature story?”

  She shook her head. But a headline leaped into her mind. How My Father Avenged My Mother’s Death.

  “Well, put your quiet little mind to it, please.” He turned his gaze on another victim. “You there, Robert Olesky, what does your fertile brain think would make a good feature story? Remember, features should have heart, soul, and body.”

  “And bloo-ood,” Kenny Collins said from the back of the room.

  Everyone was laughing. Terri’s thoughts ran in a jum-bled rush, from news stories, to blood, to the metal box, to the manila envelopes. What was in t
he box? An Army discharge. An insurance policy. What else? What if there were newspaper clippings? Oakland Woman Dies in Car Crash. Death Car Driver Dies in Mysterious Accident. Husband of Dead Woman Sought.

  She bent over her paper. She was so slow! Why had it taken her all this time to realize answers to her questions were in the locked box? If only she had a key.

  At the end of the day Shaundra met her at her locker.

  “Hi. What’s happening?” They walked out through the big front doors.

  “Let’s do something. What should we do?”

  “I don’t know, what do you want to do?” Terri said. Could she have a key made? In stories people were always making wax impressions of keys.

  “Let’s go to the drugstore and look at magazines.”

  “Okay.” Or else they had sensitive fingers that knew how to make locks open with a touch.

  In the drugstore they bought a bag of jelly beans and looked at Seventeen and Teen Miss.

  “What now?” Shaundra said as they walked out together, eating jelly beans. A plan formed in Terri’s mind.

  “I better go home,” she said.

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “Shaundra—maybe you don’t want to. I’m going to do something—” She stopped. Imagining breaking into her father’s locked box was one thing. Saying it out loud, though, would be almost like doing it. And doing it? Her stomach jumped, and she wished she hadn’t eaten so many jelly beans.

  “What’re you going to do? I’ll help you. I hope it’s not cleaning the bathroom.”

  She said it quickly. “I’m going to break into my father’s locked box.”

  “Why?”

  “I think maybe he has newspaper stories in there about my mother, and about—about the other thing—”

  “The driver?” Shaundra said. “But, Terri, if he really did that, why would he want to keep articles about it?”

  Terri walked faster. “I don’t know, Shaundra. I only know I’ve just got to try and find out if it’s true. I don’t want to do this, but I can’t go on not knowing.”

  Leaves were falling from the trees, a yellow rain of leaves. Terri felt impatient, stretched her legs. In a moment she was ahead of Shaundra. Go home, open the box, look through the envelopes. Find out, get it over with. And then she would say to her father, You see, I know, and it’s better, because now, whatever happens, it’s the two of us.