The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes Read online

  “Yes,” he said. “So I figure, I’ll pretend I’m really pissed at you for something.” He glanced at her with his full-lipped smile. “I can’t imagine what you could do to piss me off, though.”

  “I told Ronnie I thought you were interested in someone else.”

  “Brilliant!” He nodded appreciatively. “Except it makes me look like a shithead. I want the breakup to be your fault.”

  “Uh-uh,” she said with a smile. “It’s got to be yours.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ve already asked enough of you, so I’ll take the heat. We’ll make it my fault. An old girlfriend’s come back into my life and being a typical male asshole, I’m leaving you for her.”

  “What’s she like?”

  “She looks kind of like Telly Savalas, but she has some kind of hold on me,” he said.

  “What?” CeeCee laughed.

  “She can be moody, too,” Tim continued. “And she’s hard to get, so I’ve always been intrigued with her. So, now that she wants me, I just can’t help myself.”

  He seemed so absorbed with the fantasy that CeeCee felt uncomfortable. “This is all made up, right?”

  “Oh, babe, do you think I could ever leave you?” Was there a trace of annoyance in the question? She was afraid she was starting to sound as insecure as she felt. “No other woman compares to you,” he said. “You’ve got the world’s most amazing hair and you’re smart and you’ve organized my entire house and won my brother over. Plus, you’re dynamite in bed.”

  She blushed at that. She was not dynamite in bed; she’d still not had an orgasm with him inside her. Maybe she didn’t move enough or something. His fictional girlfriend was probably multiorgasmic. No wonder he wanted to go back to her. In her imagination, she named her Willa.

  As planned, Tim came to the coffee shop two weeks before Thanksgiving. Instead of sitting in his booth, he asked CeeCee to walk outside with him. He looked appropriately troubled.

  Ronnie was headed for the kitchen, and CeeCee caught her arm. “Tim wants to talk to me in private,” she whispered. “Could you cover my tables for a few minutes?”

  Ronnie glanced at Tim. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” CeeCee shrugged. “Nothing, I hope.”

  “Go ahead,” Ronnie said. “I’ll cover.”

  She and Tim walked outside and stood on the sidewalk by the coffee-shop windows. Students walked past them in either direction, crowding them, brushing up against them, but they held their ground. This was to be a show, primarily for Ronnie’s sake.

  “Just remember I love you,” he began.

  She nodded. The sunlight gave him a halo of golden curls. She wanted to touch him but kept her arms folded rigidly across her chest.

  “My old girlfriend’s come back,” he said. “And she made me realize that I was never really in love with you. I’m sorry. I need to break up with you.”

  “I knew it!” She stomped her foot on the sidewalk. “I knew there was someone else.”

  Tim started to smile at her false anger, but caught himself. “It only just happened,” he said. “It’s not like I’ve been with her all along or anything.”

  “How can you do this to me?” she shouted, louder than she’d intended to. A guy walking past her told her to “settle down.”

  “I never wanted to hurt you,” Tim said. He hadn’t shaved that morning; she could see the pale stubble on his cheeks.

  “Well, you’re doing a good job of it,” she said. “What does she have that I don’t have?”

  “It’s not you, CeeCee. It’s me,” he said. “You’re wonderful and I just…it’s completely my fault.”

  “Damn straight,” she said.

  “I’m really, really sorry.” He put his hands on her shoulders, but she raised her arms quickly to cast him off. “Can you cry?” he asked.

  She put her hands to her face and let her shoulders heave.

  “That’s better,” Tim said. “I’d like to think that losing me would tear you apart. Like losing you would do to me.” He pulled her toward him. “Okay, now I’ll comfort you tenderly for one last time.”

  She buried her head on his shoulder. “Oh, Tim, I don’t like this,” she said.

  “I know, babe.” He patted her back in the halfhearted manner of a lover who’s already moved on. “Me, neither. But you and I know what’s really still between us. Come over tomorrow night, okay? Just be sure to show up after dark so no one sees you. And come around to the back door.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  He pulled away from her. “Now look pissed off before you go back in,” he said.

  “Pissed off isn’t good enough.” She wiped her dry eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m going for complete devastation.”

  “Don’t forget who loves you.” He winked at her.

  “Ditto,” she said, and without thinking, she drew back her hand and let it fly, her palm connecting with his stubbled cheek in a slap that turned every head on the street.

  He looked at her, wide-eyed with shock as he raised his own hand to his crimson cheek.

  “Oh, my God, Tim, I’m sorry.” She tried to reach for him, but he backed away.

  “That’s it,” he said. “I’ll put your things out on the curb for you.”

  She watched him walk up Franklin Street, losing him quickly in the crowd of students. She looked down at her palm. What had gotten into her? And why had hitting him felt so good?

  She was stoic once inside the restaurant, as she pretended to tamp down the raw emotions of a woman scorned. Ronnie was solicitous and comforting, and CeeCee knew that she and their manager, George, were talking about her behind her back. She hated being the object of their pity and she hated that they now viewed Tim as a selfish womanizer. But she knew this was only the beginning of her necessary lies.

  Chapter Nine

  I wish I could see you now, at sixteen. You’re an amazing twelve-year-old, so I can only imagine you’ll get more amazing as you get older. Yesterday, when the nurse tried to keep you out of my room because I was so sick, I could hear you talking to her through the closed door. You told her, “That’s MY mother, not yours. I’ll take care of her.” Even though I had my head over the basin, it made me laugh. And it let me know how strong you are and that you’re going to be just fine without me.

  How did you ever get so brave?

  Even though they were only a few miles outside of Chapel Hill, the tension in Tim’s van was already so thick CeeCee could feel it on her skin. They still had a good hour and a half before they reached New Bern. The bucket seat felt lumpy to her, pressing against her back in the wrong places. Marty sat on a beach chair turned sideways behind Tim’s seat. He held a hand-drawn map on one knee and a beer bottle on the other, and he and Tim had been arguing about which roads to take since pulling out of their driveway. She wanted to tell them to shut up; if they couldn’t agree on something as simple as how to get to New Bern, how were they going to make the more critical decisions that lay ahead of them in the next couple of days? But she said nothing, afraid of making Tim any more agitated than he already was. They were on edge, all of them. These were their last few hours as law-abiding citizens.

  The mattress in the back of the van was covered with suitcases, duffel bags and backpacks. It had taken Tim a full day to pack and she’d felt sorry for him as she watched him weigh what to take and what to leave behind. He and Marty would never be returning to the mansion. She, on the other hand, brought only a couple of changes of clothes and her toothbrush. That was all she expected to need. Three days, max, Tim had told her. Then Andie would be safe, the governor’s wife returned to hearth and home, and CeeCee could go back to Chapel Hill.

  She was in charge of the cassette tapes on this trip. The Eagles, of course. Creedence and Queen and Chicago and old Stones. None of it very soothing.

  “Turn that crap off,” Marty snapped at her when Queen started singing “We are the Champions.”

  “Don’t talk
to her that way,” Tim said.

  “It’s all right,” she said, pressing the eject button. “What do you want to hear, Marty?”

  “I don’t know.” He sounded desolate all of a sudden. “Stones, I guess.”

  She put in the cassette, and “Under my Thumb” filled the van.

  “Turn it down,” Tim said.

  She did. She would do whatever she was told to keep peace in the van.

  Tim turned onto a highway, and Marty grabbed his shoulder from behind. “I told you not to go this way!” he shouted.

  “Let go of me.” Tim’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel. “It’s a straight shot from here, Marty.”

  “Stop it, you two!” she said. “We have to pull together, okay? Y’all told me this would be easy and now you’re at each other’s throats.”

  The two men shut up, probably stunned into silence by the fact that she’d confronted them more than by her request to stop fighting. No one said a word for nearly an hour. She put on the Eagles when the Stones tape was finished, then tried to get comfortable as she watched the terrain grow flatter, broken up by miles and miles of tall pines. The small houses were acres apart from one another. Some of them were well maintained, with white wrought-iron railings on the front steps and gazing globes in their yards. Others had sheet plastic over the windows, sloppily patched roofs and weedy, knee-high lawns.

  “We’re in the boonies, boys and girls.” Marty finally broke the silence.

  “The boonier, the better,” Tim said.

  Marty leaned forward between the bucket seats and pointed to an opening in a grove of pines. “Turn here,” he said. She could smell tobacco and beer on his breath.

  Tim turned onto a narrow one-lane road.

  “Now, watch for a road off to the right,” Marty said. “It’s about a mile down, I think.”

  He knew the couple who would put them up for the night, and he’d been to their house once before.

  “Is that it?” Marty leaned even farther between the seats to peer out the front window.

  CeeCee spotted a road veering off to the right.

  “Yeah,” Marty answered his own question. “Turn here.”

  Tim did as he was told. They were on a rutted dirt road, so tightly surrounded by pines and shrubs that the sun was stolen from them and branches scraped the side of the van. It was three in the afternoon, but it might as well have been evening for all the light on the road.

  They grew quiet as they bounced along. The cassette tape ended, but CeeCee didn’t even notice. In the silence, she could almost hear her heart beating. In a few minutes, everything would change and their journey would begin in earnest. Guiltily she hoped something would interfere with their plan. The kidnapping was to occur the following night. Maybe the woman would be ill and unable to teach her class. Maybe the people they were going to stay with would talk Tim and Marty out of the whole crazy idea.

  She’d told Ronnie and George that she was taking Thanksgiving week off to visit a high-school friend who now lived in Pennsylvania. George was annoyed, but Ronnie was so supportive that CeeCee felt guilty.

  “You need to get away,” Ronnie said. “You’ve been so down since the breakup with Tim.”

  She wasn’t depressed, but she’d apparently done a good job of acting as though she were. She saw Tim nearly as much as before the so-called breakup. She’d lie to Ronnie about meeting a friend for dinner, then go to Tim’s house for lovemaking and reassurance that everything would turn out all right.

  “You sure this is it?” Tim asked now, after they’d driven through the dark tunnel of trees for several minutes.

  “Yes, I’m sure,” Marty said. A house suddenly appeared in a small clearing on the right. “That’s it,” he said.

  The house was tiny, the white paint peeling. Smoke rose from the crumbling top of the brick chimney. A rusting swing set stood near the woods, and a little girl swung on it, leaning back so far that her long blond hair dusted the ground. Three cars, ancient and rusting, sat in the weeds on the other side of the house, and a truck and an old VW bus were parked next to them.

  “Looks like Forrest has a leak,” Marty said, and CeeCee noticed a man on the roof spreading a piece of blue sheet plastic over the shingles. He stood up as they pulled in behind the old cars, and he hesitated a moment before heading for the ladder that rested against the eaves.

  Two mangy dogs, barking and baring teeth, ran up to the van as CeeCee and the men started to get out. She was afraid of the dogs, but she didn’t want Tim to think she was a chicken. If she couldn’t handle two dogs, how was she going to handle the task she’d agreed to?

  “Hi, fellas,” she said, holding her arms close to her sides. The dogs sniffed her legs, tails rising into uncertain wags.

  The man climbed down the ladder from the roof and approached them. He was tall, bearded and big-boned but not overweight. He looked like someone accustomed to physical work. He wiped his hand on the rag hanging from his belt, then reached out to shake Marty’s.

  “What’s the buzz, bro?” he asked.

  “Not much,” Marty answered. “This is my brother, Tim, and his girlfriend, CeeCee. And this is Forrest.”

  The little girl ran from the swing set and grabbed on to Forrest’s leg. “Is this the company?” she asked.

  Forrest rested one big hand on the child’s head. “Yes, honey,” he said, then to the three of them, “And this is Dahlia.”

  “I’m five,” Dahlia said.

  CeeCee laughed nervously, charmed by the little girl’s blue-eyed beauty. “Wow, five,” she said. “Are you in kindergarten?”

  “Mommy teaches me,” Dahlia said. “Where does your hair end?” She let go of her father to walk behind CeeCee. “It’s all the way to your bottom!” she said, delighted. “I’m going to grow my hair that long.”

  “Leave her alone, Dahlia,” Forrest said. His voice was gruff, all business. “You guys have any trouble finding us?”

  “No problem,” Tim said. “We’ll just have to figure out how to get from here to the cabin.”

  It was the first time the cabin had been mentioned on this trip, but as much as she would have liked to, CeeCee had not forgotten about it. That was where she would create the prison for the governor’s wife.

  “I’ve got a map you can take a look at,” Forrest said.

  “Great.” Tim nodded.

  They followed Forrest through the front door. The inside of the house was an unexpected contrast to the ramshackle exterior. There was a fire in the small fireplace and the living room smelled of smoke and something else, something savory. The furniture was old and threadbare, but the room was neat and cozy. They walked through the living room into a kitchen, where a woman, dressed in a long pale yellow skirt and blue-trimmed peasant blouse, pulled a loaf of bread from the oven.

  “Smells good in here,” Tim said.

  The woman set the bread next to two other loaves on the counter and shut the oven door. She did not look pleased to see them.

  “Naomi,” Forrest said, as he lifted Dahlia onto his shoulders. “You remember Marty?”

  “You shouldn’t have come here, Marty,” the woman said. Her shoulder-length hair was light brown, part of it caught in a barrette on the back of her head.

  Marty ignored her comment. “This is Tim and his girlfriend, CeeCee,” he said.

  A small cry came from the corner of the room, and CeeCee noticed a cradle near the doorway. Naomi walked over to it and lifted a baby into her arms. She walked out of the room, jostling the baby, cooing to him.

  “She’s upset you’re here,” Forrest said, looking toward the door through which Naomi had disappeared. “You have to understand, it’s been years for us. We’ve got a good life here and she’s afraid you’ll screw it up.”

  “That ain’t gonna happen,” Marty said.

  “I know.” Forrest reached over his head to tickle his daughter, who giggled and covered his eyes with her hands. “Don’t get me wrong,” Forrest said, pryin
g Dahlia’s hands from his face. “Naomi’s got a good heart. She knows what you’re doing and supports you in it, but she doesn’t want us to be part of it. So I’m telling you boys—” he looked from Marty to Tim “—forget you were ever here. You, too, CeeCee. You can stay with us tonight and we’ll give you a car, like I said, but once you’re out of here, you just forget you ever saw the place.”

  “A car?” CeeCee asked. Why did they need a car?

  “You’ll need one when this is over,” Tim said. “You know, when Marty and I take off. You’ll have to go back to—” He suddenly slapped his forehead with his palm. “Damn!” he said. “You probably don’t even have your license yet, do you?”

  “I do. I’m supposed to have an adult with me, but I know how to drive.” She cringed. She’d said adult as though she were not one herself, but Tim didn’t seem to notice.

  “Good,” he said. “That’s great. So you can use one of Forrest’s.”

  “Not just use it,” Forrest corrected. “Keep it. We’ve got more than we need, and like I said, we don’t want any of you coming back here leaving a trail behind you for the pigs to follow.”

  “What pigs, Daddy?” Dahlia asked.

  Forrest lifted Dahlia off his shoulders and set her on the floor. He leaned down. “The little pig that went to market,” he said.

  Dahlia ran out of the room, squealing with laughter as her father chased after her.

  Tim turned to Marty. “You said they’d be happy to help us,” he said. “Overjoyed. Isn’t that the word you used?”

  “Fuck off,” Marty said. “It’s gonna be fine.”

  They ate beef stew and honey-wheat bread for supper, and no one said a word about the plans for the following day. It took CeeCee a while to realize that was for Dahlia’s sake: they wouldn’t talk about it with a child in the room. Dahlia talked to CeeCee throughout the meal, telling her about the latest geography lesson she’d had from her mother, in which she learned the names of the states in alphabetical order. She rattled them off with only a few mistakes. When supper was over, Forrest handed the baby to Naomi, who sat back in her chair, tucked the infant beneath her peasant blouse, and began to nurse him.