Still Missing

wait for anything--not doctor's appointments, tables in restaurants, supermarket lines--and sure as shit she generally ends up with an appointment within the hour, the best table, and the store manager opening the next checkout for her.

'Mom, stop, I'm fine. There's nothing a doctor can do for a cold--' I held up my hand as she opened her mouth to interrupt. 'But I promise if I get sicker I'll go.' She sighed, set her purse and package down on my end table, and patted the couch.

'Why don't you lie down and I'll make you a hot lemon tea with honey.'

Telling her I was capable of boiling my own water would just get me a look, so I collapsed on the couch.

'Sure, it's above the stove.'

Once she'd brought me a steaming mug, a plate of Annie Bear cookies, and poured herself a healthy glass of the red wine I had in the kitchen, she sat at the end of the couch and spread my throw over the both of us.

She took a good long gulp of the wine, handed me the package, and said, 'I found that photo album you were talking about, it must have gotten mixed up with our stuff somehow.' Sure it did. But I let it go. She'd brought the pictures back and the hot tea was spreading a pleasant glow throughout my body and even my feet felt warm tucked against her leg.

As I started to flip through the album, Mom took out an envelope from her purse and handed it to me.

'You didn't have these photos, so I made you copies.'

Surprised at the unexpected gesture, I focused on the first one. She and Daisy were at one of the ice rinks in town wearing matching outfits, matching ponytails, and matching skates. Daisy looked about fifteen, so it was probably taken just before the accident, and in the pink sparkly costume Mom looked about the same age. I'd forgotten she skated with Daisy sometimes when she was practicing.

'People used to tell me all the time that we could be sisters,' she said. I wanted to say, Really? I don't see it at all.

'You were prettier.'

'Annie, your sister was gorgeous.' I looked at her face. Her eyes were shining and I knew she was pleased, but I also knew she agreed with me.

While she got up to get herself more wine, I flipped through the rest of the photos, and as she settled back down at my feet with a full glass--this time she brought the half-empty bottle with her and set it on the end table--I stopped at the last one, of Dad and her on their wedding day.

When I glanced over at her, she was staring into her glass. It may have just been a trick of the light, but her eyes looked moist.

'Your dress was beautiful.' I looked down at its sweetheart neckline, at the long beaded veil in her blond hair. Then back up from the photo.

Leaning toward me, she said, 'I made it from a pattern Val wanted for her own wedding dress one day. I told her she didn't have the chest for it.' Mom laughed. 'Can you believe she's never forgiven me? For that or for going out with your father.' She shrugged. 'Like it was my fault he liked me more.'

This was news. 'Aunt Val dated Dad?'

'They only went out a few times, but I suppose she thought they were something. She was just awful at the wedding, barely spoke to me. Did I tell you about our cake? It was three layers, and...'

While mom went step by step through their wedding feast, the details of which I'd heard a million times, I thought about Aunt Val. No wonder she was always trying to get back at Mom. Might also explain her attitude toward Daisy and me. When we were kids she and Mom did the take-each-other's-kids-for-the-weekend thing, which Daisy and I dreaded. Aunt Val mostly ignored me, but I swear she actually hated Daisy, looking for any reason to make fun of her while Tamara and her brother giggled.

Our families didn't do a lot together after the accident. Wayne and Uncle Mark don't have much in common, or even like each other, so it was mostly just Aunt Val and Mom. When they did include us kids, my cousin Jason teased the hell out of me, but Tamara kept her distance--I thought she was stuck-up. Now I figure her mother was probably giving her the gears about me as much as mine was about her.

One afternoon after I moved into my house Mom and Aunt Val popped in from a shopping trip. Aunt Val glanced around, then asked me how I was enjoying real estate.

'It's good, I like the challenge.'

'Yes, Tamara seems to really thrive on it too. She got the top sales award for her office this quarter, won a bottle of Dom Perignon and a weekend trip to Whistler. Does your office ever do anything like that, Annie?' Nice dig, if not subtle. My office was large for Clayton Falls, but nowhere near the size of Tamara's downtown Vancouver firm--we'd be lucky to get a bottle of wine and a plastic plaque.

Before I could answer, Mom said, 'Oh, she's still doing residential? Annie's getting a huge project, all waterfront units. Didn't you say it was going to be the largest building in Clayton Falls, Annie Bear?' I'd only been talking to a developer, hadn't even done a presentation yet, which Mom well knew, but she just enjoyed twisting the knife so much, I didn't have the heart to take it out of her hand.

I said, 'It's a big one.'

'I'm sure Tamara will get a project one day too, Val. Maybe Annie can give her some tips?' Mom smiled at Aunt Val, who looked like her tea had just turned to poison in her mouth.

Of course, Aunt Val rallied.

'That's a lovely offer, but right now Tamara is finding she can make more money selling houses and doesn't want to spend years marketing a project that may not even sell. But I'm sure Annie will be fabulous at it.'

Mom's face turned so red I was actually worried for a minute, but she managed to force a smile and changed the subject. God only knows what those two were like growing up.

Mom never talks about her childhood much, but I know her dad split when she was pretty young and her mom remarried another deadbeat. Her older stepbrother, Dwight, is the one who's in prison. He robbed a bank when he was nineteen, just before Mom got married, served his sentence, and was released a month after the accident, then managed to get arrested a week later. Dumbass even shot a guard in the leg the last time. I've never met him and Mom refuses to talk about him. I made the mistake of asking if we could go see him once and she flipped out. 'Don't you even think about going near that man.' When I said, 'But Tamara told me Aunt Val takes them, so why can't we--' that got me a slammed door.

After we moved into the shitty rental house, I came home from school one day to find Mom sitting on the couch, staring at a letter in her hands with a half-empty bottle of vodka beside her. It looked like she'd been crying.

I said, 'What's wrong, Mom?' She just kept staring at the letter.

'Mom?'

Her voice was desperate. 'I won't let it happen again. I won't.'

A jolt of fear shot through me. 'What--what won't you let happen?'

She held a lighter to the letter and dropped it in the ashtray. When it was gone she picked up the bottle and stumbled to her room. On the kitchen table I found an envelope with a prison as its return address. The envelope was gone by the morning, but she didn't leave the house for a week after that.

I tuned back in when Mom said, 'You know, Luke's a lot like your father.'

'You think? I guess in some ways. He's patient like Dad was, that's for sure. We've been talking a lot recently, I'm going to help him with his bookkeeping.'

'Bookkeeping?' She said the word like I'd just announced I was going to become a prostitute. 'You hate bookkeeping.'

I shrugged. 'I need to make some money.'

'So you haven't talked to an agent or a producer?'

'I decided I don't want to make more money off what happened to me. It makes me sick that people, including me, have made any money off it at all.'

The first time I saw an old high school friend being interviewed on TV, I sat stunned on my couch while this girl I hadn't seen in a decade told the talk show host about the first time we tried pot, about the outdoor party where I got drunk and threw up in the backseat of a car belonging to a boy I had a major crush on, then read aloud from notes we supposedly passed each other in class. That wasn't even the worst of it--the guy I lost my virginity to sold his story to a major men's magazine. Jerk even gave them pictures of us from when we were together. One