information as quickly as we can.'
Deanna nodded. 'I know,' she said. 'Mom told me. I promised her I'd do whatever I could to help.'
'What can you tell us about your sister?' Stan Jacek asked. 'Her neighbors up on Camano Island knew her name and recognized her on sight, but she doesn't seem to have sought out friendships with any of them. No one could tell us much about her background-about where she came from and all that sort of thing.'
Deanna blew her nose. 'I'll tell you what I can, but I have to watch the time,' she said. 'My folks left Anchorage by plane this morning. They're due in at Sea-Tac two hours from now. I'll have to leave before too long to go pick them up.'
'That's where you're from-Alaska?'
Deanna nodded. 'Not originally. My folks moved up there from Dayton, Ohio, during the oil rush. They liked it so much they never left.'
'What do your parents do?' I asked.
'My father used to be a minister,' she said. 'Now he's the chief administrator in a convalescent home.'
'That's a big change.'
Deanna Meadows shrugged. 'He pretty much had to do it. Dad just couldn't bring himself to stand up in front of people and preach Sunday sermons when his own family life was in such disarray.'
'How so?' I asked.
'Because of Denise,' Deanna answered, with more than a trace of bitterness in her voice. 'It was always because of Denise. Isn't that why you're here?'
'I'm not sure,' Jacek said. 'Maybe you'd better tell us.'
It took a while for Deanna Meadows to answer. 'I guess you've heard all the bad talk about preachers' kids,' she said at last. 'About how awful they are.'
'I've heard rumors to that effect,' Jacek agreed, 'but from what I hear, teachers' kids are just as bad…or maybe even a little worse.'
' Some of them are,' Deanna asserted, placing careful emphasis on the word 'some.' 'Not all, but some.'
'So you're saying your sister went haywire?'
'She didn't go haywire; she always was haywire, but I don't think anyone realized it at first. As a little kid, she was so pretty. She got good grades and was smart as a whip-a lot smarter than I ever was. They tested her at school once. Her scores were off the charts. Genius-level I.Q. But she had this dark side to her, mean almost.
'As far as Denise was concerned, rules didn't exist. Not for her, anyway. Only for other people. The first time she got busted for soliciting, she was thirteen years old. She told my parents she was going to a slumber party with some of her friends from school. Instead, she was downtown trying to hustle visiting businessmen.'
'Thirteen's pretty young,' Stan Jacek agreed. Deanna Meadows; to make it easier for her to continue. I knew I'd seen hookers in Seattle who hadn't seen their twelfth birthdays yet, and I'm pretty sure Jacek had, too. Maybe even in Coupeville.
'What happened?' I asked.
'The cops called my parents. Dad went down to juvie to get her; to bail her out. On the way home, he asked her what she was thinking of; how come she did it. She said she did it for the money, because she didn't get enough allowance. She told him she'd figured out that she could make more by the hour screwing-although she called it something much worse than screwing-than he did after twenty years of being a minister.'
'That must have been hard on him,' Jacek said.
Deanna laughed a harsh, raw, humorless laugh. ' Hard is hardly the word for it!' she exclaimed. 'Denise killed something in my father when she told him that-robbed him of something important-his dignity. He took it personally. Having Denise act like that made him feel like his whole life was a fraud, a joke. He must have thought he had failed his entire family.'
There was a long pause while Deanna Meadows gazed off into the middle distance and collected her frayed emotions. When she spoke again, I could hear the unvarnished bitterness behind her words.
'Of course, I was there and doing all right. While Denise was out raising hell, I was busy finishing up my last year in high school and getting good grades, but that didn't seem to matter. It didn't count. I don't think anybody even noticed. That's what they say. The squeaky wheel is always the one that gets the oil.'
'What happened after your father brought Denise home?' Jacek asked.
Deanna shrugged. 'He must have written his letter of resignation that very night and turned it in the next day. He never preached another sermon. I used to love his sermons. He and Mom were both hurting, but Denise didn't give a damn. My parents tried to pick up some of the pieces-tried to glue them back together. They did all the things parents do, like going to counseling and all that, but it didn't work. Nothing worked. Denise didn't want to get better because she didn't think there was anything wrong with her.
'Eventually, my parents just gave up. They had to. They ran out of time and energy and money all at the same time. They couldn't afford to keep of fighting. By then, my father had gone back to school to get a degree in hospital administration, and my mother was working as a receptionist in a doctor's office. Denise ran away for good when she was fourteen. I was already down here, going to school on a scholarship. I met a guy here at school. Gary's the best thing that ever happened to me. We ended up falling in love and getting married.'
'And Denise?'
'She dropped out of sight completely. No one heard from her for years and years. Then, about a year and a half ago, out of a clear blue sky, she turned back up. Someone rang my doorbell one morning, and when I opened the door, there she was. ‘Hi,' she says with this big grin on her face, as though nothing had ever happened, like the years in between the last time I saw her and right then didn't exist.
'‘It's your baby sister,' she says. ‘Remember me?''
Deanna closed her eyes as if remembering for a moment before she continued. 'I was so shocked, I could hardly believe it. I mean, we all thought she was dead, but there she was, big as life.'
'You let her in?'
'Of course I did. Wouldn't you if your long-lost sister showed up when you'd spent years thinking she was dead and buried? Not only was she alive, she looked like a million dollars.
'She was all dolled up-healthy and tan. She's a brunette, not a redhead like me, so her skin always turns- turned golden brown whenever she went out in the sun. She looked like one of the models you see in commercials for Caribbean cruises.'
'And?'
'She came in for a while. We sat down and talked.' Deanna Meadows frowned. 'I guess I'm naive. I thought maybe she had changed. I hoped she had done the same thing I did-that she had grown up and become a responsible adult. But she hadn't. She said her boyfriend-she called him Gabby or Gebby-something like that-had just given her a new car, one of those little Cadillac convertibles. White and black with a white leather interior. Anyway, she had decided to take the car out for a spin and look me up while she was at it. I still don't know how she found me.'
Jacek leaned forward in his chair. 'Was Gabby or Gebby the boyfriend's first or last name?' he asked.
Deanna frowned. 'I don't know. I don't think she ever said. I did ask her if she and her boyfriend were, like, engaged or something. She just laughed and said she'd never marry him because he was too old for her.'
'Did she tell you anything else about him?'
'Not really, because she didn't stay for very long after that. And I was glad when she left. I didn't like being around her. It was almost like getting over being sick and then having a relapse. I felt like the whole time she was here she was making fun of everything I stood for and believed in. I think that's how my father must have felt, too, that time in the car.'
Deanna Meadows started crying again. For the next few minutes, there was nothing for Jacek or me to do until Deanna Meadows got herself back under control.
'It's so hard to understand,' she said finally, when she could talk again. 'I loved her once. Denise was so cute when she was little. I used to like to dress her up and show her off to my friends like she was some kind of living, breathing doll. Much better than a Barbie. But then she changed, and I never knew how or why.
'Part of me still loves her, I guess. Part of me still misses the little girl she once was, but part of me hates her, too. For what she did to my parents. For what she did to me. I think I've hated her for a long time. If she's dead, I'm sorry. At least I cry like I'm sorry, but still…'
Once again Deanna broke off and couldn't continue. I understood. There's very little distance between love
