One Speck of Truth Read online

  Dedication

  For Melissa

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  One: A History of Questions

  Two: Where’s Adam?

  Three: Where Are You?

  Four: What’s Wrong with My Mom?

  Five: Why Is Life So Unfair?

  Six: Why Do Good Things Happen to Bad People?

  Seven: Who Is Alma McArthur?

  Eight: Where Is All the Furniture?

  Nine: What If I Never Find You?

  Ten: What Happens to People After They Disappear?

  Eleven: What Was Mom Like Before She Had Me?

  Twelve: What Does It Mean to Be Portuguese?

  Thirteen: Does Anyone Miss You as Much as I Do?

  Fourteen: Where Did I Get My Music?

  Fifteen: Where Can I Look for You Now?

  Sixteen: What Would I Do Without Nanny?

  Seventeen: How Far Away Is Home?

  Eighteen: Is This When I Finally Find You?

  Nineteen: What?

  Twenty: What Happened?

  Twenty-One: What If?

  Twenty-Two: What Is a Dad?

  Twenty-Three: Who Else Has Been Lying?

  Twenty-Four: How Do I Stop Being a Sneaky Kid?

  Twenty-Five: What If I Have Questions?

  Twenty-Six: Where Would We Be Without My Mom?

  Twenty-Seven: Will He Show Up?

  About the Author

  Books by Caela Carter

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  One

  A History of Questions

  WHEN I WAS FOUR, I ASKED my mom a question. Eight years later I’m still waiting for the answer.

  I was sitting on my mom’s lap at our new kitchen table in our new tiny apartment, just the two of us, no Nanny and PopPop. We were sharing a dinner out of cardboard take-out boxes.

  “Mom,” I said. “Where’s my dad?”

  I felt my mom’s legs stiffen underneath mine. She cleared her throat. “You heard what Nanny said. He passed away.”

  “I know,” I said. “But where is he? Nanny said he’s in a graveyard.”

  “Yes,” my mom said.

  “But where is the graveyard?”

  Mom didn’t say anything else. She took a bite of her food. She shifted.

  “Did you read any books at school today?” she asked.

  “Where is the graveyard?” I said.

  “I’ll tell you when you’re older,” Mom said. “Did you read any books at school today?”

  “How old?” I asked. “Seven?”

  “I don’t know, Alma,” Mom said, her voice getting louder.

  “Twelve?” I asked. Back then, twelve seemed very old.

  “Alma. Enough. We are changing the subject.”

  And she was the grown-up and I was the kid. So when she spoke hard and loud like that, all the thoughts swimming around in my brain stopped mattering. Or at least they seemed not to matter. Or at least they seemed not to matter to anyone else. They were mine, of course, the questions. So they’ve always mattered to me.

  When I was six, I tried it a little differently.

  We were sitting at our new-new kitchen table in our new-new house all the way out in Pennsylvania, far from Nanny and PopPop in Florida.

  I sat across from my mom, rearranging the meatballs on top of my spaghetti.

  I didn’t look at her. I thought maybe if I didn’t look at her, I could trick her into answering.

  “So is the right graveyard near where we are now? Because now we live close to where you grew up. Or maybe it’s near where Nanny and PopPop live? Because that’s where we lived when I was as a baby.”

  Mom coughed as if a piece of meatball were stuck in her throat. I still didn’t look at her.

  “Or is it all the way in Portugal?”

  I didn’t want to see the way she narrowed her gray eyes when I asked a question. I didn’t want to see the way her bun was wound tight, tight, tighter on the back of her head. I didn’t want to see her perfect posture. All the ways she was better than me.

  “The right graveyard?” she finally said, like the words were from some nonsense language. “What do you mean by ‘right graveyard’?”

  But I knew she knew what I meant.

  I speared a meatball with my fork and to it I said, “The one where my dad—”

  “Alma,” Mom interrupted. She sighed. “Not today. I’m tired.”

  I bit my lip, embarrassed and angry. But also a little determined. I’d find out where he was, even if she didn’t want me to.

  “Be a good girl and stop asking questions,” Mom said.

  But if good girls were girls with no questions, I wasn’t a good girl. I couldn’t be.

  I was determined to find him so I decided to ask every day. Every day she would say no, she wouldn’t tell me.

  She said the same thing for so many days in a row that I finally called Nanny and asked her.

  “He’s near you, sweetheart. Of course he’s near where you live now.”

  When I tried to ask more questions, Nanny cut me off just like Mom did. “Some answers need to wait until you’re older.”

  By the time I was eight, I had found him. But that didn’t chase all the questions away.

  “Where did you meet?” I asked Mom one night.

  “We met in Lisbon. In Portugal,” she said. “When I was spending my junior year of college abroad. You know that.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But where in Lisbon?”

  Mom turned her back to me. She was cooking. I was alone at the kitchen table this time.

  “I don’t remember all the details, Alma,” Mom said. She sounded tired. I made her tired.

  “You got married, right?” I said.

  Mom said nothing. She rearranged pans on the stove, then walked to the counter next to it and put her elbows down so her back was pointing toward me.

  “You were in love, right?”

  She put her head in her hands right there on the counter.

  “What did he say when I was born?” I asked. “Did he look like me?”

  Mom rubbed her forehead.

  “Did he want me to have his last name?”

  “Enough, Alma,” Mom said. She was always sick of the questions. I couldn’t stop them from coming. I didn’t know how. And, sometimes, I didn’t want to anyway.

  “Enough,” she said again. Even though I had stopped. For now.

  Enough. That was the only answer I got.

  When I was ten, Mom and Adam were married. I tried to ask him instead.

  “Do I have any family still in Portugal?” I asked.

  He was driving me to a piano lesson. So I didn’t have to look at him, but also he couldn’t run away.

  “You’ll have to ask your mother, Alma,” Adam said.

  “Did you know my dad is buried in the graveyard behind the McKinleys’ house?”

  Adam raised his eyebrows and looked at me in the rearview mirror. “You’ll have to ask your mother about that,” he said.

  “Did he love me?” I asked.

  Adam didn’t answer for a minute. He pulled the car over and turned around so he could look at me.

  “Alma. Of course he loved you,” Adam whispered. “You’re the most lovable kid in the world.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  I took that answer and tucked it into a pocket right in the middle of my heart. He loved me. My dad loved me.

  The rest of the questions were still humming in my brain, but they quieted a little with that one answer.

  He loved me.

  Later, I asked my mom that question.

  I guess that was a good question for some rea
son because she actually answered it.

  “Of course,” she said. “Of course he loved you.”

  But she didn’t look up from her work to say it.

  A few weeks ago, when I was newly twelve, I found my mom on the little couch in the living room, surrounded by papers, her glasses pushed up on her head.

  Her eyes were red and there was a tissue next to her so I knew she’d been crying, even though she always tries to hide her sadness from me.

  Sadness and questions belong in other people’s houses. Not ours.

  I asked a question anyway, of course.

  I asked a new kind of question.

  “Mom,” I said. “Where’s Adam?”

  “Alma,” she said like I’d done something wrong. Like I’d thrown a ball through the window or put already-chewed gum under the couch cushions. “I swear, if you don’t ask me another question for a hundred years it’ll be too soon.”

  It was like she slapped me.

  She slapped me with her words.

  So now I have new questions.

  A pile of new questions.

  A heap of new questions.

  And they are piling, heaping on top of the mountain of my old questions.

  I used to be a girl but I’m not anymore.

  Questions are my bones, my blood, my organs.

  I’ve been overtaken by questions.

  I can’t ask my mom anymore.

  Instead, I find a way to ask my dad.

  Two

  Where’s Adam?

  MY BEST FRIEND, JULIA, DOESN’T KNOW about the No Questions Rule. Julia lives in a normal family with normal rules. Julia is an actual good girl who doesn’t ask the questions she isn’t supposed to.

  Julia, Mom, and I are sitting at our kitchen table with cartons of Chinese food open between the three of us. Julia and I have spent almost every minute of this summer before sixth grade together. But she hasn’t been here in weeks. It’s better when we sleep over at her house.

  “Hey,” she says.

  My heart speeds up. I know what she’s going to say before her mouth opens. She’s going to ask a question.

  Not the sort of safe question that Mom allows, like “Can I have more milk?” or “Is there still a TV in the living room so we can watch a movie?”

  She’s going to ask a Bad Girl Question. She won’t know it’s a Bad Girl Question because I haven’t told her or anyone what’s been happening in my house.

  “Hey,” she says again. “Where’s Uncle hjAdam?”

  A piece of stir-fried broccoli lodges in my throat and I cough.

  If I were the one asking, Mom would say, “Don’t ask me that right now, Alma.”

  Or “The details are not for the children to know.”

  Or “Go practice the piano.”

  But Mom doesn’t say anything to Julia. She gets up and pours me a glass of water. My face burns as I take a sip.

  Finally she says, “That’s actually private family business.”

  Julia looks stunned.

  I feel stunned. If it’s private family business, I must not be part of the family. No one has explained to me where my stepdad—or maybe ex-stepdad—is now that he’s not here anymore. A few weeks ago I saw him putting a suitcase in his car. “Alma,” he said. “You know my number. You call me when it gets really bad.”

  I didn’t know what that meant but he didn’t give me time to ask. He squashed me into a hug, then rushed into his car and drove away.

  Since then, Mom hasn’t told me anything. Nothing. Zilch.

  But I’m pretty sure he’s gone forever.

  Julia’s looking at her shoes. She’s embarrassed like I am.

  Mom is good at that.

  Reminding us how small we are.

  Reminding us how little we need to know.

  Mom comes into my room at ten on the dot. Julia is sprawled out on her sleeping bag on my rug, braiding a friendship bracelet. I’m sitting at my desk, surrounded by scraps of loose-leaf paper. On each I write one sentence.

  One question.

  What would you have said to me on my birthday this year?

  Where did you and my mom like to go to have fun?

  How old were you when you died?

  As soon as I see my mom, I scramble to gather all the scraps of paper, hiding them in my hands. She can’t know about the questions. They belong to only me. Until I can give them to my dad.

  “Lights out, girls,” Mom says.

  At Julia’s house we don’t have a Lights-Out time during sleepovers.

  “I have to brush my teeth!” Julia says, jumping to her feet. Mom sighs.

  I stand to pull back my covers and get into my bed. Mom is staring at me. Her bun is so tight it makes the skin stretch thin on her forehead.

  “I already brushed mine,” I say.

  “Lights-out is at ten,” Mom says, as if it’s my fault Julia didn’t brush her teeth yet.

  Lights-out used to be at ten for me and ten thirty for Mom. But recently I’ve seen the light on under her door late into the night. Mom is forgetting her own rules half the time, but she doesn’t forget mine ever.

  Julia comes back and crawls into her sleeping bag.

  Mom crosses the room and plants a kiss on my forehead. “I love you, Alma. I do everything I do just for you.”

  She says the same thing every night. She likes it when one day looks exactly like the day before. It’s my favorite part of her everyday same things. Hearing that she loved me that day. No matter what Bad Questions I accidentally asked. No matter what I forgot to do or did that I shouldn’t have done. She always tells me she loves me at the end of the day.

  I take my big green glasses off and put them on my night table.

  “Good night, girls.”

  Julia waits until my mom’s footsteps have disappeared down the hallway before asking the Bad Question again into the darkness.

  “Alma,” she whispers. “Where was Uncle Adam tonight?”

  I bite my lip. Blood oozes out and into my mouth, metallic and gross and a perfect reminder that I didn’t actually brush my teeth.

  When I don’t answer, Julia wiggles out of her sleeping bag and sits on the edge of my bed. She’s blurry next to me.

  “Is he gone?” she asks.

  I look at her. My breath feels like fire.

  “Did they break up?” she asks.

  I can’t make myself answer. She figures it out though.

  “I didn’t know,” she says. “I don’t think he told my dad.”

  Julia thinks that matters because her dad is Adam’s brother.

  But I was more than that. I was his kid.

  He didn’t tell me.

  “This is awful,” Julia says. “I get it. It’s awful.”

  I scoot away from her. Her parents still hold hands across the dinner table. I see them kiss each other every time one of them enters the room. And her parents are alive. She doesn’t get it at all.

  “He was only my stepfather,” I mumble, not looking at her. “I’ll get over it.”

  My breath cools, comes in and out of my mouth smooth and easy. Lying makes me feel better.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Yes, I think. Yes, more than anything.

  “I’m fine,” I say.

  “OK,” Julia says slowly, like she doesn’t believe me. But she gets off my bed and wiggles into her sleeping bag. It’s only minutes before she’s snoring.

  I watch the clock tick slowly. My room somehow gets darker and darker even though the sun was already down before we went to sleep. Or maybe it’s my thoughts getting darker. In the lonely darkness, all I can think about is both of my dads. Both of my missing dads.

  At 2:00 a.m. I figure my mom must be asleep.

  I get out of bed, put my glasses back on, and slip my flip-flops on. I pull my hoodie on over my pajamas. The right pocket rustles with scraps of questions, the left one is heavy with the tools I need. I tiptoe over Julia’s sleeping body, then down the hallway. My mom
’s door is dark. Perfect.

  I go out the back door in the kitchen. It’s as easy as it always is. Julia never wakes up. Mom never suspects anything. If I didn’t spend so many nights at Julia’s, I could do this every night.

  The moon is full, lighting up our backyard and glinting, silver, off our wet grass. It feels like it just stopped raining. The world smells fresh and new and, with the trees at the back of our yard spread out before me and the moon round above me, I feel like I’m the only one in it. It’s the perfect night for what I’m about to do. I dart through our yard and weave my way through the trees until I’m in the McKinleys’ yard. I run around their pool, around their house, and across the gravel road in front of it. I run up the little hill at the other side, jump over the train tracks, run down the little hill. Then I feel along the green wire fence until I find the crack in it, right where it always is. I squeeze through and take a deep breath, exhilarated and calm all at once.

  My dad tugs on my heart. My heart had been solidly in place but then it feels like he hooks a finger right in the spot where all four quadrants meet and he yanks it toward him. “Hi,” I whisper into the mist around me.

  The graveyard is beautiful in the moonlight, the white headstones seeming to grow out of the blackness around them. The wet grass tickles the sides of my feet.

  I walk the ten feet or so until I find his grave.

  His headstone is simple. Gray. About the size of four bricks pushed together. Long grass grows on all the sides, covering up all but the surface of it. His initials are carved into the top of it: JFC.

  Jorge Francisco Costa.

  I think he must have wanted such a simple headstone. I think he must have been humble and reserved.

  I think that also must be why he said it was OK for me to have my mom’s last name. He was humble. He was a feminist. He was a perfect dad. Or he would have been.

  I imagine him sick in a hospital bed, telling my mom what he would want after he was gone. She’d have to lean over her big belly, pregnant with me inside, to listen as he told her in a dying voice what he wants in a tombstone and a funeral. I’d be listening too, inside layers of flesh and amniotic fluid, and I’d hear her tell him, “Yes, OK. Whatever you want, babe.”

  Because my dad must have made my mom better. Softer. Easier to love.

  My dad must have been very loving. Because even with all the Bad Questions, even with all the times I break the rules, he still loves me. Even across the abyss of death, he still loves me.