Deleted Read online

  Deleted: Jackson and Maggie

  Tess Thompson

  For my first love, Eric Hansen,

  who taught me how to write about love and made me an artist the moment he kissed me in the rain on a Seattle street as the Blue’s notes wafted sweet around us.

  No love is ever wasted.

  Or forgotten.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Maggie

  * * *

  MAGGIE KEENE TURNED thirty the week she learned she’d been dead for twelve years. It started with a phone call from across the country and a hangover. Her phone squawked and vibrated in that darkest hour before dawn, when even the Brooklyn streets had quieted to a spattering of shouts and sharp horns and rumbles from battered cabs. She groaned as she reached across the bedside table for the abhorrent gadget. Why had she chosen the whistle ringtone? It pierced the very center of a person’s brain. Which, at this precise moment, throbbed without any outside stimulus whatsoever. An empty plastic water glass fell to the floor and bounced across the room.

  Finally, she found the phone and punched it into quiet submission. “Hello.”

  “Hello, Maggie?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Darla.”

  Maggie jerked upright, hard and straight. Darla. Her father’s wife. The Postmistress.

  “It’s four in the morning.” Vodka and perspiration seeped from her pores. Maggie wiped her forehead with the corner of the sheet.

  “Your father’s dying. He doesn’t have long. He’s asked for you.”

  “Asked for me?” Maggie repeated the question, dull and confused. “It’s been twelve years.”

  “He wants to make amends,” Darla said.

  Amends?

  “He’s found God.”

  God? Viscous, acrid syrup boiled in Maggie’s belly. She pressed her fingers against her mouth and swallowed.

  “Will you come?” Darla asked. “Will you come home?”

  “Home?” Come home? Cliffside Bay was no longer her home. She wanted to say that out loud, but instead a gravelly voice like Al Pacino in a bad gangster movie played in her mind. The hard streets of Brooklyn, baby. That’s my home.

  “Yes,” Darla said. “Home to California.”

  The idea landed with a heavy thud inside her aching head. Go home. Could she? After all this time? Not for him. But for herself? Confront the past and gain the truth? Say what she wanted to say? Not redemption for the dying, but peace for her, the living? Closure. Answers?

  Yes, answers. She deserved answers. This was an irrefutable fact. The injustice of it bored into her mind like a cancer. She would never be free until there was retribution—until he had to pay with something dear to him. Just tonight, on the way home in the cab, she’d been unable to keep the images of that day from crowding into the lonely spaces of her mind.

  Her mother crumpled at the bottom of the stairs. Her father teetering above with the bag in his hands. Jackson tugging at her arm, his face the color of an oyster’s pearl and his voice an octave too high.

  Would this be her last opportunity to get her father’s confession?

  Below, from the street, a horn blared a staccato warning.

  “I’ll come,” Maggie said. “But not for him.” I’ll get him to tell the truth. Before he’s whisked off to hell, he would affirm what she already knew. He murdered her mother and baby sister. He would tell her where her newborn sister’s body was hidden. And finally, Maggie would bury the sweet baby that hadn’t had a chance to live next to their mother.

  “It’s the right thing, Maggie.”

  “The right thing? For whom?”

  “You don’t know what you think you know. You were always too big for your britches.” Darla and her Texas sayings. Maggie had forgotten how self-righteous the Postmistress was.

  The thick, bubbling hatred stewed in Maggie’s stomach. “You don’t get to say one word about me or my life. Not after what you did—what you helped him do.”

  Darla cleared her throat. She must still smoke. An image of cigarette smoke wafting around Darla’s pocked face flashed before her eyes. When had Maggie last seen her? A week before she left, waiting in line at the drug store. They’d pretended not to see each other. “What do you think he did exactly, Maggie?”

  Out of Darla’s mouth, Maggie sounded like a curse word. Maggie. She’d learned once from one of Lisa’s boyfriends—the sales guy—that you should insert someone’s name into conversation because it made them feel seen and heard. The technique was good for selling things or picking up chicks in a bar. It had worked on her best friend Lisa. For a while, anyway.

  Darla repeated the question with even more scorn in her voice this time. “What do you think we did, Maggie?”

  “You know.”

  “There’s something I should tell you,” Darla said.

  The line went silent. Maggie waited. Had they lost the connection?

  After several dead seconds, Darla spoke. “Never mind. Best it waits ‘til you get here.”

  “It’ll be a few days,” Maggie said. I’ll have to rummage up the cash for a plane ticket.

  “He’s old. Sad and remorseful. You’ll pity him now,” Darla said.

  “I won’t.” Maggie hung up and resisted the urge to toss her phone across the room.

  She collapsed back in bed and stared at the ceiling. It was her birthday in a few days, but her friends had taken her out tonight. They’d gotten all dolled up with perfectly applied makeup and dotted perfume behind their ears and worn little dresses that barely covered their behinds.

  Maggie groaned again as the night rushed back to her. The club. Dancing. Birthday drinks, pink and festive in their fancy glasses. Clearly overserved. All of them spilled into cabs an hour before closing time, still giggling.

  What a night, though. To the future, they had roared as they toasted and spilled and laughed and danced. They’d promised one another, for tonight, no thoughts of auditions or callbacks or diets for this gaggle of chorus girls. Just a pounding bass and those overpriced drinks they’d pretended they could afford and had no calories. They were actresses, after all, and the whole “as if” scenario from Sanford Meisner could be used for more than acting. Denial was a wonderful thing. Until rent came due. Until you got on the scale.

  Now, though, reality fermented in the murky pit of her stomach where the black syrup remained. The angry scar on her left knee itched, reminding her that her story was officially over. No more dancing professionally, the doctor had said with a click of his pen. I’m sorry.

  Sorry? That was all he could come up with? He could have at least added her name at the end of the sentence. I’m sorry, Maggie. I’m sorry for your broken heart and your ridiculous dreams and your empty bank account, Maggie.

  What he’d actually said was much less sympathetic. “What did you expect? You started ballet at three years old. That’s a lot of years abusing your body. It’s time to retire from dancing.”

  Retire? From what? Working in a bar and taking endless dance and acting classes and auditioning for chorus roles? Was this a career from whi
ch to retire?

  Thirty years old. Dreams a bust. Twelve years in the Big Apple and nothing but the calluses on the bottoms of her feet and the stage name Marlena Kassidy listed under “chorus” in a handful of theatre programs to prove she’d ever been here.

  Other than her friends. She’d figured the phone call just now would be one of said friends. The most likely candidate being Pepper. She’d decided to stay for another round when they left the club and Maggie figured she was stuck somewhere without cab fare. Or, crying into her vodka-soaked pumps about the former boyfriend she’d run into that night. Or, God forbid, panicked in a urine-splashed jail cell after a moment of lapsed judgment.

  Maggie was always the one they called. Even on her birthday. She could figure a way out of a mess or an empty pocketbook like no one else. Like a boss, as Pepper was prone to say, which always made Maggie giggle. Pragmatic and sensible, able to get right to the heart of a thing—that was her. It was the small-town-girl vibe, they always said. She was kind, fanciful, and still had the right answer to comfort a friend, despite living as a New Yorker for twelve years.

  Come to my place. I’ll pay the cab from my “mad money” when you arrive. He’s not worth crying over, sweetie. I’ll make pancakes and mimosas and we can watch Rent until the sun rises.

  Maggie’s mother had called it mad money. And, like her mother, Maggie never had much, mad or otherwise. But that didn’t keep a girl from taking care of her own. There was always an extra shift behind the bar. Or two.

  She stared at the ceiling. Her mind raced like the rapid beat of a club song. She wouldn’t be able to fall back to sleep. Not after that phone call. Just get up. Play guitar. Work on a new song.

  Maggie stumbled to the bathroom and stared at her reflection in the mirror. She’d fallen into bed still wearing her dress and thick makeup. Her long, red hair hung in a tangled mass down her back. Smeared black eyeliner and mascara blotted out the freckles on her cheeks. The ocean blue dress, once so perky and boastful, hung in wrinkled and disheveled defeat.

  Like me.

  Maggie scrubbed her face with soap and hot water. Steam rose from the sink and soothed her tired eyes. She swallowed a few ibuprofens and changed into leggings and a soft t-shirt, then wandered out to the front room. Lisa was asleep on the couch, still dressed from the evening in her little black dress. One of her shoes rested listlessly on the coffee table, speckled with sticky drops of a Cosmopolitan.

  Since Whiskey broke up with her, Lisa had been sleeping on the couch instead of in her bedroom. Maggie didn’t need to ask why—nor the reason for the French language lessons or the shortening of her once waist-length hair. They’d been friends since their theatre days at NYU. There wasn’t much they hadn’t been through together, most recently a jerk who called himself Whiskey. Whiskey, for heaven’s sake. Maggie knew his real name was John. A stealth peek at his driver’s license had revealed that dirty little truth. No one in this town could admit to what and who they really were.

  Who was she now? She wasn’t sure anymore. Beneath her exterior made of dance muscles, expensive haircuts, and thrift store clothes—always better to pay for a good haircut than clothes—was she still a small-town girl?

  Fear rumbled down the back of her neck and settled in her chest, blinking like an errant traffic light. She imagined her father, dying in a hospital bed, shrunken and sick. Were his strong, mean hands and cutting words still able to hurt her, or had looming death squashed his venom? Could she summon the courage to do what needed to be done?

  And what of the rest of them? Those who had betrayed and abandoned her? The ones she had believed would always love her unconditionally? What of them? That script had taken a cruel turn. Jackson and Zane, and Doc and Miss Rita were as much a façade as the sets in a theatre production. How easily they were pushed over and dismantled.

  All these years she’d stuffed the pain inside, focused on her new life and her goals.

  A glorious life.

  Not a glorious life. A hard life.

  This turning thirty was turning her into a real crybaby. She spoke in a silent, stern voice to herself. Buck up. You’re going home. You do what you have to do and get out. Once that’s done, you can and will figure out what to do with the rest of your life.

  But first, she might have a good long cry.

  No. No more crying. She’d cried enough self-pitying tears for a lifetime over the past few weeks.

  Maggie slipped Lisa’s other shoe from her foot and set it next to its mate. She covered her friend with a blanket. Lisa stirred and mumbled something in French.

  Maggie shuffled over to the front window. Her reflection was ghostlike in the glass, the details of her appearance obscured, other than the outline of her slender figure.

  The phone call had opened a door inside her mind. Memories surfaced in images that played on the window. Surfing next to Zane. Dancing under the full moon in Jackson’s arms. Jackson Waller. How was it possible that her heart still ached at the thought of him?

  She placed her hand on the glass and whispered his name as if he were merely outside waiting in the gloomy night. Where was he now? Had he become a doctor like he’d planned? Or were his dreams like hers? Unattainable? Silly to him now that the reality of the world had swallowed all sense of self?

  No, not Jackson. He would have done what he said he would. Singularly focused on whatever he wanted. Until he wasn’t.

  It would be easy to find him. Everyone knew a quick social media search would pull him up in an instant. Years ago, she’d vowed to keep his memory separate from her new world. This was a different life, a different Maggie. New York Maggie hadn’t loved Jackson Waller all her life, only to have him break her with his dismissal. Not even Lisa and Pepper knew his last name. She couldn’t take the chance that they might decide to look for him. When and if the pain of their parting ever subsided, she would free him from the cage and allow the remembrances to inform the present. Until then, she kept him locked away, like a box of photographs she knew existed but that she would not open.

  Maggie grabbed her guitar and sank into the faded armchair they’d rescued from the street, deleted from someone’s home for a newer, trendier model. She and Lisa had reupholstered it in an optimistic yellow. More precisely, Lisa had. She was from the Midwest and her mother was a home economics teacher, so she knew how to do useful things like cook and sew and decorate.

  Maggie strummed a few chords. Usually she could think better when she played her guitar. While she recovered from her knee surgery, she had written songs with a focus and speed she’d never had before. Lyrics and tunes had come in abundant clumps of inspiration. She had to wonder if her idle body had somehow lent her brain its energy. The songs were pretty good. Maybe. Who knew, really? She’d thought there was no way she could fail until she arrived in New York and ran smack into the cement of reality.

  Unlike her friends, she no longer believed tomorrow would be better. She knew after yesterday’s appointment that it would not be. She had told no one, not even Lisa, about her doctor’s visit the previous afternoon. Since her injury and subsequent surgery, a persistent thought had snuck in like a snake and wrapped its reptilian muscles around her neck. Was it time to leave New York?

  The problem was this: who the heck was she if not a chorus girl looking for her big break? All these years she’d sacrificed everything to make it, and she was no further ahead than when she’d arrived at eighteen. It was time for a new chapter. If only she knew what that was.

  A more traditional life? Marriage and children? A family of her own? These blessings would be welcomed, but how did one find them?

  While Lisa and Pepper were in a constant search for the one, Maggie had never bothered with men. After college there had been a few men she’d dated casually, but no one important. No one who could push away the memory of Jackson. She told herself it was because of her ambition and focus. No time for men. However, the truth was—no one would ever compare to Jackson. She would never love another man
like she had him. If she couldn’t have that kind of love, she’d rather have none.

  Was her summons home a sign? Should she go back to California and try her luck in Hollywood? She could change the direction of her career away from theatre to television and film.

  The truth, Maggie.

  The idea of Hollywood left her cold and exhausted. Without dancing, performance had lost its hold on her. She loved to sing, but her voice was more suited to popular music than the operatic style of musicals. It had only taken her twelve years to admit that truth.

  God, she was tired of hoping. She plucked a melody on the strings of her guitar. The sympathetic notes reverberated in the quiet room.

  From the couch, Lisa stirred. “What time is it?”

  “It’s just after four. Go back to sleep.”

  “What happened?” Lisa asked.

  “You passed out before I could get you into your pajamas,” Maggie said. “As did I.”

  “I barely remember stumbling up the stairs. Oh no, did we pay the cab driver?”

  “I took care of him. You want water?”

  “And an aspirin? I feel like death.”

  Maggie set aside her guitar and went to their kitchen. Kitchen being a loose term, as it was more like an area.

  Lisa was upright by the time Maggie came back with the water and painkillers. She did her nurse-like duty, then plopped back in the armchair.

  Lisa drank the entire glass of water, then swept her blond curls back from her face and wrapped the blanket around her shoulders. “I’m afraid to ask what the doctor said yesterday. I know it’s bad because you didn’t say anything before we went out.”

  “He said the surgery healed nicely, but it won’t stay that way if I keep dancing professionally. The strain on my knee is too much, unless I want to live a life with constant pain and subsequent surgeries.”