Page 68 of Half Baked

“Yesterday, Noah and I talked to Dawn Heaton, Mom’s best friend for her entire life, and she said that Mom had a wild streak when she was younger.”

Her brow creased. “Dawn wasn’t her best friend when you were little.”

I stared at her in shock. “What?”

“Who was her best friend?” Noah asked, speaking up for the first time since I’d started asking my questions.

“Annamarie.” She grimaced. “I’m struggling to remember her last name.”

“Annamarie?” I asked. “I don’t remember Mom having a friend with that name.”

“That’s because you were little when she used to hang around. Her name was too hard for you to pronounce, so you called her Maymay.”

That name pinged a memory, and I remembered a dark-haired woman laughing with my mother. “Long dark hair? Sort of curly?” I asked, narrowing my eyes as I struggled to remember.

“Yes. About the same age as your mother. She was a teacher at the high school too.”

Noah got out his phone and started tapping on the screen.

Mrs. Lebowski gave him a strange look, then turned back to me. “She was over at your house quite often because your mom hated that you were in daycare all day. Other than her Saturday night outings, she stayed home, and Annamarie would come over and hang out with her. They spent a lot of time together for several years. But then Annamarie got a boyfriend and stopped coming over as much, and I think your mother got lonely.” She gave me a sad look. “You were about four, and while you were quite a chatty thing, it wasn’t enough. Andrea vowed not to bring men home to you, but I think she was still lonely for adult company. For a man, really. She was a beautiful girl. She told me she used to date lots of boys in high school and college.”

“Did she ever mention that she was married to my father?”

She looked shocked. “What? No. She led me to believe you were born out of wedlock, not that Bill or I cared. We loved you both.”

“Dawn said they were briefly married.”

She seemed to give it some consideration. “I never saw your father, not once. She told me about him a few times. She said he was a rich asshole—excuse my French—and he wanted nothing to do with either of you. She said you were both better off for it.”

I glanced at Noah, and he gave me a serious look, then typed something else onto his phone.

“So my mom started going to bars in Chattanooga when I was four?” I asked.

“She went a few times when you were younger, but after Annamarie met her man, well…I think Andrea started getting stir-crazy. Her entire life consisted of school and home, and while she loved you, she needed…” Her voice trailed off.

“More,” I finished.

“It’s important you know that she loved you,” Mrs. Lebowski said insistently.

“I know,” I said. “But she was more than just a mother. She needed her own life outside of work and me.” She’d told Deidre she needed to party. I’m sure tea parties with a four-year-old didn’t feel the same as dancing with drinks and handsome men.

“Yes, exactly.” She started dropping cookie batter onto the now-cooled baking sheet. “It was once or twice a month at first, and Deidre and Albert would watch you, but then it was every weekend, often from Friday night until Sunday late. They told her they wouldn’t watch you anymore. It hurt your mother terribly, but she found a teenager to stay with you. The girl was sixteen or seventeen and lived a few houses down. She was a responsible girl, but she practically got paid to watch TV. Andrea would wait until you were in bed before she left, but she often came home in the wee hours of the morning. We’re talking three or four a.m. This went on for months until…”

“Until I left the house in the middle of the night,” I finished.

“You remember?” she asked in surprise.

“Bits and pieces. Aunt Deidre filled me in on a little of it this morning. She said I had a bad dream and went looking for my mom. My mom came home and found me on a neighbor’s back porch.”

“It was ours,” she said sheepishly. “We had no idea you were there. Apparently, you’d knocked, but you were so little, it wasn’t very loud, and we didn’t hear. Bill and I felt positively terrible for months afterward. To this day, I think about it sometimes. It was cool that night. You were only in your nightgown, and you couldn’t get back inside your house. You might have gotten hypothermia. If only we’d heard…”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I assured her. “Some people are hard sleepers and don’t wake up for anything.”

“Ifwefelt guilty, your mother was positively drowning in it. It didn’t help that the police had been called, and half the town knew. People treated her like she was wearing a scarlet letter for a while.”

“It wasn’t her fault,” I said.

“No, but people judged her for not being here. They judged that poor teenager too. But it was three in the morning, and she was asleep on the sofa. She was doing what she’d been paid to do. Andrea hadn’t expected her to stay awake all night.”

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