Lock and Key by Sarah Dessen Page A

more of an overseeing position.”
    I just looked at him.
    “CEO,” he admitted. “Which is really just a big word, or a really small acronym, actually, for overseer.”
    “I can’t believe Cora didn’t tell me,” I said.
    “Ah, you know Cora.” He smiled. “Unless you work eighty hours a week saving the world like she does, she’s tough to impress.”
    I looked out at the guy on the mower again, watching as he puttered past. “Cora saves the world?”
    “She tries to,” he said. “Hasn’t she told you about her work? Down at the public defender’s office?”
    I shook my head. In fact, I hadn’t even known Cora had gone to law school until the day before, when the social worker at Poplar House had asked her what she did for a living. The last I knew, she’d been about to graduate from college, and that was five years ago. And we only knew that because, somehow, an announcement of the ceremony had made its way to us. It was on thick paper, a card with her name on it tucked inside. I remembered studying the envelope, wondering why it had turned up after all this time with no contact. When I’d asked my mom, she’d just shrugged, saying the school sent them out automatically. Which made sense, since by then, Cora had made it clear she wanted no part of us in her new life, and we’d been more than happy to oblige.
    “Well,” Jamie said as a palpable awkwardness settled over us, and I wondered what exactly he knew about our family, if perhaps my very existence had come as a surprise. Talk about baggage. “I guess you two have a lot of catching up to do, huh?”
    I looked down at my hands, not saying anything. A moment later, Mr. Thackray walked back in, a sheaf of papers in his hand, and started talking about transcripts and credit hours, and this exchange was quickly forgotten. Later, though, I wished I had spoken up, or at least tried to explain that once I knew Cora better than anyone. But that was a long time ago, back when she wasn’t trying to save the whole world. Only me.
    When I was a kid, my mom used to sing to me. It was always at bedtime, when she’d come in to say good night. She’d sit on the edge of my bed, brushing my hair back with her fingers, her breath sweet smelling (a “civilized glass” or two of wine was her norm then) as she kissed my forehead and told me she’d see me in the morning. When she tried to leave, I’d protest, and beg for a song. Usually, if she wasn’t in too bad a mood, she’d oblige.
    Back then, I’d thought my mother made up all the songs she sang to me, which was why it was so weird the first time I heard one of them on the radio. It was like discovering that some part of you wasn’t yours at all, and it made me wonder what else I couldn’t claim. But that was later. At the time, there were only the songs, and they were still all ours, no one else’s.
    My mother’s songs fell into three categories: love songs, sad songs, or sad love songs. Not for her the uplifting ending. Instead, I fell asleep to “Frankie and Johnny” and a love affair gone very wrong, “Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right” and a bad breakup, and “Wasted Time” and someone looking back, full of regret. But it was “Angel from Montgomery, ” the Bonnie Raitt version, that made me think of her most, then and now.
    It had everything my mother liked in a song—heartbreak, disillusionment, and death—all told in the voice of an old woman, now alone, looking back over all the things she’d had and lost. Not that I knew this; to me they were just words set to a pretty melody and sung by a voice I loved. It was only later, when I’d lie in a different bed, hearing her sing late into the night through the wall, that they kept me awake worrying. Funny how a beautiful song could tell such an ugly story. It seemed unfair, like a trick.
    If you asked her, my mother would say that nothing in her life turned out the way she planned it. She was supposed to go to college and then