Close to the Broken Hearted (7 page)

“That's not what I said. I said I think it bothers you. Which means I think
I
maybe should be worried. Tell me how it makes you feel.”

Sylvie looked at her cup. “Mad. Sad. I dunno. Kinda like it hurts and I can't do nothin' 'bout it.” Turning her face back up, Sylvie revealed tears pooling in her eyes. “How do you think it makes me feel? I want the man dead, Miss Teal. I can't rest without him bein' dead.”

“Please call me
Officer
Teal, Sylvie. And him bein' dead won't help your rest any. I agree you need closure, but not the kind of closure you think you need. That kind of closure never actually closes anythin'. You'd wind up with his ghost hauntin' you the rest of your life.”

“What do I do then?”

“I reckon you need to find a way to forgive him for what happened all them years ago.”

Anger flashed in Sylvie's eyes, and for a brief second Leah thought things were going to blow out of control. But the anger was washed away by more tears. They still just stood there, tiny pools reflecting the light overhead like small blue moons.

“I can never forgive him for what he did. Not to Caleb. Or to me. He took away everything I ever had.” As she said this, her voice broke, betraying the control she'd been exhibiting since Leah had arrived.

Leah sighed. She remembered what she'd heard about Sylvie still being emotionally five years old. She had to talk to her like she was a five-year-old and this was a concept far beyond a five-year-old's understanding.

“No, Sylvie, he didn't. He accidentally shot your brother. Caleb wasn't meant to die. What happened to him happened because the Lord saw fit for it to happen. For whatever reason, it makes sense in some way or another. That's why Eli only got sentenced to manslaughter. To be honest, I don't think he meant to pull that trigger at all. I don't think he even meant to shoot your daddy.”

Sylvie just sat there quietly as Leah took a long sip of her coffee before continuing. The girl actually seemed to be listening.

“My own daddy was the police officer assigned to that case,” Leah said, “and he would come home at night and tell me 'bout it. I was only a kid then, but I remember him sayin' how remorseful Eli was about what happened, and my daddy felt sorry for him on account of him feelin' so bad. What happened to your brother was terrible, don't ever get me wrong.”

With another gulp, three quarters of Leah's coffee was done. She was trying to time it so she'd be done just in time to leave.

She continued talking, grateful Sylvie hadn't tried stepping into the conversation. Instead, she just sat there with her hands folded in her lap like a little girl. Occasionally, she would lift one hand to the table to take a small sip of her coffee, but then her hand would go right back to her lap.

“But all the hate you're carryin' for Eli?” Leah said. “It ain't hurtin' Eli none, Sylvie. It's hurtin' you. You're carryin' it round with you like a bucket o' poison. And every time you think 'bout how much you hate him, you drink a little bit more of that poison. Eli don't drink any of it, you do. And that poison eats away at you from the inside. It makes you see the world as a dark, scary place where people are out to get you.”

Sylvie looked down at the table.

“And the only way you can heal the wounds you've got from drinkin' all that poison is by learnin' how to forgive,” Leah continued on. “And when you forgive, you're not givin' anything to Eli either. He ain't the one gettin' the forgiveness,
you
are. If someone gives you a gift and you don't take it, who does it belong to?”

Leah wasn't sure if Sylvie was even listening to her anymore. She was just staring at a spot on the table directly in front of her. The light above the table began to flicker and buzz for several seconds before settling back to normal. Leah sat there, waiting for a response. Finally, Sylvie looked up and answered her question. “I guess it still belongs to the person givin' it?” she offered.

Leah was happy to hear her sounding like her old self again, even if that old self was the scared, paranoid Sylvie who called the police every time a car so much as backfired in the neighborhood. The way Sylvie had been acting when Leah got here had scared Leah into thinking Sylvie was well on her way to making some really bad decisions. Now Leah thought that just maybe she might have turned things around.

“Exactly,” Leah said. “Eli's not acceptin' your gift of hate, and he ain't gonna accept your gift of forgiveness, neither. Besides, these gifts ain't
for
him. Both of these things belong to you. One of them tears you up and hurts you inside, and one of them will heal you. Do you understand any of what I'm sayin' to you?”

Sylvie sniffled. “A little, I guess.”

“Can you do some thinkin' on it?”

Sylvie blinked away some tears. “Guess so.”

“Can you stop talkin' 'bout killin' Eli? Because all that's gonna do is put you in prison, and you won't even get manslaughter. You'll get murder one. And then there really
will
be no justice in the world. And who would raise that little girl of yours? Who would be left to give her a name?”

Sylvie wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve. When she spoke, there were tears in her voice. “No one.”

With a drink of her coffee, Leah nodded. “No one. That baby needs you more than you need to drink any more poison from that bucket you's carryin' round with you. So I want you to just relax for the next few days and let things settle. If you need me, or get anxious at all, you call me. You don't even need to call the station first. Do we have a deal?”

Sylvie was crying. “Okay.”

Leah rose from her chair. “Now stand up and give me a hug.”

She did. And Leah felt the girl tremble in her arms.

With a look back at the shotgun, Leah asked, “I don't suppose there's any chance I can convince you to take the shells out of that 'fore I leave, is there?”

Still crying, Sylvie shook her head.

“Didn't think so. Just be careful. And call me if
anything
happens, you understand? Do not pick up that shotgun. Pick up the phone. Am I clear?”

Sylvie nodded.

Leah kissed her forehead. “You'll be okay. Just take care of that baby. And get some sleep.” Reaching down, she lifted her cup to her lips and finished her coffee. “Tell you what I'll do. Once Eli Brown's moved back here, I'll pay him a little visit and just get a feel for the man—make sure he's as safe as I believe he is. Then I'll come back here and tell you everything me and him talked about. Does that sound like a good plan to you?”

Sylvie nodded. “I'd appreciate that.” Her words were broken.

“Okay. I've gotta leave now.” Leah stepped into the living room. “Don't forget to lock the door behind me.”

Once again, it was probably something that didn't need saying.

O
n Monday afternoon I came up with a brilliant plan.

It was too late to get a real sword; they were back at Disney World, and my mother wasn't about to buy me one anyway, but she couldn't stop me from making my own. Sure, it wouldn't look as impressive as the ones I saw while on vacation, with the steel blades and the hilts full of gems, but at least I'd have a sword. And if I made it out of wood, I could use it to play fight with Dewey, which would mean I'd have to make two of them.

Problem was, I wasn't so good with building stuff when it came to wood. Not that I was all that bad; I just didn't have any experience. But I knew somebody who did. My sister, Carry. And Carry was home right now, in the living room, watching television. And my mother was at work, so the timing was pretty near perfect.

All that remained to my plan was to come up with another plan on how to get Carry to help me.

I decided the direct approach was the best. So I walked into the living room where she was sprawled all over the sofa and just asked her straight out if she'd do me a favor,

“Well, I guess that depends now, don't it?” she said smugly.

“On what?”

“On what the favor is, dork.”

I didn't feel we were off to great start with her calling me a dork already, but I decided to press on. “Will you help me build a couple swords from some of the wood Pa left in the garage?”

She didn't even look at me. Her eyes were glued to that television screen. “What are you talking 'bout?”

“I wanna make two swords so me an' Dewey can pretend sword fight with 'em, but I need your help on account of I ain't no good at woodwork and stuff.”

She laughed. “And you think I
am?
You
do
remember the non-tree tree fort we made when you was little, don't you? That thing didn't last through the night.”

The drapes above the sofa were open and sunlight was pouring into the room, casting my sister in the shadow of the sofa cushions. It made it hard for me to see her properly. “Yeah, but we was just kids then. You're almost an adult now.”

“Tell Mom that. She still thinks I'm twelve.” She hesitated and added, “No offense.”

“None taken,” I said honestly.

“Anyway,” I said, “I'm thinkin' swords might be easier to make than forts. They don't seem to me like they'd be all that complicated.”

I stood there, waiting for her to reply, but a response never came. She just kept watching her television show. After what felt like at least five whole minutes of waiting, I asked again. “So?”

“So, what?” she asked back.

“So will you help me?”

“I'm watching
The Facts of Life
right now. Maybe later.”

I looked at the television. “This is a rerun. You've seen this one at least a hundred times. I think I've seen it more than half a dozen, and I can't even stand this show.”

“So what? They're all reruns. The show ended in May. I wanna watch it again, ass face.”

“Hey! Mom told you to stop callin' me that!”

“Oh, you gonna tattle on me?”

I kicked at the gold shag carpet with the toe of my sock. “No. I just really want you to help me make a couple swords so me and Dewey can pretend sword fight. Please? It'll only take an hour.”

She turned her head and stared at me. “An
hour?
You think I have an hour to stand around and make stupid swords with you?
Please
.”

I sighed. “Okay, then a
half
hour. It won't take long, I promise. They can be real simple.”

Lying there with her head on the rise of the sofa's arm and one leg thrown over the top and the other askew along the cushions, I could tell she was considering it. Finally, she pushed herself into a sitting position. The sunlight from the window lit her blond hair from behind, making her look almost like an angel. “Fine! I'll help you make simple swords,” she snapped. “But they're gonna be
real
simple. And you're gonna owe me somethin' for this. Don't you forget it.”

My heart flipped over in my chest. “I won't,” I said, smiling. “I promise. Cross my heart.”

 

Crossing your heart and promising your sister you owe her one is like signing a pact with the devil. Especially if your sister is Caroline Josephine Teal. Oh, she helped me make the swords, all right, and they turned out not half bad. We made them from two pieces of narrow pine. One piece was about two feet long and it made the handle and blade. The other was maybe six inches and we nailed it across the other maybe six inches from the bottom to form the cross guard of the hilt. Carry figured out how to use my pa's old belt sander to taper the long piece down into a point. When we were done, they looked pretty good. Even better than I'd hoped.

“There,” Carry said, as I inspected our handiwork, one sword in each of my hands. “You happy with 'em?”

I beamed back at her. “I sure am. Dewey's gonna love 'em.” The garage smelled like old car oil, which was strange because there hadn't been a car parked in here for as long as I could remember. It was too full of wood and tools and other junk left over from my pa after he died that my mother had never bothered cleaning up or getting rid of. We had the garage door open for light and the sun picked out specks of dust scattering through the air.

“How long we been out here?” Carry asked.

I checked my watch. Uncle Henry had bought it for me last fall—it was a Timex, just like his. Except for when I had baths, I always wore it. “Just over half an hour.”

“That's a lot of my time. You remember our deal?”

I fell silent, trying to figure out what she was talking about. I didn't rightly have any idea what she meant.

“We had a deal, ass face. You promised if I made you your swords that you'd owe me one.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “What do I owe you exactly?” I realized now that I'd been so excited at the prospect of getting my swords made that I never confirmed what the “one” was that I owed her and that the whole deal was probably a mistake.

“That's for me to decide. But when the time comes, I'll let you know.”

“Okay,” I said hesitantly. The way she said it made me wonder if she was going to get me to kill someone for her or something.

Oh, well, there was no point in worrying about my deal with Carry until the time came for me to fulfill whatever she came up with. I decided to just ignore it for now and be happy I had swords.

I was just about to rush inside and call Dewey when my mother drove into the driveway. Unsure of how she'd feel about us being in the garage and playing with Pa's tools, I nearly raced over to close the door, but realized she'd see me do it, and that would just make me look guiltier. Besides, way back when Carry helped me build the non-tree tree fort, my mother hadn't been upset at all. She'd been right happy about it, in fact.

As I mostly do—at least more times than not—I decided honesty was the best policy and walked out of the garage into the afternoon sun with my swords in my hands to show her my and Carry's handiwork.

“What're you kids doin' in the garage?” she asked, getting out of her car.

“Carry helped me make some swords so me and Dewey can pretend sword fight.” I held up the one in my right hand, pretending the sunlight was glinting off its hardened steel blade. It actually looked more like sun shining on dull wood with rounded corners that Carry had sanded so we wouldn't hurt ourselves, but I had a pretty good imagination.

“Did I say you're allowed to play in the garage?”

“I—” I started, but changed to “You didn't say we
wasn't
allowed to.”

“Don't be smart with me, Abe.”

“Should we not have made them?” I asked, wondering why this was different than the fort had been.

For a moment she seemed at a loss for words. I think her mind was somewhere else and she wasn't really sure what she was angry about. “You just should've asked first. Did you clean up after yourselves?”

I nearly laughed. That garage was such a mess, you couldn't find an elephant in there with a magnifying glass. We
had
to clean up just to be able to get at things. So, “Yes,” I said, quite honestly.

“Good.” She still hadn't really looked at my and Carry's woodworking projects as she closed her car door and started toward the house. In her hand was a file folder.

“You never said if you liked my swords,” I said from behind her, still raising the one majestically. A slight breeze picked up, swirling leaves around my feet. They had fallen from the shrubs planted around the driveway.

“They're fine. Just don't play with 'em in the house.”

She walked up the front steps and was just about to open the door when I asked, “Somethin' wrong?”

Stopping, she rested her forehead against the door. After a minute she said, “Listen, Abe, I'm sorry. It's not you. Here, let me see your swords.”

I walked over and showed them to her.

“Oh, these are nice. Did Carry help you make them come to a point like this?”

I nodded. I decided not to tell her that I had to sign a pact with my sister in order to engage her services. “I think Dewey will like 'em,” I said with a grin. “We can pretend sword fight.”

“Just be careful. Just because they're not metal doesn't make them not dangerous. You could still poke out an eye with one of these.”

“I'll be careful. We rounded the corners and made the ends blunt, see?” Then I nodded to the file folder in her hand. “What's that?”

She looked at it and her expression fell. “Oh.” She took a breath. “It's the background check Chief Montgomery ran on your pa.”

Suddenly, my swords were no longer important to me. Excitement frizzled through my body. It was like an electric bolt of lightning had erupted at my heart and quickly spread throughout my entire insides. “What's it say? Can I read it?”

Looking down at me standing there expectantly, she exhaled so hard her shoulders heaved. “Come in the house. We'll sit at the kitchen table and go through it together.”

I couldn't get inside the house fast enough. Leaning my swords up against the wall beside the door outside on the porch, I went in and took off my shoes. It seemed to take her forever to get to the kitchen table where I was already anxiously seated and waiting. I could tell there was something inside that folder that my mother obviously didn't like. Still, I was filled with anticipation. I never really got to know my pa. I barely even remembered him. Mostly I remembered the picture I carried around in my pocket that I found in my mother's closet. And it seemed nobody would ever give me any details about him when I asked anything either. But now, here was a file folder, full of real information concerning my pa. And it was only a few feet from my hands.

We sat there, our chairs almost touching, and my mother laid the folder in front of her. “There's not a lot of information here,” she told me. “Your pa never got in trouble with the law or nothin' like that, thank the Lord”—she said “thank the Lord” in a way that made it sound like that was a potential possibility, given something else she found—“so it's really limited to things like employment, family history, stuff like that. It's really quite boring.”

“Then why are you so worked up over it?” I asked.

“I'm not worked up.”

“Seems like it to me.”

“Okay, maybe a little. But it's for something dumb.”

“What?” I figured if she was worked up about it, it couldn't rightly be so dumb.

“Well, in a way, I think your daddy lied to me, and that don't sit very well is all.”

“Pa was a liar?” I didn't know much about him, but this was the last thing I thought about my pa.

“Now I didn't call him a liar. I said
in a way
he sorta lied to me.”

“What do you mean by sorta?”

“I mean he didn't rightly tell me the truth.”

I couldn't figure out the difference between that being just a “sorta lie” and a real lie, so I asked her.

With yet another sigh, she flipped open the folder. Inside was a document on blue paper with a staple in the corner. It turned out to have three pages to it.

“He didn't
not
tell me the truth, I suppose, better explains it,” she said.

I scrunched up my forehead. “Huh?” I asked. “What does that mean? I don't get it.”

“Your pa had a family he never told me 'bout. In fact, he had an entire past he seemed to have neglected mentionin'.”

“Doesn't everyone have a past?”

“Yeah, but usually bits and pieces of it come up from time to time in casual conversation. Your pa kept things all to himself. He didn't so much as even hint at any of this.” She was flipping through the pages. I still hadn't heard a word of what any of “this” was.

“So he lied to you by not tellin' you what he was lyin' 'bout?” That question didn't even make sense to me.

“This is why it's not sittin' so well, Abe. Part of me thinks I'm bein' a fool for caring 'bout this at all. I mean, of
course
he had a past. Everyone has a past. Why did I expect anythin' different from him? But for some reason, I never thought of his life before we met, and since he never mentioned it, it was like it never existed. And that life led into the life we spent together. So, in a way, to me, he had no life before our marriage. Our marriage was his life. Now I find out about all this stuff and that he really did have a life that led into our life together, and so it changes our marriage in a way. It's sort of like our whole life together was a lie.”

She was sounding crazy, but I wasn't sure I should tell her that. “Maybe Pa just didn't think the stuff that happened to him 'fore he met you was important. Maybe in a way he liked pretendin' his life didn't really start until he met you.”