Faultlines (10 page)

On Sunday evening, after Huck’s interrogation of Jordy, after Huck had agreed to wait until Jordy was discharged to arrest him, out of deference, he said, to Jenna and the other members of Sandy’s family—not that she or Jordy were part of it anymore—Sandy had gone home and looked up countries that had no extradition agreement with the United States. It had turned out that Russia was the most likely place they could go and have a chance of surviving.

There were other countries—Somalia, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, and Syria—a handful of third-world countries, but even the thought of trying to go to any one of those mired her in fear. Overseas travel of any sort, though, would necessitate passports, immunizations, all kinds of arrangements . . . the idea was overwhelming, and it would all have to be done in secret, alone, without any assistance from anyone.

But giving her son up to the Texas criminal-justice system if—
when—
he was innocent was just as incomprehensible.

“You should know, if you don’t already—” Huck paused.

Sandy looked at him.

“Folks around town aren’t going to welcome Jordy at the church or the cemetery, if I was to let him go there. Even Jenna’s not too keen on seeing him, or you, right now. I’m sorry to have to say it, but it’s true.”

“Jenna told you to do this, didn’t she? She wanted Jordy arrested today to keep him from coming to Trav’s funeral.”

Huck didn’t answer.

It was Ken Carter who spoke. “Your son committed a crime, Mrs. Cline. There’s evidence to support the fact. We’re here to arrest him because that’s the law, not because anyone told us to.”

“Ha.” Sandy turned her back to the lawmen. “We’re getting a lawyer—”

“Mom?” Jordy appeared in the open bathroom doorway, wearing the sweats and T-shirt she’d brought him, not the suit. That was folded over his arm. “I’ll go with them,” he said.

“But Travis’s funeral—you have the right to say good-bye. You didn’t do anything.” Sandy was begging. Begging Jordy, of all people, when even he knew it was futile. He’d consigned himself to the outcome.

Sandy glanced at Huck, and the look of pitying commiseration he gave her was almost more than she could bear. He stepped over to Jordy. “Son,” he began, “you have the right to remain silent . . . ”

They were taking Jordy to the jail in Greeley, the Madrone County seat, twenty-five miles west of Wyatt. Visiting hours were posted online at the Madrone County website. Huck gave Sandy that information as he escorted her son out of the hospital’s front entry doors and into the backseat of his waiting squad car. Jordy bent his face, his pale and exhausted face, to the window and mouthed something.

“What?” Sandy took a step toward him.

But now the car left the curb, and within moments it was out of sight.

She was still holding Jordy’s hospital-discharge papers, the ones Showalter had signed, that in effect had released Jordy into police custody.

Showalter hadn’t had the nerve, or the courtesy, or whatever it would have taken, to appear in Jordy’s room himself. He’d sent a nurse, and when Sandy had asked her about Jordy’s aftercare, she’d said doctor’s orders included no driving for two weeks and no strenuous activity for six. Jordy, who had been handcuffed and Mirandized by then, had snorted so hard he’d almost choked. “Since the state took my license, driving’s not an issue,” he’d said. “Don’t think strenuous activity is, either. Can’t get too worked up in a jail cell, right, Sergeant Huckabee?”

Sergeant Huckabee,
Jordy had called him. Not Huck or Len. Sandy didn’t think she’d ever heard any member of her family call the man by his professional title. She had shot Huck a look and said to Jordy that he wouldn’t be in a cell long enough to find out how arduous it might be, although she had no idea.

But the whole situation was impossible. She couldn’t fathom how her life—her family’s lives—had spiraled so far out of control.

Emmett had left her—again—on Saturday, as soon as he knew Jordy was out of danger. His aunt Leila had called him to say his mother had been taken by ambulance to the hospital, suffering from chest pain, and she’d been admitted for observation. Something was going on with her heart again; they weren’t certain what. Emmett felt he had no choice. The sisters were old; they had no one but him. Even Sandy’s father had encouraged him to go.

“Irene isn’t strong,” her dad had said. “You can’t expect Emmett to tell her over the phone that Travis has died and Jordy might well be charged with manslaughter. Who knows what more damage that might cause to her heart.”

“Why tell her at all?” Sandy had asked. “Why worry her?”

“You want me to pretend everything is fine?” Emmett had given her a disbelieving stare.
Am I starring in an episode of
Twilight Zone
here?
He’d asked that of Sandy, derision heavy in his voice.

Did he think it wasn’t the same for her—hearing Jenna blurt out the secret she’d been entrusted to keep? Sandy thought she would never grasp the enormity of that betrayal any more than Emmett seemed able to grasp her betrayal of him.

How could you lie to me?
He had repeated the question, for possibly the tenth time, moments before climbing into his truck to leave her.

“I didn’t lie,” Sandy said. “I just didn’t tell you.”

“You’re splitting hairs,” he said.

She guessed she was. At least in his mind, there wasn’t a difference between a sin of omission versus one of commission. The result was the same.

But she didn’t have a better answer. Had someone handed her a million dollars in trade for an explanation, she couldn’t have provided one. The woman, the wife and mother she was today, wanted to go back and choke the girl who’d lied. At the time, all those years ago, she’d done the only thing that had seemed right.

“What am I supposed to tell Jordy?” she had asked Emmett.

“The truth,” Emmett had answered, driving away.

She had returned to Jordy’s room alone to wait for him to wake up, to be alert enough to take in the terrible news not only of Travis’s death but of his father’s departure. She had waited through Saturday night in an armchair beside his bed, jolted from snatches of disturbed sleep each time a nurse came to take Jordy’s vitals, every time he asked for water. It had amazed her when near dawn on Sunday morning, she wakened to find him much improved. The damaged right half of his face was still a carnival of reds, blues, and a sickly shade of greenish yellow, but the swelling was down, and the color had returned to the healthy side of his face. The white of his left eye was clear. He looked more like himself, and for the first time since the accident, she felt her fear for his physical well-being subside. But not her dread. No. It was pervasive, suffocating.

Jordy knew; she had an immediate and visceral sense that he knew Travis was gone before she pushed herself up from the chair and went to his bedside to tell him. When she managed it, she stood for a moment, patting his arm. Delaying, she asked how he was feeling. “You look better,” she said.

He rubbed his eyes, tried a smile. He needed a shave. It still startled her, the sight of dark stubble on his face.

“Do you want anything? Water?”

He shook his head.

“I have something to tell you,” she said.

He lowered his chin, still shaking his head, even as she spoke, quickly and quietly of the severity of Travis’s injuries and his failure to survive them. “I’m so sorry, honey.”

“I thought I was having a nightmare.” Jordy’s voice was hoarse. “The drugs—I didn’t believe it.”

She smoothed his rumpled hair. She didn’t question his meaning, although he would explain it to her later, all that he’d heard, more than she suspected. In the moment, though, what consumed her was his need for comfort.

He asked when it had happened; he asked if it was really true, and finally, when there was nothing to do but accept it, he buried his face in his hands, and the sob that came was ragged and hurt. It pierced her heart. Without thinking about it, she slipped off her shoes and climbed onto the bed beside him, careful not to jostle him or the tubing that snaked out of his arms, and she pulled him against her. He was big, as wide shouldered and broad chested as Emmett, but she cradled him as if he were still small, her own tears dampening the hair near his ear.

She had told Emmett later, while Jordy slept, how awful it was, but he hadn’t come home. Sandy had a feeling he wasn’t going to, either, not until she told Jordy the truth—all of it.

She glanced at Jordy’s discharge papers now, and stowing them in her purse, she found her cell phone. He needed an attorney, a criminal attorney, someone to get him out of jail.

The only one she knew was Roger Yellott. He’d been a client a year ago, an unhappy one. He’d moved to Greeley from somewhere in Florida. Tampa, she thought, and he’d hired her to design a look straight out of the tropics, using plants like date palms, brugmansias, cannas, and birds of paradise. It wasn’t a look she especially cared for, but that was beside the point. The fact was that none of those warm-weather, humidity-loving plants were really suitable for the often windy and dry, occasionally subfreezing, hill-country climate. He’d been annoyed when she’d explained she couldn’t give him her standard one-year, onetime replacement guarantee for plants so unsuited to their location.

She scrolled through her directory, and finding his office number, she dialed it, and she was so relieved to have his assistant put her through to Roger, to have him actually take her call, and when he answered, she said so.

“I thought we might not be speaking,” she said, and he laughed.

Laughed!

And for some reason, Sandy’s throat closed.

“Water under the bridge,” Roger said. “I’ve been hunting for six months for the nerve, or whatever it is I need, to call you.” As if he sensed her discomposure, he hurried on in a warm voice. “You were right, you see. About the plants. After last winter the whole garden looks like shit. Especially the date palm. Jesus, there is nothing uglier than a date palm clinging to life by its frost-blackened fronds.”

Now Sandy laughed and pinched the bridge of her nose. She found her truck and got in. “So, you’re ready to take my advice, is that what you’re saying?”

“Eating crow as we speak. And yes, if you’re offering your services. Absolutely. What was it you recommended, other than the serving of bird, that is. Cactus and rocks, wasn’t it?”

“I think we can be a little more creative.” She thought how genuinely nice he was. Even when they’d had their disagreement, he’d kept his cool.

He sobered. “Somehow I don’t think that’s why you called, though, is it? I heard about that god-awful wreck your son was involved in. How is he?”

“He’s why I’m calling, Roger. Jordy’s been arrested.” She paused, waiting for the breath—the actual nerve to put it into words, and then it came. “My nephew, Travis, died from his injuries on Saturday, and Jordy was arrested today when the hospital discharged him.”

“For?”

“They say he was driving.”

“Intoxication manslaughter, then. Is that the charge?” Roger asked, gently.

“Yes, and intoxication assault. Michelle Meade is still in a coma. But how did you know? The news? Has it been on the news already?”

“I don’t know about the news; I heard it from Mandy, Augie Bright’s wife. She told me when I was getting a haircut earlier. That gal is cute, but boy, can she talk.”

“Jordy says he wasn’t driving, that Travis was the designated driver. He says Sergeant Huckabee—that’s who made the arrest—has got it wrong.” Sandy waited. So did Roger. She went on. “I think Huck—do you know him? Len Huckabee? I think he’s got something against Jordy. Jordy won’t say what it is, but Huck has stopped him so many times in the past couple of years for nothing. He says Jordy has an attitude, a chip on his shoulder.”
A drinking problem.

Sandy let her stare drift. Jenna had said it, too. She’d accused Sandy of having her head in the sand about it. But all the kids drank. Even Travis. Perfect Travis.

Oh God, where had that come from?

Sandy had thought it before, plenty of times, but that was when Travis was alive, when Jenna was busy comparing him to Jordy, making it sound as if Jordy was inferior.

Roger said he knew Sergeant Huckabee but not well.

Sandy said, “Jordy needs an attorney, Roger. Can you represent him? Can you get him out of there? Arrange for bail?” She didn’t know what she was asking. What did arranging bail mean? Emmett would know, but he wasn’t here. Jordy had no one but her.

When Roger said he would go to the Madrone County jail in Greeley and find out what was happening, Sandy almost cried from relief and exhaustion, and the constant wearing fear that she was on the brink of losing everything and everyone she loved, if she hadn’t already.

He said, “Let me warn you, though, they might not set bail today. They will likely wait for the arraignment.”

Sandy said, “Okay,” but how would she know whether it was? The word
arraignment
, the process involved—whatever understanding of it she had was from watching crime shows on television. How accurate could that be? “When would that happen?”