Faultlines (16 page)

“Best you will ever eat. I promise,” the sergeant said.

Coleta said, “No. He is—” She broke off, looking for the word, frustrated when she couldn’t find it. Blushing, she looked up at her husband, who towered over her, for help.

“She thinks I’m prejudiced,” he said, and Libby knew it was true and that it made him happy. She thought how when he had stopped her for speeding, she had found him patronizing, a little menacing. Even on his subsequent visits out here, he’d been brusque, every inch the cop. It was disconcerting now, this soft glow of affection emanating from him, this glimmering pride. But she guessed he wouldn’t last long on the job, showing this side of himself in the course of enforcing the law.

“Won’t you all come in?” Libby repeated her invitation, and this time he shepherded his little family across the doorsill, asking if she would call him Len or Huck, whichever she preferred.

Libby took possession of the still-warm casserole dish, and said, “Okay, then, I’m Libby.”

Heidi peeped from behind her mother’s skirt.

“You are adorable,” Libby told her. She found Coleta’s gaze.
“Bonita.”
She tried the word, thinking it was the right one.
“Muy bonita.”

Coleta’s smile was pleased; she dipped her chin, shielding it.
“Gracias.”
Her offering of thanks came on a murmur of air.

“How old are you, Heidi?” Libby asked, smiling down at her.

The little girl held up four fingers, spreading them wide like rays of the sun.

“Almost four,” Huck corrected her gently. He glanced at Libby. “She’ll be four in September.”

“Ah,” Libby said. “You’re getting to be a big girl.”

“We can only stay a moment,” Huck said. “We’re taking Heidi swimming at Lake Hershey in Ten-Mile Park. Just up the highway,” he added, and Libby thought it was because she was a newcomer and might not know. But she did know it.

“Beck and I hiked there not long ago.”

Huck’s eyes went loose with apology. He hadn’t meant to rake up a memory that caused her pain. As if she didn’t remember every moment. “It’s all right,” she said, and then quickly, she said, “I’ve been thinking I might stay here in the cottage.”

“I wondered if you would, in view of the vandalism—” But now he caught sight of Libby’s first visitor, and his demeanor hardened. “Jordy Cline. What in the hell are you doing here, son? I hope you didn’t drive out here.”

His voice was hard; it was his cop voice, and Libby deplored it.

“No, Sergeant, I didn’t drive. I hitched. ”

Hitched?
Libby thought. Had it really meant that much to him to come here?

“You know, I’d think you’d tone down the attitude given the circumstances, but, hell, that’s just me. I’d like to know what you’re doing here, what your business is with Mrs. Hennessey.”

“I’m not required by law to explain that to you, am I? You can’t revoke my bail if I don’t, right?”

Huckabee, to his credit, Libby thought, didn’t take the bait.

“He’s doing some work for me,” she said, in an attempt to defuse the situation. It wasn’t a total lie. She realized, too, that she didn’t want the true nature of Jordan’s visit exposed any more than she wanted to see him create more trouble for himself. “That’s all right, isn’t it?” Libby addressed the sergeant. “He can work, can’t he?”

“As long as he can get himself around without driving,” Huckabee answered, and while he seemed less formidable now, Libby sensed he was alert, watchful in the way that’s characteristic of lawmen, of bullies. In her mind there was a fine line between the two. She remembered how he’d followed her, closely, from the shoulder of the road for a short time after stopping her for speeding. She had felt threatened by him in those few moments. She felt wary of him now, although she realized he was only doing his job, that his advice was spot-on, and warranted, and very likely well meant. Still, the undercurrent of authority remained, as lethal and menacing as the duty weapon he strapped on his hip before beginning a shift.

He said, “Everybody’s got eyes on you, Jordy. You mess up, somebody’s bound to see. I’m telling you for your own good, okay?”

Libby looked at Jordan, at the storm fuming in his eyes. She sensed the effort he was making to keep a grip on the hot words she could only imagine were boiling on his tongue.

“Len?” Coleta edged Heidi toward the door, her gaze darting between Jordan and her husband and back to Jordan. She was clearly worried, as if she didn’t understand what was happening, or perhaps, Libby thought, Coleta understood all too well that there were grounds for her apprehension.

Huckabee seemed not to hear her, though. His focus was on Jordan.

“I know you’re hurting, son. Losing Travis, your best buddy, knowing it’s your fault—it’s one hell of a hard thing. I’ve been where you are. I can tell you the pain never goes away entirely, but it’ll get better. Tolerable, anyway. You’ll get past the worst of it, and you’ll make some kind of life. If you don’t screw up more than you already have, you can learn from this.”

Libby waited for Jordan to object, but he only looked at the sergeant with something like derision riding in his eyes. Libby sensed he wasn’t buying Huckabee’s speech, which had sounded to her almost fatherly, in a pointed way.

And yet she couldn’t quite trust it, either. She didn’t know what bothered her. Huckabee seemed to care. Augie and Ruth said he was a good guy, a good cop. Fair. Even tempered. What did she know, anyway? Everything the sergeant said matched the facts: Jordan had driven a car drunk and caused an accident that had killed his cousin and left a young woman in a coma.

Libby took a quick step to the kitchen table and set the casserole down, and turning, she found Coleta’s glance. “Thank you for the tamales.”

“
Sí, senora. De nada.
You are welcome,” she added, her translated English halting and unsure.

“Yes, perfectly said.” Libby couldn’t resist encouraging her.

Coleta smiled, glancing at her husband.

He smiled, too, but the look he gave Libby held none of that warmth. She felt he was assessing her, putting her on notice, but then he and his family were quickly gone, and she thought it might as easily have been her imagination.

She drove Jordan home in Beck’s truck, over his protests. When she stopped at the end of the road that led to the highway, he got out and opened the gate, waited for her to pass through, then locked it behind her.

She thanked him when he got back into the truck, and after they’d driven several miles in silence, she said, “I could really use some help at the cottage with the landscaping, but I don’t want you hitchhiking—unless you already have a job.” She hadn’t thought of that.

But he said he didn’t. “I could probably get somebody to bring me. Not my mom,” he added quickly.

No,
Libby thought.

“It might be hard to work out a regular schedule, though, since I’d have to rely on somebody to give me a ride.”

Talking further, they decided he would call when he could arrange transportation, and when she offered him fifteen an hour, he said it would be great. “It’s more than Mom pays me.”

Now that it was settled, Libby questioned her sanity. Why was she doing this, involving him in her life? But she could already tell there was no use in arguing with herself.
This is Beck’s son,
a voice in her head said, and it was as if Beck were there, riding beside her. She could reach out and touch him, and he would be warm and real.
If all things were truly possible.

She glanced at Jordan. He didn’t resemble Beck so much in profile. His nose was shorter and slightly upturned. Beck’s nose had been long and straight, what people called a Roman nose. Libby had never seen Sandy close up. Jordan might have her nose, for all she knew. She said, “I’m surprised you aren’t working for your mom this summer.”

“It’s better if we’re not around each other right now.”

Libby waited, knowing from her work as a guidance counselor that silence could be unnerving, that it would often get a person talking simply to fill the void. She didn’t know what to say, in any case. She didn’t know why she was thinking of tactics that might lead him to confide in her. To what end? What would she do with any information he gave her? She didn’t know if she had ever in her life felt so uncertain, so unsure of her role. But she was drawn to him, that much was undeniable.

He said, “It’s no secret, I’m in a lot of deep shit. Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay.”

“Huck is a great guy, or he used to be. He was at my aunt Jenna’s a lot when me and Trav were kids.”

“I heard your uncle was killed in the line of duty,” Libby said. “In San Antonio? He and Sergeant Huckabee were partners, right?” They’d reached town, and Libby stopped at a red light.

“Yeah, Huck was kind of like a dad to Travis. He did stuff with both of us. Once he even helped me and Travis build a soapbox-derby car. We raced it in Dallas and a few other places around Texas.”

“Did you win?” Libby headed through the intersection and picked up speed.

“Nah. We didn’t care. It was just for fun. You should slow down. My house—see that little road up there with the green mailbox? That’s where you turn.”

She followed his directions, cresting a short hill. The house, a low-slung ranch style with a rusty metal roof and a deep front porch, came into view. What if his mother was home? The possibility had needled Libby’s mind the entire way here.

“My mom’s on a job.”

Libby darted a glance at Jordan, and it was in his eyes that he’d read her mind. She parked in front of the basketball goal. The net was missing, and the plastic, sand-filled base was faded. It looked well used. “Do you play?”

Jordan said, “For fun, yeah.”

Libby said, “I grew up in a neighborhood full of basketball-playing boys, mostly older than me. Sometimes they let me hang out with them. They taught me the game.” She remembered the slap of the ball on the concrete, the endless taunts and whoops of laughter, summer nights playing endless games of H-O-R-S-E. They’d never liked it when she won.

“Trav and I played football in high school. We were cocaptains. I don’t really know why I got picked for the job, but Trav—he was a natural-born leader. He never let anyone quit, never let them get down. No matter how bad you screwed up, he’d be there for you. You know the rule ‘No pass, no play’?”

Libby nodded.

“The center on our team, Brad Strong—he couldn’t get algebra, not the simplest equation, and he was flunking big-time. He was all, like, ready to quit to avoid getting booted him off the team, but Trav wouldn’t let him. He tutored Brad—nights, weekends, before school, whatever—and he never asked for a dime. He knew Brad didn’t have it. Trav helped other kids with their grades, too, not just football players. He never took a fee unless they could afford it.”

“Brad passed?”

“He made a B.”

“Pretty impressive,” Libby said. It was. She remembered what Augie had told her about Travis, that he’d worked with special-needs kids when he had extra time. It made her heart ache to think of his loss, of what he might have become, the contribution to the lives of others he might have made had his life not been extinguished so soon. Such a waste.

“Trav was the best,” Jordan said, and then, after a heartbeat, he added, “I wasn’t driving.”

Libby looked at him; he was staring straight ahead.

“We were on the lake all day. Michelle’s folks have a real nice place. They’ve got boats, a couple of Jet Skis. Her mom and dad are pretty cool, too. They’re not all uptight if we have a beer or something.”

Libby didn’t say anything.

“We’re almost twenty-one, anyway.” He waited, and when Libby didn’t fill the silence, he said, “I know you shouldn’t drink and drive. I mean, I know it when I’m sober. Everybody does, I guess.”

“But that night you weren’t sober.”

“No. We’d been drinking pretty much all day. We slept some in the afternoon when it got really hot, but you know . . . we kind of started in again when we got up. Michelle’s folks cooked hamburgers, and we ate. I wanted to just chill there, watch a movie or something, but Trav was wired, like, he ate dinner, drank a couple more beers, and got his second wind or something. He wanted to shoot off firecrackers.”

Jordan wiped his face and made a noise deep in his throat. It sounded to Libby like a protest of sorts. It sounded like a wish to not tell the rest, or to change it somehow.

He said, “We’d already shot off everything we had over the Fourth, but the stands stay open around here for a few extra days till they sell out, or sell as much as they can. I didn’t know how bad off Trav was, or I would never have given him my keys, but he’s usually all right to drive. He doesn’t get wasted.”

“Were you doing something more than drinking?”

Jordan didn’t answer. He wiped his face again. “X,” he said. “We took some Ecstasy, but I don’t think they found it when they did the tox screen at the hospital, or they would have said something, so maybe it wore off.”

“I don’t know,” Libby said. “Alcohol and drugs in combination—” She stopped, not wanting to come off as if she were preaching. She sensed it was important to let him talk.