Faultlines (19 page)

“I know, don’t worry,” he said. “But don’t think for one moment you’re alone in this, okay? I’m right here. You can count on me. Just call. Okay?”

She nodded, and he left her there.

“Thanks for dinner,” he said, walking backward, finally turning from her. He got into his car, something black and sporty and built low to the ground. Jordy had told her what it was, a Porsche, she thought. He had said it could really go. She thought of the trucks she and Emmett drove. She had a truck kind of life, not a sporty kind of life.

She wondered what that might feel like—a sporty life.

Back in the house, she found her cell phone and called Emmett. It didn’t ring once before rolling to his voice mail. He was avoiding her. It wasn’t the first time she’d had the thought. “I need you,” she said, and stopped when her voice broke, when tears salted her eyelids. And when she found her composure again, she said, “The dishwasher’s broken, and a witness Roger found out about who would have testified for Jordy changed his story.” After that, she carried her phone into the kitchen and curled into a corner of the little sofa to wait—for Emmett to call, for Jordy to come home.

She hadn’t meant to fall asleep, and at first she wasn’t certain what woke her up, or where she was. She lifted her head inches from the sofa arm, smacking her mouth, mopping at the drool that crusted one corner. Her back and neck—everything—ached.

“Mom.”

“Jordy?” She got up, fumbled with the wall switch.

“No,” he said. “Don’t turn it on.”

Her attention caught on the urgency in his voice. “Why? What’s wrong?”

He walked past her, going from the kitchen through the great room and into the living room to the pair of windows that overlooked the front yard. “I think someone followed me home. They’re parked out there, at the end of the drive.”

“What time is it?” Sandy came up behind him.

He had his knee in the seat of an armchair, finger parting the drape behind it, peeping out. “Look,” he said. “Isn’t that a car? See it? To the right of the oak tree.”

She bent over his shoulder. It was a moment before her eye found it, several inches of car hood, a chunk of bumper, the only parts of the car that were visible in the wind-scattered moonlight.
Midsize sedan,
she thought.
Light colored.

“Why would anybody follow you?” But even as Sandy asked, she was thinking of Patsy Meade, that if Michelle Meade’s mother would accost her in a parking lot, then she was probably capable of almost anything. “Should we call the police?”

Jordy straightened. “What if it is the police?”

“You keep coming back to this idea that Huck has got it in for you, that he’s framing you. Why would he do that? Something so terrible? Why would he risk his job that way, Jordy?”

“Because he’s an asshole?” Jordy headed for the kitchen.

Sandy followed. “If you can’t tell me, then you’ve got to tell Roger. He’s your attorney. Anything you say to him is privileged.”

“You think he wouldn’t use it at the trial, that it wouldn’t come out then?” He opened the refrigerator, got out a bottle of water. “If it was anything, I mean.”

Sandy saw the time: 2:06. The numbers glowed red on the microwave. “Where have you been all this time? I hope you weren’t drinking.” She thought she smelled it, beer. But maybe that was a memory left over from when Roger was here. And maybe she was deluding herself, the proverbial ostrich.

“I’m whipped; I’m going to bed.” Jordy drained the water bottle and tossed it in the recycle can. He was in the doorway to the hall when he stopped. “I’m sorry,” he said, keeping his back to her. “For taking your truck, for being pissed off and making you worry. I’m sorry that Aunt Jenna lost her only kid, and that my best friend is dead, and that Michelle still hasn’t woken up, and for the whole damn mess, but I can’t fix it, Mom.”

His voice was gruff. He turned to her, and she took a step toward him, but just as he had earlier, he warded her off, showing her the flat of his palm. “I think it would really be best for me to plead guilty, you know? Get it over with, take whatever’s coming. It won’t make up for Trav—”

“But if you weren’t driving—”

“There’s times I wish I was gone with him.”

“No, Jordy—” She started toward him again.

“Stay,” he said, and the syllable was blunt edged, hurt.

“You don’t have to go through this alone, honey.” Sandy repeated the comfort Roger had offered her. “I’m here. I’m in this with you, and I support you no matter what.”

“But you don’t believe me.”

“I never said—”

“No, Mom, we both know where everyone in this family stands. No one believes me. Not you or Aunt Jenna or Dad or the grands. No one. Roger only believes me because it’s his job. That’s what happens when you get a reputation for being a liar—when you
are
a liar.”

A silence came. She didn’t know how to break it. She thought he would go, but he seemed not to know how, or maybe he had more to say.

She touched her brow and said, “I don’t know how we got here,” and she realized she didn’t even know where
here
was.

“Does it really matter, Mom?”

11

L
ibby was anxious to talk to Ruth about what Jordy had confessed to her, the alarming predicament he was in, but Ruth didn’t have time for a serious talk until Monday. They agreed to meet at her office before the other real estate agents and the office staff arrived. Libby drove into town, early, stopping for danish on the way.

“What is going on?” Ruth asked, greeting Libby at the door.

“You won’t believe it,” Libby answered. As she explained it all to Ruth, heard it all again out loud, she thought how crazy it sounded. She thought of the jeopardy Jordy was in.

“I don’t know what to do now,” Libby said when she finished. “I don’t think I’ve slept for longer than two minutes since Jordy told me all of this.”

“What if he’s lying?” Ruth asked over her shoulder. They were in the tiny office kitchen, and she was making coffee.

“I know. People lie so much nowadays, it’s practically an art form.” Libby opened the paper sack containing the cheese danish she’d brought. It was their shared favorite, and now that they were older, an illicit treat.

“But?” Ruth brought napkins from the coffee service bar, setting one in front of Libby and keeping the other for herself. She poured coffee into mugs and brought those to the table, too.

“I think Jordan’s too scared to lie,” Libby said, glancing at Ruth.

“But isn’t that what people usually do when they’re scared? They lie because they’re guilty and afraid of the consequences, right? You ought to know. You’re the big crime-show nut. How many times have you seen a husband murder his wife and then cry about it?” Ruth asked. “Big, lying tears streaming down their big, lying face, dripping off their lying jaw? Not from grief, or even out of remorse, but because they got caught.”

“I keep wondering, why did Jordan tell me? Why did he come to see me? It’s not as if we’re related.”

“He wants to know about his birth father. Some adopted kids do.”

“I always forget you were adopted.” Ruth had found her birth mother while she and Libby were still students at SMU in Dallas. She’d been living in Wichita Falls twenty miles south of the Texas–Oklahoma border. Libby had gone with Ruth to see her. She’d told Ruth she was fifteen when she got pregnant, and when it was her time, her parents sent her to the Edna Gladney Home in Fort Worth. They had stood over her, too, after Ruth’s delivery, while she signed away her right to mother her child.

“It’s ironic, in a sad way,” Ruth said now, “how Jordy found out, and the timing couldn’t be worse.”

“If only he’d known a bit earlier, he and Beck might have met.”

“I’ve always wondered why he didn’t try and find Jordy sooner.”

“He promised his mother he wouldn’t.”

“I know, but it doesn’t seem as if some promise he made in the heat of the moment to a woman he cared nothing about would have stopped him. It wasn’t as if you were making a fuss about it. You forgave him.”

“That was later, long after he confessed. In the beginning, I made a lot worse than a fuss. You must remember. You took the brunt of it. I was a wreck.”

“But once you worked through all that—”

Libby folded her napkin and folded it again. “Well, not to be too crude about it, but do you have any idea how many times he was in some fertility specialist’s office masturbating over a stack of porno magazines because I couldn’t let go of the idea of having our child?” Before they’d gone that route, on her doctor’s advice, Libby had kept a record, taking her temperature religiously, calling Beck home when the chart indicated she was at her most fertile. Something broke inside her brain when the cause was shown to be her cervical mucus, that it was killing off Beck’s sperm, murdering every dream of the child she so desperately wanted to make with him, before it could even become a possibility. There were cures for her condition, but none of them worked. She moved on to artificial insemination, attempting round after round, and finally as a last resort they suffered through five failed attempts at in vitro fertilization. Her obsession had lasted seven years, during which she had nearly bankrupted them financially and emotionally.

She poked her napkin into the bakery sack. “He never once blamed me. He never said it was my fault he had an affair. He blamed himself. He always said it was his stupid mistake, and I blamed him, too. I made his life hell.”

“He broke your heart.”

“Yes, and he knew it. After that the last thing he was going to do was start a search for the child that was the result, the very symbol, of everything I could never give him.” Libby paused to consider. “Had I been a mother and given away my baby, I would have wanted to find her or him. I mean, when we’re in the heat of some horrible time in our lives, when we aren’t thinking clearly, we make mistakes and later regret having made them. Like Beck regretted his affair. Like your birth mom. She was so glad when you found her.”

“She cried,” Ruth said.

“Beck must have wanted to reach out to his son for years.” Libby was caught up with the idea of Beck’s longing. “But he didn’t do anything about it because of me, because of how he thought it might affect me. It was a relief when we could finally talk about it.”

“It might not have happened at all if I hadn’t moved here, if Aunt Tildy lived in some other town,” Ruth said.

“It’s strange how it came together, as if it was meant to. Even though it scared me when you said Sandy was here. But looking back now, who’s to say it wasn’t the universe’s way of getting everything into the open and resolved, once and for all?” Libby pressed her fingertips to her eyes.

“Libby, honey, what is it?”

“I’m fine. I just miss him, and yet, if he had to go, then I’m so happy we were at peace with all of that.” Libby sniffed, pinching her nose. “I think I’m even happy about Jordan seeking me out. He looks so much like Beck.”

“I think so every time I see him, which isn’t often.”

Libby picked up her mug. The coffee had gone cold; she set it down.

“I’ve heard he drinks—Jordy. I know they all drink at his age, but I’ve heard he’s a bit more deeply into it than that.”

“He told me he thinks he has a problem.”

“Really?”

“It made me think of Mia. Even Beck in the early days, and their parents. I’ve heard it can be genetic.”

“I’ve heard that, too. I’ve also heard Sandy is good at ignoring it.”

“I ran into that a lot from parents in my guidance-counselor days. If you pretend your kid is okay, then yea and amen, he is.”

“If only.”

Libby smiled.

“So, do you think you’ll talk to Sandy about this—what he told you?”

“I don’t know.” Libby picked at her thumbnail. “It’s easy to
say
I’m good with it, that when I see her I won’t claw her eyes out, but when I think about that e-mail, the fact that she waited until all hell was breaking loose—”

“Uh, yeah, maybe you’re not that good.” Ruth made a face.

“What if I talk to her and she doesn’t believe me? And what about the promise I made to Jordan not to tell anyone, especially his mom?”

“Well, you blew that when you told me. Why does it have to be a secret, anyway? I mean, the kid’s freedom is at stake—”

“Senora Ruth?”

Ruth’s glance darted over Libby’s shoulder.

She twisted around.

“Perdón.”
Coleta spoke from the doorway. “Sorry.” She repeated her apology in English.

Libby looked at Ruth.

She stood up. “Coleta? Uh,
buenos días
. Good morning. I didn’t think you were coming in till ten?”

“Good morning.” Coleta repeated the words, smiling, uncertain.

Ruth pointed to her watch. “Ten o’clock? Um,
diez—las diez
? That’s when you were supposed to come? Uh—
venir aquí
?”

“Ah,
las diez
.
Sí.
Len bring, um,
vengo ahora
?” She shrugged.

“She doesn’t drive.” Ruth addressed Libby. “Huck has to take her everywhere. Let me get her settled, and I’ll be back.”

Libby rinsed their coffee mugs and wiped the table, and when Ruth reappeared, she said, “You found work for her to do?”

“Folding brochures and stickering on addresses. She seems to understand, but she’s so quiet, like a little mouse. I said to Huck the other day if she doesn’t talk more, engage with us, I don’t see how working here is going to help her gain enough fluency in English to pass the test to get her green card.”

“What if she heard us earlier and tells her cop husband what Jordan told me about him?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. She understands even less English than she can speak.” Ruth crossed her arms and leaned against the coffee bar. “Besides, you can see how shy she is.”

“Well, I know if I wanted citizenship as badly as you say she does, I wouldn’t be taking such stupid chances. Suppose she were to get deported? They wouldn’t let her take her little girl back to Honduras with her, would they?”

“I don’t think so. She’d be staying here with her daddy.”

“So she’d lose her opportunity to become a US citizen and her little girl.”

“And she is totally devoted to that little girl, let me tell you.”

Libby hung the hand towel she’d used on a hook next to the sink. “But she’s very young and very pretty.” Libby looked at Ruth. “
Muy bonita
and what?
Muy
younger?
Mucho
less years-o than Huck-o?”

Ruth laughed. “How have we lived in this state all our lives and not learned to speak decent Spanish? It’s a crime.”

“I don’t know about you, but I took French in high school and dreamed of romance in Paris.”

Ruth sobered. “Well, if it felt odd having her here before I knew all of this, it feels downright weird and uncomfortable now.”

“I probably should have kept my mouth shut. For all I know, you’re right and Jordan is lying.”

“What I hear, he has kind of a reputation for it. It’s for sure there’s no love lost for him in town now. Or Sandy, either, for that matter. I can’t think of anyone who believes he wasn’t driving that night, and he’s not doing himself any favors, accusing Travis.”

“I want to help him, though. I know it’s crazy.”

Ruth eyes flooded with compassion. “It keeps Beck alive.”

Libby’s throat tightened. Of course Ruth of all people would get it. But Libby might have added that she herself felt more alive. Jordan’s appearance on her doorstep, and the Gordian knot his actual and real physical self presented, even the tangle of old emotions and memories that his flesh-and-bone substance enlivened, was better than staring bleakly into the dark tunnel of her future without Beck. Being the one of them left behind was something she’d seldom contemplated.

“Will you talk to Sandy, then?” Ruth asked. “Want me to come with you?”

“Not right now. I’m going to try a different way first, go straight for the horse’s mouth, if you know what I mean.”

“If by horse’s mouth you mean Huck, I think that’s a bad idea.”

“Why? It’s not as if I’m going to accuse him of anything. I have a good reason to talk to him anyway. I don’t think he, or anyone at the Wyatt police department, cares one thing about finding the person responsible for killing those animals on my property. But I am serious, and he’d better know it. Plus, there’s what happened to Ricky Burrows’s truck. It was damaged on my property, too, but there again, local law enforcement has dropped the ball. It’s a disgrace.”

“Who is Ricky Burrows, anyway? I can’t place him.”

“I only know him through Augie. Ricky works for him. Augie told me he’s from Colorado, that he came here because he couldn’t get work there.”

“Or he’s on the run from something or someone.”

“Ha! I thought I was the one who watched too much IDTV. He’s just a young guy who’s had a run of bad luck, and now he’s out of work altogether since I stopped construction on the house. I feel bad for him.”

“There must be other jobs. Your house isn’t the only one Augie’s building.”

“No, probably not,” Libby allowed. “Maybe Augie fired Ricky.”

“You need to find out, Libby. The guy could be in trouble. Maybe his truck was keyed by accident, or maybe it was a random bunch of hooligan kids who did it. But if it was random like that, why stop with his old beater truck? Why not scar up your shiny new Lexus or Beck’s practically new Ford F-150? They were both there, parked nearby, right?” Ruth paused.

Libby didn’t answer.

“Okay, let’s say it
was
someone up from Houston, out to get revenge—a bizarro plan if I ever heard one—”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to. I know how your mind works. Let’s say that’s the case. Would they have made that mistake? What’s the point of gouging the paint off a vehicle where most of the paint is off already? And don’t even get me started on the mutilated-animal routine, or the significance behind finding a note on your kitchen counter advising you to lock your doors.
Bizarre
is too mild a word for all this stuff. It’s past that now. It’s dangerous. You shouldn’t even be staying out there.”

“Why do you think I’m going to have a chat with Sergeant Huckabee?”

“To talk about Jordy, another terrible, if not downright dangerous, idea.”

“I already said I’ll be discreet.”

“Suppose Huck
is
the one leaving the dead animals around at the cottage?”

Libby hooted.

“Come on, Libby. Even you’ve said it’s concerning the way that note is an almost exact verbatim quote of the advice Huck gave you about keeping your doors locked.”

“Yes, but aren’t you the one who told me it was a coincidence? Otherwise I would have taken it to the captain, or to Greeley. I still could.”

Ruth crossed her arms.

“It isn’t as if I want to be involved in any of this.”

“Then let it go.”

Libby made a face.

Ruth flung her hands. “Why am I wasting my breath when you’re so hardheaded?”

Libby grinned. “Don’t you think maybe you’re being just a tish paranoid?
Un poco?
” She held her index finger and thumb a little apart, expecting Ruth to laugh. She didn’t. Instead she hammered away, saying Libby didn’t know whom she was dealing with, which didn’t sit well, and Ruth knew it, but she went on anyway.