Faultlines (22 page)

“Well, I’ve probably got no right to say this, but it pisses me off the way this has been handled.” Roger folded the paper sack as he spoke, keeping his eye on it. “Not by Jordy. He’s at the mercy of—aw, hell—” He tossed the sack aside. “I don’t like seeing you hurt, that’s all.”

She shifted her glance, fighting with the complicated mix of her emotions—gratitude at having Roger’s defense of her, and pain at the way in which she was being closed out of her own family. “I’m afraid Jordy hates me.” She whispered the fear that was uppermost in her mind.

Roger lifted her chin, bringing her face around. “I was pretty horrible to my mom, too, at his age. I put her through hell. She felt the same as you. We laugh about it now.”

She wiped her face, pinched her nose, gathering herself, the scattered fragments of her composure. “Were you ever arrested? Is that why you became a lawyer?”

“My brother was. Where’s your blender?”

Sandy opened the cubby where it was stored and found a shot glass.

Roger uncapped bottles and measured ingredients. “I was a freshman at Florida State and partying hard when he was wrongfully accused and convicted of raping and assaulting a woman. After he got sent to prison, I transferred to Stanford and started working on my law degree. He did eight years in prison before I could pass the bar and get to work on the petition for a retrial. My whole focus was on getting the guilty verdict overturned. I wanted him to be exonerated, totally.”

Sandy kept Roger’s gaze. “He didn’t do it?”

“Nope. It was a setup. The sex was consensual, but the woman’s husband found out and took exception. He was a batterer, and there was an afternoon when he came home and somehow knew what was going on.”

“Your brother was there?”

“He’d just left, but the guy hammered his wife until she confessed. When she did, he hit her a few more times, then he took her to the emergency room, where they did the rape kit, the whole nine yards. When the cops came, the husband did most of the talking. The woman was terrified and went along. Given that they had my brother’s DNA, he didn’t have a chance.”

“How awful. How did you ever get him out?”

Roger’s smile was one cornered, an odd mix of chagrin and rue. “The husband eventually recanted after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, end stage. He had some kind of come-to-Jesus moment.” Roger flipped on the blender.

Sandy took two cocktail glasses from the cabinet but put one back when Roger declined to join her.

“Grasshoppers are a little froufrou for me,” he said. “I’ll stick with beer.” He poured her drink and handed it to her, watching as she took a sip.

She closed her eyes, savoring the minty, sweet flavor, cool on her tongue. “Delicious,” she said. “Thank you. It’s just what I needed.” It was. She felt the effect of the alcohol uncurl, warming the blood in her veins, loosening the tension coiled in her muscles.

“Sure.” Roger stowed the blender jar in the refrigerator and got out a beer. “I might have killed the guy if he hadn’t already been dying. But it was pretty crazy, the way it ended. Ironic, really. That whole shit storm, for lack of a better way to describe it, changed my life, and in the end, nothing I did made the difference.”

Sandy didn’t believe that. “You kept your brother going, I bet. Just knowing you were out there, an advocate—it had to mean a lot to him.”

“Yeah, you’re right. It did.”

“You’re close.”

“Yeah. Both of us and our mom.”

“What about your dad?”

“He took off when we were young. Haven’t seen much of him since.”

Sandy peered into her drink. “I miss my family.”

“I know,” Roger said. “I’m sorry.”

She was grateful when he didn’t say it would get better.

They took their drinks outside on the deck that overlooked the backyard and sat in adjacent chaise longues, and Sandy knew it was dangerous, sitting here, drinking on an empty stomach. Even worse, drinking with Roger, and imagining there might be something between them that was based on more than her loneliness, her overwhelming sense of isolation, her feeling that for all intents and purposes, she was on her own. She shouldn’t allow such ideas into her mind. Shouldn’t encourage them. But the idea of being alone with her fear and uncertainty frightened her.

“Nice night,” he said.

“Yes.”

They took care not to turn to each other, studiously looking into the yard instead, at the day that was steadily losing its shape to the oncoming twilight of evening. The air seemed alive with a kind of nervous anticipation. A breeze fretted. Crickets chittered madly among themselves. A roadrunner dashed a few steps through the long grass in the meadow beyond the fence line and paused to look around. Sandy followed its progress when it took off again, dashing a longer path, neck forward, full of itself. She was aware of Roger watching the roadrunner, too, and then she was aware of his hand, reaching across the space that separated them. After only a moment’s hesitation, she extended her hand, meeting his. His grasp was warm; his thumb slid over her knuckles. Heat flared low in her abdomen.

He said, “I have feelings for you, Sandy. I can’t lie.”

She started to object, which was ridiculous, given that she’d allowed him to take her hand. He overrode her anyway.

“I’m not going to put the moves on you as much as I might want to—as badly as I want to be with you, because I know you’re vulnerable now.” He stopped, and setting his beer down, he swung his feet to the deck floor and turned to her, keeping her hand, finding her gaze. In the fading light, his eyes were dark with emotion, his longing.

Sandy felt her breath go.

He said, “I won’t overstep, but I won’t pretend, either, that I’ll be glad if your husband comes home to you. He should. How he could leave you to handle this—but no, you fool.” Roger was talking now to himself. “Shut up before she kicks you out of here.” He didn’t drop her hand so much as give it back to her. His smile was chagrined, asking her indulgence.

It didn’t please her, being relieved of his touch.

“Forget I said anything.”

She thought of saying she was flattered, but she didn’t like the sound of it even in her own mind. She thought of saying she might not want to forget, but that would take them beyond the point of return. Her mother had always said to be careful with your words, that it wasn’t as if once you said them, you could get them back.

“Do you want me to leave?” he asked.

“No,” she said, and she didn’t.

He sighed. “Then if you don’t mind, I’ll get myself another beer.” He stood up. “Freshen your drink?”

“Yes, please.” She acquiesced, handing him her glass even though her head was already swimmy. Why should it matter what she did or with whom? No one needed her to be sober. No one cared what or how she was doing. Jordy was off, happily, with Emmett, at the apartment of their good friends, eating pizza and watching the Astros game. Maybe he would spend the night there, as Emmett had said he had done all the other nights when he’d made up stories about nonexistent new friends.

It came over her then—and she thought of Roger’s earlier reference to irony—that Emmett and Jordy were fine together in spite of how disturbed they claimed to be over learning they weren’t blood relations. They’d been shocked, but that hadn’t interfered with their relationship, which was how it should be, what she’d tried pointing out to them both. And just look at them now; they’d moved on, without her. When she’d said those words—
separation
and
divorce
—Emmett hadn’t so much as flinched. What would he think if he could see her, sitting in the gathering dusk with Roger, sipping grasshoppers, thinking of how it might feel to have him kiss her, to have his hands on her?

The patio door slid on its track. She half turned, thinking when Roger gave her drink to her she would take his hand, pull him down beside her. What was there to lose, other than herself for an hour or two?

He was looking at his phone, though, when he came back, or who knew what might have happened?

That was her first thought the following morning when she woke on the sofa, where he’d evidently put her. She had the vaguest memory of it—his arms supporting her, half carrying her into the great room and laying her gently down on the sectional. He’d covered her with the cotton throw she kept folded over the back.

Sandy thrust it aside now and sat up, moaning softly, touching her fingertips gingerly to her temples. She imagined a pair of little monkeys, one on either side of her skull, wielding tiny but lethal sledgehammers. The inside of her mouth was as furry as moss, and it tasted faintly of mint and something darker, like dirt. She looked at her bare feet, then sidelong at her sandals nearby. At least she was still wearing the shirt and capris she’d been dressed in when Roger arrived last night. She was almost positive he hadn’t taken advantage of her. And she had one other near certainty: she would never drink another grasshopper again, not as long as she lived.

He’d made another batch, teasing her, telling her how much she’d regret it. She remembered that. And she remembered that he’d shown her what he found so interesting on his phone. The text from the private detective he’d hired to help with Jordy’s case had read:

Third witness confirmed. Travis not Jordan was driving. Talk tomorrow.

13

L
ibby never knew what to do with herself at dinnertime, and Sunday evenings were the worst. Beck had always made something special for them on Sundays. He’d been the executive chef, and she the sous chef. They would have shopped together, bought the makings for an elaborate meal. There would have been music, conversation, laughter, and afterward, when the dinner dishes were done . . . 

But what was the point in remembering that sweet ritual? Libby was grateful when her phone rang. She left off making what passed for her Sunday dinner nowadays, a ham and Swiss on rye, and answered it.

“Libby, how are you?”

She recognized the voice of Robert, Beck’s partner, and said she was doing well, hoping he would let it go at that.

He apologized. “I don’t want to interrupt your dinner.”

She eyed her sandwich, the single glass she’d gotten from the cabinet for iced tea, and said it was fine.

“Well, I’ve got some news,” Robert said. “I thought you might like to know that law enforcement arrested the guy who’s responsible for the animal killings down here in Houston. They caught him about two weeks ago. I meant to let you know earlier, but things have been hectic at the office. It’s been really difficult since—”

“Who was it?” Libby interrupted. It was selfish, but she wasn’t in the mood to commiserate with Robert over the loss of his business partner.

“It’s as we suspected: he’s the father of one of the victims who was killed when the balcony fell. The poor guy just went insane with grief, wanting someone to pay. He’s a single dad, and it was his only child, only son. You can imagine.”

“How awful for him,” Libby said.

“I don’t think he’ll do any jail time. The DA is recommending probation and community service. Something like that.”

“Oh, good. He’s already been punished enough.” Libby was surprised when her throat tightened. It was the sense of the man’s loss, what he was enduring now, that touched her.

She and Robert talked for a few more minutes about his wife and people they knew in common and then ended the call, promising to stay in touch. But Libby knew they wouldn’t. That life, the one she and Beck had built and led together, the one she’d loved with her whole heart, was over. She lived here now, and it might as well be a different country, a different planet, even. The trick would be learning to navigate the terrain, and she couldn’t do that living in the past.

The next morning, Monday, Libby took her coffee outside and, wandering though the garden, decided she wanted boxwoods. She pictured them in the beds that flanked the cottage’s wide front porch steps, trimmed into globes and interspersed with a mix of spring blooming bulbs and, later, blooming perennials. That was the only reason she drove to Inman’s Native Garden World outside Wyatt that morning—to buy boxwoods. And it was crazy, planting anything in the August heat. Still, she had a vision, and she was hot on the trail to see it come together. Jordan had spent most of last Wednesday pulling off the old, crumbling lattice that screened the foundation. She’d bought new lattice at the Home Depot on her way into town, and she was up in the bed of the truck, shifting it around to make room for the wagonload of boxwoods when she caught sight of Sandy Cline’s distinctive vintage truck nosed in on the opposite side of the parking lot, down several spaces. Her heart paused, and after a moment when it resumed beating again, she settled the sheet of lattice she’d been holding onto the stack and lowered herself from the tailgate to the pavement, thinking:
Now?

Would she—did she have—? Was it nerve she was looking for? The nerve to tell Sandy what Jordan had told her? He didn’t want his mom to know. He’d been red-faced, confiding in her, embarrassed, half-defensive. Sex wasn’t something boys felt comfortable discussing except among their peers. Libby didn’t want to talk to Sandy at all, really. About anything, much less sex. Could there be a topic more awkward to discuss with your husband’s ex-lover of twenty-plus years ago? But here she was, confronted with the perfect opportunity, as if the universe had set it up. She could choose not to take advantage of it, load up her boxwoods, and drive away.

Stay out of it,
Ruth had advised. But how could she? How would she feel if Jordan was convicted and sent to prison when she might have the very piece of information that could save him from that? If he was telling the truth. Because she still lacked that total certainty. What if she only wanted to believe him for Beck’s sake? What if her impulse to engage with Jordan, and now to involve herself with his mother—what if it was all tied up with some sentimental hogwash about keeping Beck’s memory alive, clinging to him through a connection to a boy they had never known? She was a fool if she thought she knew him now.
People lie; they lie all the time.
The thought floated to the surface of Libby’s mind.

But who else was there to tell this to who would do the right thing about it?

Jordan’s dad? The aunt who wasn’t speaking to any of them, so far as Libby knew? Or maybe Jordan’s grandparents?

Sandy was at her truck now, unloading her own wagon, filled with what from where Libby stood looked like red autumn sage and Mexican feather grass, and something purple-flowered that she didn’t recognize. Still, she hesitated, wanting to leave, knowing she couldn’t. Regardless of the circumstances that had created Jordan, or who his father was, he was a human being, a young man in jeopardy. If there was any possibility she could set this right, then she had to try, or never sleep again for the rest of her life. She hesitated a moment more, steeling herself, then she approached Sandy, her stride purposeful, full-out and obvious. Still, Sandy, who by now had finished loading her plants and was at the driver’s side door, didn’t look up until Libby rounded the bed of the truck, and she was startled. Libby could see that by the way her eyes widened.

“I’m Libby Hennessey.” She gave her name straight off, wanting her identity out in the open. Wanting there to be no doubt in Sandy’s mind about it. Libby didn’t know what reaction she expected, and at first Sandy only frowned slightly.

But after a moment, comprehension came, and Libby watched the color drain from Sandy’s face. “You’re Beck’s wife.” Something in Sandy’s voice seemed to underscore the inevitability of their meeting, or that was how it felt to Libby.

She said, “We need to talk,” and it came out a bit more forcefully than she’d meant it to, but she was nervous. So was Sandy. It was pretty clear they both shared a wish that the earth would open and swallow them whole.

“All right.” Sandy briefly met Libby’s eyes.

“We can sit out back. They have picnic tables, don’t they? And a drinks machine?”

“I think so. Just let me get my purse.” Sandy reached into the cab of her truck.

They went behind the garden nursery’s gift shop, and after getting bottles of water from the machine, they sat on either side of a picnic table that stood in the shade of a live oak, taking longer than was necessary to settle in, both of them squirming, fussing with their purses and water bottles, shifting their sandaled feet in the weedy scruff under the table. Finally they looked at each other, gazes tentative, uneasy.

“I think you know Jordan has been to see me,” Libby said.

“I didn’t want him to bother you.”

“He said as much.” Libby put her hands around her water bottle, feeling the wet soak her palms.
It’s all right.
The words were perched on her tongue, but she hesitated before saying them, thinking how Sandy might interpret them as absolution of some kind.
It’s all right that you seduced my husband and had his child. It’s all right that you cut him from his son’s life. It’s all right that now that the going has gotten rough, you need his money and his support.

Libby said it anyway. “It’s all right.” Because the bottom line was she had no control over Sandy’s interpretation, and maybe she
was
offering absolution. And maybe later she’d be angry at herself for it. “He’s doing some work for me. I think you know that, too.”

Sandy nodded, and Libby could tell she was perplexed, wondering where Libby was going with this. Where was the fight, the show of claws, the hissed accusations? Sandy wouldn’t ask, though. Libby could see that, too. It wasn’t that she was intimidated, exactly, but there was sorrow haunting her eyes, and she wore an air of regret that felt true to Libby. She said, “This is very weird.”

“Yes.” Sandy nodded with fervency and near-palpable relief. Thank God one of them had at last named the elephant sitting on its haunches on the table between them.

“I’m not here to rake over the past, okay? I was angry about what happened between you and Beck, but that’s been over a long time, and now he’s dead—” Libby broke off. It was harder than she’d anticipated.

“It was such a mistake,” Sandy murmured. “It didn’t mean anything.”

Libby might have objected.
It meant something to me.
Instead she shot Sandy a look, one that warned she didn’t want to hear Sandy’s defense of herself, or her excuses. Sandy must have gotten the message, because she clamped her mouth shut and shifted her glance.

Libby said, “I haven’t really known what to do about this, but Saturday, a week ago, when I was driving Jordan home, he told me something in confidence that could have ramifications for him legally. I think his lawyer might be able to use it to Jordan’s advantage.” It occurred to Libby then that she could have gone to Jordan’s lawyer herself; it would have been much easier, and she wouldn’t have broken the promise she’d made Jordan not to tell his mother, but it was too late now.

The silence seemed to fill with Sandy’s perplexity, her wariness and hope-inflected dread. Clearly, she had no idea what to expect. The understanding rose in Libby’s mind, and against her will, she felt the faint unfolding of some newborn compassion—for this woman, of all people. But there was no accounting for the heart’s propensities. It had a mind of its own.

“You know Sergeant Huckabee—Jordan said you’re aware the sergeant has a grudge against him.”

“He told you?”

“Is it true?”

“Yes, but why is he talking to you about it?”

Libby heard more than annoyance in Sandy’s voice; she was hurt that her son had talked on a personal level about a private matter to a virtual stranger rather than his mother. Libby said, “According to Jordan, you don’t know the reason behind it—the harassment, I mean.”

“No, he would never tell his—Emmett and me, or his lawyer. What are you getting at?”

Libby looked away. Jordan
had
told the truth. Sergeant Huckabee had targeted him. Every time Jordan was pulled over, the sergeant had meant to needle him, to bait and provoke him, and Sandy was clueless. She had no idea. All of which meant Libby was going to have to find the words to tell her. But even assuming she found the right ones, how would she manage to say them?

“Until I retired a few years ago,” Libby began, and she guessed she was going to come at the issue sideways, “I was a high school guidance counselor. I don’t mean to make a thing out of it, but I’m trained to get kids to open up. Some have said I showed a real knack for it. A lot of kids over the years trusted me. It’s easier sometimes, confiding in a stranger.”

“What is your point? Why are you talking to me?”

“You’re asking because if our roles were reversed, you wouldn’t?”

“I’m not sure. I guess it would depend on what was at stake.”

“Beck would be here instead of me, if he were still alive.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, so sorry.” Sandy spoke in a rush, sitting forward, giving Libby the sense that she’d been waiting for the right moment—a second chance—to offer her regret. She sounded sincere; she sounded as if her apology was meant to cover far more than Beck’s loss.

It came as a surprise, but Libby felt lighter somehow, as if Sandy’s contrition had loosened a last bit of sore anger and heartbreak she’d been carrying unaware, and she was grateful. “Beck wanted to know him.”

“Yes.”

“Would you have let it happen? I know when he e-mailed you two years ago, you didn’t respond, but once it was definite that we were moving here—”

“I don’t know, to be honest.” Sandy turned her water bottle side to side, studying it.

Libby watched her. It was as if they were both enthralled.

When Sandy looked up, she said, “I want you to know that if I could go back, I’d do things differently.”

Libby nodded once.
Wouldn’t we all.
A heartbeat of silence passed, and then two, and then Libby said it, the hard thing she’d come back here behind the garden nursery to say. “Jordan was—for lack of a better way to put it—seduced by Sergeant Huckabee’s wife.”

“Coleta?” Astonishment lifted Sandy’s voice, rinsed the color from her face. “She can’t even speak English. That’s what he told you?”

“Until last summer, he said, he had a lawn service, that the Huckabees were customers? That’s how he got to know Coleta.”

“He and his cousin, Travis, were partners. I helped them start their business when they were still in junior high. When did it happen? When did they—”