Faultlines (29 page)

19

T
his is where you were the first time I came here.”

Libby sat back, squinting up at Jordan. “Weeding,” she said. “It never ends.” She got to her feet. “You look good. Happy. Free.”

“Yeah. I can’t believe it’s over.”

“I’m happy for you,” Libby said.

“You want to get those boxwoods in the ground? I heard a rumor we may get some rain tomorrow. Real rain. Not those little showers we had a few days ago.” He was referring to the day Libby had picked him up outside his dad’s apartment when they’d gone to Jenna’s and everything had unraveled. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

“Let’s do it,” she said.

They worked in near silence for the better part of the morning, cutting the lattice, then nailing it to the front porch edge in a diagonal design. They stopped at one point and drank the fresh lemonade Libby had made the evening before. “I wasn’t sure you’d be back,” she said when they sat on the front steps to drink it.

He looked at her. “I said I’d plant those boxwoods.”

Libby nodded. People said a lot of things.

“I was kind of hoping we could be friends. I don’t have a ton of those right now.”

“Well, I’m here anytime,” she said.

When the boxwoods were settled in the ground and watered, she made lunch. Chicken-salad sandwiches on croissants, fresh fruit and chips.

“I’m going to build the house.” Libby sat across from Jordan. She was so pleased he was here, ridiculously pleased. But she wouldn’t let on. She might scare him.

“Really?” He grinned. “It means you’re staying, right?”

“Yes, I think so. I think Beck would want me to follow through with our plans. Besides, it’s the last house Beck designed. It should be built.”

“I could help with the landscape,” Jordan said, taking a bite of his sandwich, wolfing it down, really.

Libby thought she’d never seen anyone eat with such gusto. “I’d like that.”

“Mom would help, too. She’s great at design.” He speared a grape with his fork, then paused it halfway to his mouth. “We could do a pond.”

Libby smiled. It was his use of the word
we
that delighted her. She wasn’t Jordan’s mother; she couldn’t hope to be part of his family, but she could see that she mattered to him.

“How is your aunt doing? Your mom told me she’s living with your grandparents.”

“Yeah. She has her house up for sale. She’s thinking of building on my mom and dad’s property.”

“That’s good. I was so glad to hear from your mom. It seemed as if maybe your family was beginning to put itself back together.”

“Yeah. Except for Dad, I guess. He still hasn’t come back home.”

Sandy hadn’t mentioned Emmett when she and Libby had spoken on the phone the other day. She dabbed at her mouth with her napkin. “I hope they can work it out.”

“Me, too,” Jordan said. “I told my dad he shouldn’t hold it against her, something she did twenty years ago.” Jordan met Libby’s gaze. “I told him he’s my dad, you know?”

“Yes,” Libby said. “He certainly is. What did he say?”

“He knows it. He’s just stubborn.”

They ate for several moments in silence.

Libby broke it. “So, now that you’re a free man again, will you go back to school?”

“Yeah. I wanted to tell you. I’m leaving tomorrow. I can still do late enrollment. It’ll be tough at first, catching up.” He stopped, bent his weight on his elbows, traced a pattern with his fingertip, not looking at her. “I drink too much,” he finally said. “I don’t know if I have a problem, you know, like whether I’m an actual alcoholic—” He looked at Libby and made a face.

“Beck, your birth dad—there’s a history of drinking in his family.” Libby set her fork down. She’d been waiting for the opportunity to tell him this. “His sister, Mia, still drinks a lot, but Beck quit, a long time ago. He never really knew why he started or why he stopped.”

“Did he go to AA?”

“No. Are you thinking of taking that route?”

“I’m thinking if Trav had lived, he’d find a way to make something good come out of all the bad that’s happened. That’s the kind of guy he was.”

“Do you have something in mind?” Libby asked.

“There are a lot of kids on campus who drink, and a lot of bad stuff goes down because of it. Not just car accidents, but fights and sexual assaults. You don’t know half of what you’re doing when you’re drunk. You make bad decisions. It seems like there ought to be a way to put the brakes on it, to look out for each other better.” Jordan leaned back. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s stupid, thinking I can use my experience to make a difference. It’s just—I know it’s what Trav would have done, and I don’t want him to have died for nothing. I want to honor his memory, to make it stand for something. I don’t want him to be another statistic. Another stupidhead who drove drunk and killed himself.”

Libby reached out, cupping his elbow in her palm.

“If only something—one good thing—could come out of this. You know what I mean?” he asked. His voice was rough with emotion, and it tore at Libby’s heart. She understood, she said. She surely did.

20

O
n a Wednesday morning in late September, Sandy was at the kitchen sink tossing the last of her coffee out and rinsing her mug when she spotted the car, a light-colored sedan, coming up the drive.
No.
The word appeared in her brain, a protest. She recognized that car. It belonged to Patsy Meade. What was she doing here? Sandy still had no proof that the woman wasn’t as much of a lunatic as Ricky Burrows, who was thankfully back in the custody of the Colorado state mental hospital he had escaped from. It was unlikely, though, that he would be prosecuted for stabbing the nurse there. His mental state was too precarious.

Libby had told her that when she’d joined Emmett, Jenna, and Troy for a farewell dinner with Jordy before he’d gone back to UT a few weeks ago. They’d grilled hamburgers. Libby had brought a pot of cooked fresh green beans from her garden. They planned to get together again the next time Jordy was home for a weekend.

A knock came on the back door. There was a moment when Sandy considered pretending she wasn’t home, but it passed.

“I was hoping you would see me,” Patsy said when Sandy opened the door.

“Do you want to come in?”

Patsy said, “Yes,” but she didn’t sound at all sure.

“Can I get you anything? I have iced tea. I could make coffee?”

“No, thanks. I only came to say that I’m sorry to have caused you distress. I was wrong about Jordy, wrong to accuse him.”

“I appreciate that,” Sandy said.

“Is he here? I’d like to apologize to him.”

Sandy explained he was back at school.

Tears came into Patsy’s eyes. She wiped at them with the back of her hand and then pressed it to her mouth, obviously fighting for control. “Michelle’s doctors don’t think she’s going to wake up.”

“Oh, Patsy. Oh, I’m so sorry.” Sandy’s own eyes welled up. The wave of her compassion closed her throat. It was strong enough that she would have embraced Patsy, if there had been anything in her demeanor that suggested she would welcome such comfort. But there wasn’t a shred of warmth. They were adversaries in a way, players in a mutual catastrophe. But Sandy had left the field with her child intact, while Patsy had not. She envied Sandy for that and resented her. At times, Sandy felt the same chill of antagonism from Jenna, and it was hard. It made Sandy feel as if she should apologize for her son’s life. She never would, though. She would never say it, those words:
I’m sorry Jordy lived
, as if Jordy were a gift she didn’t deserve.

Patsy found a tissue in her purse and blew her nose. “Her father and I have separated,” she said.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like something to drink? A glass of water?”

Patsy seemed not to hear. “He wants to take Michelle off life support. He’s talked with the doctors about harvesting her organs. He says she would give life to others. But how do you do it? Kill your own child? He says he can’t stand seeing her this way. But it’s not about him.” She thrust the tissue back into her purse. “If there’s one good thing, though, that has come from this, it’s that I see my husband very clearly. I see the kind of father he is, one who can give up on his daughter. I see the sort of husband he is, that it’s always about him. Well, not this time. I’ve hired an attorney, and I’m getting a court order. Michelle is not going to be offered up like a field of corn, ripe for the harvest. People come out of comas; they wake up. Miracles do happen. Don’t you agree?”

Sandy said yes, that of course she believed in miracles. But looking at Patsy, her adamant, wide-eyed glare, Sandy thought not even Patsy believed there would be one for Michelle. It was simply that she couldn’t face it yet, the heartbreaking reality that her daughter was already gone.

Sandy walked Patsy to her car, and she started to get inside, but then straightened, and turning to Sandy, she said, “You don’t know how lucky you are.”

Sandy started to protest. It was not all jolly times. Emmett was still living at the apartment. She and Jenna were still estranged to some degree, and their parents—well, their parents were doing the best they could to distribute their love and support evenly between their daughters. And Jordy was still groping in the dark. He had nightmares and questioned why he’d been spared and how his life mattered. Why hadn’t it been taken. No, it wasn’t all jolly around here.

Patsy put her hand on Sandy’s arm. “I don’t mean to dismiss what you’ve been through.” She dropped her hand, looked away, looked back, and her breath came out in an irritated gust. “But your son is alive; he has a future. Everything else—
anything
else that’s wrong in your life, or that you might have lost, or think you need and don’t have—it’s nothing by comparison. Trust me.”

She turned away, opened her car door, then turned back. “You know, losing a child is the one thing I have always said I wouldn’t survive. I guess I’ll find out, won’t I? If my husband wins. If the court says the doctors can stop the machines. You should thank God you don’t have to learn this about yourself. That’s all I’m saying.”

Patsy settled in the driver’s seat. “Treasure every moment. I mean, you must know, right? Since you got the same god-awful call in the night that I did—just how quickly it can all be gone.”

In one second.

One breath.

Less, even.

After Patsy left, Sandy couldn’t get it out of her mind, the sense of how fragile life was.

She had a busy day, back-to-back appointments, and by the end of it, she was tired, but instead of going home, she drove to the Kennedys’ and parked at the curb behind Emmett’s truck. Getting out of her truck, she hoped he was in the apartment and not the house. She hoped Grant and Brenda wouldn’t see her and try to waylay her. She walked alongside the house with her head down. Emmett appeared at the top of the apartment stairs and stood watching her from the landing.

“I wondered if we could talk,” she said, looking up at him.

“About?”

“Us. What we’re doing.”

“I’ll come down,” he said.

They walked to a nearby park. It was nearing dinnertime now on a school night. The park was mostly deserted. They sat in the swings.

Sandy said, “I don’t know how to start.”

“Why did you come?”

“Because I want there to be a way to fix this—fix us. But maybe there is no fix. We can’t be like we were.” She paused, hoping Emmett would say something, give some clue to what he felt, but he didn’t. He only moved the swing idly and stared into the middle distance, where shadows made long brushstrokes across the rough ground.

“We aren’t the same people,” Sandy said.

“No,” Emmett agreed.

“I’m not that girl anymore, the one who led you to believe Jordy was yours.”

She felt Emmett look at her.

“I’ll be sorry for that until I die; I can apologize until I die, but it won’t change what I did.” She met his gaze.

“It’s my call, is that what you’re saying? Whether we have a marriage, a relationship, depends on whether or not I can get past it. Deal with it.”

“You have to forgive me, Emmett. If you can’t, then we have no reason to go on together. I can’t live with it—your resentment of me, the constant reminder of how badly I screwed up. I know it. I was wrong. I’ve admitted it, and I’ve apologized. I can’t be sorrier. I can’t take it back.” Her voice shook. She wanted to touch him. If only there were a way to physically impress on him the depth of her remorse. She lifted her hand, and it hovered between them for what seemed like an eternity to her.

He didn’t look at her. He didn’t even seem aware of her presence.

It was in the moment that she, giving up, lowered her hand that he took it and, pulling her and her swing to him, kissed the tips of her fingers, her palm, the inside of her wrist. He gathered her into his embrace, and she breathed him in—his smells, the starch in his shirt, the pine scent of his aftershave, a fainter underscore of oil and earth. It was the way he always smelled after spending the day at a drilling site. The familiarity of it, the feel of him in her arms, made her ache. Tears of relief, happiness, a peculiar rush of anxiety, scarred the undersides of her eyelids. She thought of Roger, her brief attraction to him. She might have given in to it, especially the night when she’d foolishly had so much to drink, and she was so thankful she had not, and grateful to Roger that he’d been such a gentleman. Her old self, that long-ago girl she’d been, had once taken advantage of just such a distraction. She had used Beck Hennessey as a temporary remedy for her grief over Emmett’s absence. Maybe she had learned something from that in spite of herself. If she were to have to face that again, Emmett’s leaving her, then she would deal with it alone. She would find her own strength, her own way along the dark road, using the light she had.

“I don’t want to lose our family,” she said, and her face was pressed into Emmett’s chest, her voice muffled. “I don’t want to lose you. Please tell me you can forgive me, that you feel you can trust me again.” She lifted her head, finding his gaze.

He kissed the damp trails on her cheeks. “I’m not sure of it now,” he said, and she stiffened, but he held her firmly. “I’m not closing the door. I’m not saying I can’t forgive you. I’m saying I think we should take it slow. We should spend time together and talk more. We should face a few things, like how Jordy could be drinking so much for so long and both of us not know it, or ignore it, or whatever in the hell we were doing.” Emmett released her and left the swing. It danced on its chains. Sunlight barred the short path he paced.

He stopped in front of her, his shadow falling over her. “He could have been the one who died, Sandy. I can’t stop thinking about how we could have lost him, and I—I—it would have been my fault, because I was blind to how he was growing up, the shit he was doing. Jesus Christ, it gives me chills, nightmares. How? How did it happen? One minute he’s just a crazy little kid running around, riding hell-bent on a three-wheeler, and the next thing you know, you’re in some hospital—”

“I feel the same, Emmett. Mistakes were made. I know that.” Sandy went to him. “But we can’t live in the past. We can’t say
if only
this and
if only
that. We can only be here, where we are now. Hopefully smarter. Grateful. Counting our blessings. Talking more, like you said.” She laced Emmett’s fingers with her own. “We can be more aware, help each other.”

He looked down at her, holding her with his gaze, and it seemed to her that whatever anguish he was feeling, whatever blame and sorrow was between them, it had eased. He touched her cheek, lifted her chin, and kissed her.

He didn’t come home with her that night, nor did he come the next week, or even the one after that, but she knew he would come home one day, and that was enough.

Sandy waited in the audience with the rest of her family—Emmett, Jenna, and their parents, and Troy and Libby—for Jordy to be called on to speak. Her stomach was knotted with anticipation; her nerves jangled. He had healed a lot in the three months since the accident. His physical scars were less noticeable. He wasn’t having nightmares as often. But neither was he the same. There was a reflective quality about him, a kind of stillness, that he’d lacked before. She would catch him staring, unaware, and even though he would say there was nothing on his mind, she knew his memory of the accident, and Travis’s loss, continued to haunt him.

He needed more than Sandy’s or Emmett’s word that his life had value and meaning and purpose. That was why tonight had to work. Sandy felt his entire future might depend on how well the public-service campaign he and a handful of other marketing students had designed was received. It had been Jordy’s idea, and Sandy, better than anyone, knew the germ of it had come from the darkest corner of his grief, the need to do something not only to honor Travis but in defense of him. Jordy had told her late one night when they sat talking that whatever idea he came up with had to reflect how Travis had lived, not how he died.

Stayin’ Alive was the culmination, an endeavor weeks in the planning. Named for the old 1970s Bee Gees anthem, the student-operated, campus-based cab service he’d conceived would provide safe transportation for students who’d had too much to drink. The weekend he came home and laid out the bones of his plan, he’d been on fire. He’d talked about how he’d gotten the name first, telling Sandy the song had come into his head and wouldn’t leave. It didn’t really surprise her. Somewhere there was a video her dad had shot of her and Emmett dancing a routine to the music à la
Saturday Night Fever
. It had won them a high school dance-contest trophy their junior year in high school. Jordy had grown up listening to everything Bee Gees. It was kismet, he’d said. Couldn’t Sandy see it? The song was all about survival.

She looked at him now, where he sat onstage with two other students and a small number of campus officials who’d agreed to Jordy’s request to speak this evening. He was bent slightly forward, eyes fixed on the podium; his cheeks were flushed. She’d never seen him so filled with determination, and while it was gratifying that he had found a positive direction to go in, his intensity made her anxious. He seemed stronger to her than he had been before the accident; he seemed more grounded, but what if this project failed—what if he failed? He could so easily go back to his old ways. If anything, since the accident he had even more reason to drink, to let everything slide. The worry of it hovered, and not only in her mind, either. Jenna and Emmett, too, shared her apprehension. Sandy had seen it in their eyes; she sensed it now in their posture, their careful composure.