Faultlines (8 page)

She laughed.

He rocked his eyes up, looking at the sky, shouting out, “God!” And then, leveling his glance, said in a low, husky voice, “I want to stay, rip off your clothes, eat that peach ice cream in the freezer from your belly button.”

“You never did that twenty years ago,” she said.

He folded her in close. “If I didn’t, I should have. When I get back here, I’m going to.”

“Promises, promises,” she murmured, and she was making light of it, but something in his voice, some note of tender regret, pulled at her heart. She searched his gaze. “You aren’t sorry for our life together so far, are you? Because I’m not. I wouldn’t trade any of it.”

“No,” he said. “Only the pain I caused you.” He took a moment, his gaze resting on her. “You know, I’ve been thinking, we don’t have to pursue—” He stopped, looked away, looked back. “What I’m trying to say is that just because we’re finally here doesn’t mean we have to go through with anything. You understand that, right?” He tipped up her chin. “I never want you to be hurt like that again.”

Libby was surprised when her throat closed, when her eyes filled with tears.

He wiped them with his thumbs. “I should get on the road,” he said, and he smiled. “The circus is waiting.”

“What are you doing out there alone?” Ruth wanted to know when Libby called her that evening and caught her up on all that had happened. “Come into town now and stay with me till Beck gets back.”

But Libby said no. She was happy where she was, tucked into the corner of an old chintz-covered settee. The night had cooled off, as it often did in the hill country, and she’d opened the windows. A breeze ruffled the wisp of embroidered linen she’d tacked up over the living-room window, sending moon-driven shadows trembling over the walls.

“Are you sure?” Ruth wanted to know.

She was, Libby said. “I’m not letting a bunch of kids run me off my property.”

“Kids?”

“That’s who Sergeant Huckabee thinks is behind it.”

“Him.” Ruth huffed the word.

“You don’t like him?”

“It’s not that.” She heaved a little sigh. “He wants me to hire his wife, his little
chica
, Coleta.”

“Augie mentioned her. He said if I were to ask you about her, I should stand back.”

The sound Ruth made was half laugh, half snort of disgust.

“Augie said she’s young.” Libby said.

“Yeah, you could say that. Huck could be her dad. Wait till you see her. She’s gorgeous, boobs out to here, tiny waist, and her skin—my God, I don’t think she has a single pore.”

“I hate her already.” Libby was teasing.

“Me, too.” They shared a beat of silence, then Ruth said, “She’s trying to get green-card status.”

“She’s here illegally?”

“Not exactly. She let her visa run out. She would have been deported if Huck hadn’t married her. But there’s still a lot of rigmarole to go through, forms and stuff; it’s a long process, and part of it requires that Coleta be able to speak and write in English. She’s taking a class, but Huck thinks if she works in the office with me and the other agents, she’ll learn faster, and I’d be fine with it, I guess—”

“But?” Libby prompted.

“Nothing in particular. Some folks in town think she only married Huck to get citizenship, that she’ll leave him flat once she has it, and that’s just wrong, doing that to him, especially now that they have a child together. Hold on, can you. Clemmie wants out.”

Clemmie was Ruth’s Aussie, and so sweet natured Libby had threatened to dognap her.

Ruth had never married, although she had always had a man in her life. Her current guy was the head of some hotshot Internet-based business in Santa Monica. They’d been together for eight years, seeing each other every couple of months or so. Like Libby, Ruth had no children. The difference was that she’d never wanted them. She was a dog lover, she would say. They made the perfect companion.

She should get a dog,
Libby thought. She thought of the peach ice cream in the freezer, what Beck had said about eating it from her navel—her fiftysomething navel. It was ridiculous; it made her groan inwardly even as it made her smile.

“Sorry.” Ruth came back on the line. “What were we talking about?”

“Coleta.”

“Oh yeah. Well, honestly, I am totally gossiping here—you know, baseball may be the national pastime, but here in Wyatt, it’s gossiping. I was bound to get sucked into it sooner or later.”

Libby laughed.

“Just wait,” Ruth said. “You’ll be doing it, too.”

“Augie was telling me he gets all his information from Mandy, his wife.”

“Oh,” Ruth said, “she is the worst. Sweet as can be, but can she talk. That old saying comes to mind—telegram, telephone, tele-Mandy.”

“You’re terrible,” Libby said. “But since we’re talking, isn’t it considered fraud when a marriage is arranged for the sole purpose of gaining citizenship? Wouldn’t Coleta be deported if immigration were to find out? Lose custody of her—” Libby laughed again, interrupting herself. “God, you’re right. I’m gossiping like a pro, and I’m only living here part-time so far.”

Ruth snorted. “Told you. I think it’s all a bunch of hooey, anyway. People around here don’t have enough drama in their own lives. They always want to go around stirring it up in someone else’s.”

“I’m glad I live out here in the sticks.”

“Yeah, except for finding the occasional gutted hog swinging from a tree, what’s not to like? Are you sure you won’t come stay with me?”

“I’m already in my pj’s, thinking of raiding the fridge for peach ice cream and watching the ID channel.”

“Oh, you and your crime shows. Have you ever considered you might have a problem?”

Libby laughed. It was true; she loved them all.
Dateline
,
48 Hours
, and everything IDTV. Beck teased her, saying he was afraid to sleep nights for fear of all the ways she might be planning to do him in. “You think I should find a twelve-step program?”

“Ha! Listen here, tootsie, if you change your mind or get scared, just come over, hear me? I don’t care if you wake me up.”

Libby said, “Sure,” and “Thank you,” but she knew she’d be fine. After all, didn’t she have her dad’s shotgun?

On Sunday morning, she called the number on the card Sergeant Huckabee had given her, and when he didn’t answer, she left a message, telling him about Beck’s partner, Robert, finding the raccoon’s entrails smeared on his car in Houston. “I thought you should know,” she said, “so you could pass it along to your friend on the force down there.” She left the cottage after that and drove to Yesterday’s News, the salvage warehouse near Fredericksburg, to look at the beams. Beck had called earlier and told her to go, that he had no idea when he’d make it back. The news conference wasn’t going to happen until two o’clock that afternoon. Meanwhile, he was dealing with a client he called a pain in the ass. Beck had said it might be Wednesday before he saw her again. Unless she came home. To Houston, he meant. He was still worried about her being at the cottage alone. But she’d repeated she was fine.

“I know I’m being a pain in the ass, too,” she’d said.

He’d laughed. “But what an ass it is.”

Yesterday’s News turned out to be a vintage lover’s gold mine. In addition to a lean-to housing dozens of rough-hewn barn beams, there were three warehouses packed to the rafters with everything from doors and windows to porch columns, beadboard, and hardwood flooring. There were oddities—a table made from a cypress knot, an iron lung, a rusted casket roller. Libby snapped a picture of that and texted it to Ruth with a note:
See what ur missing?

Ruth texted back:
I may need that later. Clients n la-la land! How much?

Libby grinned and texted:
Stick with wine; it’s way cheaper. I’ll buy.

Ur on!
Ruth responded.

Before Libby left she bought an old bee skep and talked to the owner, a gruff old man who told her he’d give her a 20 percent discount if she bought three or more of the beams.

“Can’t beat that,” Libby said, adding she’d have to wait until her husband got back. “He’s the one with the truck.”

“I was you, I’d bring a trailer to haul them things outta here,” the old man advised.

Libby thanked him. She wouldn’t have known, she said. “He’s been saying we need a trailer,” she told the old guy. “Now he’s got an excuse to buy one.”

Somehow going home to the cottage, she ended up on CR 440, passing the accident scene again. There was only one vehicle parked there now, a pale-green vintage pickup truck with the name EJS Landscape Design painted on the door. The mementos that had been left behind only days ago—the sympathy cards and hand-printed messages, the flowers, candleholders and candles—had been blown about by the wind. They were caught in the tall clumps of grass; they scrimmed the broken fence line like so much fading party trash. Libby slowed as she neared the parked truck. A woman sat behind the steering wheel, staring into the field. Only the back of her head was visible, but Libby could see she was blonde and wore her hair in a messy ponytail. She turned as Libby drew abreast of her, and her eyes locked with Libby’s. She looked exhausted and sad.

Stricken.

The word surfaced in Libby’s mind. She was related to one of the kids, Libby thought, possibly even one of the mothers. She looked the right age to be the parent of a twentysomething. Libby felt a commiserating pang of sorrow. Who by a certain time in life didn’t suffer the heartrending loss of someone they loved? And sometimes death came so suddenly, taking a person who was way too young. Like this boy. Like Helen.

Libby’s eyes smarted. She nodded at the woman and drove on, hurriedly, slowing only when she remembered having been stopped for speeding before on this road. She looked in the rearview, half expecting to see the flashing strobe of red and blue lights, but there was no one there.

Libby checked on the homesite before driving to the cottage, walking the ground around the shattered slab framework, but she found no further signs of damage. She paused on her future front porch, letting her gaze fly over the highway to the hills. Even in the glare of the sun’s unforgiving eye, they were peaceful to look upon, a row of round-shouldered old men, caped in verdigrised shades of green and gold, inscrutable faced, eternal. She would sit here with Beck, evenings, she thought. At dusk the cardinals would come. Soon after there would be fireflies, hummingbird moths. They would come to the mountain laurel she would plant just there, off the porch’s deepest corner. Imagining this, her heart flooded with joy. She couldn’t wait to begin. A thought swam through her brain, that her vision was too perfect. But there had always been so much goodness in her life, enough that at times she felt compelled to apologize:
I’m sorry my childhood was so happy, stable, abundant.
It was only after she learned that the one blessing she longed for most—a child—would be denied her that she thought there was a price for having been given so much when she was young, that possibly there was such a thing as too much good, too much joy. The truth was that light required darkness.