Home Before Dark (12 page)

“Oh, God—”

“She's not hurt,” Jessie said quickly. “Some of the others were.” She shut her eyes, wondering what Lila had seen, heard, felt. How long would the nightmare images haunt her? When would she begin asking the hard questions about the others? How would her fragile, mysterious, adolescent heart take bad news?

“Luz is pretty shaken up. I thought you would want to know.”

“Well.” Glenny exhaled loudly. “Poor thing.”

Jessie couldn't tell whether she referred to Lila or Luz. “Everyone's been up all night,” she said.

“Should I come?”

As far as Jessie knew, a mother wouldn't have to ask that question. A mother would know.
Should I come?

She opened her eyes. “I don't know,” she said with total honesty. “I suppose that's up to you, Glenny.”

“Stu's got a conference in Phoenix next week…. If I showed up, I would probably only be in the way,” she said, hedging already. She was practically begging for Jessie to agree, to tell her:
Of course that's true. Maybe you should wait until things settle down around here.
And naturally, that meant she would never come.

“You wouldn't be in the way,” Jessie said. “With the three cabins, there's plenty of room.”

“I don't know… You've never even met Stuart.”

Jessie bit her tongue to keep from reminding her that in the past, her mother had brought home any number of men she'd never met. “All the more reason to come. I'd love to meet him.”

“I'll see what I can work out.”

Jessie knew what that meant. She'd used the phrase many times herself. It meant you had a terrible time saying the word no, but no was the only answer you gave to people who wanted something from you. It meant you didn't want to get involved.

It meant there was nothing the other party could say to change your mind.

The call-waiting signal beeped. “I have another call coming in,” she said.

“I'll let you go, then.”

You did that a long time ago, Glenny.

Keeping one ear tuned to Scottie at all times, she pushed a button to receive the next call, and ended up taking half a dozen—more friends and neighbors, more school officials, people at Ian's law firm. Still no word from the families of the other kids. She dutifully jotted down numbers and offered a truncated explanation of the accident, then thanked each caller for expressing concern.

Meanwhile, she performed a half-panicked check of her vision. By now she was used to the field drill, holding out a finger at arm's length and slowly moving it to the periphery, marking the degree where it moved out of range.

“Whatcha doing?” Scottie caught her in the middle of the experiment.

She managed to smile. “Watching my finger until it disappears.”

He imitated her, but swiveled his head in the direction of his finger.

“That's cheating. You have to keep your eyes straight ahead.”

“Why? If I keep my eye on it, I can see it longer.”

She laughed. “Maybe you've got a point, cowboy. If you can't see something from the corner of your eye, then turn and look at it.”

“Yup.”

Who would have thought that hanging out with a four-year-old could be so enlightening?

Unlike Scottie, Lila was neither straightforward nor simple. She had proven herself to be complex and crafty, manipulative and untruthful. At the same time, she was charming, funny, caustic and beautiful. She had a streak in her that Jessie recognized. It was the same reckless abandon that had driven Jessie
to do the stupidest things of her life—to sleep with men she didn't love, give up too easily, leave too quickly. To let panic and heartbreak drive her decision about her child.

At the time, she believed adoption was the best possible choice for the baby, but the plan seemed to be backfiring now. Why? Why? She'd stayed away, kept her distance. Wasn't that part of the bargain she'd made with God? She had given her child the calm, steady influence of her sister. Jessie wanted to ensure that Lila didn't turn out like her.

Yet that was just where Lila seemed to be heading.

Scottie wandered over to the rope swing, and the phone rang again.

“Benning residence.”

A hesitation. “I'm calling for Jessie Ryder, please.”

She lifted her eyebrows in surprise. “This is Jessie Ryder.”

“It's Blair LaBorde, from
Texas Life.
”

Jessie recognized the round and mellow drawl of her former journalism professor. “I didn't expect to hear from you so soon.”

“I didn't expect to find something for you so soon. It's in your own backyard, as a matter of fact.”

Jessie's blood heated. “No way. You don't expect me to cover the wreck—”

“Wreck?” Blair's voice sharpened. “Who said anything about a wreck?”

Jessie stood and paced, wishing she had kept her mouth shut. “This isn't about the accident?”

“No. But it could be. Maybe it should be, hon.”

“Not on your life.” Jessie owed Blair more of an explanation than that. She'd find out soon enough, anyway. She gave a quick, unsensational summary of what had happened.

Blair gave a low whistle. “Six kids. Hell of a story, there.”

“This is a tight-knit community. People are taking it hard.”
She decided not to reveal just how close she was to the situation. “So what is this about?”

“That cold lead I told you about. Something I've been hound-dogging for a while. Could be a big story.”

That was code for, Maybe we'll actually make a little more than the usual pittance. Jessie perked up at the prospect of an assignment. One of the psychologists who had screened her for the Orientation and Mobility program in Austin had suggested that Jessie clung to work because her psyche had rationalized that if the camera took her into darkness, perhaps some grand design would save her from having to go there herself. Of course, a career that relied on being able to see was not going to make sense anymore. But maybe she had one more assignment in her.

“I'm listening.”

“The magazine wanted a feature on a resident of Edenville, Texas a while back, but we dropped the lead. When you mentioned you were going back there, I looked into reviving it.”

Jessie's heart sank. Christ, what if it was Ian? Ian Benning, the noble, penniless death-row attorney, fighting injustice despite the opposition of his conservative politician father. He was the stuff of David-and-Goliath stories; he always had been. “You're kidding. So who is it?”

“Nobody famous. A human interest piece. And it's a crackerjack story. I'm waiting on an answer from the guy. I know what it'll be. He's a stubborn SOB, but he's no fool.”

“Human interest? Then why me? I photograph mountains and suspension bridges, not—”

“So it's not a suspension bridge. It's a local guy named Matlock.”

A shadow loomed in front of Jessie, and she shrank back before realizing the darkness was cast by the big live oak across the yard. “Fine. Give me the scoop and let's do it.”

Lila slept all day, the way she used to when she was little and had an ear infection and a fever. Except that now, when she awakened to a blaze of late-afternoon sun streaming through the window, she didn't feel any better.

She could hear the activity going on below—the phone ringing, her dad pacing the floor and talking to her mom in a low rumble, her aunt's lightly accented voice chiming in now and then. Mom sounded totally stressed out, because she couldn't get hold of her best friend, Nell Bridger. Trying not to think about the last time she'd seen Dig and Travis, Lila squeezed her eyes shut.

Some time later, after more drifting, she heard Owen and Wyatt getting home for the day, slamming the door and being shushed. Scottie asked to go see Lila, whining a little when denied. Lila wished the little guy would come in anyway—or was she on restriction from him, too?

She lay unmoving, hot and groggy, wishing she could be little again, cocooned by the hazy comfort of her mother sitting on the edge of the bed and smoothing her hand over Lila's
brow. She yearned for the salt-sweet tang of brackish Gatorade from a sippee cup, the earnest hilarity of
Sesame Street
, the sense that the smiling world would wait for her to get better. But she wasn't a kid anymore; her mother and father had made that perfectly clear when they'd laid down the law. Yet in the same breath, they'd grounded her as though she was Wyatt, in trouble for hitting golfballs into the lake.

They didn't get it. She was the oldest, the only girl. She was always having to baby-sit and clean up and put up with the Three Stooges. No wonder she sneaked out, drank beer, partied with her friends.

Frustrated, she lay appraising her memories the way she had assessed her injuries in the moments following the accident. Some of her recollections were ice-sharp, others were vague, as though someone had breathed on a mirror, melting the details into a diffuse blur. The agonizing moments of lying there, listening to the blare of the radio and smelling the reek of dripping gasoline, had been endless. Someone—Kathy, she thought—had turned hysterical, screaming and crying with the sort of roaring savagery you might hear in a zoo.

Lila remembered putting her hands over her ears as she let the tears run unchecked down her face. She offered up not only prayers, but detailed, intricate bargains to God—a 3.5 GPA if nothing was broken, volunteer hours at the Hill Country Care Alzheimer's facility if she didn't need stitches, a lifetime of uncomplaining household chores if no one in the Jeep was hurt at all….

Finally a fire truck and ambulance—maybe more than one—arrived, bathing the area in artificial white light. Paramedics and big-shouldered firemen swarmed over the hill like an army of fire ants. Grim faces appeared in every window. Gruff voices barked orders and talked about a “plan of extraction” and called for backup.

Judd Mason, who'd witnessed the accident because he was out doing the same thing in his Bronco, had appeared at the Jeep window, tipped his head sideways to peer inside. Before the rescue workers could peel him away, he said aloud what they were probably all thinking: “Ho-lee doggone shee-it. Look who's been whirled around in the Bass-o-Matic.”

One fireman, so young he hardly needed to shave, grabbed Judd by the back of the collar and shoved him away. All cockiness gone, Judd fell to his knees and vomited. The young rescuer looked inside, too, and Lila remembered how close his face was, his features distorted by the cracks in the glass, his angel eyes filled with heartbreak. “This one's conscious,” he called, his gaze never leaving her, never wavering. “Hurry up with that stretcher.”

More rescue workers closed in, asking Lila all sorts of questions: Did she know what had happened to her? What day was it? What year? Where did she hurt?

The strange thing was, at the time she had believed with every shred of herself that she was dying. She was a floating corpse, breathing underwater.

That's what shock does to the body, Dr. Martinez had explained to her much later. She felt like she couldn't catch her breath. She felt like she would never breathe again.

She didn't really recall the “extraction,” as they called it, or the ambulance ride to the hospital. She had lain on a gurney for uncounted minutes before being questioned by the highway patrol, X-rayed, cleaned up, given some sort of IV and parked in an exam room to wait for her mother.

Hurry, Mommy, hurry….
Maybe she'd said it aloud, maybe not. She wasn't sure.

The moment her mother had burst into the room, Lila had known she would survive. But she didn't break down, didn't sob with relief even though she wanted to. If she did that, her
mother would know how scared and confused she was. She'd been fighting forever to prove she was her own person, and now this. So she put up her usual defense—anger, defiance, sarcasm—and prayed she could get the hell out of there.

According to the doctor, she was the lucky one of the bunch. “Shaken, not stirred,” the technician who did the CT scan had cheerfully proclaimed.

The lucky one. What was so lucky about surviving an accident when the boy you love and all your best friends were…

She scrambled from the bed and snatched up the phone receiver. Dead. The cord to the phone jack was gone.

She slammed down the phone, then grabbed the edge of the dresser as a wave of dizziness caught her. She felt like Dorothy in the swirling house, spinning out of control with no landing in sight. Feeling her way back to the bowl-shaped Papasan chair in the corner, she drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. She smelled her own sweat and puke and someone else's blood and realized she hadn't even bothered to shower before collapsing on her bed and sinking into sleep.

What about Heath? Had he taken a shower? She let out a wavering little moan.

“Hey, are you all right?”

Lila dragged her head up. “Aunt Jess. Where's Mom?”

“Busy with your brothers, I imagine. I thought I heard you moving around up here and figured you were awake. Do you need anything?”

Lila leaned her head back against the cushion of the big round chair and stared at her aunt. She looked like a tattooed, redheaded pixie. The image spun gently. She was like Mom but she wasn't. Mom on Ecstasy, maybe.

Do you need anything?

Yeah, Aunt Jess, how about we figure out a way to rewind the past twenty-four hours?

Then the dizziness stopped and she focused on the cordless handset clipped to Jessie's waistband. “I have to make a phone call,” she said. “I need to find out what happened to my friends. Kathy's my best friend. We've known each other since kindergarten. She was so scared in the car last night. I just want to hear her voice.”

Jessie indicated the turquoise plastic phone by the computer. “So make the call.”

“My phone is out of order,” Lila said. “I think the battery's dead. Can I borrow that one? Please?”

Jessie moved closer. She didn't seem to see the stack of willfully neglected schoolbooks on the floor in her path. She kicked them over, nearly falling on her face. “Damn,” Aunt Jessie muttered. “Your folks were right about one thing. This room needs a big cleaning.”

Great. She'd already gone over to the Dark Side.

“So can I borrow the phone?”

Jessie sat on the vanity stool and swiveled to face her. “Lila, you lied to me last night. Just remember that. Last night started with a lie. I was stupid enough to believe you. I have to live with that. I have to live with what happened because I believed you. My mother's caddie used to say, ‘Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice—'”

“‘Shame on me,'” Lila said, repeating the old phrase with her. “I've heard it.”

Jessie sat silent, watching her. She had the weirdest way of looking at a person. She didn't just look with her eyes but with her whole body, like she was a dry sponge and you were water and she wanted to absorb you so you'd no longer exist apart from her.

Fool me once, shame on you…

Was she ashamed?

She was supposed to be, so she did what you were supposed to do when you're ashamed of yourself. “Aunt Jess, I'm real sorry about what I did.”

Last night started with a lie.

She swallowed, and felt the first truly excruciating physical pain since the wreck. “I'm sorry,” she repeated.

Jessie sat there, motionless. “It's not just me you should be apologizing to.”

Tears pressed at the back of Lila's eyelids, and she fought for control, crushing them shut. She'd vowed recently to quit crying, because crying let people know you cared. Caring gave them power over you, and then you ended up doing things to make them happy instead of pleasing yourself. It was a harsh assignment to give herself, but life was harsh and she just wanted to have a good time.

She opened her eyes. “So you came in here all offended because I lied, but you don't want me to apologize.”

“It's not that you don't owe me an apology,” Aunt Jessie said. “I need for you to mean it. I know you're damned sorry you sneaked out with your boyfriend and got in a car crash, but are you sorry you lied to me? I don't think so. You don't even know me. What do you care whether you lied to me or not?”

“I don't want to care.” The desperate whisper came out of its own accord. Then the tears followed, hot and humiliating, more defiant than her vow. They burned her cheeks with their heat, their quiet power. “Please, Aunt Jessie. I don't want to care.”

She pulled herself into a miserable ball of shame, wishing the chair would swallow her up. Aunt Jessie came across the room to her, stumbling again over a stack of folded clothes Lila hadn't put away. Jessie sat down and put her arms around
her, holding on tight even though Lila reeked, and for some reason that made Lila cry harder.

Once she started, it was impossible to stop. She just sat there and cried and cried while her aunt held her, and somehow she ran out of steam and started to feel a little better. She never hugged her mom or dad anymore. She was always mad at them or getting ready to be mad at them or getting over being mad at them. But she had no history with her aunt, no connection, nothing at stake. Somehow that made it possible to cry and not want to die at the same time.

“I was so scared,” she said, sniffling. “I was so scared.” She said it over and over again while Aunt Jessie stroked her hair and then handed her a towel from her cheerleading gear bag. Pulling back, Lila was amazed to see that her aunt's cheeks were streaked with tears. “Why are you crying?” she asked.

Aunt Jessie's mouth trembled. “Oh, baby. This is the first time I ever got to hold you in my arms and rock you.”

Lila didn't know what to say to that, so she took the towel and dabbed at her face. Sharing a corner of the towel, Aunt Jessie wrinkled her nose. “This thing is a biohazard.”

“My whole room is a biohazard.”

“Is that how you like it?”

“Of course not. But I don't like cleaning it, either.”

“I think you should clean it.”

Lila thought of the way her aunt had stumbled over things. “I have to. My parents are making me. I'm just waiting for the workers to come and install the bars on my window. I'll never see the light of day again.”

Something like panic flashed across her aunt's face. “Don't ever say that.”

“It's true. They're going to keep me in jail until I'm old enough to vote. They don't care if I rot from boredom.”

“If your parents didn't care, they would cut you loose and let you drift away, maybe sinking out of sight.”

Lila rose from the chair. She felt achy and fragile, even though she wasn't supposed to be injured. She started picking through clothes mounded on the floor, tossing them in a laundry basket. Aunt Jessie watched for a while, then took out a slip of paper with phone numbers scribbled on it. She turned on the phone and stepped out into the hallway. Lila instantly glued her ear to the door.

Aunt Jessie identified herself as a family member of one of the victims and asked about the other kids. She listened carefully, saying “uh-huh” a bunch of times. Then she said, “Is she awake? Would it be all right to ring her room? I see. Yes. I'll hold.”

Lila couldn't stand it any longer. Whipping open the door, she said, “Kathy?”

Aunt Jessie nodded and came back into the room, crossing to the chair and sitting down. She looked like an angel, surrounded by colorful pillows, her short-enough-to-be-cool skirt draped over the edge of the chair. She froze, holding up a hand. “Is this Kathy? Just a moment, love, there's someone here who wants to speak to you.”

Pure elation bubbled up in Lila and she seized the receiver.
Thank you,
she mouthed at her aunt, then said, “Kathy? It's me, Lila. Are you okay?”

“No.” Kathy's voice sounded tired and weak. “My leg's broken in two places. Broken ribs, too, and stitches under my chin where I banged it. Hurts like a bitch, or it did until they gave me something. I'm dying of thirst, but they said I'm not supposed to drink anything.”

“Have you seen Heath?”

“No.” A long pause.

“Kathy, what?”

“My mom said Sierra had to have surgery to stop some kind of internal bleeding, and her foot was crushed.”

Lila clamped her eyes shut. This wasn't happening. It wasn't. “She's on the track team.”

“Not anymore.” Kathy's voice sounded slurry and strange. “Where're you?”

“They let me come home,” she said. “I'm grounded for life.”

“Me, too, probably. As soon as the parental units quit feeling sorry for me.”

“If they're like mine, the pity won't last long.”

“That sucks.”

“Yeah. Have you heard about the others? What about Travis and Dig?”

The phone was snatched from Lila's hand. Her mother stood there, her face as hard and white as marble.