Home Before Dark (3 page)

Of course. They'd had more to do with Lila's survival than Jessie ever had. She had simply left, never looking back, with only the agony of her milk coming in, then drying up unused to haunt her with reminders of what she'd left behind. Jessie remembered looking at that photo for hours, trying to understand what she'd tossed into the wind, resisting the urge to gather it back. Oh, she used to ache with yearning and regrets, wishing she could hold her baby, witness her first smile, first tooth, first step. But that would only have deepened the agony. More than once in those early days, the physical distance and lack of funds had kept her from doing something foolish.

Luz assigned chores to each of the boys. Wyatt was in charge of slicing the bread, which he did with a stream of martial arts sound effects. Owen went outside to fetch his dad to dinner. Scottie was appointed chief napkin folder, and his airplane noises competed with Wyatt's Kiai until the place sounded like a war zone.

Lila must have felt Jessie's adoring, pain-filled gaze; she looked across the scrubbed pine table laden with chipped china and mismatched flatware and said, “This is not my life.”

Jessie laughed, even though Lila didn't crack a smile. But Jessie thought, it is. It's the life I gave you. Tell me I wasn't wrong.

A moment later, stomping feet sounded on the porch. “Intruder alert. Intruder alert,” Owen and his father announced in a robotic monotone. Owen sat atop his father's shoulders, ducking down as they came through the door.

“Ian!” Jessie hurried forward as he flipped Owen head-over-heels to the floor. She hugged her brother-in-law briefly, a bit awkwardly.

He stepped back and grinned at her. He was one of those men who would look boyish at any age, be it twenty, forty… When he was sixty, he would probably still wear that Lone Star Longneck T-shirt and the same size Levi's he'd worn in law school. Same blue eyes, same large gentle hands.

Jessie's skin prickled with apprehension. She'd known, of course, that by coming here she would have to face him, but she found herself unprepared for the sight of his lean frame, the abundant hair tumbling over his brow, the broad shoulders and generously smiling face.

“Hello, gorgeous,” he said. “Long time no see.”

“You look great, Ian,” she said, feeling a rise of complicated
emotion. For Luz's sake, they'd long ago put aside their old enmity and treated each other with good-natured familiarity.

“I smell like two hours of yard work.” He paused to kiss Luz on the back of the neck as she worked at the kitchen counter. “You're a slave driver, Mrs. Benning.” Grabbing Scottie like a football under his arm, he went to wash up.

Dinner was served boardinghouse style—pasta, red sauce with meatballs, meatless sauce hastily poured from a Ragú bottle, salad, bread. Luz seemed nervous, yet fiercely competent as she juggled glasses of milk and plates of spaghetti. Jessie felt like the main dish as the kids peppered her with questions. “Are you really our mom's sister?”

“Her baby sister, by three years.”

“Are you famous? Mom told us you're a famous photographer.”

“Your mom is being generous. My pictures are published in magazines but nobody knows who I am. Photographs are not for making the photographer famous. But it was heaps of fun.”

“How come you talk funny?” asked Owen as he played with the croutons on his salad plate.

“I've been living in New Zealand for about fifteen years,” Jessie said. “I probably picked up a bit of an accent. But you know what? They think
I
talk funny.”

“Why New Zealand?” Lila asked. “How did you end up there?”

“That's a long story,” Luz said quickly. “I don't think—”

“The fact is,” said Jessie, feeling an unwelcome flicker of the old tension, “my very own sister made it possible.” She settled her gaze on Lila. “I have a really generous sister. She and I were going to graduate from college at the same time, but there was only enough money to pay for one final semester. Luz insisted on being the one to quit and get a job.”

“You had the higher grade point average, better prospects, a chance to work abroad with Carrington,” Luz reminded her.

“I hope you're as good a sister as Luz is,” Jessie said to Lila.

“She is,” Scottie said stoutly. “She's the best sister I got.”

Lila ruffled his hair. “I'm the only sister you've got.”

The moment of tension passed. Jessie pushed back from the table and gave everyone a wicked grin. “I brought presents.”

“Presents!” The boys punched the air. At a nod from Luz, they excused themselves and followed Jessie outside to paw through the boot of the rental car for the ANZAC bag containing the treasures. Even in her haste to leave, Jessie had taken the time to choose gifts for her family: a Maori waka figurine for Scottie, a fearsome carved swamp kauri mask for Owen and a small model of a Maori war canoe for Wyatt. For Ian, there was a kiwi bottlestopper, and for Lila, a set of paua barrettes, which gleamed with natural iridescence. She smiled a bit shyly, and it was all the thanks Jessie needed. Finally she gave Luz a carved greenstone pendant.

“It's the koru,” she said. “A native fern. Regarded as a symbol of birth, death and rebirth. It represents everlasting life and reincarnation.”

“So it pretty much covers all bases.”

“Yep.”

“I need all the help I can get.” With a laugh, she leaned forward and hugged Jessie, a flash of good-natured envy in her eyes. “You've been to some fabulous places.”

“This is pretty damned fabulous, if you ask me. I love what you've done to the house.”

In the den, the phone rang, but no one sprang to answer it. Luz caught Jessie's look. “We don't take calls during dinner.”

“But dinner's over,” Lila protested.

“Not until the table's cleared.” Luz ignored Lila's poisonous look.

The machine kicked on, followed by the sound of a distinctly male, adolescent voice.

The cherry blush returned to Lila's cheeks. She said nothing, but Wyatt piped up, leading his brothers in from the porch. “She's in
looove.
She's in love with Heath Walker,” he said in a singsong taunt. Together, he and his brothers broke into the classic chant: “Lila and Heath, sittin' in a tree,
K. I. S. S. I. N. G…”

Lila mouthed something that looked like
fucking morons,
threw her napkin on the table and stomped upstairs. Wyatt and Owen elbowed each other and giggled until Ian glared them into silence. Scottie chanted under his breath, “First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Lila with a
ba
-by carriage!”

Jessie met Luz's eyes across the table. “Welcome home,” Luz said.

Jessie sent her a pained smile.

The boys were denied dessert as punishment for the chanting.

“That means she didn't make dessert in the first place,” Wyatt muttered, thus earning the extra chore of loading the dishwasher.

Owen and Wyatt were banished to the showers. Scottie grabbed a battered copy of
Go Dog Go!
and went in search of Lila to read it to him, certain his big sister had forgiven him already. Ian went to get one of the cabins ready for Jessie.

“Nothing like a nice relaxing meal with the family, is there?” Luz peeled off her apron and folded it over the back of a chair. She grabbed a bottle of red wine and two glasses and led the way out to the deck. “Now comes Merlot time,” she said, imitating the old commercial.

She lit a citronella candle to keep the mosquitoes away. They sat down in a pair of Adirondack chairs and Luz poured.
They weren't proper red wine glasses, they didn't match, but they were festive enough.

Luz held up her glass. “I'm glad you're back. And stunned.”

Jessie raised her glass but instead of clinking against Luz's, she misfired and dumped half the wine on the deck between them.

“Damn it,” she said through her teeth. “Sorry—”

“De nada.” Luz gave her a refill. “With four kids, spilled beverages are my life, doncha know?”

They sipped their Merlot. Across the lake, the sun was a thread of fire on the horizon. The calm waters were glazed in beaten gold, with inky lines wavering across the surface. Lines she didn't trust. Didn't know which were real and which were not.

“Did you call Mom?” Luz asked.

“No. I suppose I should.” Their mother lived in Scottsdale with husband number four. Stan? No, Stu. Stuart Burns. Jessie had never met him. She made a point not to get too cozy with her stepfathers, since none of them stayed around for long, yet Stu had defied the odds. These days, Glenny was the ladies' pro on a suburban golf course, and somehow she was just as busy as she had been when she was constantly on the tour.

Jessie and her sister sat without speaking for a while. There was so much to say that they said nothing, just listened to the sounds of the settling day: water lapping at the shore, bobwhites calling out for reasons no human could fathom, the swish of the wind through the bigtooth maples that grew along the south shore of the lake.

Luz drew her bare feet up to the edge of the chair and draped her arms around her knees. Her feet were tanned, the nails of one foot painted with pink polish. So much about her seemed half finished—projects, toenail polish, her garden. It was the story of her life. She'd left college before earning her
degree to marry Ian and adopt Lila. Jessie wondered if this was a life half-lived, or had Luz left things undone because she had more important things to do?

Across the water, about a quarter-mile off, a vaguely familiar pickup truck pulled up to a wooden house set in the side of a broad hill. Jessie thought it might be the stranger who had given her directions earlier. “Are you acquainted with your neighbor across the way?” she asked, more concerned with filling the silence than with the answer.

“Not really. He's got a little girl about eighteen months old, I think. I heard he used to be a pilot in Alaska, but he moved down here when his wife died or left him or whatever. He's got a fancy Swiss-made airplane out at the county airpark. Ian's used his service for work before. His name's Rusty or Dusty, if I recall.” Luz's face grew dreamy. “He's a grade-A hunka burnin' love, if you want to know the truth.”

“Luz.”

“I know, I know. But even we soccer moms have our fantasies.”

“Is that a floatplane tied to his dock?”

“Yeah. He does lessons and tours, too, or so I hear. A regular jack-of-all-aviation. Maybe you could get him to fly you over the maples. That is, if you're going to be around for a while.”

“Maybe.” Jessie had hoped the wine would help relax the knots in her stomach, but it wasn't working.

The quiet lapping of the lake lent a sense of intimacy—though it was probably only imagined—to the moment. Luz didn't say a word, yet Jessie heard the question as clearly as though her sister had spoken it aloud:
Why did you come back?

The wind licked across the surface of the water and sifted through the maple leaves.

Jessie took a deep breath. “I wanted—”
say it
“—to see her.”

She knew what the next question would be before Luz asked it.
Why now?

“I shouldn't have stayed away so long,” Jessie said in a rush of nervousness and half-truth. “The years got away from me. But then I realized…” She took a deep swig of wine. Even now, long after she'd come to terms with reality, she was surprised by the terror that gripped her. She was at a crossroads in her life. Leaving Simon wasn't the only thing that was happening to her, but it had its own sort of importance. Struggling to hide her secret fear, she said, “Ah, hell. Simon and I broke up, and—”

“And?”

Not now.

“Everything went to shit. Nothing seemed right anymore. I wanted to see Lila and meet the boys, and…I missed you.” The truth of it reverberated through her, the breeze shimmering audibly through the trees. “I'm sorry. What more can I say?”

“You don't need to apologize. God knows, I'm no saint.”

“Yes, you are.” Jessie had always known it, ever since Luz had played the Virgin Mary in the fourth grade Christmas play. Jessie, in first grade, had been in the hosanna chorus, with the sacred duty of ringing a bell on cue. She could still picture her sister, robed in blue, kneeling over a basket of straw containing a swaddled doll. Some artistry of lighting had suffused Luz's face with a glow of maternal piety that made the women in the audience reach for their husbands' hands, and even the gym teacher had to wipe away a tear.

Even then, thought Jessie. Even then.

Of course, their mother had missed the performance. Each December Glenny played in the Coronado Invitational in San Diego. Jessie couldn't recall which neighbor had looked after them that year.

“Luz? Is it that bad, that I came back?”

“No.” She put a trembling hand on Jessie's. “It's that…I didn't really think you'd ever be back. The work you were doing over there sounded so fabulous… Perfect, like a dream.”

Jessie took her hand away. “It was fabulous and perfect for a long time, but—” She hesitated. “It's over now.” She gripped the armrests of her chair. “Luz, do you ever think about telling Lila?”

“Oh,
Jess.
” The night shadows haunted Luz's face with mystery and pain. “Of course we've thought about it.”

“But you never said anything.”

“That was your idea,” Luz reminded her, “and we agreed to honor that. We moved back here when she was three, so there was no chance of someone asking an awkward question in front of her. People still remark on how much she looks like me.”

“She does look like you.”

Luz nodded. “Like both of us. Once in a while, someone remarks that she looks like Ian. Can you imagine?”

Jessie took a swift gulp of wine. Yes. She could imagine.

“As a matter of fact, I have brought it up. The first time I tried to explain things to her was when I was pregnant with Wyatt. She was four. She asked me if I got so big when she was a baby in my tummy. It was simply beyond me to lie, even to a four-year-old. So I told her she was a baby in another woman's tummy, but the moment she was born, I became her mommy. She laughed and told me I was silly, so I didn't push the issue. It seemed cruel to burden her with information that would only confuse her. She never asked again and I'm sure she forgot the incident. And she was always a difficult child, given to taking dangerous risks.”

“What do you mean, risks? Why didn't you ever tell me
this stuff? It's not like I was incommunicado—we had letters, e-mail, phone calls.”

Luz combed her fingers through her hair. “It was nothing
that
serious, but she's contributed her fair share of gray. The first thing she did when we moved out here was jump off the dock—and she didn't know how to swim. That same year, she went toddling out to the neighbors' cow pasture to pet a Charleroi bull. She broke her arm jumping off the Walkers' barn roof, flapping a pair of homemade wings, because she thought she could fly. I don't think I let her out of my sight until she started kindergarten. She loves extreme sports, white-water rafting, waterskiing—anything with a high degree of risk. Ever since she was tiny, she's had a wild streak running through her. I'm not sure why. Maybe because we worried and fussed over her so much when she was born, or—”