Home Before Dark (9 page)

From this moment on, nothing would be the same.

“You're like my mom but you're different,” Scottie declared.

Jessie's youngest nephew stood on a kitchen stool, wearing a Don't Mess With Texas T-shirt and nothing else. After a sleepless night, it had been all Jessie could do to get the other two fed and dressed and up the road to the school bus. Scottie had been parked in front of the TV, his head propped against the ribs of his sleeping dog, for the past forty minutes.

“I'm like your mom because I'm her sister,” Jessie said, pawing through a plastic mesh basket of clean laundry she had found on top of the clothes dryer. “Aha.” She produced a pair of Spiderman underpants. “I bet these are yours.”

“Nope. Owen's.”

“But you could wear them, for today.”

“Nope.” He regarded her with a solemnity that aged him beyond his years.

“What about these?” She plucked out another pair, these bearing a green cartoon character she didn't recognize.

“Wyatt's. Where's Mom?” The solemnity teetered on the
brink of despair. Jessie knew without asking that Scottie had never before awakened to a house with no mother.

Sucks, doesn't it, little guy?

Jessie didn't know what she would do if he cried. With urgent movements, she sorted through the clean clothes, coming up with a wisp of lace—a thong.

“I bet this is yours.”

“No way.” A smile teased one corner of his mouth.

“No?” Jessie put on a baffled look. “You mean you don't wear pink lace undies?”

“Lila's,” he said.

Yikes. Wasn't Lila a bit young for that? “Do you see any of your undies in here?”

“Nuh-uh.”

“So you want to run around bare-assed all day?”

“You said ass.”

“Is that bad?”

“We say bottom.”

“Oh. I'll try to remember that.” Scanning the cluttered room, she spied a tiny pair of swim trunks hanging from a doorknob. They were surfer shorts decked with navy hibiscus blossoms. “Scottie, I've had a brilliant idea.” She pointed out the trunks.

“My swimsuit!” He scrambled down from the stool, his little butt hanging out as he crossed the room.

Jessie reached for the shorts. Her hand met empty air.

God, not now.
She reached again, knuckles hitting the door. Concentrate. Focus. Grim with determination, she found her field of vision and reached again, this time seizing the shorts. “Voilà,” she said holding them out.

“Wah-la,” Scottie echoed, all smiles.

He was still smiling minutes later, long after Jessie had run out of patience. Her nephew insisted on putting the pants on
all by himself, and did not seem to think that making it an all-day operation was much out of line.

God. Luz had gone through this with four kids. And she was still sane. How could that be? Yet as she watched Scottie inserting one foot, then another, into the leg holes, Jessie was seized by a sudden affection that brought a rush of sweetness through her as though she had gulped a mocha latte. The kid was beyond cute with his tumble of chocolate-colored curls, his little tongue poking out in concentration, his pudgy feet pushing against the fabric. She felt the loss of her years with Lila.
Dear Lord, what have I missed?

“I'm so glad I got to see you, Scottie,” she whispered, more to herself than to him.

“Huh?”

She smiled. “It's just good to see you. I feel like the luckiest auntie in the world.”

He went back to dressing himself, taking forever to fasten the Velcro closure at the waistband.

While she was waiting, Jessie had found a bottle of pink nail polish and was doing her toenails, grimly proving to her self that the vision in her right eye still served. Through the diminishing field, her close-range acuity was nearly perfect. She glanced up to see Scottie watching her. Then, without a word, he stuck out his tiny bare foot.

With an air of somber ritual, Jessie painted his toenails. The look on his face filled her with an absurd gratification. Then his mercurial mood shifted. “Where's Mom?” he asked, looking worried again.

“She said we could eat Cheetos for breakfast.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“And red Kool-Aid.” Taking his hand, she brought him over to the fridge.

The guilt that had been gnawing at her since Luz had awakened her dug deep.

I could have stopped Lila last night.
She reeled from the thought, wished she could race away from it, but she couldn't. She had colluded with Lila, covering up her deception as though it were a schoolyard prank.

We're only going for a walk by the lake, I swear, that's all.

Why hadn't she challenged the lie in those wide, green eyes? Jesus, was she blind already? Why hadn't she heard duplicity in that pleading young voice? She should have, because it had been like looking at a mirror into the past. She used to lie all the time, used to run wild. The only one who had ever seen through Jessie was, of course, Luz. God. She would give up all of her vision right now if she could have that moment back.

“So where's the Cheetos, huh?” Scottie asked.

She touched his silky curls. “I think I saw some in the pantry.”

He trailed her across the kitchen. She lifted him onto a booster seat at the table, opened a small lunch-sized bag of Cheetos and poured a cup of artificially red Kool-Aid. He dug in, eating fast before she realized her folly and fed him oatmeal instead.

Her heart pounded with a sick rhythm. Things were happening too fast and she didn't know how to slow them down. She never had. Neither, it seemed, had her daughter. Now she was feeding this child the most nutritionally bankrupt breakfast on the planet. She was going to burn in hell.

After opening the windows to let in the morning breeze, she sat next to Scottie. The sunny breakfast nook was smaller than her memory of it, though little had changed. It was the same tiger oak table she remembered, bearing a few more
scratches and scars, perhaps. On a knickknack shelf on the wall was a small digital clock that read 2:26 a.m.

“That clock's wrong,” she said. As if a four-year-old would care.

“That's the Jessie clock.”

She frowned. “I don't understand.”

But as he lifted his shoulders in an elaborate shrug, comprehension dawned. Luz had a clock set to the local time in New Zealand. Ah, Luz, she thought. Jessie used to phone at her own convenience, unwilling to calculate the time in Texas. But it seemed Luz always knew the time where Jessie was.

Some of their mother's old golf trophies sat on the shelf by the clock, though they now served as easels and props for framed photos of Luz's kids. An entire wall had been transformed into a mural.

“I bet your mama took all those pictures,” she said to Scottie.

“Yup.”

“I can tell,” she said. “She takes the best pictures in the whole wide world, doesn't she?”

“Yup.”

Jessie was particularly drawn to the shots of Lila. They showed her at various stages, from unsteady toddler into a breathtaking princess in an emerald-green dress with a Texas-sized corsage of mums and streamers, standing beside the outrageously good-looking kid from last night. Keith? No, Heath. The interesting half of Heathcliff. In anyone else's hands, the picture would have been a snapshot of a good-looking couple in the foyer, but as far as Jessie knew, Luz had never taken just a snapshot. Her work was seriously good. With her uncanny eye and sense of timing, Luz had managed to capture their very essence. Their youth and vulnerability, their beauty, their strength, their fearlessness. She wondered if they'd ever be fearless again, after last night.

“I remember when your mom got her first serious camera,” she said. “It was Christmas, and she was twelve and I was nine. Our mama—”

“Your mama?” He looked skeptical.

“The lady with the tan,” Jessie reminded him, wondering when Scottie had seen her last. “The one who makes you call her Miss Glenny.”

“Yeah! And Grampa Stu takes me for a ride in his magic chair.”

Jessie had no idea what he was talking about, so she went on with the story. “Anyway, Miss Glenny got an endorsement deal with Main Street Camera, and they let your mom have a real grown-up camera and all the film she wanted.”

That year, the press had made much of Glenny Ryder's daughters, who shared her trademark red hair and lightning bolt smile. Luz and Jessie had followed their mother around like a miniature professional photographer and her assistant. That had been a good year. Jessie remembered an abundant Christmas at Broken Rock, a couple of shiny trophies to add to the collection.

She had a distinct memory of developing pictures with Luz. They'd turned the smallest guest cabin into a darkroom and they used to spend hours there. Magic happened when they dipped the paper into the developer, and the picture appeared. Photography was a miracle, an act of light and alchemy that fused into a lasting image. The ghostly blood-colored lamp in the watery cubicle painted the sisters' hands and faces and created a shadowy cocoon, making Jessie and Luz feel like the only people in the world.

Not long afterward, husband number two entered the picture, a blond, suntanned younger man who spent Glenny's money twice as fast as she won it, then left without a forwarding address for the creditors to find him. But Luz had always
treasured that camera; it had started a lifelong love affair with pictures. Sometimes Jessie wondered, with a sting of guilt, if all of Luz's girlhood dreams had somehow taken hold of Jessie's heart.

Now Jessie understood what the trade-off had been.

Her gaze settled on a masterful portrait of all four kids together, playing in a field of bluebonnets. The children were as much a part of the landscape as the live oaks and rolling hills.

“You must be real proud of your mom's pictures,” she said.

“Yup.”

“Do you ever say anything besides yup?” She imitated him perfectly, coaxing a sweet grin from his Red Number Two lips.

“Yup.”

She snatched him up and hugged him, savoring his compact warmth and puppyish smell.

A distant, plaintive cry captured her attention. A movement on the lake caught her eye. Through the broad bay window, she saw a flock of loons angling down from the sky to the lake.

“See the birds, Scottie?” She set him down and they watched in silence. The birds landed in V-formation, almost military in its precision. They glided toward the dock across the lake, where the green-and-white floatplane gently bobbed. “Have you ever seen that airplane fly?”

Nodding, he stood up on his chair. “Amber's daddy flies it.”

The pilot. Rusty or Dusty, Luz had called him. “Is Amber your friend?”

She met Scottie's gaze and they said it together: “Yup,” then burst into giggles. The uncomplicated mirth lingered as the birds took off with one mind, one motion. She could tell the moment the graceful spread wings caught air beneath
them. She felt the sensation in her arms and chest, and her chin lifted involuntarily as the flock rose, leaving behind a sparkling diamond trail of water.

The birds crested the tops of the lost maples before banking and then flying out of sight. The image pierced her with a sharp ache, and she swallowed hard, fighting a sudden lurch of loss. What will I see when I can't see anymore?

“Aunt Jessie?”

She turned to Scottie, banishing the trouble from her face, a move so practiced and polished she did it without thinking. “Yeah, kiddo?”

“I need to pee.”

“You know where the bathroom is.”

He slid out of the booster seat and held out his hand, regarding her implacably. She took his hand, noting the fingers were now covered in Day-Glo orange powder. “I hope it doesn't come out red Kool-Aid,” she said, leading him down the hall to the bathroom.

He climbed up like a cowboy to the saddle. There was a grid tacked on the wall and covered in stars: Scottie's Potty Chart. Oh, Luz, she thought. And you thought
my
life was exotic.

Digging around under the sink for a new roll of paper, she spotted a wrinkled drugstore bag and couldn't resist peeking inside.

A home pregnancy test, unopened. Never say her sister wasn't prepared.

Scottie leaped down as though an alligator had bit him in the butt. “Mom's home!”

He must have radar like a bat, Jessie thought, barring the door long enough to make him pull up his shorts and wash his hands. Wiping them on his swim trunks as he raced to the front door, he burst outside, followed by Beaver. He jumped
down the steps, one at a time, his bare feet slapping on the planks.

The expression of pure joy on his face explained everything to Jessie in that moment. No glamorous career could ever compare to the look on a child's face, the sound of his voice, singing
Mom's home.

Luz got out and caught Scottie up in her arms, hugging him tight. Over his tousled head, she regarded Jessie, and Jessie wasn't sure what lay beneath that look. Relief? Accusation?

Standing on the porch, Jessie was startled but not surprised to see a tall man unfold himself from the driver's side of the car. Apparently Ian had flown across the state last night to get to his wounded daughter. Did Lila know how lucky she was?

As he regarded his sister-in-law on the porch, Ian Benning was reminded of something he'd never told a soul: his wife Luz was not the only beautiful woman he had ever slept with.

Seeing Jessie again, all these years later, confirmed it. That indisputable fact had not changed.

Not that he'd ever say so aloud, but it was true. Dressed in a short, flowing skirt and a tight top that made her look like a lingerie model, she had an exotic aura of drama and danger. The energy was different when Jessie was around. The air seemed to vibrate with the rare buzz of electricity before a lightning strike, drawing all the attention to a heated center. The mere fact of her presence made men want to perform feats of daring, capture prizes and lay them at her feet. During his brief, youthful affair with her, she'd never really let him know her—an aspect some men probably found intriguing, but it simply frustrated Ian. The moment the flame dimmed, she disappeared, off to the next adventure. He remembered feeling relieved. He'd dodged a silent, invisible bullet.

A few weeks after that, he'd nearly forgotten her, and then
he saw her again. It was like being hit in the solar plexus. She was in the library, helping a deaf student with a biology paper—which should have clued him in immediately. When he moved in for a closer look, he realized it wasn't Jessie, but someone eerily like her. She caught him circling around, staring… So he introduced himself. She was Luz Ryder, and he immediately realized they were sisters. Luz shared Jessie's looks and voice, yet she lacked Jessie's hectic, unsettling beauty, her contagious energy. Everything about Luz was quiet and calm; she had a warmth that struck at the heart and brought comfort to the soul. Jessie might make a man want to slay dragons, but Luz inspired him to achievements that were more realistic and lasting—and therefore harder. She made him want to be a good man, to measure up to her vision of him. Ian loved her before the sun set that day, and he'd loved her ever since.

Meeting Jessie in a new context, as Luz's sister, was slightly awkward at first, then the awkwardness faded as both Ian and Jessie realized they had one thing in common—loyalty to Luz.

Then Luz dropped the bomb, informing him that Jessie was pregnant and Luz wanted to adopt the baby. Ian resisted. He wanted to start their lives together with a clean slate, not mopping up after Jessie's mistakes. But when it came to her sister, Luz had a core of solid steel. Refusal was not an option.

Ian cornered Jessie in private and confronted her with the inevitable question. He could still hear her answer, echoing across the years: “No.”

He took the reply at face value. She was stormy and mysterious, and he knew she'd been seeing other guys. Sometimes the question nagged at him, but Jessie insisted he was out of the running, and on some level, he acknowledged it was easier to let it be. She'd been an indiscretion, a clash of hormones, nothing more.

From the moment of her birth, Lila had dominated the
family. She presented every childhood challenge in the book. Ian tried to treat all the kids the same, but Lila demanded something different from him. He loved her with a fierceness that hurt, but his love was complicated. He didn't know what she needed from him. Or he from her.

“Daddeee!”
Scottie brought Ian back to the present, launching himself like a human cannonball. Ian caught and held his youngest son. The kid reeked of junk food and juicy sweetness. Each of Ian's kids owned his heart in a unique way; Scottie's hold on it was forged of laughter and joy. Totally trusting of his father's grip on him, Scottie leaned back and flung out his arms so Ian could spin him around.

“Missed you, monster,” he said.

“Aunt Jessie's been baby-sitting me.” He gestured toward the house.

“So I see.” He locked eyes with hers, and their gazes held briefly before breaking apart.

Jessie came down from the porch—bare feet, long tan legs, a couple of Maori tattoos in intriguing places—and hurried to the car. She patted his arm in a brief impersonal way, then brushed past him to the car. “Lila, are you okay?” she asked as the girl climbed out of the back seat.

“What's the matter with your neck?” Scottie asked.

“I'm fine.” Lila waved away the hovering adults. “I'm okay. I'll be better when I can lose this.” Before Luz could stop her, Lila ripped the Velcro straps of the cervical collar and discarded it. Beaver pounced, grabbing the thing and shaking it into submission.

“Hey, you.” Jessie hugged Lila, holding her lightly as though she might break.

Ian tried to imagine what was going through Jessie's mind right now as she hugged her niece who was really her daughter.

“Is it your head?” Luz asked. “Are you dizzy?”

“No, Mom.” Lila spoke with barely veiled exasperation. Her trembling chin hinted at the deeper reaction she was trying to hide. “I'm tired.”

Scottie squirmed downward as though Ian's torso were the trunk of the tree. “Lila! Why're y'all dirty, Lila? What's the matter with your hair?”

The kid had always had a special affinity for his sister, though Ian was hard-pressed to know why. Lila always brushed him away as though he were a gnat. But when she thought no one was looking, she liked to cuddle with the little guy.

“Lila!” he persisted.

“Yeah, pest?”

“Lila, where did you get them fingernails, Lila?” Before she could escape, he grabbed her hand and inspected the flame-colored nails.

“I was born with these nails,” she muttered.

“Nuh-uh.”

“Was too.”

“Was not.”

The two of them entered the house, still arguing back and forth. The screen door smacked shut behind them. The gun shot slap of the door made Ian jump.

“You're white as a ghost,” Luz said, rubbing his arm. “You'll be all right,” she added, as though by saying it aloud she could make it so. “We're all going to be fine.”

“Christ, how can you say that? Don't you get it, Luz? Everything fell apart last night. You know, I've lost cases. I've seen murderers die. I've even seen innocent men die for crimes they didn't commit. Held their grieving mothers in my arms. But this is worse. It's personal. My own goddamned family.
I'm supposed to protect them, and instead, my own kid nearly gets killed. I failed to protect her.”

“You didn't fail,” Jessie said. “This is my fault.”

Both Ian and Luz turned to regard her with anguished eyes. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he asked.

“Sit down. We should talk out here.” In the shade of an umbrella-shaped live oak, they sat in metal chairs whose edges had started to rust.

Ian regarded his sister-in-law with both interest and suspense. The prodigal sister. The fact of her presence was still sinking in. Instead of welcoming her, he wanted to put up a wall. But no wall or any other barrier had ever been able to stand between Jessie and what Jessie wanted.

She looked like something out of a dream, sitting there, her bronze legs shiny as turned and polished wood. Her feet were bare, her toenails painted pink. A tribal symbol tattoo rode the crest of her right collarbone. Then he felt disloyal for staring at her and shifted his attention to his wife. “You okay?” he asked Luz. “Should I get you a cup of coffee or—”

“Let's talk to Jess,” she said, sending her sister an encouraging smile. “I don't know why in the world you would say it's your fault.”

“I saw her leave with her boyfriend.” Jessie's voice trembled. “Last night. She even introduced me to the kid. And I sent them on their merry way.”

Ian glanced at Luz, who in turn stared at her sister as though she had been kicked in the gut. He reached out and cupped the back of her neck with his hand, gently massaging the tense muscles there. Jessie crossed her arms around her middle. In that moment she didn't look so beautiful, merely lost, as though her steering mechanism had gone out. He had encountered people who looked that way in his work. They were not the death row inmates themselves, but the families
of inmates—mothers and sisters and daughters who had traveled the twisted byways of the court and penal system, only to find a clinical cellblock and a chamber of death at the end of their journey.

“I was so jet-lagged, I didn't know what time it was,” Jessie said. “But I heard them talking, so I stepped out, and there they were. I think I startled them more than they startled me. Lila introduced me to Heath and said they were just taking a little walk by the lake.” She blinked fast, glancing from Ian to Luz. “I swear, there didn't seem to be any harm in it.”

“A little walk.” Luz's voice took on that harsh edge that had the power to cut so deep. Ian almost felt sorry for Jessie. Almost. “Since when does a boy just take a walk with his girlfriend at eleven o'clock at night?”

Ian kept rubbing her back but she didn't seem to notice.

“So I figured they'd do a little more than walk. But I never dreamed they would take off.” Jessie shook her head. “I can't believe she lied to me.”

Ian burst out laughing. “Where have you been living?”

“Why didn't you wake me?” Luz asked.

“She's not some toddler in danger of falling into the lake.” Jessie looked her sister in the eye and Ian could see the effort it took. “I'm so sorry, Luz. I don't know how to tell you how sorry I am.”

“So this all could have been prevented,” Luz said in a low, incredulous voice. “If you had spoken up—”

“Hey.” Ian surprised even himself as he interrupted her. “You know that's not how it works, Luz. Especially with Lila. If she was sneaking out, she would have succeeded whether or not Jessie informed us of it.”

Jessie shot him a grateful look, but he dismissed it. He was more concerned for Luz. She was having a hell of a time with Lila lately, and when she got scared, she lashed out. Lila scared
Ian, too, for that matter, but he was more realistic. People were going to do what they were going to do—stupid things, noble things, things that broke people's hearts—and there wasn't a hell of a lot even a mother could do to change that.

Luz pressed her lips and her eyes shut briefly and then he sensed her forcing herself to relax. He felt as though he had deactivated a bomb. And then he felt guilty for feeling relieved.

“He's right,” Luz said at length. “You couldn't have known what they planned, and you couldn't have stopped them. But I wish—” She broke off and bit her lip, but Ian could tell Jessie heard the unspoken conclusion.
But I wish you had tried.

“I never should have come back here,” Jessie said. “Never should have tried to see her. It's like I brought a curse with me. I should leave immediately.”

“That's what you're good at, Jess.” Blunt honesty was Luz's specialty.

“Then why mess with success?”

“Because I need you here, damn it,” Luz said, and her voice—her strong, unwavering voice—broke on a sob. “Can't you stick around for once in your life, just for a while?”

“Luz,” Jessie whispered. “Ah, Luz, don't cry.”

The sisters stood up and hugged in weary fashion. Standing off to one side, he could see their closeness and their desperation. They hadn't seen each other in years but that bond was still strong, a magnet whose charge had not diminished over time, but instead had grown stronger.

“You used to scare me, too,” Luz whispered.

Jessie laughed unsteadily. “You were the scary one.”

Luz pulled away, clearly not comprehending, although Ian did, perfectly. “We'd better get inside and deal with Lila,” he reminded her.

Nodding, she took his hand in a gesture of sweet depen
dence that he had no chance to savor before it quick-hardened into resolve.

“Will you let me talk to her later?” Jessie asked.

“Yeah, you should,” Ian said. “She owes you one hell of an apology for lying.”

Jessie's temper struck like heat lightning. “What about the lie we told her? Maybe we're the ones who should apologize.” Her fierce gaze locked with Luz's. “Yeah,
that
lie.”

Luz stiffened. “Not now, Jess. That's not what she needs from us now.”

Ian held his silence and his temper. It was easy for Jessie to come waltzing back after all this time, thinking they should suddenly reveal all to Lila, as though that would fix things. He couldn't understand why the issue was so important after all this time. Even before Lila drew her first breath, she had belonged to Luz and him in every way that mattered. Just because Jessie decided to show up now didn't change that—or so he hoped. “Leave it, Jess. Nobody's thinking straight now.”

He could tell from the set of her chin that her surrender was only temporary.

Hand in hand, Ian and Luz walked into the house. Scottie was parked in front of the TV, turned up too loud. He was eating Cheetos and drinking something red from his sippy cup. In one graceful movement, Luz managed to plant a kiss on his head, take away the Cheetos and red stuff, turn down the TV. The kid never even knew what hit him. Scottie was by far their easiest child, and he settled back against the sofa cushions and turned his attention to SpongeBob Squarepants.

“We'll be upstairs with your sister,” Luz said.

“Yup.”

Lila was in bed when they walked into her room, but Ian could tell she was faking sleep.

“Your mother and I need to talk to you,” he said loudly.

She blinked, opening her eyes to stare at them without expression.

“Sit up, please,” he said. “This is serious, Lila.”

“Like I don't know that.” Scowling, she shifted in her bed to lean back against the pillows.

“We don't need your sarcasm,” Luz said in her icy voice, rarely used, but it sent a chill down the spine.

“I don't need your lectures,” Lila snapped, looking like an MTV groupie. “I don't need you to tell me I'm a screwup. I don't need you to tell me I'm grounded forever and how you used to be so proud of me and now you're ashamed and aren't I ashamed, too, and that the decisions I'm making now are going to affect the rest of my life and, thanks to my poor choices, I'm cutting off some of my best options—”