Jilted (15 page)

“Lynda?” Hector Chavez knocked on my front door bright and early Monday morning, and when I peeked out the diamond-shaped window, I saw that the sheriff had been followed by more news reporters and cameras. The desperation I'd worked so hard to repel now crept silently across the hardwood floors of my living room and crouched behind me.

As if finding my husband's vehicle at the bottom of the lake wasn't enough, now I had to discuss it with an old friend while being hounded by a crowd of strangers.
Why bother?
Hector would only explain that they had found Hoby's wrecker, that he was dead, that he had been dead a long time.

I opened the door but shielded my face with a Kleenex box when I saw cameras pointed at me from the street.

Before either of us spoke, Hector entered, clearly wanting to avoid the media as much as I did. He pushed the door closed behind him, then leaned against it. His eyes quickly swept my tangled hair and worn pajama pants before he cut his gaze to the front window. “I won't stay long, Lynda.” Without moving from the door, he reached over and pulled the curtain cord, closing out any unwanted attention I might receive from the spectators.

“Thanks.” I crossed my arms and waited for him to decide if I was thanking him for closing my curtains or for not staying long.

“When I leave, I'll try to get them to give you a break for a while.” He closed his eyes for a second and seemed to take a deep breath to prepare. “I guess you've heard about the Lubbock Police Department finding Hoby's wrecker out in the lake.”

“I thought it was the Texas Rangers.”

“No, the LPD has jurisdiction over the actual lake.”

I nodded, not trusting my voice.

“This is hard for me, Lynda. Hoby was a good friend.” He held his cowboy hat in his hands, rotating it endlessly. “And Neil.”

“Neil?”

“I keep thinking about one summer. The three of us did target practice on the side of his dad's barn.” He chuckled. “That was before I was in law enforcement, of course. Years later I ran a report when Neil's pistol was stolen.”

“I never knew it was stolen.”

“Right out of his truck in downtown Trapp.” Hector shook his head. “During the Christmas parade for the volunteer fire department. Don't that beat all?”

Silence invaded my living room as we both lost ourselves in memories, but then Hector shrugged, ever so slightly, as though to plunge on through his dirty deed. “They didn't find a body, Lynda.”

A body.

Suddenly I was in a crime scene television show, with my husband playing the part of this week's victim. I stumbled to the couch and plopped down heavily. “But I saw—”
What had I seen?
When the wrecker came up out of the water, it had been filled with silt from the bottom of the lake, but as the mud sifted back into the water, I could have sworn I saw a skull through the back window.

“I know what you think you saw.” Hector followed me and sat on the very edge of the recliner. “Most all the spectators saw the same thing, and at this point, we're letting them believe it was a body, but it was actually Hoby's old hard hat hanging from the gun rack.”

“A hard hat?” I had forgotten Hoby even had a hard hat. He used to wear it as a batting helmet when he played softball. My teeth bit gently on my bottom lip, and I looked away from Hector toward the empty kitchen, through the window, to the backyard and freedom. “So he's not dead?” With my worn emotions, I didn't know what to think, and it crossed my mind that I probably wasn't behaving the way a widow should behave.
Was this some kind of test?

“The boys from Lubbock are speculating, but everyone in town assumes it was either an accident or suicide.” His face scrunched. “That's probably what you're thinking, too.” He leaned forward. “Hoby had been diagnosed with depression, right?”

“Yes.” My head seemed full and empty at the same time, and when I tried to talk, my tongue tingled. “What should I be thinking, Hector?”

“I'm sorry to be so blunt,” he said. “I'm not really involved in the investigation of the vehicle, but I have a little to do with those bones that were found.”

I bent one knee to tuck my icy toes beneath the opposite thigh, not seeing the connection.

“At this point,” he continued, “the Rangers are considering the possibility that those bones belonged to Hoby.”

“Wh-what?” My thoughts spun in wild arcs, and I struggled to make sense of them. “Why?”

Hector shrugged. “Because there was no evidence of a body in the truck.”

“But everyone's saying the Tarrons' grenades could've moved things around.” A feeling of dull nausea settled in my stomach. “If his body wasn't in the wrecker, then it's still on the bottom of the lake.”

“Actually …”—Hector shifted, and his holster pressed against the arm of the recliner—“the CSI team from Lubbock had a lot to say about what would happen to a body under those conditions, especially with the windows open on the truck.”

I didn't want to know what would happen, but surely I was supposed to ask. A good wife would ask. “What would happen?”

Hector studied the cuticle of his left thumb before returning his gaze to me. “Let's just say that if Hoby had been in the cab when the truck entered the water, his body probably would have surfaced in a day or two.”

Even though I hadn't eaten anything for breakfast, my stomach churned in protest, and the mild nausea from a few minutes ago flared into a serious threat. My dead husband's bloated body had risen to the surface of the lake, only to be ripped apart by animals and left to rot.

“I'm sorry this is happening, Lynda. Hoby was a good friend.” Hector continued talking, unaware that my brain was only catching half of what he said. “Also, the Rangers sent those bones to an anthropology expert down in Austin. The preliminary report showed there wasn't enough DNA to make an identification.”

Bones … DNA … identification … Hoby. I couldn't take any more of Hector's verbiage or assumptions or speculations. My husband was dead one minute, alive the next, then dead again. Or maybe it wasn't him at all. “I think I've got it now, Hector.” But really I didn't. It didn't make sense at all.

He rose, walked stiffly to the door, and then stopped. He turned back to me, and his eyes were sad. “Lynda, I don't think you fully understand what I'm saying.”

I pressed my forearms against my stomach in an attempt to settle it. “Okay.”

“You see … at this point, the Rangers don't know if the bones belonged to Hoby, or if the body was in the truck when it went into the water. They don't know if the bones were ever in the water at all. They'll know a lot more once they get the rest of the results from Austin.”

“What are you saying?” If he told me anything else, I might not be able to handle it, but I had to ask. I was supposed to ask.

He held his palms in front of me as though he would catch me if I fell. He spoke slowly and softly. “I'm saying they think there may have been suspicious circumstances.” He pressed his lips together and dropped his gaze, seemingly unable to look me in the eye. “I can't tell you everything right now, but I can tell you that things aren't adding up.”

“I don't understand.”

“I know, but you're going to have to wait a few days. Wait until we have more evidence.” He reached for the doorknob. “But I need you to keep this between the two of us until I talk to you again.”

“Why?”

“Because I'm not sure who I can trust.”

“Momma?” Ruthie knocked on the front door twice.

“It's open, Ruth Ann.” I rubbed my eyes, pulling myself up to a seated position.

It had been four hours since Hector left, and I had sat on the couch the entire time, but at least I hadn't gone back to my bedroom. I kept telling myself I would take a drive later today. Maybe not all the way to the windmills, but surely I could handle a trip to the Dairy Queen drive-through. After all, Clyde would expect me to get out.

Ruthie came in the house, then stood just inside the door, arms crossed, peering at me. The look on her face was the same as when she was five years old and had to drink the thick, pink medicine—stubborn and willful. “Dodd said I had to come over here and talk to you, or he was going to go nuts. He's not picking me up for an hour.”

From where I sat on the couch, I could see the El Camino pulling away from the house. Apparently the reporters had given up. “He's a good man.”

Ruthie sat down next to me even though there were two other chairs in the room. “Yeah … he is.”

Shooting the breeze wouldn't help either of us, but it was the best I could do. “What's his sermon topic this week?” I had a warped habit of asking. “Tell me it's not forgiveness again.”

“No, I think he's gotten all the mileage out of that one. This Sunday he's preaching on repentance.”

“Ah, he's talking to Neil.”

“Momma, Dodd wouldn't preach to one person in the audience. That's not cool.”

“I don't see how he has a choice.”

“What do you mean? Nobody tells him what to preach.”

“I'm just saying Neil's been on his mind lately, so he's bound to be influenced. It's just where Dodd is right now.”

She laughed lightly. “But Neil has been on his mind ever since he started preaching here two years ago.”

“No wonder he's preached on forgiveness until he's blue in the face.”

Ruthie pursed her lips as if she wanted to say something else, but she only looked away and shook her head.

Ruthie was hurting.

She was hurting, and I didn't know how to help her. I had never known, and my own pain had always overshadowed hers until I barely knew my own daughter.

Her eyes clouded. “Why do I miss Daddy?”

I froze, unable to think of anything other than Hector's insistence that I not talk to anyone.

“He's been gone over fifteen years,” Ruthie said. “I stopped missing him years ago—or at least I stopped dreaming he'd come home, but now I miss him again. It's stupid.”

“That's not stupid.”

“Explain it, then.”

I couldn't explain it. “I just know I feel the same way, and we can't both be stupid.”

She peered at me for a few minutes, then bumped my shoulder with hers. “But you've missed him all along.”

“Sure, I've missed him, but I also wanted to slap him. I wanted to get him back for leaving the two of us. I wanted to make him pay.”

Ruthie's gaze bounced around the room, looking for a place to land.

I cringed. “But I never wanted him … dead.”

She inhaled a shallow breath, and I could hear a stifled sob around its edges. “I know, Momma.”

A gust swelled outside, and dust pelted the window. We both turned our heads that direction, stared without seeing, then turned back. Like so many other times, I noticed our similarities and marveled at how much we were alike. Was there any trace of Hoby in my daughter? Was there anything left of him?

While she picked at her fingernails, I studied her. As a child, Ruthie had a gap between her front teeth, just like Hoby, but braces had changed that. She still had Hoby's eyes, of course. Right after he left, those eyes of hers had almost driven me insane, but somewhere over the years, I had all but forgotten their constant reminder, and Ruthie's eyes had become her own, not Hoby's.

She sighed. “Dodd says I miss him now because I know he's never coming back, but it's more than that.” She spoke louder and faster as though she would feel better—
cleansed
—once she had tossed the notion out into the room where we could look at it, examine it, poke it with a stick. “Now we know where he was all that time.” Her eyes widened. “He wasn't deliberately staying away.”

The same thoughts had somersaulted through my head, but after the sheriff's visit, I didn't know what to think. “It makes sense, Ruth Ann. I could always reason out why he left me, but it was wildly out of character for him to leave you.” Then I realized the truth of my words. No matter what Hector had been trying to tell me, Hoby being dead was the only thing that made sense.

A tear trickled down her cheek. “I've spent so many years believing he didn't want me.” She slumped back, seeming to let the cushions soak up her tension. “Momma, what do you think Daddy would say if he were here?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Oh, I don't know.” She shook her head. “I've just been thinking. What would he have done if he had been at my wedding? What would he think about Dodd? Would he be happy that I'm in college? I mean, I suppose I know the answer to those questions … but still … I wish he could be part of my life.”

I was beginning to understand. “What else have you been asking yourself?”

“I ask myself what might have happened if things had been different. What if he hadn't gotten drunk? What if he had just slammed into a telephone pole or something? Yes, he would have still died, but we would have known about it. What would our lives be like now?”

I shivered. “Things would definitely be different, but there's no way to know if they'd be better or worse.”

“Seems like they'd have been better.”

My finger rubbed at a rough spot on the couch cushion. “Yeah, it does.”
Sort of.
My thoughts had just undergone a shift, and in my mind, Hoby was so dead, I couldn't imagine him alive. “Let's go get a dip cone.”

“You just want to see Clyde.”

“He's not working today.”

She lifted her head and smiled. “Okay. A dip cone.”

As we walked down the front steps, the outdoor air felt foreign to me, and I could hear it whispering that I should go back in the house, stay home, stay safe, but in defiance I lifted my face and let the sunshine warm my cheeks.
I can do this.

Ruthie paused, squinting into the sun. “I wish I had more memories of him.”

So do I.
The most vivid memories were always the bad ones.

“The two of you used to swing a jump rope for me,” she said. “Daddy sang a chant while I jumped. I don't remember it, though.”

I took one step to the car, then stopped. “Cinderella dressed in yellow went upstairs to kiss a fellow.”

Ruthie finished the rhyme. “Made a mistake and kissed a snake. How many doctors did it take?”

My mind wandered back to that time. Not long before Hoby left, he had been working a lot, but he had always made time for our daughter. “He was the first one to give you a nickname,” I said. “And I used to call you Ruthie just like he did. Do you remember that?”

She didn't answer right away, and I knew it wasn't easy to think back that far. “Maybe. Why?”

“I haven't thought about that in so long. He only called you Ruth Ann if he was sad. When he left, I was mad at him, and I started calling you Ruth Ann all the time. I told everyone it was because I wanted to emphasize the names of your grandmothers, but really I was just angry with him for leaving.”

The two of us stood in the middle of the yard, halfway between the house and the hatchback, but in the past thirty minutes, we had covered so much emotional ground, we were miles closer than we had been in years.

She smiled. “Thank you for telling me that, Momma.”