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The Truth We Bury: A Novel

Page 24

by Barbara Taylor Sissel


  “Who is it?” Lily didn’t know why she asked.

  “Pilar Dix, if you’ve just got to know.”

  “Jerry’s wife?”

  “Ex. They were divorced last year.”

  “He doesn’t mind?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t Pilar just have twins?”

  “Three years ago. They aren’t mine, if that’s what you’re asking.” He shuddered slightly.

  She wondered if he really thought he could do it, be a father to toddlers. He’d hire a nanny, no doubt.

  He stood up, pulling his keys from his pocket. “I’ll call,” he said.

  She nodded. They didn’t say good-bye.

  She didn’t think she would sleep, but she did, falling off the ledge of consciousness into an abyss so deep that when she heard the phone ring—the landline out in the hallway—she had the sense it had been ringing for hours. It was a struggle to waken, to lever herself into a sitting position. She ran her hands through her sleep-matted hair, registered the glowy red numbers, 6:25, on the nightstand clock. Her mind felt logy and soft. She wasn’t certain of her footing and staggered a bit when she stood up, catching her hand on the mirrored vanity corner to steady herself.

  She heard her dad’s tread on the stair.

  “I’ll get it, Dad,” she called out to him.

  He flipped on the hallway light, and their eyes met, blinking. She saw her own worry reflected in his gaze.

  Lily picked up the heavy receiver. “Hello?”

  “Lily! Oh, Lily, thank God!”

  “Winona?”

  “Yes, yes. Can you come? It’s Erik. He’s here.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Home. I got in a few hours ago. I didn’t expect Erik would be here. He scared me when I came in. He was sitting on the couch, in the dark. He—Lily, he has a gun. He says he hurt AJ. Is it true?”

  “Oh my God, Win! You have to get away from him. Where are you now? Where is he? Did you call the police?”

  “No. I’m in the bathroom. He is still in the living room, I think. He told me—he said the girls, Becca and Kate, Shea’s and AJ’s friends—Erik says they’re dead, that he—he—” Win’s voice broke and fell into small hurt sounds.

  “Win? Oh, Win—” Lily fought to keep the panic from her voice. “Hang on, okay? I’m coming. I’ll call the police. Just stay away from him, okay? He’s not—not stable, not right in his head.”

  “I know. He’s talking so crazy, going to shoot me. Going to shoot himself. What is the matter with him? Do you know? He was fine when we last talked—yesterday. I think it was yesterday—”

  “What’s happening? Is it Erik? He’s there with her?”

  Lily glanced at her dad. “Yes. He has a gun. He says he’s going to kill them both.”

  “Tell her I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  “We need the police.”

  “Call them, but I’m going now. You don’t wait for the cops when a dog’s gone mad.” He disappeared down the stairs.

  “Lily? Is it true, all these terrible things Erik is saying? He’s never harmed anyone in his whole life. I want someone to wake me up, to tell me—oh no—” Win’s protest ended in an abrupt shriek.

  “Win?” Heart beating wildly in her chest, Lily called her name. She heard a crack as if wood had been splintered. She heard angry shouts and recognized Erik’s voice. She heard a clattering sound, as if Winona’s phone had fallen to the tile floor, and then she heard . . . nothing.

  Nothing.

  “Winona?” Lily bit her teeth together, waited.

  Nothing.

  Dropping the receiver back into the cradle, she shouted, “Dad? Daddy, wait, I’m coming with you.” Lily went into her bedroom, pulled on her boots, got her cell phone. She was dialing 911 as she ran down the stairs. There was no one in the kitchen. She flew out the back door just as her dad was wheeling the Jeep around the corner of the barn toward the old service road.

  She shouted, running after him, waving her arms. She’d almost given up when he stopped. Reaching the Jeep, she yanked open the door, threw herself into the seat. “Go!” she said to him. “Hurry.” And when the 911 dispatcher asked, Lily gave the woman their location and a brief summary of the facts. But it wasn’t really necessary. At the mention of Erik Ayala’s name, the woman indicated she knew the police were looking for him.

  The operator left the line for several moments, and when she came back, it was to advise Lily that patrol cars were en route. “How far out of town are you?” the woman asked.

  “Thirty minutes, at least,” Lily answered.

  “A lot of damn shit can go down in thirty minutes,” her dad said.

  Lily looked at him, and then down at his shotgun firmly wedged between the seats.

  22

  Winona’s house looked deserted. The front porch was shadowed, the windows dark. Except for the slow, measured crunch of the Jeep’s tires against the caliche, there wasn’t a sound. Not even the birds were awake.

  “Let’s wait for the police, Dad,” Lily said.

  “He’s not going to try anything with me.” Her dad pulled off the road, some fifteen feet from the porch. “I’ve got the shotgun if he does.”

  “But Winona’s in there.”

  “Stay in the Jeep, Sissy.” He issued the order as she was getting out, and when he saw she had no intention of obeying him, he said, “I shouldn’t have let you come.”

  She held his gaze. “Winona said he was going to kill her, Dad, and then himself.”

  “He’s not going to hurt anyone else if I’ve got one goddamn thing to say about it.”

  The front door opened suddenly, making Lily flinch. Her dad raised the shotgun.

  Erik came out onto the porch. His clothes, filthy and wrinkled, were the same he’d been dressed in on Thursday when he’d made lunch in the kitchen at the xL. “AJ is my brother,” he’d said that day. “You’ve been like a mother to me,” he’d told her. Incongruously, his feet were bare, and for a moment, Lily’s attention was riveted there—to his feet—but then he said, “I wondered when you’d show up, old man,” and her gaze rose, first snagging on the gun in his hand—she recognized AJ’s .45—then going to Erik’s face. His gaze was locked on her dad. Lily wondered if he even realized she was here.

  “Put the gun down, Erik,” her dad said.

  Lily heard the sound of tires and prayed it was the police, but when she looked over her shoulder, she saw a faded red SUV, coming fast around the curve, dust swirling in the new-morning light. Dru? But no, it was Shea driving, Lily saw, and AJ was riding in the passenger seat.

  “What are you doing here?” Lily asked AJ as soon as he’d maneuvered himself out of the car. “You shouldn’t be out of bed. You’re white as a sheet.”

  “Get back to the hospital.”

  “No, Granddad.” AJ gripped the top of the SUV’s door, keeping himself upright.

  “He made me bring him.” Shea pulled crutches from the backseat. “He was going to hijack an ambulance, or something worse.”

  “But how did you—?” Lily’s uncertain glance wavered from Shea to AJ. He was dressed in scrubs. The right pant leg had been jaggedly scissored off at the thigh to accommodate the compression bandage.

  AJ thrust his chin at Erik. “He called Shea and told her there was something he needed me to hear before he checked himself out.”

  Lily took a few steps toward AJ, as if to force him back into the car. “You’re bleeding.”

  He looked at the bloom of red midway down his thigh. “It’s fine.”

  “Hurts like a bitch, I bet,” Erik said.

  “Put the gun down, Erik, and we’ll talk.” Lily’s dad’s voice was quiet. It was the voice he used with the livestock when they were spooked and liable to go berserk.

  “Like hell, old man. Mom and I are done listening to you, done keeping your secrets. It was all lies and bullshit anyway, wasn’t it, you old fuck?”

  Lily stared at Erik, not believing that
this wild, foul-talking man was the same as the Erik she’d known from infancy. The change in him seemed impossible; it made her head swim.

  Winona crept into the open doorway, and Lily saw her own shock mirrored in Winona’s eyes. But there was some other element working in Winona’s expression, too. Was it remorse? Apology? What is this about? Lily opened her mouth to ask, but Winona’s attention had shifted, and she was looking at Lily’s dad now. He was standing a few feet to Lily’s right and a little closer to the porch, and while he held the shotgun easily enough, Lily knew that could change in less than a second, less than an eye blink. He was a crack shot.

  AJ came to stand beside Lily, and they exchanged a glance. Her heart was hammering so loudly, she wondered if he could hear it.

  “We can’t talk unless you put the gun down,” her dad said to Erik.

  “I can talk just fine.” Erik swung the .45 at AJ. “You think you’re such a big fuckin’ hero. Who’s the hero now, huh?”

  “Why don’t you just say what’s on your mind, Erik? We’re all friends here.” AJ held his ground, and Lily marveled that he could.

  “Ha! We’re a lot more than friends, vato.”

  “What do you mean?” AJ asked.

  Winona came over the threshold onto the porch. “Erik, no—”

  “I’m done, Mamita. We both are. Can’t you see? We’re not getting a fucking dime. Jeb lied to you.”

  Was he talking about an inheritance? Lily imagined, although she didn’t really know for sure, that Erik was included in her dad’s will, along with Winona. Her father wouldn’t leave them out. They were family.

  Family . . .

  The word resonated in Lily’s brain. The weight of it, its possible meaning, fell like a stone to the floor of her gut. She was cold, suddenly so cold. “Dad?” She glanced sidelong at him.

  But he wouldn’t look at her. His chin was lowered nearly to his chest; his eyes were closed. He looked done in, beaten—old and frail. Lily had never thought of him as frail. Not even after he’d fallen the other day.

  “What kind of a game is this, Erik?” AJ hitched forward on his crutches. “You murdered Becca and then Kate. You shot me. You’ve twisted the evidence, trying to frame me—”

  “That part was easy. It helped you’d been arrested before. You saw how the cops—everybody went for it.”

  “We were friends, Erik. Granddad has never been anything but kind to you and your mom. He’s given you everything. He built this house—”

  “You want to know why? Guilt.”

  Winona grasped Erik’s arm. “No, mijo. Not like this. Not like this.” She clung to him, desperate to silence him.

  He shook her off. “Guilt,” he repeated.

  “He’s crazy,” AJ said softly, as if he meant only Lily to hear.

  She glanced past him at Shea, standing on his other side, looking shell-shocked. They all were. Where were the police?

  “Can you explain what Erik is saying, Winona?” Lily appealed to his mother.

  But she only shook her head and sank to her knees as if she no longer had the strength to support herself. Her braid was unwound, and its tip dragged in the dust on the porch floor. Somehow, the sight loosened a memory in Lily’s mind from a long-ago morning. She’d been maybe fifteen or sixteen when she’d gone into her dad’s bathroom, the bathroom he’d once shared with her mother, and found a robe—Winona’s robe—hanging on a hook on the back of the door. She’d known it was Winona’s because she’d often stayed overnight with Win.

  When she was angry with her dad.

  When she needed a mother’s touch, a friend to talk to. Another woman.

  Win had been all those things.

  Now, holding her eyes, a knowing came to Lily, and Winona saw that it had come and wrenched her gaze away. Her shoulders heaved, but if she was crying, she made no sound.

  Lily looked at her dad. “Is Erik your son?” she asked. “Yours and Winona’s?”

  “You got it, Lily.” Erik was excited. “That’s the goddamn answer to the million-dollar question of who in the fuck I am—your half brother and AJ’s uncle.” Erik laughed, but it was a harsh, broken sound. “It’s crazy, isn’t it? But it’s true; there’s paperwork on it.”

  “Did you just find out?” Lily addressed Erik as if she believed what he was saying. She spoke as if the discussion, the situation, was rational and comprehensible, but inside she was reeling.

  “I’ve known it nearly all my life, but Mamita said we could never tell anyone. She said if word ever got out, the good life we had here would end and we’d have to go back to Oaxaca to her family. No way was I going there, so I kept their secret. It was part of the deal.”

  “We thought it was best for him, for everyone.” Lily’s dad spoke for the first time.

  Lily stared at him, mute. AJ, too, seemed incapable of speech.

  “Bullshit! You never wanted me.”

  “Erik.” Winona’s protest was laced with sorrow.

  He rounded on her. “He may care about you, but he’s treated me like shit my whole life.” Erik looked out at the rest of them. “How do you have a kid, watch him grow up right under your nose, and never recognize him? Never call him son? He’s my dad”—his voice broke—“but I couldn’t call him that. Do you know what that’s like?”

  “What deal are you talking about?” AJ asked.

  “Maybe we could all go inside—”

  “No, Granddad. Let Erik say what his problem is.”

  “You want to know, vato? He cut me out of his will. That’s my problem. All these years I keep his secret, keep my mouth shut about who I am, figuring it’s going to be worth it. I’ll get my share of his estate, something like a quarter million. That was the deal, the promise he made Mom. If I never let on I was as much an Axel as you or Lily, he’d cut me in for my share. Isn’t that right, old man?”

  “You didn’t want any part of the ranch, Erik. I asked you to come on as my foreman, but you turned me down flat. Three times. You left me no choice. I’m not leaving the xL to somebody who doesn’t give a shit about it.”

  “I don’t see AJ taking on the job of foreman, but you didn’t cut him out of your will, did you?” Erik swung his gaze to AJ. “Do you know how it’s been for me, bro? Hearing you call him Granddad, watching how he treated you with respect like you mean something to him. Like you’re something more to him than the dirt under his boot heel?”

  “Jesus, Erik,” AJ began, “I didn’t know anything about any of this.”

  “You were never shit to me.” Erik’s voice rose, shattering in the air like so much glass. “A pain in the ass. A snot-nosed kid I had to look out for. Another fucking responsibility Jeb piled on me.”

  Lily moved closer to AJ, as if she might shield him from the lash of Erik’s words. She wanted to speak, to somehow defuse the hostility, but her tongue felt rooted to the floor of her mouth.

  “So we join the marines, right?” Quieting, Erik swiped his eyes and under his nose. “I wash out and you come home a hero, and I’ve got to deal with the bullshit all over again—how you’re better, stronger, smarter. I’m sick of it. Sick of walking ten paces behind you like I’m your damn lackey.”

  “But why did you kill Becca and Kate?” AJ raised his voice. “To get back at me? What?”

  “You realize, don’t you, that Becca was in love with you. Like, crazy obsessed.”

  “I doubt that, Erik,” AJ said. “We dated, but it was never serious, and, anyway, what does that have to do with—”

  “She was preggers, vato. She told me she wished it was your kid. But no, hell no, my shitty luck, it was mine, and she’s all like I had to ‘do the right thing.’”

  “She wanted you to marry her, is that it?” AJ asked. “And what? You got pissed?”

  “She was going to tell Kate about the kid. I couldn’t let her do that. Kate was the best thing that ever happened to me, and after I saw how Jeb screwed me over, she was the only thing, the only good thing, I had left. I told Becca I’d
pay for an abortion. Hell, I gave her the money last month.”

  “It wasn’t just a loan,” Shea said.

  Erik looked at her.

  “Kate kept a journal. She wrote that she knew when she saw you and Becca fighting that it was about more than a loan.”

  “She thought I was cheating on her with Becca. Can you believe it? It broke me, you know? She didn’t believe me when I said I’d only slipped the one time. She wouldn’t let it go. She texted Becca last Tuesday and said they had to meet. Becca freaked and called me, making all kinds of threats. I told her to meet me at AJ’s. I knew he’d be working, and I figured I’d have time to reason with her. But no, hell no. The second I said the word abortion, she went all bat shit, called me a murderer. I said, ‘I’ll show you murder, bitch.’ I was only playing when I grabbed her around her neck. I just wanted her to understand I was serious about not wanting the kid. After a minute I tried letting her up, but she screamed like a fucking hyena. I was scared the neighbors would hear.” Erik paced now, a short path, toward Winona.

  “Give me the gun, mijo,” she said, reaching out her hand. Erik ignored her, walking back to the top of the porch steps.

  Lily saw her dad pull the butt of the shotgun to his shoulder and thought, No, and as if he heard her, he lowered the weapon. Or maybe he couldn’t bring himself to shoot Erik. “When it comes to shooting someone—another human being—you can lose your nerve.” He’d said that to her at the hospital on Friday—a scant forty-eight hours ago—in reference to AJ, and it was ironic, given that he hadn’t known or even suspected Erik was the shooter who’d lost his nerve. Now her dad was in the same place, pointing a gun at someone he purported to love. His son.

  His son. The revelation had all the substantiality of a balloon in the wind.

  “She kept fighting me.” Erik walked back to the head of the steps. “I just wanted her to get the damn abortion and keep her mouth shut. I get so goddamn sick and tired of everybody screwing me over, you know?” He looked out at them in anticipation of their agreement, as if they must see his reaction was one that any of them might have, sane and justified.

 

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