She looked out at her parents’ house. She didn’t need to see them to know they were as panicked by the news as she was. What could she say to them, anyway? It will be fine? She couldn’t offer that kind of reassurance, not now. Maybe later. Maybe if she gave it a little more time Tucker would show up. She started the truck.
“Hey!”
Lissa froze, as if she could pretend she hadn’t heard her dad’s shout, hadn’t caught sight of him from the corner of her eye, crabbing his way down the front steps. She looked through the windshield at her dad’s pickup, at the license plate that had Disabled Vet printed across the top. He would allow the tag that labeled him a cripple, but if anyone were to suggest the use of a cane, he’d growl like an injured bear.
He met her at the gate, swinging it open for her. “Guess you came looking for your brother and thought you’d just skip on by if he wasn’t here.”
“No, Daddy, I was coming in.”
“The hell you were.”
“You look like hell,” she said. Up close, she could see his face was sweaty and pale under his iron-gray buzz cut. His leg was bothering him again, or she should say the lack of his leg. The pain was worse, Lissa guessed. Ordinarily, he was never bothered by it. In fact, people who knew him often forgot he was missing a limb. According to her mother, though, the ill effects of her dad’s amputation, the aching and tenderness, had resurfaced recently. Probably the result of stress, Lissa thought. He wasn’t handling retirement very well, and there was Tucker, always Tucker. Lissa loved him—they all loved him—but the joke, the painful family joke, was that he could drive God to drink.
She followed her dad into his office. When she and Tucker were young, her dad kept it locked because of his gun collection. Of course, the precaution only heightened their curiosity; they had looked for ways to be in here, to handle the weapons, and their wish was granted. Over their mother’s protests, Daddy schooled them—the same as their mom—in their use. He taught them to hunt and claimed Lissa had a dead eye.
She sat in a club chair across from him now, and she was wary. She couldn’t quite sort out his mood. She asked if he was okay.
No answer. There was only the sound of his breath, the creak of the leather as he shifted his weight in the tall wingback desk chair.
Dropping her glance, she saw the morning newspaper folded on the desk’s corner, the photo of Jessica Sweet staring out. It looked as if it had been taken from a high school yearbook of roughly the same vintage as Tucker’s. Lissa thought she had read somewhere they were the same age, thirty-four, and it worried her. It made it seem more likely Tucker might have known her. She started to say something, to make some comment, or offer the customary reassurance, but then she saw the ledger—the old-fashioned, leather-bound business ledger that her dad insisted they keep the family company’s, Lebay-Winter’s, financial records in because he didn’t trust computers, the ledger that was supposed to be at the office that she and Evan shared in town, but instead was sitting here, open on the desk blotter.
“What are you doing with that?” she asked.
“Not the right question,” her dad answered.
“So, what is?”
“Oh, I think you know.”
They sat, eyes locked, while silence rose, like a rigid wall. Lissa’s dad, the former decorated United States Army drill sergeant, said a guilty man, a soldier in her dad’s case, who had something to hide, couldn’t handle the silence. Pretty soon, he’d break down, say whatever came into his mind just to fill the void. Eventually, he’d hang himself. Her dad was waiting for that now, for Lissa to hang herself.
She set her teeth together.
“I’ve been going over the numbers,” he said finally. “You and Evan have been bullshitting me. We’re not in good shape the way you said. In fact, this is looking like the worst year we’ve had in the past five. You want to tell me why you lied?”
“About the numbers?” When had he gotten the ledger? Lissa tried to put it together even as she said, “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Come on, Lissa!” Her dad smacked the desktop with the flat of his hand. “I’m retired, not senile.”
“I understand that, Dad, but I assumed that since you retired and turned over control of the company to me, and to Evan, that meant you trusted us to run the place.”
“I built that goddamn business from nothing, worked it thirty years. You can’t push me out.”
“Oh, Daddy, we’re not trying to!” Lissa was nonplussed at the emotion in his voice, the way it slipped and caught.
He held her gaze, and she saw that his eyes were dark with anguish and, amazingly, filmed with tears. In her entire life, she had never known him to cry; he counted a man’s tears as weakness. It alarmed her; it hurt her heart. He could be gruff, even hard; he might take your head off if you made a foolish mistake. But the very same man had spent hours building her the exact replica of a dollhouse from an illustration in a book she’d fallen in love with, and she could still recall the shapes of the calluses that spanned his palm from all the times he’d taken her hand when he’d walked her to school. He’d taught her to drive and never once raised his voice, not even when she’d driven them into a ditch and he’d had to call a tow truck to get them out again.
“Look,” she said quickly, “maybe we did overstate a bit. It’s been tough the past several months, you know that, what with the economy, and then ever since—” She stopped before she could say Tucker’s name, say how badly business had been affected by last year’s notoriety, but her dad knew what was in her mind.
He inclined his head in the direction of the Houston Chronicle and said, “Yeah, well, it looks like the shit’s about to hit the fan again.”
“You don’t know that, Dad.”
A silence fell.
Her father broke it. “Your mother tried to call the cops to report him missing this morning. She would have, if I hadn’t stopped her.”
“She wants to find him, that’s all.”
He shook his head. “She’s losing it.”
Lissa didn’t ask what he meant, whether he thought it was her mother’s faith or her mind that was going. He looked at the newspaper, but she looked at him. She thought he was the one who was losing it. He looked so distraught. But he’d caused this, hadn’t he? He’d put himself in this position.
As if he felt her gaze, her father looked at her and said, “What?” in that tone he used when he meant to prick a nerve.
“Momma said you told Tucker to get out and not come back.”
“So?”
“So, you got what you wanted.”
“He called me, his own father, a fucking bastard and said he was a grown man and could take care of himself, which I’d like to see—just once.”
“Well, he could, if he had a job, if he had a paycheck. You cut him out of the business, Daddy! You basically disowned him. What was he supposed to do, fall all over you with kisses, his heartfelt thanks?”
“You know he blew another meeting with Carl Pederson.”
She nodded. She and Evan were as irked at Tucker as her dad, as Carl himself, was. It wasn’t easy to find a good cabinet man.
“If it was anyone else, screwing up as consistently as your brother has, I’d have fired them a long time ago,” her dad said. “Even you and Evan would have. You know I’m right.”
Lissa picked at her thumbnail. He wanted her to say he was justified in cutting Tucker from the business. And maybe he was. “Tucker is your son, not just some employee,” she said.
“I’ve given him every chance, bent over backward. Like I said to your mother this morning, the boy needs to grow up....”
And if that means he has to hit the bottom... Her dad went on.
Lissa tuned him out. Some things weren’t worth fighting over.
“Where’s Mom?”
Lissa waited to ask until her dad was quiet.
“Upstairs. She’s pissed because I won’t go to the lake and see about finishing the house.”
“What’s going on with that, Dad? You always said after you retired, you were going to build that house and fish until you died.”
“I’ve got no appetite for it anymore,” he said, and his voice was raw. “You get a crew out there, pull the frame down, use the material somewhere else. Tell Evan—”
He stopped, but Lissa kept his gaze while a hundred thoughts crowded her mind. She could offer him comfort, but she didn’t know how he’d take it. He’d never needed her comfort before.
He brushed his hand over his face, and the breath he took in was huge and ragged. “Go on, little girl, and check on your momma, will you? I’m worried about her.”
“Daddy?” Lissa felt a fresh jolt of alarm. She could see his eyes were filmed with tears again. Her own throat constricted.
He waved her off. “Just let me be now.”
“Tucker will come home soon. It’ll be fine, you’ll see.”
“Sure,” he said. “It always is, isn’t it?”
She eyed him a moment longer, then left, pulling the door closed behind her. When she heard the click of the lock, she looked back, and the thought came that he shouldn’t be alone now, not with all those guns, and it chilled her momentarily. She thought of asking him to let her back in, but he’d only refuse, if he answered her at all.
Her head throbbed with every step as she climbed to the second floor. She had wakened with another brutal headache this morning that had only gotten worse. She’d had a series of them recently. They had to be sinus related, she thought.
“Mom?” she called, reaching the upstairs hallway.
“Back here,” she answered.
Lissa went toward the sound of her mother’s voice and found her sitting on a footstool in the linen closet. Her mother looked up. “Honey, what’s wrong? You’re so pale.”
“Headache,” Lissa said. “I think it’s sinus. I took some Advil, but it’s not helping.”
“Dr. White gave me something good for that last time I went to see him.” Her mother went into the bathroom next to the linen closet and returned with a glass of water and a tablet. “It works, and it won’t make you sleepy.”
Lissa took the pill and a swallow of water.
“He said to remind you that you’re overdue for a checkup.”
“I know. I’ve been putting it off.” Lissa drank the rest of the water. As much as she loved Dr. White, she wished she could see someone different for her exam, a doctor who hadn’t known her since she was six. Someone who would only see her as a condition, not as a person. In case of bad news, she thought it might be easier if it were treated with clinical dispassion. Not that she felt as if she were seriously ill. It was only that she didn’t feel herself. In addition to the frequent headaches, she wasn’t sleeping, her appetite was low and, last week, she’d fainted. She kept telling herself it was stress. She wanted it to be.
Lissa’s mother resumed her perch on the stool. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“I wanted to check on you, you know, because of—”
“I’ve been rereading Dad’s old letters,” Lissa’s mother interrupted. She half lifted a cardboard box from her lap. “Did I ever show you this one?” She handed Lissa a sheet of onionskin paper, sepia tinged at the edges and covered in her dad’s cramped writing.
“‘My Dearest Em,’” her mother read, “‘my dearest one, my love, how will I tell you this news, the awful thing that has happened. I’m not the same, not your sweetest—not your sweetest honey—’” She caught her lip, took a breath. “‘I’m not sure I’m even a man anymore.’”
“Mom...” Lissa’s murmur was half in sorrow, half in protest.
She hadn’t read her dad’s letters home from Vietnam, but she knew how he’d been injured there. Her mother had told her and Tucker the story, how in the aftermath of battle, he’d rescued a four-year-old North Vietnamese boy, an enemy’s son, and run with him from a burning house, but before he could make it back to the location where his company was bivouacked, sniper fire had caught him in the meaty part of his calf below his left knee. Still, he’d kept running with the child; he’d brought the boy to safety against all odds, and sixty-one days later, they’d amputated the gangrenous, blasted remains of his lower leg. He’d nearly died from the infection.
Lissa was still in awe of the story. She couldn’t imagine the selfless act of courage it had taken. She remembered socking a kid once in third grade who called her dad a cripple. She’d been sent home that day for fighting, but she hadn’t been punished. Her mother only said the boy was probably frightened at the idea of her father having only one leg. It hadn’t made sense to Lissa. Her dad wasn’t different from any other dad with two legs. In fact, he was stronger than any man she knew. She never thought of him as handicapped. Most of her life, she’d scarcely been aware of it.
She gave her father’s letter back to her mother. “Daddy doesn’t look good, Mom. I’m worried about him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him quite so shaky.”
“That missing girl—she’s—”
“But it doesn’t necessarily mean anything, you know?”
Her mother hugged her elbows. “They don’t make linen closets with so much room in them anymore, do they? I played house in here when I was little, did I ever tell you?”
“Sure, Momma.” Lissa went along. “We played house in here, too, remember? You and me and Tucker.”
“It’s just the right size. Your grandma let me have a little table. And dishes. Such pretty dishes. I loved being in here—I still do. The way the old floor creaks and how the sunlight comes through the door, and the smell—it’s a comfort to me.” She drew in a breath, eyes closed. “Some people think it’s musty, but to me it smells safe. It smells the way love would smell, if love had a smell.”
Lissa knelt beside her. “Tucker will be home soon, Momma, or he’ll call. He always does.” The assurance sounded no better now than when she’d offered it to her dad.
Her mother touched Lissa’s cheek, lifted her fingers, trailing them across Lissa’s brow. “You and your brother are so different,” she said. “Tucker’s blond, like me, like the Winters, but you favor your father with all that wonderful dark hair. You’re strong, too, like he is.”
They shared a silence.
“I want to help him, you know? But when he hits these dark places, when he retreats and goes into himself, I— It’s hard to know what to do.”
Lissa tucked a wayward strand of her mother’s hair behind her ear. It added to her worry, seeing her parents so undone, so not themselves. Abruptly, she held out a hand to her mother. “Come with me to Pecan Grove. It will do you good to get out of the house.”
“Oh, that would be lovely, but you’ve got work to do out there, and I’m fine. Dad and I both are. Don’t worry about us.” Her mother stood up making shooing motions, then suddenly she cupped Lissa’s face in both hands. “Do you know how much I love you?” Her eyes were swimming with tears.
Lissa nodded; her own throat knotted.
“Sometimes, I think we get so focused on Tucker, we forget about you. Forget to tell you how special you are. Please say you know how much we love you.”
Lissa slid her palms over her mother’s hands. “Of course I do, Momma.”
She gathered herself and gave Lissa’s cheeks a final pat. “Don’t pay any attention to me. I just need to hear from your brother. Once he’s home, and he and your dad have mended their fences, we can get back to normal.”
“What’s normal?” Lissa asked, and she was glad when her mother smiled.
* * *
She stopped outside her dad’s office door on her way down the front hall. “Daddy?” she called softly, but he didn�
�t answer her, and she didn’t call out again. Passing the dining room on her way out of the house, her path was diverted when she caught sight of the collection of family photos arrayed across the top of her mother’s baby grand piano. Some were casual shots that her dad had taken back when she and Tucker were little. Others were formal studio shots. She picked one up, a five-by-seven framed in wood. It was of the four of them sitting on a sofa. Her mother was holding Tucker on her lap, and Lissa was leaning against her daddy’s good leg, smiling, gap-toothed. Tucker was in shorts and had a Mickey Mouse Band-Aid on one chubby knee.
Setting the studio portrait down, she picked up another, a shot her father had taken that her mother had framed in silver. It was from Easter Sunday. Lissa remembered the year was 1981. Tucker turned three that year, and she turned seven. They were outside on the front porch, dressed in their church finery. Lissa’s outfit, a ruffle-hemmed sheath made of pink dotted swiss, with pink patent-leather Mary Janes and a purse to match, had been a favorite. Her mother had corralled her glossy, straight, dark hair into a French braid that hung midway down her back and ended in a tied puff of pink chiffon. Lissa wore it in a French braid to this day, to keep it out of her face, especially when she was working or painting. Growing up, Tucker called the braid her donkey tail to annoy her. He’d grabbed it and held it to his chin, letting the end dangle, making a long beard of it, teasing her. She’d wanted to clobber him.
Safe Keeping Page 2
