A white aching space.
As if along with Tucker the whole world had vanished. The police were called in, and they found him just after nightfall, after everyone was good and scared, none the worse for his adventure, in a ravine nearly a mile from their house. The story he told was that he’d been trying to catch a dog, a little puppy. He said he followed it because it looked so sad and lost, and he wanted to bring it home and take care of it.
Lissa remembered Tucker hiding from their dad on his return from the hospital weeks later. Even though he was calmer and seemed to keep a better grip on his temper, it took Tucker a long time to warm up to him again. Thinking back now, Lissa didn’t remember the movie camera ever making it out of the box. It was probably packed away somewhere along with Momma’s habit of humming and Dad’s laughter, which was rare even then.
She didn’t know exactly, because even as a child she’d been reluctant to ask, to talk about her dad’s absence at all. She had always thought there was more to it; she still did.
Evan took her hand, and they followed Tucker up the sidewalk.
Their mother came to the top of the steps. Tucker joined her, and she took hold of him, bending her forehead to his chest. She wasn’t crying, but she was close to it, and Lissa was glad when Tucker slipped his arms around her.
“Come on, Ma. It’s nothing,” he said. “It’s over.”
“Are you sure?” She tilted her gaze to look at him.
“They wanted to ask me some questions, that’s all.”
“You didn’t know her, then? Jessica Sweet? You told the police you didn’t?”
Lissa’s heart sank. She ought to have warned her mother, but there hadn’t been time, and truthfully she hadn’t wanted to. “Mom? I think he’s going to need a lawyer.”
“No, I told you—”
“You talked to the police without an attorney, Tucker. They know you had a relationship with Jessica. Nothing’s over. When they find her killer, then it will be over.”
6
TUCKER SAID LISSA was making too much of it, that it was no big deal. This time he had an alibi—witnesses, receipts, proof that he was nowhere near here when Jessica Sweet was killed and dumped in the woods. Emily wanted to believe him; she did believe him. She gathered herself. “I baked a cake,” she said.
Tucker grinned his foolish puppy grin. “Chocolate?”
She nodded, patting his cheeks, happy to have him home, to have her family together. She didn’t miss Lissa’s sigh of exasperation but chose to ignore it. “Why don’t we all go inside?”
Lissa asked for a rain check. “I’m worn out, and Evan and I have an early day—”
When she broke off, Emily didn’t have to turn around to know that Roy was standing in the doorway. She froze. She had tried talking to him at dinner, forcing herself to say Joe’s name. She had said, “Please, let me explain,” but Roy answered there wasn’t a need, and his voice had been low with hurt. She had no idea what he thought he knew, or where he could have gotten his information, if he had any, and she was beside herself with the worry of it. But there was no way they could pursue it now, in front of the children. She hugged her arms around herself.
Tucker lifted his cap, whipped it once, then again, against his leg, saying nothing.
The silence thickened. Someone in the neighborhood called for their dog and now the night breeze carried the sound of a train whistle from the edge of town.
“Roy?” Emily lifted her voice. “I was just saying we should all come inside and have some cake.” She paused, and when he didn’t answer, she turned to him, and she was relieved and not a little amazed when he didn’t argue, when instead, he backed out of the doorway, leaving it open. Gesturing at Tucker and Lissa and Evan, she followed Roy down the front hall and into the kitchen. The cake was centered on the table, underneath a glass cake dome. It had turned out beautifully, and Emily was glad she hadn’t abandoned making it.
“Mmm, looks yummy.” Lissa opened a cabinet and lifted down five dessert plates.
“I hope it’s not too dry.” Emily gathered forks and napkins, taking a moment to circle Lissa’s waist as a way of thanking her for staying, for being amenable.
Lissa tipped her head to Emily’s. They were often the peacemakers, the buffer between Roy and Tucker.
“Is coffee all right? There are soft drinks and milk.” Emily looked around at the men, and she thought it wasn’t only Roy who was humoring her. Every one of them was. Even Lissa was likely wondering if Emily truly believed she could serve them slices of cake like doses of medicine and somehow defuse the tension. She knew better, of course. But she wanted her family to see that regardless of the circumstances they could still come together, just as they had in the past, to share in the sweetness of dessert.
When everyone was seated, she said they should join hands. It seemed important to offer a blessing. “Roy, would you do the honors?” she asked, and her heart almost broke with love and gratitude when he bowed his head, and taking Tucker’s hand in his left and Lissa’s hand in his right, he thanked God for them and for Evan, and for the cake, and Emily, who baked it.
After they said their amens, she squeezed Tucker’s opposite hand. “Thank you, God, too, that our son is home safe.” She smiled at him.
He kept her glance and her hand, and there was something wounded and fraught caging the shadows of his eyes. Some quality or essence had come over him—was it despair? Remorse? She didn’t know, had never seen it before.
“I’ve been a bastard,” he said.
Emily frowned.
“I’m sorry,” Tucker said.
“It’s all right, honey,” Emily said, but panic knotted her stomach.
“It isn’t all right,” he insisted. “It hasn’t been right—I haven’t been right, not for a long time.”
“What do you mean, Tucker?” Lissa asked the question Emily couldn’t find breath for.
“I didn’t murder Jessica Sweet.” Tucker looked hard at Lissa. “Or Miranda. I tried telling you earlier, Liss. The cops can dog me into hell, and they probably will, but they’ve got it wrong.”
“If they’re so goddamn wrong,” Roy said, “why do they keep coming after you?”
Emily tensed, waiting for Tucker to say something ugly; she waited to hear the scrape of his chair, the clatter of his plate when he dumped it into the sink. She waited for him to walk out in a huff, or walk out yelling. But for what seemed an eternal moment there was nothing.
And then Tucker said, “I want to come back to work.”
Emily looked at Tucker in astonishment.
But he had eyes only for his father. “I’ll do whatever it takes, Pop. You can cut my salary, put me on any kind of job. I don’t care. I just want a chance to make it up to you, to get it right.”
A tremor rocked Tucker’s voice, stalling Emily’s heart.
“I meant what I said before,” he went on, “about being a bastard. I’m sick of myself. Sick of living this way. Sick of being so fucked up— Sorry, Mom. There’s no reason you should believe me, but I swear this time it’s different. If you could just let me try—if you could just give me one more shot.”
Roy drew his napkin from his lap. “The only job we’ve got going on is Pecan Grove, and Pederson’s made it clear if he sees you out at the site, he’ll quit. We can’t afford to lose him. I think your sister and Evan would agree.”
“Maybe if we talked to him,” Evan said.
“If we reassure him he won’t have to work directly with Tuck again,” Lissa said. “Either Evan or I can meet with Carl from now on.”
Emily clenched her fists, willing Roy to see the possibility.
He didn’t. “That’s not going to fly,” he said. “If he even sees Tucker out there, he says he’s done. I had to tack five percent onto his original bid to get h
im to stay as it is.”
“Dad!” Lissa protested. “We’re already upside down on that job.”
“Yeah, well, do you think losing Pederson is going to put us right side up?”
“Look,” Evan said, “we could use Tucker’s help out at our place, right, Lissa? He could lay the floor in your art studio, for one thing.”
“That would be great,” Lissa said. “I’m dying to have a real place where I can paint again.”
Evan found Tucker’s gaze. “We can’t pay you much.”
“I don’t want any pay. I’ll just be glad for a job, the chance to show everyone I mean what I say.”
“It’s a deal, then,” Evan said. “You want to start tomorrow?”
“Is eight o’clock too early?” Tucker said, sounding as eager as a child.
Evan laughed, and Lissa said it was fine. She said, “The floor tile for the studio is at the office,” and a discussion ensued among the three of them about the logistics of transporting it to the house.
Emily looked at Roy when he shifted his fork from one side of his plate to the other, the noise drawing her attention. She knew what he was thinking, that this was another of Tucker’s empty promises. He would say people don’t change, that they were incapable of it. She didn’t know how much he based his opinion on his own experience, the ongoing war he waged with his own demons. She didn’t hold his gaze when their eyes met. She couldn’t. She was too afraid of what she might reveal. Why hadn’t she told him immediately when Tucker was arrested last fall? A confession now would sound so much worse. She stood up, and began stacking plates, pausing when Evan mentioned the lake house.
“I think I know how we can engineer the deck off the master bedroom to extend over the water the way you want it to,” he told Roy. “If you’ve got a set of plans here, I can show you.”
Emily exchanged a wondering glance with Lissa, who shrugged.
Catching them at it, Evan grinned. “Roy did say he wanted to be able to fish from bed.”
“Please tell me that’s a joke,” Emily said, feeling a warm surge of delight mixed with relief. Suppose Evan could convince Roy to take up his project again? Suppose Tucker did even half of what he promised? Suppose he was right and the police were finished with him? Suppose her worry over what Roy might or might not know about Joe Merchant was needless? Then life might be as it had once been. She wondered if she was asking for too much.
Tucker said the house plans were upstairs, that he’d get them.
Lissa stored the leftover cake.
Emily carried the dishes to the sink. “I don’t have a clue how Evan can fix the problem with the deck, but I’ll be beyond ecstatic if he can get your dad back to work on that house.”
“Me, too. Evan’s as worried as we are about him. He thinks Daddy’s in a lot more pain than he’s letting on.”
“He is, but we both know how he feels about seeing a doctor. He won’t even let Dr. White look at him.”
“If only Tucker would get his act together, that would help.”
“Maybe he will this time. I’ve never heard him sound quite so—” Emily paused, hunting for the right word.
“Committed? Contrite?” Lissa supplied two. She dampened a dishcloth and wiped the countertop. “He has to grow up sometime.”
Emily opened the dishwasher. “He said he has receipts, proving he was in Austin over the weekend when Jessica was murdered. Did he give them to the police, do you know?”
“They’re in his glove box. He has to get his car back first.”
“That should take care of it, right?”
“Maybe, but you know, if it doesn’t, if the police insist on pursuing him, we’ll have to get a lawyer.”
Emily wouldn’t say it aloud; she didn’t want Lissa to worry, but she wondered where the money to pay a lawyer would come from. She wondered why the police focus on Tucker continued. It was as if they wanted him to be guilty. A year ago, when the police fixated on him, the media raised the outrageous possibility that whoever killed Miranda had likely killed the other two victims who’d been found at the same location in previous years.
More than one reporter speculated that the I-45 serial killer had moved his base of operations from the Galveston area north, seventy or so miles, to the piney woods. They associated the location with Tucker’s home—her home—by describing it as “near where Tucker Lebay, a person of interest in the murder of Miranda Quick, lives.”
It horrified Emily, the very idea that her son’s name was forever linked in some people’s minds to such brutal crimes. And it was complete insanity, anyway. The math didn’t work. Tucker wasn’t old enough to have committed the first two murders. He wasn’t capable of such violence in any case. These crimes were the work of a monster, one who was still out there, still on the loose, which could only mean more women would disappear, more bodies would be found. And more families, good families, like the Quicks, would suffer heartbreak and loss, while the police wasted time hounding Tucker, while they drove him even further back into the black cave of his unhappiness and frustration.
Lissa came to stand beside her.
“I wish Tucker could be more like Evan.” Emily was sorry even as she said it. Even as she felt Lissa’s arm slip around her waist, the surge of her love was tainted with regret. She shouldn’t compare them, these three who would always be children to her.
She had mothered Evan, too, the same as Lissa and Tucker, ever since Roy gave Evan a job when he was barely seventeen, nothing more than a scrawny boy. As a nine-year-old, Tucker almost instantly idolized Evan. But even Lissa, at thirteen, was drawn to him, although she had pretended the opposite. Still, the seed of their attraction for each other had been visible from the beginning. Tucker’s admiration was less self-conscious. So often when he needed someone strong, when he needed a sure and steady guide, Evan was there.
He possessed every admirable trait a parent could want in a son, despite his own complicated upbringing, which involved a father who’d walked out and a mother who was indifferent. Emily would never understand it. Evan’s parents were so careless with him, and yet, he never caused them, or anyone, one moment’s worth of worry or doubt.
“Some people seem to lead a charmed life, while others struggle,” she said now, and there was a bite in her voice that was unintentional, and she rued it.
Lissa moved away. “Evan hasn’t led a charmed life, and neither have I. Tucker has the same opportunity as anyone to make better choices. Not even Daddy can stop him.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know, Momma. It’s okay.”
Emily glanced sidelong at her daughter. “I know you’ve pretty much decided not to have children, but if you were to change your mind and become a mother, you’d understand. There’s just this drive to protect, especially when your child is—” Emily shrugged. She didn’t want to say impulsive or high strung, or oversensitive or—she didn’t know. Just hardwired, differently, in some nameless, unfathomable way.
* * *
Lissa and Evan had left, and Roy had gone upstairs to bed, when Tucker found Emily, as she had hoped he would, outside on the porch, tucked into a corner of the swing.
He sat down beside her. “What are you doing out here? It’s cold.”
“I think that woman is calling your dad,” Emily said without preamble.
“What woman?” Tucker asked, as if he didn’t know.
“The one who had you arrested for stalking her last fall,” Emily answered shortly. “Revel Wiley.”
“What makes you think—?”
“I’ve been getting calls on my cell phone from her number, and I’ve ignored them. Now, in the past few days, the same number has started coming up on the landline caller ID. When I answer, she hangs up. But if your dad answers, he talks away. He’s acted odd when I ask about it. I’m
afraid it’s her, that she’s stirring up trouble again.” Emily couldn’t keep the edge from her voice. “Every time I think how you involved me in that mess, Tucker, I’m angry all over again. I wish you hadn’t put me in the middle of it.”
“I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t know who else to call.”
“I posted your bail. I paid Revel a thousand dollars to drop the stalking charge altogether because you said that would end it. I should have known better.”
“I’ll talk to her.”
“No! For heaven’s sake, Tucker, if you can only do one thing for me, please, please promise me you’ll stay away from those women, the clubs, that life.”
He scrubbed his hands down his thighs, shifted his feet, jarring the swing.
Emily’s initial jolt of exasperation was softened by her regret for his inadequacies and his struggles, his aura of unhappiness. It was the constant war of her own emotions that weighed on her, that rendered her nearly useless when it came to making a stand. At one moment she would feel she didn’t love Tucker enough, or in the right way, and then at another, she would feel as if she loved him and catered to him too much. She slid her palm over the back of his hand. “You know I want to believe what you said earlier, that you want to change, to take responsibility, but for that to work out, you’re going to have to stay away from Miranda’s friends—”
“Revel misunderstood me, Mom. I only wanted to help her get out of the business and out of the rat hole she was living in.”
“Yes, but she and the rest of those girls aren’t your responsibility. You can scarcely take care of yourself.”
Even in the half-light, Emily could see his shoulders sag. She saw his defeat and his aggravation written into the line of his jaw, the crease of his brow. He hitched forward, setting his elbows on his knees. “I’ll be up a shit creek with Pop if he finds out.”
Emily was worried, too, for the possible consequences, which was why she’d talked to Joe and solicited his help. She felt as though the slightest pressure could send Roy reeling off an edge. A breeze kicked a hash of dried leaves mixed with road grit along the curb, making a ruckus, and she looked in that direction. “He’s done so well for so long,” she said.
Safe Keeping Page 6
