“Good morning,” she said, feigning a neutrality she didn’t feel.
“I hope you aren’t cooking any of that for me,” he said. “I’ve got to get going.”
“You have to eat, Evan. Please?” She didn’t care about neutrality now, but she did refrain from saying her effort was for Tucker, that she thought it would help him, help to reassure him, if they could sit down together.
She was grateful when Evan acquiesced, and even set the table, taking three plates from the cabinet. He gathered napkins and silverware. She wanted so desperately to go to him, to put her arms around him and pour out her feelings that were jammed in her throat. She wanted to say she was sorry, so sorry.
She wanted to tell him she loved him.
She checked the biscuits and broke the eggs into a bowl.
Tucker came and pitched in, pouring the orange juice. He turned the golden-topped biscuits into a napkin-lined basket, brought the platter of scrambled eggs to the table. He asked if they could say grace, and they did. Lissa fought the lump in her throat. None of them ate much. She would throw most of it into the woods later for the critters.
Evan left. He didn’t kiss her goodbye.
“Evan’s pissed,” Tucker said, passing a Coke can between his hands while they sat at the table.
“He’s just worn out, is all,” Lissa said. She’d poured herself a second cup of coffee that she didn’t want. “I need to go to the grocery store,” she said. “Want to come?”
“He slept in his study last night.” Tucker looked at her. “What’s that about? It’s because of me, isn’t it?”
“No. Don’t worry about it. I’ve been restless at night, because of the headaches and stuff.” She kept his gaze, willing him to drop it.
He took a swallow of the soda. “I wish you guys didn’t have to be messed up in this.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it isn’t.”
She started to interrupt again, to protest. She wanted to question him about Revel, the cell phone, the charge of assault Miranda had leveled against Darren, Miranda’s work with the police. She wanted to talk about what was happening to him, to them, but as if he sensed what was in her mind, her fear for him, her anxiety, he held up his hand.
“You aren’t responsible for me, Liss, for anything that’s happened to me, ever. I mean, I love you for how you’ve always had my back. It means a lot. A lot,” he repeated. “You know that, right?”
“Yes, but you’ve done it for me, too, Tuck. We’ve helped each other.”
He put up his hand again. There was something working on his face, a complication of emotions, regret, she thought, anguish even, and something sharper. Was it anger? She started to ask, but he interrupted her.
“You ever think about that day when Dad lost it, when he checked into rehab—what was going on in his head, how fucked up it was?”
A taut silence fell between them, a thin-shelled egg on the lip of an abyss. Lissa knew the direction Tucker was going in, and as much as she wanted to know what had happened on that day, as much as she swore she wanted to hear the truth, now that it was coming, she wondered if she wouldn’t really prefer to keep her illusion.
“I didn’t even understand it was post-traumatic stress until I was in high school,” she said. “I think there’s a certain amount of that he’s never gotten over.”
“You remember his service revolver?”
“The Colt?”
“Yeah.” Tucker sucked in a breath.
Lissa touched his arm. “What is it?”
“I don’t know. Can’t shake that old shit in my head. I keep seeing him, that gun—”
“What do you mean?”
He locked her eyes with his. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to have your old man put a gun to your head?”
“What are you saying? He didn’t—”
“It was the glass, when I dropped the glass in the bathroom that day, he came off the bed like he’d been shot. He thought he was back in the war, in ’Nam, fighting. He was yelling like a wild man. I tried to run, but he grabbed me and jerked me down on my knees. I had my hands like this.” Tucker laced his fingers behind his head. “I thought he was pissed because of the glass. I cut my foot and blood was everywhere. I said I was sorry, that I would clean it up, but he kept yelling, ‘Stay where you are,’ and ‘Don’t move or I’ll shoot.’ Stuff like that.”
“Oh, my God, Tucker...”
“It was my dad, you know, but not my dad. When he got his old service revolver and put it to my head, I figured that was it. I was going to die. I asked him for Itsy. Down came the rain, right?”
Lissa had a sudden memory of her dad pulling Tucker and Itsy onto his lap, tickling Tucker with Itsy’s long spider legs, making him laugh. She could see the love in her dad’s eyes. She could feel it in her bones, all that love. It had made her feel safe.
But this other thing? Her dad holding a gun on Tucker? She couldn’t see it, couldn’t get her mind around it.
“I didn’t know,” she said, and the words came hard.
Tucker said he was sorry. He never meant to tell, to wreck her day. He’d wrecked everything in her life enough already.
“Whatever happened to Itsy?” she asked.
“Pop destroyed him. Swore there was contraband or some shit inside it. He ripped it to shreds.”
“What happened, Tucker? What stopped him?”
“Mom. She came home. By then Pop had locked me in the front hall closet. I heard her voice—” He stopped and something like shame darkened his eyes for a moment. “I hate to admit it, but I wet my pants.”
“Oh, Tucker, oh, God, I’m so sorry.” She seemed incapable of coming up with anything else to say.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, and she knew he was close to crying.
She thought of the day shortly after that, when their dad had already gone away to the VA hospital, when she’d walked out on the porch to find her little brother missing. She wanted to tell Tucker about that and about how terrified she’d been. In her mind, she saw it again, the wrought-iron gate yawning open on its hinges; she felt the hollow sensation of disbelief that he was gone and the hotter bite of panic that had come later. But instead, she rubbed his arm, and said nothing.
The silence lengthened; she thought the day might pass and night fall before either one found the ability to speak again.
Then Tucker looked at her and said, “Stuff is happening in my head, Liss. I don’t know—I can’t—can’t hold on to this by myself anymore,” and his eyes were so bleak Lissa’s heart faltered.
She took her hand away.
“There’s this way Dad looks at me, even now, where I wonder if it’s me he’s seeing or am I still his enemy. It’s like I remind him of—I don’t know—the fucking war or something.” Tucker doodled circles on the table.
Lissa watched his finger going around and around. She could feel his fear, the child’s fear, and she wanted to comfort him; she wanted to run so she wouldn’t have to hear whatever came next. She wanted to put her hand over his mouth and stop him from speaking, but it wasn’t about her. It was about his pain, and inside, a hope grew that if she could listen, then maybe that would make it possible for him to let go of the darkest edge of the nightmare. Maybe some part of this terrible wound, the wound she had sensed existed at the heart of her family nearly her entire life, could be healed, even for her father.
“I was the most scared when I was in the closet,” Tucker said. “I could hear him, you know, like crashing around the house. He was yelling orders, ‘Get down! Get down!’—stuff like that. But then, sometimes he just...howled. Now I know he was crying.” Tucker clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Man, that kind of pain—shit, I don’t know. What do you do with that?”
Lissa didn’t answer; she could
n’t.
“He still pisses me off.” Tucker’s smile was unbearable.
“I wish we could talk about this.”
“We are talking about it.”
“No, I mean as a family. If Dad understood how you felt, if we could all talk about what happened—”
Tucker hooted as if she was crazy. “Lissa, come on. You’re living in a dreamworld if you think the old man would ever listen to anything I had to say. You, maybe, but me? Never. As far as he’s concerned, I’m the biggest screwup to walk the earth. He’d rather Coe was his son than me, and that’s even if the bastard is a killer.”
“No, Tucker—”
“It’s true.” He was having none of Lissa’s protest. “I was never the son he wanted. He gave up on me the day he figured out I wasn’t going to be the man he was.”
“You’re projecting what you think onto Dad, Tucker, not what’s real. It’s everything horrible that you think about yourself that’s in your head, not his.”
“Do you have any idea what my life has been like? It’s one shitty thing after another, you know? Then boom—” Tucker struck the side of his head “—the only real, goddamned woman I ever loved gets murdered, because I wasn’t man enough to get her the hell out of that shitty world she was living in and keep her safe. But how could you know how bad it sucked? You never asked. All you and Mom and Pop ever did was tell me how wrong I was to care about her.”
“You’re right,” Lissa answered, even though she wasn’t sure of what she was affirming, or her feelings about it. He was referencing more than the day of their dad’s breakdown now, widening the scope to include Miranda’s death and every other bad thing that had happened to him in his life. She felt the prickling heat of aggravation that he was so willing to make her and their parents into ogres and cast himself as their victim. Still, it seemed better to go along, and it was easy when she kept her focus on the little boy he’d been and the little boy’s terror that lingered, which colored everything he was.
“I’m sorry if it came across that way, Tucker, but sometimes, I’ve been so scared for you, especially when you disappear. I’ll never forget the first time, how relieved I was when they found you.”
“I wish I had the guts to keep going. I wish I could make myself over, be somebody else.”
“I wish I’d been home with Dad that day, and not you. I was older. I could have handled it better.”
“No, Liss.” Tucker was adamant. “I’m glad it wasn’t you.”
She went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “I knew you were hurt then. I could see that, but I really didn’t understand about the damage, not until I was older.” Lissa stopped, while the memories swarmed and stung like a handful of sand flung in her face. “I remember being really scared, too. You and Momma were so quiet after Dad went away, and then you disappeared, and I thought I would die, I was so afraid. I think it’s why it’s so awful now every time you go. I wish you wouldn’t. Mom has such a hard time with it. It nearly kills her.”
Tucker didn’t say anything.
“She can’t keep getting you out of trouble, either, you know? I hate to pile all this on you, but I think she and Dad are at the end of their rope. They can’t take any more.”
Tucker said he knew it; his eyes teared, and he wiped roughly at them.
Lissa’s annoyance softened. “I know it isn’t easy, Tuck, but I also know we can work it out, if we work together, as a family.”
He flicked his glance at her, and there was something agitated in his eyes, some raw edge of accusation, or pain, or loss—Lissa didn’t know. It was as if he was looking at a place she couldn’t see.
He said, “She left me with him, Liss. Mom knew how bad off he was. I heard her telling the doctor afterward that she knew Pop was close to the edge, but she left me there with him, alone—” Tucker’s voice cracked. He coughed. “I was fucking four years old.”
Lissa got up and went to him, wrapping him in her arms as best she could, staggering when he drove his head into her shoulder as if he might bury himself there. The sounds that broke from his chest were ragged and dry. She held on to him, rocking a little, humming nonsense, and when it fell into the opening notes from the “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” the child’s song, the child’s game, that he’d loved when he was small, she was scarcely aware when she picked up the words, “...crawled up the waterspout. Down came the rain and washed the spider out...” She wasn’t holding the man, singing in her teetery voice to the man, but to the little boy, and she was relieved when she felt his tension ease.
When he pulled free, he was sniffing and red-faced. Lissa got him a tissue.
“Pop would have a field day,” he said after he mopped himself up.
“There’s nothing wrong with a man’s tears, Tucker.” Lissa blew her own nose.
He didn’t answer.
“You aren’t any different than Dad, you know.”
He looked at her bemused.
“You have symptoms of post-traumatic stress, too, because of what happened. I know you and Mom and Dad got help before, but maybe you need to talk to someone again. Maybe we all do.”
“No, it’s too late.”
“It’s not,” Lissa insisted.
“I know you mean well, Liss, but really, it doesn’t matter anymore.” He stood up. “I’m not going to beat this murder rap.”
“You will! Of course you will.”
“Even if I did, somebody’s going to get me one way or another. The cops’ll lock me up, and there’s no way I can take that again. No fucking way. I’ll slit my own throat first.”
“I won’t let it—”
“Come on, Liss. My own goddamn father thinks I’m guilty.”
“He doesn’t,” she said. “None of us think that. We have to trust Mickey, trust the system.” Lissa was offering a plea for faith, the one her mother had offered, and it sounded as foolish and inadequate now as it had then. But what else was there?
Tucker reached for her braid and pulled it forward over her shoulder; he touched her cheek. “Out of everybody, I could always count on you, no bullshit, Liss. I wish I was good enough with words to tell you what it’s meant to me. I wish I’d ever been good enough to be your brother.”
“Oh, Tucker...”
He pushed his chair under the table, heading for the door.
Lissa stood up, too. “Where are you going?”
He looked back at her. “I meant to tell you—I gave those receipts to the cops.”
“Really? When?”
“After we unloaded the tile, I stopped by the police station on my way home.”
“Tucker!” She felt a surge of happiness. “They’ll check them out. You’ll be cleared, right?”
He lifted his cap, brought it down and inspected it. “Maybe,” he said. “But I doubt it’ll be that easy so don’t get your hopes up, okay?”
She went to him and laid her hand on his arm. “Come with me. I have to go to the grocery store.”
“I’ve got an appointment with the Mickster.”
“I’ll take you into town. We can grocery shop after.”
“No,” he said. “Thanks for a great breakfast.”
Something made her go after him, made her ask again. “Tucker, please, come with me. We can go out to lunch, take in a movie, like we used to, my treat.”
He shook his head, and she let him go, thinking there was time, that they would have tomorrow. It would haunt her, later, that she let him go. She would remember they hadn’t even said goodbye. She would wonder if in her lifetime she had ever said to him that she loved him.
24
EMILY WAS WITH Anna in Anna’s driveway when she spied Lissa’s truck turning the corner, and she waved, catching Lissa’s attention. “Is everything okay? Tucker?” Emily asked when Lissa joined them.
“It’s all right, honey,” Emily said. “Anna knows pretty much everything.”
Anna squeezed Emily’s hand, and she gratefully returned the gesture.
“Tucker didn’t have so much as a toothbrush when he came last night,” Lissa said. “I thought maybe you’d help me pack up a few of his things? I don’t want to cut your visit short, though.”
“I was on my way home, anyway,” Emily said. “I don’t want to leave your dad on his own for too long.”
“I’m so sorry this is happening, Lissa,” Anna said.
“Me, too.” She crossed her arms, holding herself, looking worried, too worried, Emily thought.
They said goodbye to Anna and climbed into Lissa’s truck, and they weren’t inches from the curb before Lissa said, “Tucker told me everything that happened the day Dad had his breakdown. It’s so much worse than I thought.” She rounded the corner and pulled in behind Roy’s truck.
Emily sat staring at the disabled-vet license tag. She thought of how Roy nearly gave his life for a child in another country; she thought of the act of courage it had taken for him to do that and to survive. She said, “No one could feel more awful than your dad. It was a horrible thing and my mistake for leaving them alone.”
Something crossed Lissa’s expression that made Emily add, “I know Tucker blames me, but not any more than I blame myself.”
“How could you have known, Momma?” Lissa said, and Emily loved her for it. Lissa went on. “He thinks—he believes, believes to his core, though, that Dad hates him.”
“What your dad hates is that he terrorized his own child.”
“All these years, it’s been eating Daddy alive, hasn’t it?”
Emily made a sound that wasn’t yes or no. So many things had eaten Roy alive, she thought. Maybe some day she should make a list. She wiped her fingertips across her eyebrows.
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