“She did a great job. Momma and I totally bought into the whole routine.”
“They did tell you it was staged, because they weren’t sure if you were involved somehow, maybe protecting Tucker.”
“Yes, but when I heard that, I thought it must be a joke.”
“Family takes care of family, right?”
Until they don’t, Lissa thought. Hadn’t her own brother betrayed her?
When she didn’t say anything, Sonny changed direction again, this time asking Lissa if she knew that Revel aka Devon was at the party in Galveston the night Tucker was seen with Jessica.
Lissa said she hadn’t heard that. She walked back into the kitchen. What they did know, they’d learned from Mickey. It turned out the police had been building their case against Tucker, bit by circumstantial bit, until the D.A. felt confident they had enough evidence for a conviction. The warrant for Tucker’s arrest had been issued after the club owner in Austin, where Tucker said he hung out, denied seeing him. The owner, who knew Tucker well, said he hadn’t seen him in months. There were the cell phone records, too, that while they showed usage during the weekend Jessica was murdered, all of it had taken place in the vicinity of Houston, Galveston and Hardys Walk, not Austin. And there were the receipts. It turned out they didn’t exist, that Tucker had lied when he said he had them, when he said he’d turned them over. “No one’s told us much about any of the investigation that led to Tucker’s arrest,” Lissa said.
“Well, it was really an accident that Devon was involved at all,” Sonny said. “She was working another case, similar to the Todd Hite sting. You remember?”
“The whole money laundering, prostitution, drug thing, you mean?”
“Yeah, but when Tucker showed up at that party, she knew who he was, that he was a person of interest in Miranda’s murder, so she kept an eye on him. She was there when Tucker and Jessica got into it, and Jessica dropped his cell phone in the toilet.”
“In the— Are you kidding? That’s how it got wet?”
“Yeah. I guess she was pissed. Anyway, Devon recovered it. She fished it out.” Sonny waited, but Lissa had no idea what to say. Nothing about the police end of this was relatable; it wasn’t her family he was talking about. It couldn’t be.
“Maybe this is too hard—”
“No,” Lissa said. “I want to hear it.”
“After the blowout, Jessica left. Tucker followed her, and Devon followed him. She just had this gut feeling, you know? She lost them in traffic, though, once they got into Houston.”
“You mean she could have stopped him?”
“Yeah, maybe.” Sonny paused. “But they would have gotten him eventually for the other.”
“Miranda.”
“Yeah.”
Neither of them said that if Tucker had been stopped, Jessica would still be alive.
“Before I let you go,” Sonny said, “I do have one more piece of news.”
“Oh?”
“According to Devon, our mutual friend could be feeling the legal heat himself pretty soon, although if you were to repeat that, I’d call you a liar.”
“Are you talking about Darren Coe?”
“Who?”
“Okay,” she said. “I get it. I won’t be sorry if he’s in trouble, though,” she added.
“Keep your eye on the news,” Sonny said.
“I will,” Lissa answered, and she thanked him; she appreciated that he’d taken the trouble to call.
“No problem,” he said. “You let me know if I can do anything.”
After they hung up, she thought how people changed, how much Sonny had. More than she would have thought was possible.
The following week, after the coroner released her dad’s body, Lissa, her mom and Evan held a graveside service for him. Anna helped them plan it, and somehow, the media didn’t get wind of it. But in the initial days following the tragedy, they were kept under scrutiny, the objects of curiosity and derision. Even when the woman who was reported missing the day of Tucker’s arrest was found alive at a boyfriend’s house, there were people who didn’t believe it, who were convinced Tucker had kidnapped and killed her, too. The amount of misinformation that was passed around was maddening, intolerable after all they’d been through. The business suffered. Home construction at Pecan Grove was at a standstill. They had nothing new coming in. Under the circumstances, there was no question of Lissa’s mother going anywhere but home with Lissa and Evan.
Lissa shadowed her. She could almost not bear to have her mom out of her sight. Some nights, she left Evan, sleeping, and went to lie down beside her mother, and they held each other. They talked about what her dad had done, stepping into the path of a bullet that was meant for Tucker.
“Was it suicide?” Lissa asked once.
“I don’t know,” her mother said. “Possibly. He felt so horrible for how he terrified Tucker when he was small, you know? He suffered for it every day. In so many ways, he could never get past it. But he suffered with so much. Tucker caught the brunt of his misery, I think.”
“Dad put too much pressure on him. First he pushed him to play baseball, then he pushed him into working construction—”
“He gave his life to save Tucker’s,” her mother said softly.
“Oh, Momma, I know.”
They lay still for several moments. The window was open slightly to the night breeze, and Lissa watched the curtain rise, billowing, and fall, like breath. A lone cricket tweedled a few notes that then died. She remembered the night Tucker showed her his folder filled with clippings about the murders that had taken place along the southern stretch of I-45. She remembered his admiration of John Douglas, the FBI profiler. She had thought nothing of Tucker’s interest then, but now, in hindsight, it seemed chilling. Had it been or did it only seem that way now in light of all that had happened? Lissa thought she would probably never know.
“We should have talked more,” her mother said.
“As a family, you mean?”
“Yes, but at the very least, I could have talked to Tucker myself about your dad’s issues. It just seemed best not dwell on them. I mean in the way it’s best not to pick at a wound once it starts to heal. I have so many regrets, though, I wonder if I’ll ever come to the end of them.”
Lissa could name her mother’s regrets; the list was similar to her own. They wished they had not judged Miranda so harshly. They wished they had rid the house of every gun. They wished Daddy was alive, and Tucker was right in his mind.
They were cleaning up the kitchen one day after breakfast when Lissa asked her mother what she would have done if the police hadn’t arrested Tucker. “Would you have turned him in?”
Her mom picked up a towel to dry her hands. She took so long to answer that Lissa thought she wouldn’t, but then she said, “It’s horrible, but I’m relieved I was spared that. It’s going to be hard enough to know daily that he will grow old in that place, caged and locked down like an animal—” Her voice broke; she drew in a breath. “I can barely stand the thought of it.”
Lissa turned from her mother to stare out the kitchen window. She wondered, too, how they would stand it, but a few minutes later when she asked, her mother said all they could do was to live it.
“One day at a time. It’s what your dad would want and Tucker, too, if he could say. They would want us to try and be happy.”
A pause fell, and when Lissa felt her mother’s hand on her back, she somehow intuited what was on her mother’s mind, and she stiffened.
“The timing is terrible,” her mother said by way of prefacing her concern, “but there is one thing you’re going to have to do, and fairly quickly now, and that’s to decide about the baby. Either way, I’m here for you, and either way, you’ll need medical attention.”
Lissa covered her eyes wi
th her fingertips and started to cry; she couldn’t help it. She felt her mother’s arms come around her and turned into her embrace. “I’m so scared, Momma. What if the thing that made Tucker do this is genetic? What if it’s in me, and I pass it to the baby?”
“Oh, honey, a child is more than its genetics.” Her mother rubbed circles on Lissa’s back. “You and Evan are loving people. You love each other. You will love your child. That’s what’s important.”
You and Daddy loved Tucker, but it wasn’t enough. The thought flared in Lissa’s brain, but it would be cruel to say it, to add more to the burden of guilt and grief her mother was already carrying.
Evan hadn’t mentioned the pregnancy. Lissa had the sense that he was giving her time, and she was grateful to him for it, but she knew her mother was right, that there was little time left.
In the end, it was only a handful of days later when the decision became clear to her. She would never really know why or how. It was a rainy afternoon, and she was sitting on a stool at her art table that Evan had carried down to her studio for her earlier, idly doodling in her sketchbook, thinking of another long-ago rainy day when she and Tucker had lain flat on their bellies on the front porch, coloring. The air had been damp then, too. It had smelled of crayons and moss and of something more astringent. Maybe the huge chaste berry tree planted near one corner of the porch had been in bloom. And there they were, the two of them, in her mind’s eye, so joyfully content, so involved. So happily absorbed.
She looked up when Evan tapped on her door and came inside to tell her that lunch was ready, and he must have seen something in her eyes, because he came and knelt beside her. She cupped his face in her hands, a fresh image crystallizing in her mind of the two of them bent over the side of a crib, watching their baby sleep. In her imagination, Lissa reached out her hand, stroked the sweet softness of one round, flushed cheek, and her heart was pierced by such yearning, she almost cried out.
She held Evan’s gaze. “I want our baby,” she said softly, “more than anything.”
His eyes widened. “Really?”
“I’m still scared.”
He stood up, pulling her into his arms. “I’ve got you, babe,” he whispered against her hair. “I’m not going anywhere.”
* * *
In the end they decided to relocate to Denver, where Evan’s younger brother, Connor, was opening his own residential construction company and was thrilled to learn that Evan and Lissa would join him. Lissa hated to leave the house they’d built, but as Evan pointed out, they could build another. They needed a third bedroom, anyway, with the baby on the way. She thought how much she would miss her studio with the lovely north light, and the gazebo, where she’d last sat, reminiscing with Tucker. But she knew moving was for the best. Even if people in town had been kind, and very few were, they needed a fresh start for themselves and for the new life Lissa carried. She couldn’t bear the thought that anyone, remembering Tucker, would watch for signs of something horrible and twisted in her baby. She prayed she wouldn’t do it. She held fast to the belief that with enough love, if such tendencies were present, they would be transformed. From the research she did, it seemed even science agreed it was possible that such things could be overcome.
Her mother turned down Lissa and Evan’s offer to join them in Denver, instead taking Anna up on her invitation to camp out there for a time. She wanted to see to it that the lake house was finished and to oversee the sale of the house in Hardys Walk. Thankfully Joe Merchant had found someone to clean up the carnage so that, although the memory lingered, there wasn’t a physical trace of it left. But there was still the ordeal of sorting out what do with all the furniture and the rest of what the old house contained, four generations of belongings. Lissa took a few of the furnishings with her, and she brought more back to Denver after every visit home. She came as often as she could until the doctor banned her from travel the week before Thanksgiving. The baby was due the week of Christmas.
The last time she walked through the house in Hardys Walk, the house her great-great-grandfather had built, was in October. By then most everything had been packed and sold, moved or stored. It was a warm day, and leaving her mother and Anna in the kitchen, Lissa walked outside, into the backyard. She sat in the old swing, idly shifting it with the toe of a shoe that was nearly blocked from her view by the huge mound of her belly. She thought of her dad and wondered what he would make of her now. Tucker would tease her; the Tucker she knew would laugh that goofy laugh. She could almost hear it, and the rush of warmth she felt, something akin to affection, surprised her. But Tucker’s laugh was the best thing about him; it must have been a gift from the clear, healthy part of his brain. She missed his laugh; she missed him and her dad.
Blinking, she looked up through the branches of the old elm at the sky that was clear of every blemish, an immaculate sheet of cerulean blue, and she wondered if she could hold on to the gift of Tucker’s laughter, and if she could, would it soften her anger? Would it allow her to remember only the love?
* * *
It was the day after New Year’s, and Emily was alone in the old house, a final walk through before she handed the keys over, at the closing tomorrow, to its new owners, a retired architect and his wife who were relocating from Chicago.
She rested her hand on the carved newel post and found herself looking to the grandfather clock on the landing. But, of course, it was gone. Sold like many of the other antiques her family collected through the years. Climbing the stairs to the second floor, she felt both lighter and heavier. She had taken a few of the other furnishings to the lake house, where she was living for now.
She liked the solitude there, and the quiet was balm to her soul. She knew most everyone, including Lissa, thought it was a bad idea, but it was the only way she would survive, by retreating into a corner, where she could nurse her wounds away from prying eyes. She was in touch with Anna and Joe, and that much company was enough for now.
Reaching the upstairs hallway, she stopped. The light was uncertain, the silence deep. Fragments of memories loomed from the shadows. She imagined she could hear their voices, those of her children and Roy, her mother and father. She went to the doorway of the bedroom she had shared with Roy, empty now of everything but the dust moats that sifted through the air.
Was it suicide?
When Lissa had asked her, Emily hadn’t been sure, but standing here now, she thought, No. When Roy stepped into the bullet’s path, it had been an act of reconciliation, of atonement. She hoped he had found peace. She hoped that her son would, as well, but she thought the possibility for that might lie beyond this world.
Turning from the doorway, she thought she would gather her courage and peek into each of the other rooms and then go. Walk out the front door and lock it for the last time, walk away and not look back. But it was proving to be harder than she expected, and she was near tears when her cell phone rang. She checked the caller ID. Evan! Her tears vanished; her heart soared. “Tell me you’re finally a daddy,” she said by way of answering.
“I am,” he answered. “Lissa is fine, wonderful, beautiful.” He said this in a rush of elation and joy.
“Boy or girl?”
“A girl,” Evan said. “The tiniest, most perfect little daughter in all the world. Next to Lissa, that is,” he added.
And Emily laughed. “Tell my darling daughter I’m on my way,” she said.
* * * * *
Acknowledgments
The evolutions of a story can be many and varied, and it was certainly the case with this one, but they were not as numerous as the people I have to thank for getting it to this magical place—between the covers of a real, live book!
Thank you more than I can say to my steadfast critique partners, TJ Bennett, Wanda Dionne, Joni Rodgers and Colleen Thompson, who listened to draft after draft of many pages of manuscript. Tha
nk you also to early readers, Jo and Susan, and to David and Christie, two of the best plot sounding boards in the world. Thanks also to John, Michael and Heather, for their continuing faith in me. All of you share in the celebration and always know even when I don’t that there’s a way, and I’m so grateful for that.
Of course, none of this would be happening at all without my brilliant agent, Barbara Poelle. There is no better sounding board or plot strategist in the world. Never mind her patience, her faith, her kind heart and her unflagging encouragement, not to mention the funny stuff, the sparkles of laughter. I may never get over the stroke of good fortune that joined us as partners.
It is with the same immense gratitude that I mention my lovely editor at MIRA, Erika Imranyi. It’s really difficult to describe the exact nature of what she does with my words—some sort of alchemy happens. She’s so generous and giving of her time and patience, and then there’s the care she gives to every detail—it’s exacting, but there is always room left for the story to grow, to evolve in the right perfect way. Having her faith and support and her expert guidance is another stroke of good fortune and I’m so thankful for it.
Thank you, too, to MIRA editors Lenore Waldrip and Michelle Meade, and a huge shout-out to the entire MIRA marketing and PR teams, especially Lisa Wray and Michelle Renaud, who have educated me in all things PR, patiently answering my endless questions.
And, once again, I could never say thank-you enough to readers everywhere. Without you my dream of living the writing life would have never left the ground! Love and joy to all of you!
Safe Keeping
Barbara Taylor Sissel
SAFE KEEPING
BARBARA TAYLOR SISSEL
Reader’s Guide
Questions for Discussion
Emily regrets that she didn’t put a stop to Tucker’s relationship with Miranda when it began in high school. How would you handle it if your son or daughter became romantically involved with someone you believed to be a bad influence?
Safe Keeping Page 26
