Home Before Dark

by Susan Wiggs

  Armed with a sheaf of signed papers and forms, she marched into the exam room to give Ian the good news. While Dr. Martinez rattled off final instructions, he fitted Lila with a cervical collar, as a precaution. The high neck brace made her look like some sort of angry Egyptian goddess as she sat down, against her will, in the wheelchair for the ride to the parking lot.

  The trouble started when they wheeled Lila out through the waiting room. Parents and relatives milled around, and clearly Lila was the first to leave. Some of the parents regarded her with yearning and veiled resentment. Her departure was a poignant reminder that their own children still remained.

  As they approached the main door, a gray-faced, red-eyed woman approached. “I’m Cheryl Hayes. Heath Walker’s mother.”

  Heath Walker. Lila’s first love. Keeping their hormone-charged passion in check was like stopping the tide. Heartthrob handsome, with his Texas drawl and devastating dark eyes, he had beguiled their daughter away in the night, sought to impress her with his driving, put her at unspeakable risk, nearly caused her to die.

  “Lucinda Benning,” she said through a taut throat. “This is my husband, Ian.”

  The woman didn’t acknowledge the introduction. Instead she focused on Lila, who looked up at her solemnly. “Mrs. Hayes, is Heath all right?”

  “Of course he’s not all right. His injuries are minor, thank God, but he’s out for the football season. He’ll miss homecoming! This is your fault, young lady.” The accusation lashed like a whip. “Heath would never have gone out last night if you hadn’t pressured him—”

  “Just a damn minute,” Luz burst out. From the corner of her eye, she saw Lila flinch, but couldn’t stop herself. “It was your son at the wheel. You’re not blaming this—”

  “Excuse us.” Ian cut her off with a smooth, quiet interjection and put his hand at the small of her back. “We’ve all got to get through this, Mrs. Hayes, but pointing the finger isn’t going to help us or our kids. I wish you the best of luck with your son, ma’am.” That lawyerly magic shut her up for a few moments, long enough for them to make it to the door. He escorted Luz and Lila outside with brisk efficiency, but not before Luz felt her face catch fire with delayed fury. “How dare that woman say those things?”

  “She’s upset,” he explained. “People always try to find someone to blame when unthinkable things happen.”

  “She’s right,” Lila said, losing patience as a hospital orderly flipped the footrests of the wheelchair. She stepped over the metal footrests and got up to walk stiffly toward the parking lot. “I wanted Heath to launch the Jeep. It’s one of my favorite things ever.”

  Luz’s gut turned to stone as she handed Ian her car keys. “You drive.”

  He followed her to the car, holding the back door for Lila. Their daughter slid in, fastened her seat belt before either parent could remind her, wincing with hidden pain. She leaned back and closed her eyes.

  “Heath was in the driver’s seat,” Luz said, sliding into the passenger side. “His conduct was his decision and his responsibility.”

  Lila yawned and sighed. Her lack of reaction to the situation was only a facade; Luz spotted the single tear that slid down her daughter’s cheek and bled into the padded cuff of the cervical collar. She wore her attitude like body armor.

  They drove away from the hospital in a terrible silence. Their daughter had just been involved in a trauma. She had not yet disclosed all that she had seen, heard, felt in those terrible moments. Her statement to the highway patrol consisted largely of I don’t remember and whether or not that was the truth, Luz didn’t know. What she did know was that she mothered by instinct and instinct told her that now, with the sunrise racing over the hills surrounding Edenville, was not the time for hard questions.

  Ian lacked that maternal sensibility. He was a man, a lawyer and someone who was unflinchingly honest. “Things are going to change in a big way from now on,” he said, his shadowed jaw ticking.

  “We’ll talk about it when we get home, okay?” Luz’s hand shook as she pushed her hair back. Then she turned toward the back seat to find Lila with her eyes closed and mouth slack, fast asleep.

  Reaching out, she rested her hand on her daughter’s. The landscape sped by in a smear of asphalt roads and heaved-up sandstone hills, tortilla-yellow grass and blue morning sky. Roadrunners darted in and out of the hawthorn bushes and livestock gathered around salt licks put out by the ranchers. Trucks and bumblebee-colored school buses rumbled past. Cars turned into strip centers with video stores and Laundromats. For folks who hadn’t spent the past night having their lives rearranged, it was just another day in the hill country.

  “Where were you last night?” she asked Ian.

  “We had a late meeting with the appeals team and the unit warden working graveyard shift. We’d ordered pizza and lost track of time. Then I got your message, and had to wake Matlock up to fly me back. The tower was unmanned that time of night so he had to get some sort of clearance. I came as fast as humanly possible, Luz. You know that. But I’ve never been quick enough for you, have I?”

  “What?” She looked at him with a frown. Where had that come from?

  “Never mind. We’re both exhausted. Who’s staying with the boys?” Ian asked, switching gears.

  “Well, who do you think?” Luz figured it should be obvious. “Jessie, of course.”

  “I thought you might have called someone more—someone who knows the boys better.”

  “Jessie’s right there. And she’s their aunt.”

  “I guess.”

  “But you’re not comfortable with her being in charge.”

  He glanced in the rearview mirror. “She’s a flake. She’s always been a flake. I’m not saying she’d harm the boys, but she might get…careless.”

  “Give her a break, Ian. She’s not the same person she was sixteen years ago. None of us are. And in a pinch, Jessie comes through. She always has.”

  “Name one single time she came through for you.”

  “She saved my life. I never told you that, did I?”

  “Jessie?” He lifted one eyebrow. “How much coffee have you had?”

  “It’s true. It was during a winter freeze when we were kids. The stock ponds had frozen over. Folks said it was the first time in fifty years the ice was thick enough to skate on. So of course we had to go check it out. It took a good hour to hike through the woods to Cutter’s pond. We didn’t have proper ice skates, but we managed to slide all day in our Keds. Jessie and I were the last to leave. All the other kids had to be home before dark but…well, you know my mother. She was more likely to tell us to be home by spring.”

  Luz hitched up one leg to sit sideways, so she could watch Lila sleep. Her goal had always been to be the sort of mother Glenny Ryder had never been. Other kids went home to warm houses with lights glowing in the windows and a kettle of soup simmering on the stove. Luz and Jessie went home to mind-numbing hours of bad TV and cold cut sandwiches.

  “It was getting pretty dark,” she continued, “but we wanted one more turn around the pond. Just one. I think it was the first time I ever beat Jessie in a race. But I fell wrong, skidded into a tree. My ankle wouldn’t work, and my elbow bled like a fire hose. There was no way I could walk. The light faded, fast as a falling curtain. She built me a fire. I never knew until that day she could even build a fire, or that she always carried a pack of matches on her. She walked back to town to bring help. I’ll never know how she found her way through the woods. She did the impossible and showed up in Edenville right when folks were turning on the six o’clock news. Everyone thought she was crying wolf, so she climbed into the sheriff’s cruiser, started the engine and the emergency lights. I’ll bet she would have driven straight into the woods if they hadn’t agreed to go along. Jessie’s strong when you test her. It’s just that she’s never been tested, not much, anyway.”

  “Because you’ve always made the tough choices,” Ian muttered.

  Luz’s hackles lift
ed. “What?”

  “You heard me.” He took a deep breath, visibly groping for control. “I’m sorry, honey. But you’ve got to admit, you’ve been more than a sister to Jess.”

  Reaching out with her hand, she brushed a stray lock of hair from her daughter’s brow. What an adventure it was, being Lila’s mother. Sixteen years ago, Luz had made a left turn in the middle of her life, and she was still heading down that unexpected road into uncharted territory.

  Ian drove with negligent precision, his wrist draped over the top of the steering wheel as he negotiated the rippling hills and unexpected curves. He swerved to detour around the carcass of a deer, scattering the crows scavenging a meal.

  “You doing okay, Mrs. B?”

  She nodded, though a wave of exhaustion rolled over her, heavy as cane syrup.

  “So what’re we going to do about our resident juvenile delinquent?” he asked, direct and lawyerly. “I say we ground her for life.”

  Luz nodded. House arrest. Still holding her daughter’s hand, she vowed that everything would change from now on. She swore it. Things were going to be different. They were going to lay down the law.

  From this moment on, nothing would be the same.

  CHAPTER 8

  “You’re like my mom but you’re different,” Scottie declared.

  Jessie’s youngest nephew stood on a kitchen stool, wearing a Don’t Mess With Texas T-shirt and nothing else. After a sleepless night, it had been all Jessie could do to get the other two fed and dressed and up the road to the school bus. Scottie had been parked in front of the TV, his head propped against the ribs of his sleeping dog, for the past forty minutes.

  “I’m like your mom because I’m her sister,” Jessie said, pawing through a plastic mesh basket of clean laundry she had found on top of the clothes dryer. “Aha.” She produced a pair of Spiderman underpants. “I bet these are yours.”

  “Nope. Owen’s.”

  “But you could wear them, for today.”

  “Nope.” He regarded her with a solemnity that aged him beyond his years.

  “What about these?” She plucked out another pair, these bearing a green cartoon character she didn’t recognize.

  “Wyatt’s. Where’s Mom?” The solemnity teetered on the brink of despair. Jessie knew without asking that Scottie had never before awakened to a house with no mother.

  Sucks, doesn’t it, little guy?

  Jessie didn’t know what she would do if he cried. With urgent movements, she sorted through the clean clothes, coming up with a wisp of lace—a thong.

  “I bet this is yours.”

  “No way.” A smile teased one corner of his mouth.

  “No?” Jessie put on a baffled look. “You mean you don’t wear pink lace undies?”

  “Lila’s,” he said.

  Yikes. Wasn’t Lila a bit young for that? “Do you see any of your undies in here?”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  “So you want to run around bare-assed all day?”

  “You said ass.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “We say bottom.”

  “Oh. I’ll try to remember that.” Scanning the cluttered room, she spied a tiny pair of swim trunks hanging from a doorknob. They were surfer shorts decked with navy hibiscus blossoms. “Scottie, I’ve had a brilliant idea.” She pointed out the trunks.

  “My swimsuit!” He scrambled down from the stool, his little butt hanging out as he crossed the room.

  Jessie reached for the shorts. Her hand met empty air.

  God, not now. She reached again, knuckles hitting the door. Concentrate. Focus. Grim with determination, she found her field of vision and reached again, this time seizing the shorts. “Voilà,” she said holding them out.

  “Wah-la,” Scottie echoed, all smiles.

  He was still smiling minutes later, long after Jessie had run out of patience. Her nephew insisted on putting the pants on all by himself, and did not seem to think that making it an all-day operation was much out of line.

  God. Luz had gone through this with four kids. And she was still sane. How could that be? Yet as she watched Scottie inserting one foot, then another, into the leg holes, Jessie was seized by a sudden affection that brought a rush of sweetness through her as though she had gulped a mocha latte. The kid was beyond cute with his tumble of chocolate-colored curls, his little tongue poking out in concentration, his pudgy feet pushing against the fabric. She felt the loss of her years with Lila. Dear Lord, what have I missed?

  “I’m so glad I got to see you, Scottie,” she whispered, more to herself than to him.

  “Huh?”

  She smiled. “It’s just good to see you. I feel like the luckiest auntie in the world.”

  He went back to dressing himself, taking forever to fasten the Velcro closure at the waistband.

  While she was waiting, Jessie had found a bottle of pink nail polish and was doing her toenails, grimly proving to her self that the vision in her right eye still served. Through the diminishing field, her close-range acuity was nearly perfect. She glanced up to see Scottie watching her. Then, without a word, he stuck out his tiny bare foot.

  With an air of somber ritual, Jessie painted his toenails. The look on his face filled her with an absurd gratification. Then his mercurial mood shifted. “Where’s Mom?” he asked, looking worried again.

  “She said we could eat Cheetos for breakfast.”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  “And red Kool-Aid.” Taking his hand, she brought him over to the fridge.

  The guilt that had been gnawing at her since Luz had awakened her dug deep.

  I could have stopped Lila last night. She reeled from the thought, wished she could race away from it, but she couldn’t. She had colluded with Lila, covering up her deception as though it were a schoolyard prank.

  We’re only going for a walk by the lake, I swear, that’s all.

  Why hadn’t she challenged the lie in those wide, green eyes? Jesus, was she blind already? Why hadn’t she heard duplicity in that pleading young voice? She should have, because it had been like looking at a mirror into the past. She used to lie all the time, used to run wild. The only one who had ever seen through Jessie was, of course, Luz. God. She would give up all of her vision right now if she could have that moment back.

  “So where’s the Cheetos, huh?” Scottie asked.

  She touched his silky curls. “I think I saw some in the pantry.”

  He trailed her across the kitchen. She lifted him onto a booster seat at the table, opened a small lunch-sized bag of Cheetos and poured a cup of artificially red Kool-Aid. He dug in, eating fast before she realized her folly and fed him oatmeal instead.

  Her heart pounded with a sick rhythm. Things were happening too fast and she didn’t know how to slow them down. She never had. Neither, it seemed, had her daughter. Now she was feeding this child the most nutritionally bankrupt breakfast on the planet. She was going to burn in hell.

  After opening the windows to let in the morning breeze, she sat next to Scottie. The sunny breakfast nook was smaller than her memory of it, though little had changed. It was the same tiger oak table she remembered, bearing a few more scratches and scars, perhaps. On a knickknack shelf on the wall was a small digital clock that read 2:26 a.m.

  “That clock’s wrong,” she said. As if a four-year-old would care.

  “That’s the Jessie clock.”

  She frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  But as he lifted his shoulders in an elaborate shrug, comprehension dawned. Luz had a clock set to the local time in New Zealand. Ah, Luz, she thought. Jessie used to phone at her own convenience, unwilling to calculate the time in Texas. But it seemed Luz always knew the time where Jessie was.

  Some of their mother’s old golf trophies sat on the shelf by the clock, though they now served as easels and props for framed photos of Luz’s kids. An entire wall had been transformed into a mural.

  “I bet your mama took all those pictures,” she said to Scot
tie.

  “Yup.”

  “I can tell,” she said. “She takes the best pictures in the whole wide world, doesn’t she?”

  “Yup.”

  Jessie was particularly drawn to the shots of Lila. They showed her at various stages, from unsteady toddler into a breathtaking princess in an emerald-green dress with a Texas-sized corsage of mums and streamers, standing beside the outrageously good-looking kid from last night. Keith? No, Heath. The interesting half of Heathcliff. In anyone else’s hands, the picture would have been a snapshot of a good-looking couple in the foyer, but as far as Jessie knew, Luz had never taken just a snapshot. Her work was seriously good. With her uncanny eye and sense of timing, Luz had managed to capture their very essence. Their youth and vulnerability, their beauty, their strength, their fearlessness. She wondered if they’d ever be fearless again, after last night.

  “I remember when your mom got her first serious camera,” she said. “It was Christmas, and she was twelve and I was nine. Our mama—”

  “Your mama?” He looked skeptical.

  “The lady with the tan,” Jessie reminded him, wondering when Scottie had seen her last. “The one who makes you call her Miss Glenny.”

  “Yeah! And Grampa Stu takes me for a ride in his magic chair.”

  Jessie had no idea what he was talking about, so she went on with the story. “Anyway, Miss Glenny got an endorsement deal with Main Street Camera, and they let your mom have a real grown-up camera and all the film she wanted.”

  That year, the press had made much of Glenny Ryder’s daughters, who shared her trademark red hair and lightning bolt smile. Luz and Jessie had followed their mother around like a miniature professional photographer and her assistant. That had been a good year. Jessie remembered an abundant Christmas at Broken Rock, a couple of shiny trophies to add to the collection.

  She had a distinct memory of developing pictures with Luz. They’d turned the smallest guest cabin into a darkroom and they used to spend hours there. Magic happened when they dipped the paper into the developer, and the picture appeared. Photography was a miracle, an act of light and alchemy that fused into a lasting image. The ghostly blood-colored lamp in the watery cubicle painted the sisters’ hands and faces and created a shadowy cocoon, making Jessie and Luz feel like the only people in the world.