Home Before Dark

by Susan Wiggs

  Mom and Aunt Jessie looked at each other. Then Mom walked out of the room, motioning for Jessie to follow. Aunt Jessie looked back over her shoulder at Lila. Her eyes were funny in a way Lila couldn’t explain to herself—seeing and not seeing, looking and not looking. Maybe that funny way she had of looking and seeing had to do with the fact that she was a famous photographer.

  Then she stepped out, leaving the door ajar.

  Lila hugged herself as a sudden chill took hold, even though it was probably seventy-five degrees in the room. She shut her eyes and a picture of Dig appeared, his head thrown back, Adam’s apple bulging from his skinny neck as he hooted with laughter and gave up his seat belt to Kathy. Heath had just handed him a joint; Lila had just loaned him her graphing calculator, and it was still over at his house. Had he finished those algebra problems? Had he petted his dog, made a wish on a star, heard the new Actual Tigers song? She could hardly stand to think of all the things he would miss. He’d never make the varsity football squad, never get up the nerve to ask a girl to prom, never see the autumn leaves reflected in the lake or sit around a bonfire, laughing with his friends.

  A horrible whisper started in a back corner of Lila’s mind. This is your fault, young lady. The whisper grew louder and stronger until it became a shout that filled her head, drowning out everything else. Mrs. Hayes was right. If it hadn’t been for her, Heath never would have gone out last night, and Dig would still be alive, and Sierra would still have her foot.

  “…the main reason I grounded her from the phone.” Her mom’s voice drifted from downstairs.

  “Okay, so I get it now.” Aunt Jessie sounded edgy, confused.

  “I’d appreciate it if you would respect my rules when it comes to Lila.”

  My rules. The way she said it, you’d think they were chiseled into a stone tablet up on a hill somewhere.

  Jessie said something indistinct, but Mom’s reply rang clear: “Don’t you dare leave now, damn it, Jess. I need you.”

  Wow. So Mom nearly ran her off already. This had to be a record. Still, those last three words were something Lila had never heard from her mother before. I need you.

  “…kid who died?” Aunt Jessie was asking.

  “I’ve known his mother forever. She’s not married, lives in a double-wide at Two-Dog Ranch…” Her mom went on like this and then said the inevitable: “I’m going to take a casserole over…”

  Lila pushed the door shut, leaned against it and covered her ears. She didn’t want to hear any of this. The more she heard, the deader Dig got.

  CHAPTER 13

  Jessie had been legally blind in one eye for over a year. She was losing the vision in the other eye, too, but fierce denial and dogged determination had delayed the inevitable. Yet now, even her stubborn will wouldn’t hold back the future. She had to surrender to her condition, which was progressing with increasing velocity. Yet even while making arrangements as coldly and rationally as possible, she felt as though she’d stepped off a cliff. It was a long fall to nowhere.

  She made a phone call to the Beacon for the Blind in Austin where she’d already preregistered from overseas. In a toneless voice, she set an appointment, then took a shower, thinking she would cry herself sick. Instead she could only stand there in shock, the water beating down on her as she struggled with a terrible sense of unreality.

  Perversely her vision had stabilized for now, at least. She’d experienced the same thing in her left eye, nearly a year ago. She’d suffered months of vitreous floaters, mysterious flashes, blurred smears of light like rain on a window. And then one day, the symptoms receded. Inflammation subsided, retinal dysfunction went into remission and she managed to see with remarkable clarity out of part of her eye. This miracle filled her with the cruelty of hope, making it all the more devastating when all vision disappeared only a few days later, never to return.

  Her remaining vision in the right eye was excellent, but now she knew better than to hope. As she stepped from the shower and dried her hair in front of a mirror, she blinked several times, looked from side to side, up and down, checking all the benchmarks the doctors did as they studied her condition.

  As if there was anything they could do that hadn’t already been tried.

  AZOOR stood for acute zonal occult outer retinopathy. But what it meant was the end of her life as she knew it. She lost count of the days and weeks she’d spent in specialty clinics, her head immobilized by a padded vise, her electroretinograms showing nothing but bad news, her hopes grinding down to grim determination and, finally, despair. Like misinserted film lying at the bottom of a camera, her retinas were fast becoming useless.

  At the Dalton Eye Clinic in Christchurch, they’d done all the tests technology and experimentation would allow. But peripapillary scarring had accelerated the foggy gray obscurity in its relentless descent over her vision. The most eminent specialists in the Far East had declared that there was nothing further they could do. The doctors she had seen so far, the specialists and experts, had reluctantly categorized her as one of the unlucky victims of disease. While many recovered their vision within three years, a select few failed to improve. Jessie was in the latter category. It was time, she was told, to face the truth and make plans accordingly. They advised her to enroll at the Beacon for the Blind, an international organization which had a major facility in Austin.

  While the specialists tried to explain this as a phenomenon of nature, chance and science, Jessie had her own theory. This was a force greater than her will, her desire or any doctor’s desperate treatment. Perhaps it was retribution. She used people, turned her back on people, left people. This was the price she would have to pay.

  Now she worried that her curse was infectious; it might taint the very person she’d come halfway around the world to visit.

  She’d wanted to see Lila before she couldn’t see anymore. And then when she showed up, Lila nearly died. Jessie ought to simply disappear. Except for what Luz had said: “Don’t you dare leave now, damn it, Jess. I need you.”

  When Lila had lain sobbing against her chest, Jessie had finally learned what it was like to love a child, to hold her so close their hearts melded, to accept her even when she’d done a terrible thing, even when she smelled of blood and vomit and motor oil.

  Perched at the end of the bed, she touched up her toenails with Capri coral polish. She put on a beige tank dress and then her work vest, a marvel of engineering in khaki canvas, riddled with pockets, grommets, loops, ties and zippered compartments. Very Margaret Bourke-White.

  She wasn’t quite sure how to gear up for a shoot like this. What lenses would she need? Fast film or slow? Print or digital?

  The thing that surprised her was how nervous she was. You would never know her published credits numbered in the thousands, that she’d been short-listed for all the major prizes including a MacGregor from Australia, that her work appeared on billboards and the sides of buses all over the Far East, that she’d had several single-artist shows. Today she simply had to shoot a guy across the lake. Big deal. Yet deep down, she knew something she would never tell a soul—she was ending her career as a photographer. This was the last subject she would ever shoot.

  A few minutes later, dressed, geared up and edgy, she appeared at her sister’s door.

  “Aunt Jessie!” Scottie launched himself at her, clinging to her thigh like a barnacle as she walked inside.

  “Hey, big guy.” She ruffled his curly hair.

  “He’s a gi-irl,” Owen teased. “He’s got pink toenails.”

  “I bet you want pink toenails, too. You and Wyatt both.”

  “Eew!” Her elder two nephews howled over the sound of the too-loud TV set.

  From the kitchen, Luz yelled, “Turn that thing—”

  Wyatt hit the mute button. “—down.”

  “Hi, guys.” Jessie was relieved to find a more normal routine after the weekend. There had been a special sort of pain in the dazed and mournful worship at the Halfway Baptist Church,
everyone walking around shell-shocked and empty, little kids squirming and misbehaving and apprehensive at seeing grown men and women weeping and hugging each other. Jessie had sat far in the back with Lila, squeezing her hand. She could tell the girl wished she had opted out of the service, but Luz wouldn’t hear of it, of course. As quickly as she could, Lila had slipped out and hurried to the car, preferring to stay alone and silent, dealing with unimaginable grief and guilt and God knew what else.

  Things seemed calmer now. In deference to the tragedy, the tiny school district had declared attendance optional. Extra counselors would be on hand at all levels. Luz had apparently decided to keep Owen and Wyatt home. Lila refused categorically to go to school. She claimed they’d mob her, accuse her of being the cause of everything.

  “What are you guys up to today?” she asked her blissfully young, uncomplicated nephews.

  They stood silent and bashful, their attention riveted on her, the uninvited stranger. She wondered if they would always associate her arrival with disaster. “I bet you’re going on a pirate ship,” she suggested. “No? Maybe you’re going to trap an armadillo in the woods.”

  Owen, the middle boy, definitely looked intrigued by that one.

  “Or how about digging a hole through the earth to China?”

  “Yeah!” said Scottie.

  “How about you clean your room,” Luz said from the kitchen. “Inspection’s in fifteen minutes, and we’re leaving to do errands. If your room’s clean, I’ll take you to McDonald’s for breakfast.”

  The boys’ faces blossomed, and they headed for the stairs, nearly tripping over each other in their haste.

  Jessie walked into the kitchen. “Now, where did you learn that trick? Dr. Spock?”

  Luz bent to take a bubbling, cheesy casserole out of the oven. “Hey, that guy could learn a thing or two from me. Bribery is a power tool.”

  Jessie bent over and sniffed, shutting her eyes as she inhaled.

  “King Ranch Chicken,” Luz said. “For Dig’s family. There’s a funeral planned, Nell’s got relatives coming to town and they’re going to have to eat. Anyway, I thought I would drop this off when we’re out today.” She jotted reheating instructions on a Post-it note and stuck it to the lid of the Pyrex dish.

  Jessie had to get used to the idea that Luz had a separate life here, with friends Jessie didn’t know, friends who now knew Luz better than Jessie did. “Are you and Nell Bridger close?”

  “We are. I’ve known her since the kids were little.” She set the casserole in a double paper bag, lines of grief pulling at her eyes and mouth. “Those boys are her whole world. I’ve taken their picture for the Christmas card every year since they were tiny.”

  Dig and Travis. The elder boy’s extensive injuries would keep him in hospital for a long time.

  “I don’t know how she’ll get through this.” Luz sniffled, brushed at her cheek. “And all I can think to do is bring her a casserole.”

  “She’ll want to see you,” Jessie assured her, “casserole or not. Where’s Ian?”

  “He drove to the capital early today.” Luz spoke casually; this was obviously routine. “He took the rental car to Austin to return it, and he’ll get a ride back with an associate who lives in Marble Falls.”

  “And Lila?”

  “I’m letting her sleep in. Then…we’ll see.”

  “She’s got to rejoin the living one of these days.”

  “Not today.” Luz looked at Jessie while untying a wrinkled Kiss The Cook apron. “So you’re off to work.”

  “Yep.”

  “That was quick.”

  “You know Blair. She’s always got something up her sleeve. And I have to make a living.”

  Luz smiled. “What, you’re not doing this to express your artistic soul?”

  “I’m doing this to pay off my Visa bill.” She hesitated. “I’m not so keen on photography these days.”

  “Are you kidding? It’s your life.”

  It was. Jessie forced a smile. “People change careers all the time. I’ve been thinking of trying my hand at writing. Or maybe basket-weaving.”

  Luz laughed, clearly thinking it was a joke. Jessie glanced up at the family photos displayed on a rack over the breakfast nook. “Now that is for the soul,” she said.

  The richness of her sister’s life was apparent everywhere, expressed in little details most people would take for granted: Owen’s I U Mom card, stuck to the fridge with magnets. A cross-stitched potholder with the slogan, Luz’s Kitchen Is Warmed By Love. And, of course, the picture mural of faces bright with laughter or solemn with concentration and oblivious to the camera, action shots, still shots, kids frozen in motion or sound asleep or brandishing an award or sports trophy.

  “Right.” Luz wiped down the butcher’s block kitchen island. “I never got around to framing stuff, so I started slapping prints up on the wall. Ian put the sheet of Plexiglas over it, and now it looks intentional.” Her gaze touched Jessie. “You seem nervous.”

  “I don’t have much experience photographing people.”

  “Oh, come on. That’s like me saying I don’t have much experience shooting monuments or land formations.” Setting her hands on her hips, she studied the mural. “Come to think of it, I don’t.” Then she laughed. “I guess that’s the thing—in order to take pictures of exotic places, you have to actually go somewhere.”

  Jessie pointed out a photo of Wyatt dressed up like a killer bee and brandishing a Star Wars light saber. “You don’t call this exotic?”

  “I call it bizarre.” As they finished their coffee, they reminisced about their long-ago days at college. If Jessie was Ansel Adams, Luz was Annie Leibovitz. Jessie would insist on driving clear out to Enchanted Rock and waiting for the perfect sunset, while Luz preferred sitting at Barton Creek Park, capturing family picnics, kids playing, old couples sitting on benches. They discussed Jessie’s equipment, from the latest digital upgrades to the old classic Nikon FM she’d had forever. It was the most companionable time they’d spent since Jessie had arrived, but it was over too quickly. It ended with a thud and a “Mo-om. He took my—”

  A honking horn sent the herd thundering to the door. The dog bayed a greeting.

  “Someone’s here,” Scottie yelled.

  “We know, moron.” Owen shoved him aside to open the door.

  “I’m not a moron.”

  “Are so.”

  “Am not.”

  “Are—whoa.”

  Owen stepped out onto the porch, motioning for Jessie and Luz to follow. A cloud of caliche dust swirled around a late-model Cadillac with gold and white trim and vanity plates reading Chi-O 4-Ever. A tall woman in an Escada suit emerged and went around back to the trunk.

  Blair LaBorde had not changed much over the years. She still had blond hair of a volume and tint only a certain class of true Texas women ever achieved. It was the shade of champagne left out overnight, and had been fluffed into the sort of coiffure made famous by socialite Lynn Wyatt.

  A good quality lipstick outlined a mouth with a hardworking smile and a set of well-tooled teeth. She wore a look of determined optimism that functioned as a mask for some sort of deep and bitter discontent and the ruthless ambition that ran rampant in Texas women of a certain age. She had nervous hands and a nose that twitched as though she was about to sneeze. Jessie noticed all this in the few seconds it took to walk outside to the driveway. She had cultivated an uncanny ability to suck up visual images quickly and file them away.

  “Jessie Ryder,” said Blair, talking in a suburban Dallas drawl as she opened the trunk of the Cadillac. “And Luz. Lord, but the two of you have hardly changed at all. I swear, you need a theme song to start playing when the two of you show up together.”

  “The Good, the Bad and the Surgically Enhanced,” Jessie suggested.

  “Surely not.” Blair lifted a perfect brow.

  “Not yet, anyway,” Jessie said.

  “And not on my budget,” Luz said.

&nbs
p; Blair hugged Jessie and then Luz. She had been their mentor years earlier, for under the homecoming queen exterior lay a keen intelligence—and a Ph.D. in mass communications. “God, it’s been a grandaddy coon’s age.” She waved at the wide-eyed boys clustered on the porch. “Yours?” she asked Luz.

  “My bundles of joy.”

  “And your daughter?”

  “She’s going to be all right,” Luz said. “She’s the lucky one.”

  “I heard. Hon, I’m so relieved for you.”

  Luz stepped back. “I’ll let the two of you get to work.”

  “Ready?” Blair asked Jessie.

  “I think so.”

  “I love your work, by the way. I’ve seen it here and there over the years.”

  Jessie put her camera bag in the trunk, noting that it was cluttered with clippings, e-mail printouts, a banker’s box stuffed with files. “You’ve seen my work?”

  “Nope, just saying that,” Blair admitted without the least twinge of guilt. She took out a card of gum squares, popped one out of the back and put it in her mouth. “Nicorette?”

  “No, thanks.”

  With a shrug, Blair popped a second piece into her mouth. “One of my major food groups these days. So are you ready?”

  Jessie nodded, trying to ignore the flurry of nerves in her gut. This was another assignment, nothing more. She’d photographed the wonders of the world. Shooting a man and his daughter would be a cakewalk.

  “So anyway,” Blair said, cracking her gum, “I’ve heard you’re the best there is.”

  Jessie laughed as she got in the passenger side. “I’ve heard the same about you.”

  “Good to know. This ought to be fun, anyway.” As she eased her car up the drive and turned onto the main road, she said, “Pretty around here.” She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. The nails of her right hand were perfectly manicured and painted an aggressive, shiny red. On her left hand, the nails had been bitten to the quick.

  She flexed her hands on the steering wheel. “Quitting smoking is hell.”

  “Yeah. I’ve done it a few times myself,” Jessie admitted. “How long have you been working on this story? You didn’t tell me much except to say it’s local and human interest.”