Yuck.
She cracked the window in the Ford, letting in the chilly air, despite her partner’s complaints, because it was the only way she could bear to sit in the same vehicle with him.
Hank groused again about wanting a shower to wash the stink of the morgue off his skin before they showed up on the doorstep of Dr. Harrison’s swanky Preston Hollow mansion, and Jo knew he was right. Despite her better judgment, she gave him directions to her mother’s house. He could clean up, and she could take care of some business while she was there.
After all, it stood empty, except for the boxes and the furniture that hadn’t been given away or hauled to the dump. What harm would it do? Hank could use Mama’s bathroom—the only one with a shower—and she could pick up some of the things Ronnie insisted she take. Kill two birds with one stone.
It seemed simple enough, as long as she ignored the tension creeping into her neck and the knot tying up her belly. Her past wasn’t something she’d shared with her partner, and she’d certainly never imagined taking him inside the very place that had filled her nightmares for years.
“Isn’t just being there where it all happened sort of like facing my enemy?”
“It can be, if you let it.”
If she let it. Right.
Maybe having Hank there would make what had happened within those walls not seem so real anymore, just a bad dream from long ago that she needed to stop fearing. It couldn’t make things any worse.
“You need to call and tell your mom we’re coming?” Hank asked, tapping his cell phone, stuck in the console between them. “It’d be polite to warn her we’re dropping in.”
“She’s not there.”
“Did she move?”
“Yeah, she moved.”
“Okay, so don’t tell me.”
She gave him directions, and he whistled as he drove, something that sounded irritatingly like “It’s A Small World,” which made Jo grit her teeth. In another ten minutes, they ended up on Mockingbird.
He stopped whistling. “You grow up on this street?”
“Pretty much.”
“Bet things changed a lot when they built Love Field.”
The airport that was home to Southwest Airlines was but a mile away. The rumble of jets in the air had been a familiar sound once. She recalled how the windows had rattled as they’d passed overhead while she lay awake in bed. Often she’d close her eyes tightly, wishing she could be on one of them, going somewhere else, anywhere.
“The traffic changed,” she told him. “Mama hated the noise, cars on the road at all hours.”
“It’s not a bad area,” Hank said, though she knew that he’d change his tune once they crossed Lemmon.
She watched the houses they passed go from expensive brick two-stories with well-tended yards and frou-frou cars to paint-peeled cracker boxes with bars on the windows and crumbling sidewalks, all in a matter of blocks.
Mama’s was among the latter, a pint-size clapboard with a badly patched roof and a dejected-looking facade. Shades sagged in the front windows, and the yellow-brown lawn was overgrown and littered with dead leaves. Ronnie had promised to have her nephew rake and mow before the real estate agent began showing the house after Thanksgiving. They’d talked about having the wallpaper stripped and the interior walls painted, but Jo wasn’t sure the expense was worth it. Someone would likely buy the place for the lot and tear the house down, which sounded perversely appealing.
If she could, she’d set a match to it and watch as it burned to the ground without an ounce of remorse.
“Are we close?”
“That’s it, with the shin-high grass and the Realtor sign,” she said and pointed. The COMING SOON sign sat half-obscured by weeds.
Hank slowed the car, turned on the left blinker, and waited for cars to pass before he made a U-turn and bumped the Ford against the curb.
“It’s hard for older folks to keep up a house,” he said as he cut the engine, and Jo wanted to laugh at his diplomacy. “Where’d she move to?” he asked, making no move to get out of the car. “Someplace like Florida, I’ll bet.”
Here we go, she thought, ignoring his inquisition, fumbling with her seat belt, impatient now to get this over with, to get in and get out.
“Did she leave Dallas?” he tried again, and still she didn’t answer. “What? Is it a state secret?”
She forced her hands to cease their frantic motions, willed her heart to slow down and her voice not to snap. She couldn’t blame him for asking about Mama. She’d never told him much about her family, or what was left of it. It was only natural that he’d be curious, since she’d met his wife and kids.
Do it, Jo. Tell him.
“She’s in a nursing home near Presbyterian,” she said in a rush. She drew in a deep breath, listening to the hiss of passing cars. “She’s not well.”
“Cancer?”
She shook her head.
“Stroke?”
She made herself say it. “Alzheimer’s. She’s pretty out of it, has been for a while. Sometimes she knows I’m her daughter. Mostly, she doesn’t.”
“That’s gotta be tough,” he said. “I can’t believe you never told me.”
Why? What good would it have done?
“It’s something I have to handle on my own,” she said, though she hadn’t, not really. She’d tried to ignore it, had left Ronnie in charge of Mama for far too long. When she’d chucked Dallas, it had been so much simpler to pretend Mama didn’t exist.
“No, Jo, you didn’t have to handle it yourself,” Hank said. “You chose to.”
It seemed to Jo that Mama had done the choosing all her life, and she’d had to live with the consequences.
“Did you ever tell him about your past?”
No. There were pieces of her past she’d never shared with anyone. She wasn’t sure she ever would.
Jo felt it starting again, the ache in her head, the throbbing at her temples.
She turned away from Hank and put her hand on the door handle, squishing her eyes closed for a long minute. “Can we not do this now?”
“What?”
“I don’t want to talk about my mother, okay? And I don’t want your sympathy,” she said. “I don’t need it.”
“Hey, think you could quit playing tough guy for a minute?”
Between his lectures and Adam’s, she wanted to tear her hair out. What was so wrong with looking out for herself?
“We’re partners, right?” he dug in. “No, more than that, we’re friends. So I don’t get why you have to keep—” He looked at her and suddenly stopped. “Look, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to pry. If you don’t want to talk about it, it’s your call.”
Her call.
Uh-huh.
So why was everyone always trying to tell her what to do?
“It’s a long story, Hank,” she finally said, averting her gaze and staring squarely out the window. “And I don’t think now’s the time to tell it.”
Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe she should ask him to start the car and get the hell out of there, away from the emotional landmines.
“If you don’t find a way to make peace with your mother, Jo, you’ll get stuck in this place your whole life. You’ll bury the blame, but you’ll never get rid of it.”
She didn’t want that. She didn’t want to be angry and ashamed forever.
Jo gazed at the sad little house, at the peeled paint, the rotting eaves, the cracked concrete. It wasn’t much, was it? It was pretty pathetic. And there was no one inside who could hurt her anymore. There hadn’t been for years and years except in her mind.
“Where’s my little Joey? Where’s my sweet, sweet girl?”
She shivered.
“Hey.” Hank’s big hand reached for her shoulder and patted clumsily. “Let’s not sit out here in the cold. How about we go in?”
She hated how paralyzed she felt: a grown woman still scared of a boogeyman.
Get a grip, she told herself.
&n
bsp; She could do this.
“Lock the car,” she said, fighting the tremor in her voice. “It’d be a shame for someone to steal this fine machine.”
Hank guffawed. “Like I’d get that lucky.”
He climbed out of the Ford and went around to the trunk, where she knew he kept an extra shirt and a shaving kit, a holdover from his days on the Fort Worth PD.
Hinges squealed as she pushed the passenger door wide and stepped into grass that reached above her ankles. Then she slammed the door soundly. She crunched through the brittle stalks and fallen leaves to the front door.
Her fingers clumsy, she found the key on her ring and let them in.
The musty smell hit her as soon as she crossed the threshold. Even Ronnie’s cleaning couldn’t mask the staleness of a place closed up too long, a place where an old woman had declined and decayed, and the house along with her.
The heat had been kept low, only turned up when Ronnie was there putting things to rights, and the chill touched her face, crept up her spine like a closing zipper.
She heard Hank’s cowboy boots as they creaked on the old floors and knew he was seeing the faded wallpaper and the patched linoleum, feeling the sense of abandonment that permeated the very air they breathed.
“So this is it?” he said.
“Afraid so.”
“It’s got four walls and a roof, right? Everyone comes from somewhere, and it ain’t always Buckingham Palace,” he said. She was glad that, at least, she heard no pity. “Are you having a yard sale?”
“No.” She and Ronnie had talked about that, but neither of them had wanted to stand around on a Saturday, bartering with strangers over Mama’s things. “Just giving away what isn’t worth keeping.”
There were boxes in every corner. Only a few pieces of furniture remained in the living area and kitchen, what Ronnie and her nephews hadn’t taken, carted off to Goodwill, or resigned to the dumpster behind the liquor store up the block.
“Where’s the shower?” Hank asked. He had the shaving kit in one hand, a slightly rumpled button-down shirt draped over his forearm.
Jo knew Mama’s room was still fairly intact. Ronnie had been waiting for her to go through her mother’s personal stuff, despite Jo’s insistence that she wanted none of it.
Ronnie had packed up all of Mama’s personal papers, and that was more than Jo wanted to take.
“There’s gotta be something you want of hers,” Ronnie kept insisting, no matter that Jo assured her she didn’t want a single trinket.
“This way.”
She led her partner down the hallway, toward her old bedroom, past squares on the wall darker than the rest where photographs had hung: pictures of Jo as a girl, of Mama and the man she’d married after Daddy had left them, of the three of them, pretending to be a family.
The door to Mama’s room stood wide open, but she hesitated before stepping in.
She reached a hand inside and flipped on the light switch.
The timid yellow from the overhead fixture was probably a godsend, making the gaping wallpaper seams less evident, likewise the stains on the carpeting. Her eyes darted around to the heavy old bureau and bed, matching relics from a bygone era when things were built to last forever. The bed was stripped, and the tired mattress sagged over the box springs. Boxes leaned against the walls, each clearly marked with Ronnie’s handwriting. The whole of Mama’s life packed away, and Mama wouldn’t even miss it.
Neither would Jo.
Hank plodded in behind her. She turned her head at his footstep and smiled feebly. He looked as uncomfortable as she.
“You sure this is kosher?” he asked.
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“I won’t screw up anything?”
“Fat chance,” she said. It was too late for that.
She went to the connecting bath and switched on the light. A bulb sparked and then fizzled out over the mirror, but the other two still beamed brightly.
Towels were stacked neatly in an unsealed box, and she removed several from the top.
The cabinets and drawers were bare. What Mama hadn’t taken with her to the nursing home—her prescriptions and the like—Ronnie had probably tossed.
But there was still shampoo sitting on the rim of the tub in the enclosed shower. Hank could use it as soap.
She got him set up and then left him alone, shutting the door on her way out. Then she glanced up the hall to her old room.
She debated a second before walking toward it.
When she reached the closed door, she realized she’d been holding her breath. She stood for a moment with her hand on the knob and slowly exhaled.
It’s over, Jo, she told herself. He’s gone for good.
She turned the knob, pushed the door wide, and entered.
Instinctively, she reached right for the switch plate and flicked on the ceiling lamp. The room brightened halfheartedly, like sunlight through haze.
Tiny rosebuds surrounded her from papered walls with split seams. The once-pristine white background had discolored with age. Never replaced, never changed. Mama hadn’t touched anything in the house in forever. She’d left it all just as it had been when Jo was a kid.
Jo turned around slowly.
God, it looked so small to her now. Like she could stretch out her arms and touch the walls on either side. The tiny closet was empty save for abandoned wire hangers. Beside the bed stood a whitewashed chest of drawers that matched the headboard and knobby posts.
She ran a hand down the carved wood, thinking how she used to swing herself around them, bumping against the mattress, her head spinning. She could see where the paint was worn bare. How rare they’d been, those carefree moments. She’d never had many friends. She’d always been terrified they would see in her face that she wasn’t like everyone else, that they’d smell him on her, and they would know. She could never have had them spend the night. She had been afraid he’d hurt them, too.
“No one can ever know.” Isn’t that what he used to tell her? “If you tattle, your mama will leave you, just like your daddy.”
She let out a slow, shaky breath, telling herself, You’re okay. It’s over and done.
Like Mama’s bed, hers had been stripped. She knew if she turned the mattress over, she’d find an old stain. She tried not to remember the dip of the bed as he’d settled beside her, reeking of liquor and aftershave, the stink of him filling her nose and cutting off her air.
She held fast to the bedpost, bumped her head against it.
Stop it.
She tightened her mouth into a line and turned away.
Three cardboard boxes squatted low behind the opened door, what remained of her childhood tucked inside: clothes she’d left behind when she’d moved out after high school, books and stuffed animals, dolls and records. Mama had never given anything away, though Jo had never intended to take any of it with her. She’d always imagined that, once gone from this house, it would be a clean break. She would take off and never look back.
How wrong she’d been.
The pipes groaned through the wall as Hank cut off the shower. It was the same noise that used to wake her in the mornings. She would curl up tightly beneath the sheets, hardly daring to breathe, waiting until the front door closed with a slap and the car engine started. Then she’d be safe—for a while, anyway.
Her stomach tightened so violently, she felt she would be sick. It was long ago and still so real. How was she supposed to forget when her memories were so clear?
“Hey, Jo?”
She froze in place, brushed her thumb across her cheeks, and straightened up, ignoring how her hands were shaking.
Hank appeared in the doorway. “So this used to be yours?” he asked.
“Yes.” Her voice sounded so timid.
It’s a room, she told herself. Just a room. It had nothing to do with her anymore. It had little to do with the life she led now.
“Were you an only child?”
“Yes.”
> Not like Kimberly, who’d had Jenny to protect her.
“It’s hard to imagine you as a kid.”
She wanted to say, “I never was.” Instead, she said, “Let’s get out of here.”
“Not much on sentiment, are you?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so.” He watched her, looking like he had something to say. Then he turned and passed through the door.
She followed him, switching off the lights as she went, pausing in the kitchen to pick up the box of papers Ronnie had left for her on the counter in case she didn’t get back on Saturday. She didn’t plan to.
“You want to grab some dinner first?” Hank asked as he put the key in the ignition and jerked his chin toward the clock in the dash. “We’ve still got an hour.”
“Sure,” she said, though she wasn’t the least bit hungry.
They drove north and got off the tollway, stopping at a Pizza Hut situated on the corner of a nondescript strip mall.
Hank worked on a small Meat Lover’s pie.
Jo picked at a salad, speared a cherry tomato and toyed with it, checking her watch for the tenth time, and noting how dark it looked beyond the windows.
She put Mama’s house and its ghosts out of her head, which was much easier to do when she had something else to think about. She thought instead of Jenny Dielman, of the despair written on that single page from her diary, and wondered who’d killed her.
“All set?” Hank asked when he’d finished and wiped a smear of sauce from the corner of his lips.
Jo wasn’t sure how set she really was. She wished she’d had a chance to talk again to Kimberly Parker and better prepare herself for squaring off with Kevin Harrison.
“Jo?”
She realized he was waiting for her answer. “Yeah, I’m good.”
They pushed their chairs back and left.
Is Patrick so worried about my sanity that he has the neighbor checking up on me? I’ve seen a beige car just like hers not far behind me driving through Starbucks on the way to the library. I’ve caught her looking out her window when I’m in the front yard. She hides behind the blinds, but they shimmy, and I know she’s there.
Once when I felt her stare, I started waving, so she’d know I could see her. Maybe that was a mistake. She came outside, smiling and tugging a sweater around her. I’m surprised she didn’t have on a hat and gloves. She’s always saying how much she hates the cold.
Walk Into Silence Page 19
