Sandy looked off, hating it that Jordy was being judged and labeled—and as his mother, so was she, by inference—in unflattering ways. She didn’t care how many times the so-called experts said parents weren’t responsible for a child’s bad behavior—she felt guilty and ashamed all the same. She felt accused. She felt the stab of fingers pointing at her.
“How is your mom?” She brought her gaze back to Emmett.
“Doing much better. I found someone, a retired nurse, who comes by every day and stays a few hours with her and Aunt Leila.”
“So, what does it mean, Emmett, that you’ve been back nearly a month, living in the Kennedys’ garage apartment, without telling me? Are we separated? Do you want a divorce?”
“Jordy’s got to be the focus right now, don’t you agree?”
Of course she did. Sandy plucked her trowel from the dirt, turning it in her hands. The metal was hot enough to burn her fingers. “All this time, the nights he was gone—he knew how worried I was. You must have known it, too. But the two of you just let me go on thinking the worst?” She couldn’t keep the hurt from showing.
“That’s on me, and I’m sorry. I should have come here right away when I got back.”
She could have asked him why not, but she didn’t need to. She didn’t want to hear more about his reluctance to be anywhere near her.
He said he had to go. “I’m picking Jordy up. He’s working at Libby Hennessey’s. You knew that, right? I’ve been driving him to and from.”
The look she gave him was sour; she could nearly taste it—the bitterness. She wasn’t proud of it.
Emmett lifted his cap and shoved his hand over his head before resettling it. “I know you don’t like the idea, but it’s his right, and only natural he’d want to know who his real dad was. She’s the only way he can do that now.”
“Blood doesn’t make a dad real, Emmett. Being there, loving your kid, caring for him, guiding him, teaching him—all the things you’ve done Jordy’s whole life—that’s what makes a real dad.”
“Spare me the bullshit speech, okay? Maybe blood doesn’t count, but the truth damn sure does.”
“I didn’t answer the e-mail from Beck two years ago because nowhere in my mind did he have any place in our lives.”
“How could you make that decision, though? How could you—how can you think it was only yours to make?”
Sandy didn’t answer. She couldn’t say her secrecy then had made sense to her, that it was only now, today, standing here under the hot glare of a late-summer sun, caught up in Emmett’s even hotter and more offended glare, that she saw the scope of her miscalculation. She couldn’t say to him if the accident had never happened, if you had never been called to give blood . . . if if if . . .
So much more than her honor was lost.
“You realize you’re going to have to tell Jordy, don’t you? That you turned down the opportunity for him to know his birth father? If Libby Hennessey hasn’t already.”
“He’ll hate me.” Her voice broke, tears came, and she blinked them away.
“You owe him the truth. All of it. I’ve told you that. You’re going to have to do the hard thing, Sandy.”
He was right, Sandy knew he was, but the prospect only made her heart pound more heavily in her chest.
“You know what gets me?”
Sandy met Emmett’s gaze.
“Before this I would have said I knew you better than I know myself. I would have said I knew your heart and your secrets. Out of everyone I’ve ever known, I have trusted you without question. But you’re a minefield, you know it? One wrong step and boom, I get set down on my ass by some new revelation. I don’t know even know if I’ve heard the whole story.”
“I’m sorry, Emmett.” It was everything Sandy could do to work the words by the knot in her throat.
“Yeah, that’s the hell of it,” he said, “because I know that, too.”
His gaze on hers seemed to soften, and for a moment, she thought he might relent. He might embrace her. She would feel the strength of his arms around her; his breath at her temple would stir the fine hairs there. She thought if only she could bring him that close, she wouldn’t let go of him. She would make it right; they would work it out between them and save Jordy, too. It wouldn’t ever be the way it was, but it would be something better and more. If only he would take that step.
And he did—backward, saying he’d let her know if he would be bringing Jordy home. It depended, Emmett said, on what Jordy wanted to do. “I’m sorry you were worried,” he said. “I won’t let it happen again.” And then he turned, taking more steps, and every one took him, and Jordan, too, farther down a path away from her.
“I’ve located Jordy,” she said to Roger when he answered his cell phone.
“You’ve spoken to your husband.”
“So, you did know he was here—all this time.”
“I’ve encouraged him to talk to you.”
She went to the kitchen window and stared out.
“You’re pissed, and I don’t blame you. I’m really sorry for how this went down, my part in it.” Roger’s apology sounded heartfelt.
“I don’t understand why—”
“Look, Jordy is my client. What’s between his parents is beside the point. I can’t get sidetracked by it, can’t be involved in it.”
Really? The smart-ass who lived in her head goaded her to ask. “Okay, but this morning, you knew I was worried sick about where Jordy was—”
“When you called, I had no better idea than you, and that’s the truth. I don’t keep tabs on him. He could have been anywhere.”
Sandy believed Roger. Later as she showered and washed her hair, she thought it was because he didn’t try and make her believe he was telling the truth. He simply stated the facts; she could take them or leave them.
She was sorting the laundry that had piled up when she heard the sound of an engine. Jordy, she thought, and went to look. Instead it was Roger, carrying a brown, handled shopping bag. Foolishly, despite her aggravation, she was glad to see him. At least when he looked at her there was no scrim of disgust in his eyes. At least he didn’t think of armed-and-dangerous minefields when he thought of her—if he thought of her. More foolishness.
“What have you got there?” she asked once they were inside.
He set the sack on the counter and began removing the contents, enumerating them as he did so. “One bottle of crème de menthe, one bottle of crème de cacao, and a quart of whipping cream. And I’m hoping you have a little nutmeg—that is, if you like nutmeg sprinkled on top of your grasshopper.”
“You brought this for me?”
“Yes, as a peace offering. But maybe you’d rather take a punch at me?” He stuck out his jaw, and she laughed.
“C’mon. Take your best shot.”
“No. Maybe before I would have, but I’m past it now.”
His eyes held hers, and she was almost undone by his smile, the tender concern in his glance. “I’ve got to tell you, now this is out in the open, when I heard from you this morning, I was worried. I thought Jordy and his dad might have gotten on a plane.”
Sandy hadn’t considered the possibility before, that Emmett might be the one to spirit Jordy out of the country. Would they go and not tell her?
Seeing the look on her face, Roger said, “They would have taken off by now if that was their plan.”
“Yeah, probably.” She realized Roger wanted to reassure her. She had the sense he would like to touch her, that it was costing him not to.
“So it must be a good thing, right, that Jordy’s been hanging out with his dad? It’s what you wanted, isn’t it? For the two of them to see they have a relationship in all the ways that count?”
“Yes. But I’m not sure Emmett does see it. He’s so angry at me. It’s as if he can’t get past it. Maybe he never will.”
“Well, I’ve probably got no right to say this, but it pisses me off the way this has been handled.” Roger folded the p
aper sack as he spoke, keeping his eye on it. “Not by Jordy. He’s at the mercy of—aw, hell—” He tossed the sack aside. “I don’t like seeing you hurt, that’s all.”
She shifted her glance, fighting with the complicated mix of her emotions—gratitude at having Roger’s defense of her, and pain at the way in which she was being closed out of her own family. “I’m afraid Jordy hates me.” She whispered the fear that was uppermost in her mind.
Roger lifted her chin, bringing her face around. “I was pretty horrible to my mom, too, at his age. I put her through hell. She felt the same as you. We laugh about it now.”
She wiped her face, pinched her nose, gathering herself, the scattered fragments of her composure. “Were you ever arrested? Is that why you became a lawyer?”
“My brother was. Where’s your blender?”
Sandy opened the cubby where it was stored and found a shot glass.
Roger uncapped bottles and measured ingredients. “I was a freshman at Florida State and partying hard when he was wrongfully accused and convicted of raping and assaulting a woman. After he got sent to prison, I transferred to Stanford and started working on my law degree. He did eight years in prison before I could pass the bar and get to work on the petition for a retrial. My whole focus was on getting the guilty verdict overturned. I wanted him to be exonerated, totally.”
Sandy kept Roger’s gaze. “He didn’t do it?”
“Nope. It was a setup. The sex was consensual, but the woman’s husband found out and took exception. He was a batterer, and there was an afternoon when he came home and somehow knew what was going on.”
“Your brother was there?”
“He’d just left, but the guy hammered his wife until she confessed. When she did, he hit her a few more times, then he took her to the emergency room, where they did the rape kit, the whole nine yards. When the cops came, the husband did most of the talking. The woman was terrified and went along. Given that they had my brother’s DNA, he didn’t have a chance.”
“How awful. How did you ever get him out?”
Roger’s smile was one cornered, an odd mix of chagrin and rue. “The husband eventually recanted after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, end stage. He had some kind of come-to-Jesus moment.” Roger flipped on the blender.
Sandy took two cocktail glasses from the cabinet but put one back when Roger declined to join her.
“Grasshoppers are a little froufrou for me,” he said. “I’ll stick with beer.” He poured her drink and handed it to her, watching as she took a sip.
She closed her eyes, savoring the minty, sweet flavor, cool on her tongue. “Delicious,” she said. “Thank you. It’s just what I needed.” It was. She felt the effect of the alcohol uncurl, warming the blood in her veins, loosening the tension coiled in her muscles.
“Sure.” Roger stowed the blender jar in the refrigerator and got out a beer. “I might have killed the guy if he hadn’t already been dying. But it was pretty crazy, the way it ended. Ironic, really. That whole shit storm, for lack of a better way to describe it, changed my life, and in the end, nothing I did made the difference.”
Sandy didn’t believe that. “You kept your brother going, I bet. Just knowing you were out there, an advocate—it had to mean a lot to him.”
“Yeah, you’re right. It did.”
“You’re close.”
“Yeah. Both of us and our mom.”
“What about your dad?”
“He took off when we were young. Haven’t seen much of him since.”
Sandy peered into her drink. “I miss my family.”
“I know,” Roger said. “I’m sorry.”
She was grateful when he didn’t say it would get better.
They took their drinks outside on the deck that overlooked the backyard and sat in adjacent chaise longues, and Sandy knew it was dangerous, sitting here, drinking on an empty stomach. Even worse, drinking with Roger, and imagining there might be something between them that was based on more than her loneliness, her overwhelming sense of isolation, her feeling that for all intents and purposes, she was on her own. She shouldn’t allow such ideas into her mind. Shouldn’t encourage them. But the idea of being alone with her fear and uncertainty frightened her.
“Nice night,” he said.
“Yes.”
They took care not to turn to each other, studiously looking into the yard instead, at the day that was steadily losing its shape to the oncoming twilight of evening. The air seemed alive with a kind of nervous anticipation. A breeze fretted. Crickets chittered madly among themselves. A roadrunner dashed a few steps through the long grass in the meadow beyond the fence line and paused to look around. Sandy followed its progress when it took off again, dashing a longer path, neck forward, full of itself. She was aware of Roger watching the roadrunner, too, and then she was aware of his hand, reaching across the space that separated them. After only a moment’s hesitation, she extended her hand, meeting his. His grasp was warm; his thumb slid over her knuckles. Heat flared low in her abdomen.
He said, “I have feelings for you, Sandy. I can’t lie.”
She started to object, which was ridiculous, given that she’d allowed him to take her hand. He overrode her anyway.
“I’m not going to put the moves on you as much as I might want to—as badly as I want to be with you, because I know you’re vulnerable now.” He stopped, and setting his beer down, he swung his feet to the deck floor and turned to her, keeping her hand, finding her gaze. In the fading light, his eyes were dark with emotion, his longing.
Sandy felt her breath go.
He said, “I won’t overstep, but I won’t pretend, either, that I’ll be glad if your husband comes home to you. He should. How he could leave you to handle this—but no, you fool.” Roger was talking now to himself. “Shut up before she kicks you out of here.” He didn’t drop her hand so much as give it back to her. His smile was chagrined, asking her indulgence.
It didn’t please her, being relieved of his touch.
“Forget I said anything.”
She thought of saying she was flattered, but she didn’t like the sound of it even in her own mind. She thought of saying she might not want to forget, but that would take them beyond the point of return. Her mother had always said to be careful with your words, that it wasn’t as if once you said them, you could get them back.
“Do you want me to leave?” he asked.
“No,” she said, and she didn’t.
He sighed. “Then if you don’t mind, I’ll get myself another beer.” He stood up. “Freshen your drink?”
“Yes, please.” She acquiesced, handing him her glass even though her head was already swimmy. Why should it matter what she did or with whom? No one needed her to be sober. No one cared what or how she was doing. Jordy was off, happily, with Emmett, at the apartment of their good friends, eating pizza and watching the Astros game. Maybe he would spend the night there, as Emmett had said he had done all the other nights when he’d made up stories about nonexistent new friends.
It came over her then—and she thought of Roger’s earlier reference to irony—that Emmett and Jordy were fine together in spite of how disturbed they claimed to be over learning they weren’t blood relations. They’d been shocked, but that hadn’t interfered with their relationship, which was how it should be, what she’d tried pointing out to them both. And just look at them now; they’d moved on, without her. When she’d said those words—separation and divorce—Emmett hadn’t so much as flinched. What would he think if he could see her, sitting in the gathering dusk with Roger, sipping grasshoppers, thinking of how it might feel to have him kiss her, to have his hands on her?
The patio door slid on its track. She half turned, thinking when Roger gave her drink to her she would take his hand, pull him down beside her. What was there to lose, other than herself for an hour or two?
He was looking at his phone, though, when he came back, or who knew what might have happened?
&nb
sp; That was her first thought the following morning when she woke on the sofa, where he’d evidently put her. She had the vaguest memory of it—his arms supporting her, half carrying her into the great room and laying her gently down on the sectional. He’d covered her with the cotton throw she kept folded over the back.
Sandy thrust it aside now and sat up, moaning softly, touching her fingertips gingerly to her temples. She imagined a pair of little monkeys, one on either side of her skull, wielding tiny but lethal sledgehammers. The inside of her mouth was as furry as moss, and it tasted faintly of mint and something darker, like dirt. She looked at her bare feet, then sidelong at her sandals nearby. At least she was still wearing the shirt and capris she’d been dressed in when Roger arrived last night. She was almost positive he hadn’t taken advantage of her. And she had one other near certainty: she would never drink another grasshopper again, not as long as she lived.
He’d made another batch, teasing her, telling her how much she’d regret it. She remembered that. And she remembered that he’d shown her what he found so interesting on his phone. The text from the private detective he’d hired to help with Jordy’s case had read:
Third witness confirmed. Travis not Jordan was driving. Talk tomorrow.
13
Libby never knew what to do with herself at dinnertime, and Sunday evenings were the worst. Beck had always made something special for them on Sundays. He’d been the executive chef, and she the sous chef. They would have shopped together, bought the makings for an elaborate meal. There would have been music, conversation, laughter, and afterward, when the dinner dishes were done . . .
But what was the point in remembering that sweet ritual? Libby was grateful when her phone rang. She left off making what passed for her Sunday dinner nowadays, a ham and Swiss on rye, and answered it.
“Libby, how are you?”
She recognized the voice of Robert, Beck’s partner, and said she was doing well, hoping he would let it go at that.
He apologized. “I don’t want to interrupt your dinner.”
Faultlines Page 20
