Faultlines

by Barbara Taylor Sissel

  She eyed her sandwich, the single glass she’d gotten from the cabinet for iced tea, and said it was fine.

  “Well, I’ve got some news,” Robert said. “I thought you might like to know that law enforcement arrested the guy who’s responsible for the animal killings down here in Houston. They caught him about two weeks ago. I meant to let you know earlier, but things have been hectic at the office. It’s been really difficult since—”

  “Who was it?” Libby interrupted. It was selfish, but she wasn’t in the mood to commiserate with Robert over the loss of his business partner.

  “It’s as we suspected: he’s the father of one of the victims who was killed when the balcony fell. The poor guy just went insane with grief, wanting someone to pay. He’s a single dad, and it was his only child, only son. You can imagine.”

  “How awful for him,” Libby said.

  “I don’t think he’ll do any jail time. The DA is recommending probation and community service. Something like that.”

  “Oh, good. He’s already been punished enough.” Libby was surprised when her throat tightened. It was the sense of the man’s loss, what he was enduring now, that touched her.

  She and Robert talked for a few more minutes about his wife and people they knew in common and then ended the call, promising to stay in touch. But Libby knew they wouldn’t. That life, the one she and Beck had built and led together, the one she’d loved with her whole heart, was over. She lived here now, and it might as well be a different country, a different planet, even. The trick would be learning to navigate the terrain, and she couldn’t do that living in the past.

  The next morning, Monday, Libby took her coffee outside and, wandering though the garden, decided she wanted boxwoods. She pictured them in the beds that flanked the cottage’s wide front porch steps, trimmed into globes and interspersed with a mix of spring blooming bulbs and, later, blooming perennials. That was the only reason she drove to Inman’s Native Garden World outside Wyatt that morning—to buy boxwoods. And it was crazy, planting anything in the August heat. Still, she had a vision, and she was hot on the trail to see it come together. Jordan had spent most of last Wednesday pulling off the old, crumbling lattice that screened the foundation. She’d bought new lattice at the Home Depot on her way into town, and she was up in the bed of the truck, shifting it around to make room for the wagonload of boxwoods when she caught sight of Sandy Cline’s distinctive vintage truck nosed in on the opposite side of the parking lot, down several spaces. Her heart paused, and after a moment when it resumed beating again, she settled the sheet of lattice she’d been holding onto the stack and lowered herself from the tailgate to the pavement, thinking: Now?

  Would she—did she have—? Was it nerve she was looking for? The nerve to tell Sandy what Jordan had told her? He didn’t want his mom to know. He’d been red-faced, confiding in her, embarrassed, half-defensive. Sex wasn’t something boys felt comfortable discussing except among their peers. Libby didn’t want to talk to Sandy at all, really. About anything, much less sex. Could there be a topic more awkward to discuss with your husband’s ex-lover of twenty-plus years ago? But here she was, confronted with the perfect opportunity, as if the universe had set it up. She could choose not to take advantage of it, load up her boxwoods, and drive away.

  Stay out of it, Ruth had advised. But how could she? How would she feel if Jordan was convicted and sent to prison when she might have the very piece of information that could save him from that? If he was telling the truth. Because she still lacked that total certainty. What if she only wanted to believe him for Beck’s sake? What if her impulse to engage with Jordan, and now to involve herself with his mother—what if it was all tied up with some sentimental hogwash about keeping Beck’s memory alive, clinging to him through a connection to a boy they had never known? She was a fool if she thought she knew him now. People lie; they lie all the time. The thought floated to the surface of Libby’s mind.

  But who else was there to tell this to who would do the right thing about it?

  Jordan’s dad? The aunt who wasn’t speaking to any of them, so far as Libby knew? Or maybe Jordan’s grandparents?

  Sandy was at her truck now, unloading her own wagon, filled with what from where Libby stood looked like red autumn sage and Mexican feather grass, and something purple-flowered that she didn’t recognize. Still, she hesitated, wanting to leave, knowing she couldn’t. Regardless of the circumstances that had created Jordan, or who his father was, he was a human being, a young man in jeopardy. If there was any possibility she could set this right, then she had to try, or never sleep again for the rest of her life. She hesitated a moment more, steeling herself, then she approached Sandy, her stride purposeful, full-out and obvious. Still, Sandy, who by now had finished loading her plants and was at the driver’s side door, didn’t look up until Libby rounded the bed of the truck, and she was startled. Libby could see that by the way her eyes widened.

  “I’m Libby Hennessey.” She gave her name straight off, wanting her identity out in the open. Wanting there to be no doubt in Sandy’s mind about it. Libby didn’t know what reaction she expected, and at first Sandy only frowned slightly.

  But after a moment, comprehension came, and Libby watched the color drain from Sandy’s face. “You’re Beck’s wife.” Something in Sandy’s voice seemed to underscore the inevitability of their meeting, or that was how it felt to Libby.

  She said, “We need to talk,” and it came out a bit more forcefully than she’d meant it to, but she was nervous. So was Sandy. It was pretty clear they both shared a wish that the earth would open and swallow them whole.

  “All right.” Sandy briefly met Libby’s eyes.

  “We can sit out back. They have picnic tables, don’t they? And a drinks machine?”

  “I think so. Just let me get my purse.” Sandy reached into the cab of her truck.

  They went behind the garden nursery’s gift shop, and after getting bottles of water from the machine, they sat on either side of a picnic table that stood in the shade of a live oak, taking longer than was necessary to settle in, both of them squirming, fussing with their purses and water bottles, shifting their sandaled feet in the weedy scruff under the table. Finally they looked at each other, gazes tentative, uneasy.

  “I think you know Jordan has been to see me,” Libby said.

  “I didn’t want him to bother you.”

  “He said as much.” Libby put her hands around her water bottle, feeling the wet soak her palms. It’s all right. The words were perched on her tongue, but she hesitated before saying them, thinking how Sandy might interpret them as absolution of some kind. It’s all right that you seduced my husband and had his child. It’s all right that you cut him from his son’s life. It’s all right that now that the going has gotten rough, you need his money and his support.

  Libby said it anyway. “It’s all right.” Because the bottom line was she had no control over Sandy’s interpretation, and maybe she was offering absolution. And maybe later she’d be angry at herself for it. “He’s doing some work for me. I think you know that, too.”

  Sandy nodded, and Libby could tell she was perplexed, wondering where Libby was going with this. Where was the fight, the show of claws, the hissed accusations? Sandy wouldn’t ask, though. Libby could see that, too. It wasn’t that she was intimidated, exactly, but there was sorrow haunting her eyes, and she wore an air of regret that felt true to Libby. She said, “This is very weird.”

  “Yes.” Sandy nodded with fervency and near-palpable relief. Thank God one of them had at last named the elephant sitting on its haunches on the table between them.

  “I’m not here to rake over the past, okay? I was angry about what happened between you and Beck, but that’s been over a long time, and now he’s dead—” Libby broke off. It was harder than she’d anticipated.

  “It was such a mistake,” Sandy murmured. “It didn’t mean anything.”

  Libby might have objected. It meant somethin
g to me. Instead she shot Sandy a look, one that warned she didn’t want to hear Sandy’s defense of herself, or her excuses. Sandy must have gotten the message, because she clamped her mouth shut and shifted her glance.

  Libby said, “I haven’t really known what to do about this, but Saturday, a week ago, when I was driving Jordan home, he told me something in confidence that could have ramifications for him legally. I think his lawyer might be able to use it to Jordan’s advantage.” It occurred to Libby then that she could have gone to Jordan’s lawyer herself; it would have been much easier, and she wouldn’t have broken the promise she’d made Jordan not to tell his mother, but it was too late now.

  The silence seemed to fill with Sandy’s perplexity, her wariness and hope-inflected dread. Clearly, she had no idea what to expect. The understanding rose in Libby’s mind, and against her will, she felt the faint unfolding of some newborn compassion—for this woman, of all people. But there was no accounting for the heart’s propensities. It had a mind of its own.

  “You know Sergeant Huckabee—Jordan said you’re aware the sergeant has a grudge against him.”

  “He told you?”

  “Is it true?”

  “Yes, but why is he talking to you about it?”

  Libby heard more than annoyance in Sandy’s voice; she was hurt that her son had talked on a personal level about a private matter to a virtual stranger rather than his mother. Libby said, “According to Jordan, you don’t know the reason behind it—the harassment, I mean.”

  “No, he would never tell his—Emmett and me, or his lawyer. What are you getting at?”

  Libby looked away. Jordan had told the truth. Sergeant Huckabee had targeted him. Every time Jordan was pulled over, the sergeant had meant to needle him, to bait and provoke him, and Sandy was clueless. She had no idea. All of which meant Libby was going to have to find the words to tell her. But even assuming she found the right ones, how would she manage to say them?

  “Until I retired a few years ago,” Libby began, and she guessed she was going to come at the issue sideways, “I was a high school guidance counselor. I don’t mean to make a thing out of it, but I’m trained to get kids to open up. Some have said I showed a real knack for it. A lot of kids over the years trusted me. It’s easier sometimes, confiding in a stranger.”

  “What is your point? Why are you talking to me?”

  “You’re asking because if our roles were reversed, you wouldn’t?”

  “I’m not sure. I guess it would depend on what was at stake.”

  “Beck would be here instead of me, if he were still alive.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, so sorry.” Sandy spoke in a rush, sitting forward, giving Libby the sense that she’d been waiting for the right moment—a second chance—to offer her regret. She sounded sincere; she sounded as if her apology was meant to cover far more than Beck’s loss.

  It came as a surprise, but Libby felt lighter somehow, as if Sandy’s contrition had loosened a last bit of sore anger and heartbreak she’d been carrying unaware, and she was grateful. “Beck wanted to know him.”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you have let it happen? I know when he e-mailed you two years ago, you didn’t respond, but once it was definite that we were moving here—”

  “I don’t know, to be honest.” Sandy turned her water bottle side to side, studying it.

  Libby watched her. It was as if they were both enthralled.

  When Sandy looked up, she said, “I want you to know that if I could go back, I’d do things differently.”

  Libby nodded once. Wouldn’t we all. A heartbeat of silence passed, and then two, and then Libby said it, the hard thing she’d come back here behind the garden nursery to say. “Jordan was—for lack of a better way to put it—seduced by Sergeant Huckabee’s wife.”

  “Coleta?” Astonishment lifted Sandy’s voice, rinsed the color from her face. “She can’t even speak English. That’s what he told you?”

  “Until last summer, he said, he had a lawn service, that the Huckabees were customers? That’s how he got to know Coleta.”

  “He and his cousin, Travis, were partners. I helped them start their business when they were still in junior high. When did it happen? When did they—”

  “Sleep together?” Libby came up with the only palatable euphemism she could think of. “The first time was during the summer after his senior year.”

  “There was more than one time?” Sandy’s voice was faint with surprise, notes of distress, outright alarm. She looked as if she’d been hit upside the head, as folks in these parts might put it.

  Libby answered: there had been a number of occasions. “They saw each other steadily, whenever he was home on vacation until last summer when he was caught.”

  “I don’t believe it. How could I not know? I mean, I know he was sexually—” Sandy couldn’t continue.

  “Coleta initiated it,” Libby said. “She invited him in for lemonade one day when he was mowing the lawn, and things progressed from there.”

  “Well, I guess she didn’t need English to make that happen, did she.” Sandy cut short a dark laugh. “Where was Travis? They always worked the jobs together.”

  “Jordan didn’t mention him, and I think he would have—” As Libby spoke, she searched her mind, making sure. “I’m almost positive he would have told me. He’s pretty shook up, really scared.”

  “Too scared to lie, you mean.” Sandy’s smile was brief, rueful.

  “Yes,” Libby said. “He’s not the only young guy she’s been intimate with. Evidently she’s been the hot topic of a lot of so-called locker room talk around town. I suppose she still could be.”

  “Jesus.” Sandy put her head in her hands.

  “I know. The times I’ve met her, she seemed very shy and quiet.”

  “Still waters.” Sandy smoothed her hair behind her temples. “When I think of the times Emmett and I asked Huck . . . and the attitude we got back, that blank stare as if he didn’t know what we were talking about, and the only thing Jordy kept saying was that it would blow over. How did Huck find out? Did he walk in on them?”

  “Not exactly. He found Jordan’s wallet under the bed—his and Coleta’s bed.”

  “Oh my God! Really? Something so—”

  Stupid, Libby finished in her mind.

  “I remember when it went missing. It was a nightmare, getting everything replaced, his driver’s license, student ID, the credit cards. When I said I was concerned he’d get his identity stolen, he told me not to worry, that it had come out of his pocket when he was swimming at the lake. ‘No one’ll ever find it, Mom—’” Sandy waved her hand breezily. “It doesn’t make sense, though,” she said after a moment.

  “I’m not following,” Libby said.

  “Huck isn’t with Coleta because he loves her. I know that’s what everyone in town believes, but it’s an act. They’re really just using each other.”

  Ruth had said this, Libby remembered. She remembered, too, the day the sergeant and Coleta had come to the cottage with Heidi, bearing the tamales Coleta had made from scratch. Best you will ever eat. I promise, Huck had said fondly, and Coleta had blushed. They had certainly fooled Libby.

  “He’s in love with my sister, obsessed with her, actually.” Sandy set her elbows on the table. “He only married Coleta to help her get citizenship, and the fact is he only agreed to do that after her family agreed to pay him. He even told Jenna he was doing it for the money.”

  “Won’t they get into trouble if INS finds out?” It was the question Libby had posed to Ruth.

  “Yeah, well, Huck is like a lot of cops who believe they’re above the law, but then, I’ve lost most of my respect for him lately.” Her smile was more grimace. “Honestly, I don’t think he realized it would take this long, or be this complicated, and I don’t think he planned at all on there being a child, although I’ve got to wonder now if Heidi is even his.”

  Before she could finish speaking, Sandy’s gaze locked w
ith Libby’s. She was doing the math, Libby thought, trying to determine if there was a way Jordan was Heidi’s father.

  “I think that little girl is too old,” Libby said. She remembered asking Heidi her age the day she’d come with her family to the cottage. The little girl had held up four fingers, and Huck had corrected her, saying almost four. Four in September, he’d said.

  “I hope you’re right,” Sandy said. She toyed with her water bottle. “I remember several months ago, Jenna asked me if I knew anything about how an annulment worked. She said Huck was looking into it, that he thought there was some way to get out of a marriage through the Catholic Church even after there are kids. I told her I didn’t know, that I couldn’t imagine it.”

  “Are they serious? Your sister and Huck?”

  “He’s been serious about her since they were in first grade.”

  “But she was married to his partner, John, right, who was killed? Forgive me if I’m prying. I don’t mean to. Augie Bright told me the story.”

  Sandy said it was okay. “Everyone in town knows everyone else’s business, including mine.” She made a face. “I used to think it was charming, you know, in a Mayberry RFD, Aunt Bee kind of way, if you can believe that. But that was back when everything was—”

  Ordinary. The word shimmered, unspoken, in the air.

  Ordinary was a sham, Libby thought, an illusion. People, most of them, didn’t have a clue that what passed for ordinary could be over in a breath, in a step from here to there. She thought of her boxwoods, broiling in the bed of Beck’s pickup. She thought of leaving. She’d done what she’d intended to do, said all there was to say, and yet, still, she remained as if glued to her seat.

  Sandy said, “John and Huck were like brothers, and that’s how Jordy and Trav were. It was a real source of comfort for Jenna after John died that Travis had Jordy, but she’s always thought Trav was better, smarter, more mature than Jordy. Nothing was ever Trav’s fault.”

  When Sandy paused, Libby sensed she was fishing for composure, a way to go on. She said, “It must be very difficult for you and your sister now.”