by Karen Hall
Why would Cam have been planning a trip to Atlanta? He hadn’t been home since his mother’s funeral, and he’d always sworn he’d never go there again. She folded the sheet of paper and tucked it into one of the scrapbooks. She could figure it out later.
Halfway to the front door, a sound caused her to stop.
An old man was standing in front of the living room window, staring down at the street. He looked up and saw Randa. His face showed no sign of surprise, or any other emotion.
“It’s a long way down, isn’t it?” He had a soft voice and a refined Southern accent, as smooth as old scotch. “Me, I’d go with pills. It wouldn’t hurt, it wouldn’t make a mess, and it wouldn’t bother anybody else’s life.”
Wearing a charcoal-gray suit, white shirt, and maroon tie, all of which looked expensive, he was an attractive man for his age, with a full head of white hair and a neatly trimmed beard. There was a calmness in his eyes that would have been comforting under different circumstances.
“I’m sorry,” Randa said, putting the scrapbooks down. “I didn’t realize anyone was here.” It sounded stupid, but she had to start somewhere.
“I’m Ryland Parker,” he said, simply. “Cam’s uncle.”
Lucy’s twin brother. Now she recognized him from the photos she’d seen, although he was much older. She had completely forgotten about him when the cops were asking about Cam’s relatives. Actually, it had never dawned on her that he would still be alive.
“Oh, yes. Of course. I’m sorry, I guess the detectives wondered why I didn’t tell them about you, but I didn’t remember . . .”
“Well, I’m sure Cam didn’t talk about me very much. We weren’t close.”
She wondered how the cops had managed to find him, but there was no polite way to ask.
“I’m an old friend of Cam’s,” she said. “I was just . . .” Just what? Just sitting on the floor of his closet, sobbing?
“What were you planning to do with the books?” His tone wasn’t accusatory, but Randa felt guilty just the same.
“Oh. I thought someone in the family should have them. I guess that would be you.” She picked up the books and started to hand them to him, but he waved her off.
“No, not me. Jack should have them.”
“Well, that’s what I thought, I’d try to find a way . . . Do you know where he lives?”
“Yes.”
“Then I guess you could take them . . .”
He was shaking his head. “No.” He didn’t offer an explanation. He turned toward the window again, this time looking straight out, at the lights of the city.
“Cam would have to have a place with a view, wouldn’t he? Always looking somewhere. Looking in, looking out, looking back. Where did all that looking get him, except looking in a rather unfortunate direction when he finally decided to follow his own gaze.”
Randa suddenly remembered what Cam had said about Ryland.
“He makes my mother look sane.”
“But,” he went on, “he was doing the best he could, all things considered. Like they all did.” He looked back at her. “You have to take the books to Jack,” he said suddenly.
“Me?”
He nodded. “And tell him about Cam’s death. Everything you know about it.”
“That’s crazy. Why can’t you tell him?”
“I doubt he would see me,” Ryland said, shaking his head.
“Then leave them at his door with a note. I’m not going to fly three thousand miles to hand two scrapbooks to someone I’ve never met when you know him and you’ll be there anyway . . . that’s crazy.”
He was suddenly right beside her, staring intently into her eyes. “Listen to me. This is not about the books. It’s about getting through Jack Landry’s thick skull, and I can’t do it.”
“What on earth makes you think I could?”
“In the first place, you’re the only person left alive who might conceivably want to. And you’re a very attractive young lady, and there must be something alive in him that would take note of that fact.”
Randa was sure she was offended by that last statement, but she couldn’t isolate the reason to call him on it. Before she could figure it out, he was talking again.
“I want you to give Jack one message for me. Word for word, please.” He was looking her dead in the eye. “Tell him that the thing is real. You have to make him believe that, no matter what it takes.”
With that, he turned and headed for the door.
“What thing?”
Let him go, idiot. He’s a nutcase.
“He’ll know,” Ryland said, then turned to look at her again. “If you ever cared about this family, you’ll do this.” Then he left.
Randa waited, giving him plenty of time to get out of the building. She tried to figure out why he’d been able to upset her so much. So Cam’s crazy uncle Ryland was in town for the funeral, and she’d met him and he’d talked nonsense, as crazy people have a tendency to do. So what?
HE’S TELLING THE TRUTH.
The voice. The voice. The one that had been drowning the others out for a while now, even though its messages usually made about as much sense as Uncle Ryland.
She headed for the door. She’d track Jack down and mail the books to him. She’d include a note about her conversation with Ryland. That would be that. She’d be done with the Landrys for good; she could move on to another obsession.
She waited for the elevator, unable to get Ryland’s face or voice out of her head.
“ . . . doing the best he could, all things considered . . .”
What was that supposed to mean? Cam had been doing “the best he could,” but the best he could was pretty damned impressive.
“Like they all did . . .”
The elevator door opened and she got in and pressed the lobby button, eager to get away.
“If you ever cared about this family . . .”
What? She was supposed to care about them enough to fly clean across the country to deliver a nonsensical message to the surviving member? Assuming she could even find him, why would he listen to her? What did any of this have to do with her?
IF YOU EVER CARED ABOUT THIS FAMILY . . .
I didn’t even know them . . .
IF YOU EVER CARED ABOUT CAM . . .
Not fair. Now the damned voice was going to play dirty. Well, what the hell. Everyone else did.
Back home, she sat on her bed and sipped straight tequila and flipped through the scrapbooks. There they were, in time-faded black-and-white photos: Will and Lucy, Jack, Tallen, Ethan, and Cam. She knew who everyone was from having gone through the books with Cam so many times. Randa wondered once more why her heart was so torn by these sad people she’d never met.
She picked up the piece of paper from Cam’s nightstand and looked at it again. Asked herself again why Cam would have been going to Atlanta.
“I want you to give Jack one message . . .”
Was that it? Was Cam trying to go to Atlanta to look for Jack? To tell him something? Was Ryland asking her to do something that Cam would ask her to do, if he could?
“If you ever cared about this family . . .”
“Oh, hell,” Randa said out loud. She picked up the phone and dialed the Delta number.
FOUR
Jack knocked lightly, rattling the screen door of the trailer. He knew Cathy had seen him come up the walk, but she would take her time about answering the door. She always did.
The storm had moved on and the smell of wet pine filled the crisp night air. Jack looked across the way at the other trailers. The lights were on in almost all of them, and he could hear a radio somewhere, tuned in to a country station. He hated having to think about people living in tin boxes, and wondered why it always took Cathy so long to answer the door. Did she still bother to primp for him? If so, he couldn’t imagine why.
The light came on above his head and he heard her slide the lock, then the door opened. She was smiling, the honest smile of a woman wh
o has long since stopped trying to be coy. The lines around her eyes surprised him, once again. In his mind, she was always young.
“I thought it was gettin’ to be about time for you to roll in here.” Cathy had never put a final g on a word in her life. In fact, everything about Cathy belied her intelligence. Jack had always suspected it was all deliberate. Or habit, from having been taught young that smart women lead lonely lives.
He offered his version of a sheepish smile. “Is it okay?”
“Well, I was expectin’ Tom Cruise, but I guess I can call and put him off till tomorrow night.”
She opened the screen door and he stepped inside. He looked around a little, as he always did, to get his bearings. Everything was neat and as stylish as she could afford for it to be on what she made at the truck stop. There was a half-finished afghan on the sofa that she must have been working on.
“How are you?” she asked.
“Lousy.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I woke up in a foul mood and I can’t shake it.”
“So I’m the remedy?”
He kissed her on the back of her head—his version of an apology—and walked into the bedroom.
She was the closest thing Jack had to a friend. They had known each other since high school. They had never really dated. Cathy’d had a boyfriend when they met—a genuine creep whom Jack, who loathed the term, couldn’t help thinking of as white trash. But even if she’d been available, in those days Jack was spending too much time on the streets or in the juvie courts to have much of a social life anyway.
They had both left school at the end of their junior year. In unrelated incidents, Cathy had dropped out and Jack had been expelled. (He and Ethan had been expelled on the same day. “Mrs. Landry, it’s very clear that your sons are not interested in anything but causing trouble, so let’s just stop wasting everybody’s time.” ) Cathy had married an abusive creep and had stayed with him until Jack had threatened to shoot him if Cathy didn’t. (Her motivation for leaving, finally, had been fear for Jack’s safety, not her own.)
Cathy and Jack had drifted apart after they left school, and especially after he went to the state prison in Reidsville for ten years, although she had visited him there a few times. When he got out, they would run into each other in town every now and then; they’d make a lot of noise about getting together for dinner or something sometime, but they never quite got around to it. Then Jack had moved to Atlanta, had thought he would have a life there. The Ritz-Carlton Buckhead had just opened, and thanks to a brilliant piece of fiction disguised as a résumé, he got a good job as a waiter in the dining room. Between his deceptively wholesome looks and whatever he’d inherited of his mother’s breeding, he had really been able to charm people in those days, and he made a small fortune in tips.
He met a woman, Paula, who worked at the registration desk, and started going out with her. Maybe he even fell in love with her. Back then it was still possible. He’d confessed his entire sordid past to her. When she’d found out about the BA he’d earned by correspondence while he was in prison, she’d encouraged him to go for his master’s, to arm himself to fight his past. He’d been in the process of filling out grad school applications when all hell had broken loose with Tallen. He moved back home to be with his mother during the trial. He handed his savings over to the court-appointed attorney to spend on a psychiatrist for the jury to ignore. He never returned to Atlanta; never saw Paula again; never gave another thought to grad school or anything resembling a career.
He and Cathy had become romantically involved (if you could call it that) the day Tallen was sentenced. She’d called him as soon as she heard. Jack had been out of his mind, and she had come to comfort him. He couldn’t remember how they’d ended up in bed. (Surely he hadn’t been trying to seduce Cathy a few hours after finding out that Tallen had been sentenced to die?) Even if he hadn’t instigated it, it seemed heartless and incongruous, thinking about it now. But at the time it had seemed very natural, perfectly in keeping with the desperation he had felt.
Even after that night, Jack and Cathy had never been anything approaching a couple. Jack didn’t have the stamina to be in a relationship, and Cathy had never had the stamina to stay out of one. The two of them would get together from time to time, whenever one of them needed the other for anything. That almost always meant sex, since that was the only thing either of them needed that the other could supply.
These days they never wasted time with small talk, so Jack had everything off but his jeans when Cathy came out of the bathroom, still dressed. She went over and sat on the bed and looked at him. “I want to talk to you.”
“About what?”
“About us. About this.”
Jack looked at her, worried. Surely she knew him well enough to know he wasn’t going to talk about “them” and “this.” He’d be a streak of light out the door.
“Stop lookin’ so petrified. It’s not gonna kill you.” She patted the bed. “Come here and sit down.”
He sat on the end of the bed. She frowned at him.
“Up here,” she said, patting the bed right next to her. He didn’t move. “Jack, come on. I just need to talk for a minute.” She smiled. “You don’t even have to speak, you can just nod every now and then.” As usual, her voice calmed him a little. He moved up next to her and relaxed, as much as he could. He still dreaded this conversation, whatever it was.
“You’re a nervous wreck,” she said, starting to massage his shoulders. “Do you see what a nervous wreck you are?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever tried to deny being a nervous wreck, or any other kind of wreck.”
“I know you don’t deny it, but I’m not sure you really notice it, either. Let me tell you what happens when you come here . . .”
“I know what happens.”
“I’m not sure you do. And even if you do, you need to hear it out loud. Do you know how often you show up here?”
He didn’t answer. She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, then continued. “You come here roughly every three months. Unless it’s been rainin’ a lot, then you come more often. I think that’s because when it rains, you’re not outside, you’re not workin’, you don’t have any way to let off steam. Because that’s what most of this is about. Lettin’ off steam. And I’m not sayin’ that’s bad. I just want to make sure you know what you do and why you do it. It’s gonna be important to you later.”
“I know what I do and why I do it,” he said, trying to be patient. “Why can’t you trust me on that?”
“What happens when you start thinkin’ about comin’ here? How do you feel?”
“Cathy . . .”
“Just tell me, the simplest way you know how.”
He thought about it for a minute. He knew she wasn’t going to let him out of this. “I feel . . . like I can’t stay calm.” He looked at her. She was nodding.
“Okay. That’s good.”
“Great. I passed. Is it over?”
“It’s not just about sex, Jack. It’s about that volcano you sit on all the time.”
“You think I’m unaware of it?”
“I love you to death, Jack. You’re my oldest friend, and I’d love to think it could be more than that, but you . . . you know . . . your life is what it is and I think it’s a stupid waste, but it is your life.”
He suddenly knew what she was going to say. He kept quiet and let her say it.
“I’ve been seein’ somebody. I mean, really seein’ somebody . . . I think we’re . . .” She stopped. She shook her head, then looked away, toward the wall. He got her drift. He’d been through lots of boyfriends with Cathy, and while there may have been occasional problems of logistics, it had never altered their relationship.
“Where’d you meet him?” He didn’t know why it mattered, but he wasn’t ready to say anything else.
She looked back at him. “He’s the night manager at Winn-Dixie. He transferred from Columbus about six mont
hs ago. I kept seein’ him in there . . . One night I had to get a check approved and we started talkin’ . . . He asked me out and we just . . .” Her voice trailed off. “God, I hate this . . .”
“Cathy, it’s okay,” he said quietly.
She was starting to cry. He pulled her to him and held her. She tried to go on.
“I want a life, Jack. I’m tired of being alone, I’m tired of living in a trailer . . .” Jack handed her a tissue from the box by the bed and she dried her eyes. “I know I’m probably just headin’ for another disaster—”
“You don’t know that. It could be fine.” He kissed her cheek, then rubbed a stray tear away with his thumb. “Don’t cry. You’ve told me, it’s over, everything’s okay.”
“I’m worried about you.”
“Cathy, I’ll be okay. I’m not going to go nuts, I’m not going to . . .” He stopped. “Look, if I didn’t know how to take care of myself, I wouldn’t be here, would I?”
“But after tonight?”
“I’ll come out to the truck stop. You can introduce me to some of your friends.”
She smiled a little. “Just . . . be careful.”
“I’m always careful. You know that.”
Back home, Jack went through the nightly routine like a robot: got undressed, brushed his teeth, set the coffeepot. He got into bed and tried to read, but he couldn’t keep his mind focused. It kept going back to everything Cathy had said. Was he that volatile, he wondered, that a prolonged period of celibacy was a threat to society? Maybe, but it didn’t matter. It wasn’t a theory he planned to test.
It took his mind a while to settle down, but he finally felt himself slipping into unconsciousness and was deeply grateful.
He was walking down a shady residential street. Broad daylight. Up ahead he saw a girl walking toward him. She was in her late teens, pretty, with long blond hair and tan legs in cutoff blue jeans. She smiled and motioned for him to come to her. He went, stood in front of her, and waited to see what she wanted. She looked at him oddly, like she could hear his thoughts and was pausing to listen. And then, without warning, she was kissing him, with a strength that amazed him. He could barely stand up. And then he realized she was pushing him down. He felt his knees give way and he was on the ground and she was on top of him, still kissing him, his face cupped in her strong hands. He kept his eyes closed and tried to just go with it, but he couldn’t stop wondering why it didn’t feel as good as it should. Something told him to open his eyes; he did, and instantly he knew something was wrong. The girl’s hair, hanging down around his face, was not blond anymore. It was gray and coarse. He pushed her away so he could see her face. It wasn’t the girl.
