And she had walked that fence until Old Man Tanner came out and yelled at her to get off his goddamn fence. He yelled so loud she fell again. That broke a couple of stitches, but it didn’t hurt. Her mother shrugged and dabbed at the beads of blood with cotton and peroxide.
“What am I going to do with you?”
“Mom, I can’t stay on the porch all summer.”
Her mother had kissed Courtney’s head. “I know, baby.”
Courtney was not a baby. But she didn’t protest. Her mother had given silent approval for play to resume. Within a week, she’d broken every stitch. She even pulled them out herself because they were gross and stiff with blood. She still had the scar. It was silver now, and the faint traces of the stitches were there too, to remind her that she was tough. She didn’t hurt easy.
But here she sat, in the same room Doc had once slept in with his wife, and she didn’t feel tough. She’d gotten through the ordeal with Lily. Ruby had the same stuff as Courtney; her girl was tough, too. They’d both been okay as long as they were helping Lily. Now Ruby was pretending to be okay, but a trial was pending because the DNA evidence was conclusive: Papa Van Slyke had killed the mechanic. He’d hired a cleaner, but before the guy could get there, the three civilian men, Lily’s protectors all, had shown up. And Papa had pulled the trigger himself. There wasn’t going to be a second count for killing his wife, even with the confession splashed all over the internet and print papers. The YouTube sensation made front page news, and possibly Lily’s career, but it was inadmissible in court.
Lily was not being charged with a crime, and Harlan had given her permission to leave town, as long as she stayed in contact. There was still the matter of the family fortune, and it was unclear if that would become part of the case against Papa Van Slyke or simply be ironed out by lawyers. Courtney didn’t know where Lily had gone. Nobody did. Lily had promised she would call Ruby when she settled somewhere. So that was Ruby’s focus, still, days later. “I wonder if Lily will call today.”
Courtney glanced at the clock. Three a.m. Of course. It was like her body knew when Edward was heading home. Ruby had not mentioned Edward, not since Courtney had burst into tears the day Lily left town, and Ruby wondered if they could stop in for a burger and say hi. The tears had surprised Courtney, who was always strong for her daughter. Always. Without fail. Except that once. Ruby had turned white under her summer tan. “Never mind, Mom,” she’d said. “Who needs that old coot anyway?”
Courtney laughed because Ruby never used words like “coot.” Or she pretended to laugh, and choked back the tears and wondered what the hell was happening to her. She only let herself think of Edward after Ruby was asleep. She read the letter, over and over, the one he’d written her when they were kids.
In a way, it helped her get over the baby. It helped her cope with Ruby’s horrible experience. Now that she was out of therapist mode and back to being Mom, she was having a hard time. For the first time in a long time, she remembered what hurt felt like. And she couldn’t keep peanut butter and jelly in the house.
So Edward was a coping mechanism. Nothing more. Fantasies of what might have been kept her from other, worse, might-have-beens. She traced events backward. He’d gone off her because of the lie. About the baby. It had been a terrible lie. She didn’t know the part of herself that was capable of telling such a lie. She understood Edward’s horror. She had to forgive herself for that lie. She worked on it a little bit every day. It hurt worse than a busted stitch, worse than peroxide on raw skin, but she held herself in compassion for what she had lost. Why couldn’t Edward hold her in compassion, too?
If Edward forgave her, if they could become a family, it would help Ruby. Her daughter would feel secure, she’d have music and laughter and a man around the house. Yes, Edward should forgive her for Ruby’s sake, at the very least. She glanced at the letter, puckered with dried tears. She knew every word by heart. They were all lies.
Stop it, she told herself. But then she remembered how she’d called Edward every day since Ruby had been assaulted. She’d texted him. And he had not returned her calls or texts or in any way acted as if she were a person living in the world. Living in a world of hurt for a long time.
Maybe she didn’t know Edward at all. Maybe it had all been false, right from the start. She was confused; she should be able to figure this stuff out. She had a couple of degrees in human psychology, after all. Turns out, she didn’t know as much as she thought she did. All she knew how to do was be kind. She was very kind to Ruby. She even treated herself, when she remembered, with kindness.
And she knew, deep inside, that she would never ever heal until she could think of Edward with kindness too. She had to forgive him for not loving her. She couldn’t quite do it yet, but she would get there. As soon as she didn’t need someone to blame for her ruined life anymore, she’d forgive him. As soon as the pain went away, the baby pain, the Ruby pain, the Lily pain. As soon as that faded, she could erase the Edward pain and not even leave a scar.
****
Eddie wiped down the bar and then buffed it to a shine for the final time that night. Three nights since Lily had left town. Two nights since he’d seen Courtney’s face on the television set. One night since he’d imagined Ruby being raped and lost his ability to count change. She hadn’t been raped. That was what he had to remember so he could hand dollar bills back to his wait staff.
He didn’t think about those calls and texts and things. Had erased them all without even looking at them. He’d been alone too long, and he liked it that way. He didn’t need a house full of women around with their rose colored walls and flowered furniture. Ruby would be fine. If Courtney couldn’t cure her own daughter, well, Courtney could. She was a tough broad. The toughest.
As his staff filed out one by one, nobody asked about Ruby. This was the first night not one person had said her name. Not even a customer. Not to him, anyway. Hungry vultures had not left him alone since the shooting. It was better if he could say he didn’t know how Ruby was and leave it at that. It was better he not get mixed up in all that mess. Let the Brymans deal with it. Let Courtney’s family help. Eddie didn’t want any part of it. He couldn’t even bring himself to drop those damn divorce papers in the mail. They stared up at him from the bottom of his safe every night when he prepared the bank deposit.
Tonight was no different from any other night of his life. He hung the wet towel to dry on a hook he’d hammered for just that purpose, locked up and pulled the cash drawer out of the old-style register he refused to replace. It felt so heavy. Either he was feeling his age, or the vultures were making him rich. He took the drawer into the office.
He opened the safe and ignored that damn envelope the same way he ignored Courtney’s texts and phone calls. He was good at ignoring stuff. Had a lifetime of practice. Courtney was not the first persistent lover he’d had to shake loose.
She might be the last. He finished up just as the delivery bell rang at the back door. He looked out the security camera and saw his buddy, Harlan Tucker. He went out and let the chief of police in, locking the door behind them.
“Thought I’d check in,” Harlan said, moving into Eddie’s office and taking a seat on the sofa. Eddie had gotten used to Harlan’s semi-regular check-ins at closing time. He was not in uniform, so it was really a social call. Sometimes Harlan didn’t sleep so well. Went with the territory, he’d told Eddie one time early on in their friendship. Eddie took a beer from his personal fridge. “Frosty mug?”
Harlan laughed, opened the twist off top of his beer, and drank deep.
“No frosty mug necessary, but thanks.”
“For what?” Eddie wheeled his rolling office chair out from behind the desk and put his feet up on the other end of the beat up old sofa.
“The offer. The beer.”
Eddie nodded, wondering what was on Harlan’s mind. Working behind a bar had taught him that if you just kept your mouth shut, pretty soon someone else would open theirs.
That had always been true of Harlan.
This early morning, Harlan didn’t seem in a hurry to do much talking. He took another long pull of his beer.
“What’s up?” Eddie couldn’t help himself. He was pretty sure the entire thing with Lily and Ruby and Papa Van Slyke was as done as it was going to get for a while, but you never knew. If there were developments, he wanted to know. The realization shocked him and while Harlan drank more beer, Eddie silently wondered why he cared. Shit. He cared.
“Nothing my end. Just doing a check-in. You?” Harlan set his half-finished beer on the tiled floor.
Eddie didn’t know what to say. Something big had just happened, but it was invisible. Maybe Harlan hadn’t noticed. “Not a thing.”
“Seen anything of young Ruby?”
“No. Why?” Eddie knew that was too abrupt but he was very busy zipping up his feelings, which had decided to take control.
“Well, I thought you were going to help her get onto American Music Star or something. You were gonna teach her stage presence. She was your newest protégé. As far as I recall.” Harlan picked up his beer again and drank a slow sip, like he had all night.
“Well, yeah, I was going to,” Eddie sputtered, “but now I don’t think it’s such a good idea. Her mother…” He trailed off, unwilling to get into this shit. He had to think about it some more.
“You said she had talent. You said she could be great. You said she needed proper guidance.” Harlan eyeballed him in that way cops had, like they could see inside every lie, even the ones you told yourself. “And I remember something about how it would be great for her to have something to focus on besides almost being raped and murdered.”
Eddie winced. He felt a jab of physical pain so strong, it took his breath for a second.
“What? I say something out of line?”
“No. You’re just reminding me of what a dumb ass I’ve been.” Eddie wasn’t sure if he’d been a dumb ass for ignoring Courtney and Ruby or if he’d been a dumb ass to get involved with them in the first place.
“Oh? How so?”
“I don’t know.” Then out came the story of the pregnancy, Xander’s visit, the miscarriage, the divorce papers, the entire messy wad of life that had suddenly spilled into his neat, clean life.
Harlan listened. He’d make a good bartender. After Eddie finished, Harlan didn’t speak for a minute. He pondered while Eddie stewed. Then, finishing off his beer, Harlan belched discreetly, opened a half full case of empties that doubled as a coffee table, and set the bottle inside. He closed the lid. “You love her?”
“Who? Ruby?” Did he? He cared, but did he love? Did he even have the capacity to love anymore? What was love? He wanted, had wanted Courtney as a woman. Had wanted to help Ruby achieve her musical dreams.
“Both of them. They’re a matching set.” Harlan interrupted Eddie’s train of slippery slope logic.
“Hell, I don’t know. I don’t know if there is such a thing as love.”
“There is. I see it every day in my line of work.”
“I see a lot of drunk people acting like fools in mine.”
Harlan just nodded.
Does wanting plus caring equal love? Eddie didn’t know.
“Tell me about this so-called love you see every day.”
“I see the love a woman has for a man when he’s had a heart attack on the job and I have to go tell her he’s in the hospital. I see the love a man has for a woman when another man tries to take her away and he beats the shit out of the guy. I see the love a parent has for their child when the kid’s being bullied and they come to the station for advice. I see the love a parent has for their child…”
“Okay, okay, I get it.” It seemed that caring about another person, about their well-being, was in fact a component of love. “I might love them. I care about them.”
“That’s love, you dumb ass.”
****
After Harlan left, Eddie let himself out the back door, locked up. He did the bank drop, slowing as he approached Courtney’s street. Her light was on upstairs, just like it was every night. What was wrong with him? Only one way home but why was he slowing down, setting his foot gently on the brake? Why was he turning his head and glancing down her block?
Why then did he turn onto her road? What made his foot hit the gas pedal a little harder, speeding toward her, the love of his life, his wife, soon to be ex if he ever got up the courage to take those damn papers to the mailbox. He pulled in front of her place, cut the lights, turned off the engine, pulled out his cell phone.
“You called?” He said it like she’d phoned just a minute before, instead of forty-seven hours and twenty minutes ago. She’d answered right away. He listened to her breathing. He watched the light in her bedroom.
“Oh.”
That was all she had to say? Now what?
“How’s Ruby?”
“Fine. She’ll be fine.”
“You?”
“Good.”
“That’s a damn lie.” He didn’t know what was wrong with him. He couldn’t think of the right words to say.
“Where are you?”
“Look out your window.”
He saw the curtain move, saw the shadow of her face. Her face. He needed to see her face. “Want company?”
Chapter Eleven
Courtney felt hope rise but tamped it down. Maybe if she told Edward it would make a difference. Or maybe that would be wrong. She’d have to wait and see. It was a good sign that he’d showed up at this time of night, wasn’t it?
“Okay. Come on in.”
“Is your door not locked?”
She chuckled. It surprised her that she could laugh, even a little bit. “You kidding? In this town?”
“It’s not the same town,” he said. He was dead serious. “Too many strangers these past few summers.”
She watched him slide his long legs out of his truck, watched him start the walk to her door, had to stop herself from skipping down to meet him. She’d questioned the nurse after Ruby left about the panic attack. Was it so common as the nurse seemed to believe? Or was she only trying to calm Ruby down?
“Hi.” She peeked up at him and his open face, so full of love, made her feel hopeful but still unsure. He’d fooled her with that look a few times already these past weeks. “You sure do pick a peculiar time to pay a social call.”
“Well, as I recall, you prefer early morning visits.”
They smiled at each other, shy as kids.
He accepted a seat on her sofa and the offer of a glass of water. She went into the kitchen to get them drinks, pouring herself a half glass of wine. What the hell. It might give her courage.
Turns out, that nurse had informed her, most women who had their ovaries removed, and every other one of their female parts, slammed directly into menopause, leaving them without the vital hormones the body had been accustomed to since the onset of puberty. This often caused a single episode of panic. Nothing that would come back, the nurse, and Courtney’s subsequent research, had assured her. Her mother had been the one to sign the release forms. Next of kin, of course. And she reminded Courtney that two of her aunts had died from ovarian cancer. One was a great aunt, and Courtney had many living aunts, but she saw her mother’s point. If they were going in, might as well take it all.
She brought the drinks in and handed Edward his. Then she sat on the opposite end of the sofa. It was a very long sofa. She had probably bought it thinking of Edward’s legs stretched out on it. The subconscious was a tricky thing.
“So.” He looked at her glass of wine. She remembered how she had not sipped even that one glass that first day. She’d done research on that too, trying to find a reason to blame herself for the miscarriage and the ensuing hysterectomy. “I’m sorry you lost the baby.”
“It’s okay. Wasn’t meant to be.” She swallowed a demure sip.
“Who knows? You might have another some day.”
“No. That part of my life is over.�
� She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t say the words.
“Now, Court…” He set his glass of water carefully on a coaster and was by her side, holding her, in an instant. “If that’s what you want…”
She wasn’t sure she heard him right, but the story of the surgical removal of her female organs came tumbling out just the same. She sobbed into his checked shirt. It smelled like starch, just a little bit. She wiped her tears with her hands and reached for a tissue to finish the job.
“Sorry. I still get emotional about it all.”
“I hope you don’t blame yourself.”
“Only off and on, every five minutes.”
“Shhh. You shouldn’t.”
He continued to hold her and she put her head on his shoulder. It felt so right. “I know I shouldn’t, but I do. I think about the lie I told.” Then she told him about her anxiety issues, about the panic attacks, and the phobias. He just hugged her tighter. He kissed the side of her face, right at the temple.
“I don’t care about that.” He stopped and was silent a beat. “I do care, but I know you’ll work it out. You always do.”
“Yeah, I’ve got a plan, and I’m doing good. I just have to accept myself for who I am and not try to be somebody…”
“Oh please, honey, stay who you are! I love you. Who cares if you’re a little shy in large groups? Think I didn’t know that?”
“Really? You did?” She pretended to smack his arm. “You never said.”
“Lots of stuff I never said. Eighteen years worth. I’ll start making up for all that time right now if you’ll say yes.”
Courtney didn’t know what she was supposed to agree to, and Edward must have seen that on her face. “I’m not saying let’s get married or anything like that.”
Love and Death in Blue Lake Page 14
