by Shawna Seed
“I understand,” Zuk said.
“That would be fair, you know? She doesn’t deserve anything bad to happen to her.”
“No,” Zuk said. “She didn’t.”
“She’s not dead,” Brian said.
Mitch patted Brian’s arm once and stood.
“Detective Zuk, I’ll walk you out.”
After his dad and Zuk walked outside, Brian slowly unlaced his work boots, pulled them off and put them under the coffee table.
He stretched out on the couch. The lamp was shining in his face, but Brian didn’t feel like getting up to turn it off. He flung one arm over his eyes to block the light. He could hear his dad and Zuk talking outside, but he couldn’t make out the words.
He wondered whether he should have told the cop what happened to Sharlah when she was 15 and took a ride home from a party with a guy she knew from school. He decided it wouldn’t make any difference.
Anyway, it wasn’t his secret to share. Sharlah only told him because she wanted him to understand why she’d dropped out in 10th grade.
Brian heard the front door open.
“Brian? Are you OK? Are you getting one of your headaches?”
“Tired,” Brian said. He swung his legs around and sat up. “I’m going to bed.”
“It’s not even 8 o’clock!”
His father’s voice was loud, and Brian flinched. “I didn’t sleep much last night.”
“You haven’t had any supper,” Mitch said, calmer now. “You’ll feel better if you eat. How about I call for pizza from that place you like?”
When Brian didn’t object, Mitch walked to the kitchen and called in the order.
“Should be about 30 minutes,” Mitch said, returning to the living room. He sat next to Brian on the couch. “Do you want to talk about what the detective said?”
“No.”
“I think maybe we should. You need to prepare yourself for…”
“She’s not dead, Dad. She’s not.”
“I think maybe this is her, Brian. I think we might finally have an answer.”
As he’d been so many times, Brian was tempted to tell his father the truth – the money under the house, all of it. But then he remembered what his lawyer said, that it was selfish to burden family members with knowledge.
“I would know if she was dead,” Brian said. “I would feel it – I know I would.”
“That doesn’t make sense, Brian.”
Brian couldn’t explain it to his father, but there had been many times when his heart had reached for Sharlah, and he’d never felt a void. She was out there. He believed that. He had to.
Mitch put his hand on Brian’s knee. “If she was leaving you, she would have let you know, don’t you think?”
Brian shrugged. He had debated this many times in his head and failed to come up with an adequate explanation.
“Brian, I think maybe it’s time to get some help with this.”
Brian jerked his leg away, dislodging his father’s hand. “You mean help believing Sharlah’s dead? Why would I want that?”
“You have to move on, son. This isn’t right, how you’re feeling.”
Brian sensed an opening. He turned to look his father in the eye. “It’s worse than what you told me, isn’t it? I’m brain-damaged or something.”
Mitch looked aghast. “No! Of course not!”
“Tell me the truth, Dad. I want to know.”
“We’ve been over this. The neurologist said your symptoms were mostly normal for concussion,” Mitch said. “But he also said some of your problems might be psychological. That’s why I’m thinking you need to talk to someone.”
Brian did not want to have this discussion. He thought about getting up and going to bed, but that seemed rude to his father, who was only trying to help. He wasn’t sure what to do – it seemed he never was these days – so he did nothing.
“Brian?” His father put his hand on Brian’s arm, and Brian recoiled.
“What are you thinking? It worries me when you drift off like that.”
Brian knew this was a problem. He would start shuffling through thoughts in his head like a deck of cards, trying to find the right one to play, and without realizing it he’d go quiet for long stretches. It frightened people.
“Sorry. I’m tired.”
“See, that worries me, too,” his father said. “Seems like all you do is work and sleep.”
“If there’s something you need to me to do, just tell me,” Brian said. “I don’t notice stuff. You have to tell me.”
“I’m not talking about chores that need doing. I’m talking about your life, son. Aren’t you interested in anything? Why not go back to that tutor for your reading?”
Brian wished he could explain to his father why that idea was hopeless, but he couldn’t put into words how his brain worked – actually, didn’t work.
“I don’t think there’s any point,” he said.
“You won’t know unless you try,” Mitch countered. “What about getting some exercise? Why don’t you join a gym? Remember how you and Kevin used to shoot hoops in the driveway? You’d switch on the porch light and keep playing in the dark.”
Brian understood how his father was able to talk so many people into buying expensive boats – he simply never gave up.
“Gyms cost money,” Brian said. “Anyway, my hand-eye coordination is gone.”
“Why don’t we go out tomorrow and get you a guitar? Wouldn’t you like to start playing again?”
Brian started to object – guitars were expensive, the store would be crowded – but his father cut him off. “You can use your bonus, and if you’re short I’ll front you the rest.”
Brian had forgotten about the bonus check. He patted his shirt pocket and was relieved to find it still there.
“Can I borrow your pen?”
Mitch always had a pen in his shirt pocket, at the ready for closing a deal. Puzzled, he pulled it out and clicked it open before handing it to Brian.
Brian endorsed the check and handed the pen and the check back to his father.
“What’s this?”
“Put it toward the lawyer’s bill.”
His father was getting angry now – Brian recognized the signs – but he was trying not to show it.
“How much more are you going to punish yourself, Brian? Seems to me like the state of Texas did more than enough.”
“Mom wouldn’t agree with you,” Brian said. As soon as he said it, he regretted bringing up his mother. It was a sucker punch, and his father didn’t deserve that.
Mitch’s shoulders sagged. “I know it’s hard, but you shouldn’t take what she does to heart. A lot of it’s got nothing to do with you.”
Embarrassed at his loss of control, Brian got up. “The pizza will be here soon. I’d better clean up.”
In the bathroom, he washed his hands and face, then paused to study his reflection.
His sister-in-law had helped him choose glasses, and now that his hair was longer, the scar on his head wasn’t quite so visible. Anyone who didn’t know what he looked like before might not even notice the marks on his face.
Brian had never thought of himself as vain, but he realized that he must have been. As early as sixth grade, girls thought he was cute – not as good-looking as Kevin, maybe, but who was? Sharlah always talked about how she loved his eyes and his smile.
Brian tried a smile for the mirror, just to see.
His father had pulled the living room curtains aside and was staring out the window.
“Still no pizza?”
Mitch turned away from the window and let the curtain fall. “You know what I was just thinking about? The state baseball tournament your junior year.”
Brian breathed a sigh of relief. This was safer territory.
“Do you remember that big lefty from San Antonio? You came up to bat, down a run, one on, and you got down two strikes right away,” Mitch said. “But you dug in there and you worked the count. Then you
smacked that double that tied the game. I was so proud of you, Brian, I thought I was going to bust.”
Brian had relived that moment many times. “I remember standing at second and seeing you in the stands,” he said. “I didn’t know you were coming. But we lost that game, remember? We gave up a homer the next inning.”
“Aw, Brian, that’s not the point,” Mitch said.
“Sure it is,” Brian said. “You always told me, ‘If you’re not out there to win, you’re wasting everybody’s time.’ ”
Mitch took a couple strides toward him, and just for an instant, Brian was scared. It was a familiar dynamic – his father angry, him frightened but unwilling to back down.
“Well, if I said that – and I probably did – that was bullshit, Brian.” Mitch took a deep breath. “I was wrong. I was wrong about a lot of things,” he said.
Mitch’s words poured out in a rush. “I shouldn’t have let your mother have her way all the time to keep the peace. I look back on all the times I whipped your butt just on her say-so, and I can’t believe I did that. I whipped you for getting D’s, and I never once asked were you trying your best.”
Brian was startled to see tears glittering in his father’s eyes. He knew how to deal with his father’s anger, but tears were new – and frightening – territory. Brian did not want to explore new territory.
“It’s OK, Dad.” Brian picked up the TV remote. “Let’s see if we can find a game on.”
“No,” Mitch said. “It’s not OK. I need to get this off my chest. Don’t think I don’t know how much of this is my fault, and your mother’s. Not just what happened to you, but to Sharlah, too. We never welcomed that girl in our home, and when she was in trouble, she didn’t know where to go or who to trust. I will always regret that.
“I know it’s late to change, son, but I don’t want to be that kind of father anymore. I want things to be different between us.” He puffed his cheeks and exhaled. “There. I said my piece. Now it’s your turn.”
Brian stared at the floor. He didn’t know what to say, or where to start.
Mitch sank down on the arm of the couch. “You know why I was so proud that day?”
“You thought I was going to be the hero. But I wasn’t.”
“No,” Mitch said. “It looked for all the world like you were beat, but you hung in there and made something good happen. You can do that again, son.”
“It was just a baseball game, Dad.”
Mitch turned his head away, and Brian thought he’d finally given up.
But Mitch had had one more sales pitch, and he’d saved his best for last.
“I don’t know what became of Sharlah, son, but I do know this: She loved you something fierce. Alive or dead, this is not the life she would want for you.”
He got up and walked away then, not waiting for Brian’s reply.
Mitch was a salesman. He knew when he’d closed the deal.
EIGHT
Although it was only 9:40, it was hot in the sun, and Brian was beginning to question the wisdom of attending the funeral of a man he’d met only once.
The preacher Brian had hired over the phone was, so far, a no-show.
The funeral director – the only other person in attendance – tried to reassure Brian. “Bert’ll be here,” he said. “He’s always running late. Being the jail chaplain’s spoiled him. He’s used to a captive audience.”
Brian cracked a smile to be a good sport. He’d been out of prison for more than a decade, and it was easier now to let convict jokes roll off him.
He was impatient to get Arvin Webb’s ashes prayed over so he could be on his way. He had business he needed to take care of back in Houston, and he had to pick up his niece Ashley at the high school at 2:30. She was grounded, and Lynn had taken away her car.
Brian was starting to regret this good deed, one he’d volunteered for only because Sharlah’s brother Rod – the one in the Navy – said he didn’t care about a funeral.
Brian wasn’t sure Sharlah would care, either. He’d never heard her say a positive word about her father, and Brian hadn’t seen anything in his one meeting with Arvin Webb that made him think Sharlah had been unfair.
The call about Arvin’s death had caught him by surprise. It had been years since the day he’d visited, and he would have laid odds that the phone number he left had been swallowed up in the trailer’s chaos. But no, the deputies found it on the TV, just where Brian had left it.
A dusty brown Oldsmobile pulled into the parking lot, and a banty-rooster type in a Western-cut suit got out and hustled over, a Bible tucked under his arm.
“There’s Bert,” the funeral director said. “Told you he’d show.”
The preacher reached the two men, huffing and puffing from his short jog across the grass. “You must be Brian,” he said, extending his sweaty hand. “I sure do apologize for being late. Let’s get started. Did Mr. Webb have a favorite Scripture?”
Brian’s family had no idea where he was on this sweltering September morning. As far as they knew, he’d never been to Sharlah’s hometown, had never met her father. Like a lot of things in Brian’s life, his silence wasn’t planned. It just happened.
Things started to change after the police came to ask about the skeleton in New Mexico. The body turned out to be a California runaway, but it seemed to Brian that it might as well have been Sharlah, the way everyone acted. He hadn’t heard from the police again – they seemed to have just given up – and his family started talking about Sharlah like she was dead.
Brian refused to give in at first. He ignored the raised eyebrows when he mentioned Sharlah, and even when Kevin called him “pathetic” to his face, he just shrugged.
Slowly, though, he realized that his unwillingness to concede Sharlah’s death pained his father, who saw it as evidence that Brian wasn’t “doing better” or “moving on” or any of the other things Mitch desperately wanted his younger son to do.
So Brian went underground with his feelings, quit mentioning Sharlah or letting on that he thought about her every day. He agreed to see a counselor. Within six months, his dad talked about how much better he seemed and how counseling did him a world of good.
The truth was, Brian didn’t talk about Sharlah much with the counselor. There was no shortage of messed-up stuff in his life for them to discuss, and he didn’t want to hear about the stages of grief and getting closure, anyway.
On Sharlah’s 30th birthday, Brian took a road trip. He drove by the diner and their old address, but the house had been torn down, replaced by something bigger and nicer.
Even though it was December, he went to what had been their favorite stretch of beach and sat on the sand, watching the gentle slap of the waves, oblivious to the chill.
Sharlah seemed so far away, and every year that passed just widened the distance. Brian didn’t want to lose what little he had of Sharlah. He wanted to hang on.
He had so few memories of her, and the ones he did have had been turned over and over in his mind so many times they were worn smooth by the frequent handling. He wanted more.
There had to be more.
Tracking down Arvin Webb was easy – he was in the phone book. Working up the courage to knock on his door was hard. Brian drove to Sharlah’s hometown twice and lost his nerve before the day he finally parked his truck in the weedy yard and climbed the rickety steps to the trailer.
Sharlah had told him that her dad was a mean, miserable drunk, and Arvin did indeed look mean, miserable and drunk when he staggered to the door in response to Brian’s repeated knocking. He wore a stained white T-shirt stretched taut over his big belly and work pants that hung loose on his hips. His feet were shoved into bedroom slippers. The top of one shoe was crusted with something rust-colored. Brian suspected vomit.
Arvin didn’t say anything, just stood there and glared.
Brian towered over Arvin, and it would have been easy to intimidate him. But Brian had another strategy in mind.
“I wan
t to talk to you about Sharlah,” Brian said.
“I already done told them cops, they can’t have none of my blood.”
Brian had no idea what that meant. “I’m not a cop,” he said.
“Who the hell are you, then?”
Brian held up the bottle of Jack Daniel’s. “A friend.”
Arvin turned back into the trailer, leaving the door open. Brian followed him.
Arvin flopped into a recliner draped in a filthy blue bed sheet. Brian scanned the living room for a place to sit, but the only other pieces of furniture in the room were an end table littered with beer cans and a TV blaring a fishing show.
“Grab you a seat from in there,” Arvin said, gesturing with his chin. “You want a glass or is that all for me?”
Brian rounded the corner to the small kitchen, which was even nastier than the living room. He spotted the trailer’s back door and gave serious thought to bolting.
Was he really so desperate for any little piece of Sharlah that he’d fish for it at the bottom of Arvin’s bottle?
Brian uncapped the Jack Daniel’s and took a swig.
“I heard that!” Arvin yelled from the living room.
Brian knocked a bunch of papers off a three-legged stool and carried it back to the living room. He handed Arvin the bottle. “The rest’s for you.”
“You can cut the TV off,” Arvin said. “Use them pliers. Knob’s broke.”
Grabbing a rusty set of pliers on top of the ancient TV set, Brian turned it off. Then he positioned the stool as far upwind as he could from Arvin and sat down.
Arvin scratched at his unshaven chin. His face was puffy and had an unhealthy yellow cast. He took a long pull on the Jack Daniel’s and balanced the bottle on his thigh. He stared at Brian. “Well?”
“Tell me about Sharlah,” Brian said. “What was she like when she was a kid?”
Arvin squinted at him. “That’s what you want?”
“That’s what I want.”
Arvin remembered more about Sharlah’s childhood than Brian would have suspected.
He learned that when she was little, she called herself “Haha” because she couldn’t say Sharlah.
