“Uh …” Annabelle said, her voice high and breathy, “Alison called me. She’d been trying to get hold of Harlan all day, but he didn’t answer.”
Jennifer’s head started swimming, and her vision started going black around the edges. She said, “Hang …” and put her head between her knees. The hand holding the phone was trembling so hard, she nearly dropped it, but she managed to say, “Tell me.”
Annabelle did.
It was hot in Wyoming. About eighty-three, Harlan figured, and some of the boys were flagging. He clapped his hands and called, “Let’s bring it in! Gatorade break!” and they came jogging over. Helmets on little heads, skinny shoulders bulked up by pads.
He’d just gotten them into the shade when Owen came jogging over with that surprisingly fluid motion you didn’t expect from such a big man. “Hey,” Harlan said. “Don’t want to save the running for next week, huh?” Owen, he could tell, was itching to get to training camp the same way he was himself. As grueling as camp was, as much as you swore and ached and hated almost every minute of it—if you didn’t burn to be out on the field, you didn’t belong in this game. Plus, Harlan might have something else to play for now. That made a difference.
Owen’s face, though, was serious. Nearly grim. Harlan thought, Jennifer. The baby. And time froze.
He thought, He doesn’t even have a name yet.
Owen said, “Jennifer’s here. I left her back at the office where it’s cool. She wasn’t looking too good.”
Harlan was already going, but he turned back to say, “The kids.”
“I’ve got the kids,” Owen said. “Go.”
Harlan could run the 40 in 4.27 seconds. He ran this faster. By the time he got to the mobile home that was the football camp’s office, he was breathing hard, and his golf shirt was stuck to his back.
Jennifer wasn’t sitting inside, in the cool. She was sitting on the front steps, and when she saw him, she stood up and came to meet him. In her work clothes, which meant a turquoise knit dress that stretched over her soccer-ball-sized bump, and if he was sweaty, she was worse, her skin flushed and beads of sweat on her upper lip.
He said, “Let’s go inside.”
“Harlan—” she started to say.
“Inside,” he said, suddenly furious. “Why won’t you take care of yourself?”
She reared back, and he forced the calm and said, “Sorry. Whatever it is—tell me inside.”
After she was sitting down with a bottle of Gatorade in her hand, he said, “OK. Tell me.” And braced himself to hear it.
It would be Annabelle. It had to be Annabelle. Except that if it was Annabelle, why was she here? She would have stayed with Annabelle.
One of his other sisters. Something. Something bad.
She said, “Your dad’s accepted a plea deal. He’s confessed, and he wants to talk to you. And they’ve released your mother’s body.”
Annabelle and Dyma were waiting at the airport. Waiting on the jet, in fact, because Jennifer had chartered it. When he came through the door, Annabelle jumped up and ran. He caught her midair, held her hard, and said into her hair, “Hey. Hey, now, Bug. Hey. It’s OK.”
She said, “Mom. Dad. I just …”
“Shh,” he said. “I know. We’re going.”
It took a while, but finally, he was sitting across from Jennifer again. Dyma and Annabelle were sitting on the couch behind them, watching the same movie, Dyma holding Annabelle’s hand like the good friend she was.
An hour and a half to Bismarck. It was time to figure things out. He took a breath and said, “OK. Next steps.”
Jennifer said, “Three things. Logistics of the trip, your mom, and your dad.” Composed again, and efficient always. She went on, “I’ve already done the logistics. I got us all places at the Residence Inn. Two two-bedroom suites, and one one-bedroom for Vanessa, all close to each other. It has kitchens, and a gym and pool, because you’ll need to work out, and so will Annabelle. It’ll make you both feel better. I put it all on your card, and the flight, too. Normally, I wouldn’t have run up charges this big without asking you, but I went ahead anyway.”
He said, “Of course you should’ve done that. That’s why I put your name on it. I told you, anything you need. And that’s good, about the pool. It’s hot, and you’re achy. You need to be able to swim.”
She smiled, a little watery, maybe, reached across the table to take his hand, and said, “If I haven’t said it enough—I love you. You are such a good man. You make me proud to … to know you.”
He said, “I want to marry you.”
He didn’t mean to. It just came out. Because what he’d wanted her to say was, “You make me proud to be your wife.”
She said, “Oh,” then almost visibly set it aside and said, “We can talk about it later, don’t you think? It’s kind of an … emotional time right now.” Then smiled, just a twist of her mouth. “A really emotional time. This is as bad as it gets.”
“We can talk about it later,” he said, “but I’m not changing my mind.” It was right there in front of him, so clear that he couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen it sooner.
“OK,” she said, “but I’m going to tell you the other things now, because we don’t have that long before we land.”
“Right. Go.”
“I arranged for Alison and the family to fly over, because I can’t imagine six hours in the car with two little kids, facing this. They’ll be there by the time we arrive. I hope that’s all right.”
“Sure. How about Vanessa?”
“She was working a flight, but she’ll get here as fast as she can. Probably tonight. And I called your grandparents and arranged their tickets and their room, too. They’re coming tomorrow evening. I thought …” She took a breath. “That they’d want to be here with you right now, and that you’d want to bury your mom as soon as you can. She’s been alone long enough.”
That was it. He tried, but … he lost it.
Jennifer was beside him in the aisle. On her knees, her arms around him. He managed to say, “You need to … get back in your seat. Seat belt. And … Bug. I shouldn’t …”
“Yes,” she said, her voice fierce, and so tender, too. “You should. Annabelle needs to know that this hurts everybody, that it’s safe to hurt this badly, to let herself feel it. And you all need to say goodbye to your mom. You need to tell her you love her. You need to grieve, and you need to do it together.”
He shook his head, his hand over his face, still crying like he couldn’t stop. That place that was numb—the anesthetic had worn off, and it hurt.
It hurt.
She was still holding him. “Harlan,” she said. “Go on and cry. The grief doesn’t go away, otherwise. It just sits like a hard ball in your chest until you can’t breathe around it. You need to feel it.”
No chance of doing anything else. Finally, though, he was mopping up, and she was back in her seat. He took a few more deep, shuddering breaths, got himself back under control, and said, “Right. Next.”
She hesitated, then said, “I didn’t make final arrangements for the funeral. I wasn’t sure if you’d want her to be buried there, or maybe with your grandparents. Or even out in Portland, near you and Annabelle. I figured you all could talk about it tonight. I made some preliminary choices in case you wanted to do it in Bismarck, but I can cancel them. Or change them.”
“OK.” It was too much to think about, and she was right. They needed to do it all together.
“Last thing,” she said. “Your dad.”
“Where is he?”
“At the house. He’s still out on bail until sentencing. I didn’t make any decisions at all about that. That’s up to you.”
60
Love Wins
It was Friday afternoon, high summer in Bismarck. A day for kids to ride their bikes to the pool and run through the sprinklers and get purple tongues from their popsicles. And Harlan was driving to the house, the route as familiar as a recurring nightmare. The sky
around him summer-blue, the clouds puffy-white. Field after field of yellow sunflowers lifting their cheerful faces.
Behind him, Vanessa said, “Mom loved the sunflowers. She always had a big vase of them in the house. Do you remember that? We’d tease her that you couldn’t go anywhere without seeing sunflowers, but she said they made her happy, and we could just hush.”
“I remember that,” Alison said from beside Harlan, and Annabelle said, “I don’t.” Sounding so sad. He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw that Vanessa had her arm around her.
The four of them, doing this together. That had been Jennifer’s suggestion yesterday afternoon, when she’d come back from her swim and found him sitting on the edge of the bed, his elbows on his knees, unable to work up the energy to get up and shower after his workout.
He was never stuck. He didn’t let himself be stuck. He was stuck now.
“You know …” she said when she’d gotten the hard words out of him, “you could skip this. Of course you could. You don’t need to let him justify himself to you. If you need to confront him, to make a statement, you can do it at the sentencing hearing. That’s part of what that’s for, right?”
“Yeah,” he said. “But I want to do it now. And I don’t want to do it at all. Go back into that house … I don’t want to. But I feel like I need to.” He rubbed a hand over his jaw and tried to think, but it just wasn’t coming. Like when you had a concussion, and the thoughts wouldn’t form, but kept skittering away the more you tried to pull them in.
She said, “What if you all did it together?”
He raised his head, and she said, “Just because he asked for you, that doesn’t mean only you can go. I think, if you asked them, everybody might want to go. To be able to ask their questions. To be able to yell if they needed to. To be able to call him names. They might feel constrained, in a courtroom. And you know … there would be two reasons I think they’d all say yes. Because, first, you’re the glue. You’re the leader. You’ve got the strength to hold them together, and you’re also their protection.”
“What’s the second reason?” he asked.
“Annabelle. If you’re the protector, she’s the one you all want to protect. At least for Vanessa and you, because I’m not sure about Alison. It helps to have a protector. It helps more to be a protector.”
“Being loved deeply by someone gives you strength,” he said. “Loving someone deeply gives you courage.”
“Sometimes,” she said, “the Tao is right.”
Now, he pulled up outside the house. Not into the driveway. He didn’t want to put a car there. Irrational, maybe, or maybe not. Maybe completely rational, because sometimes, your body knew more than your brain. He turned the engine off and said, “Everyone still want to do this? No shame in staying in the car, if you can’t face it.”
“Yes,” Vanessa said.
“I think so,” Alison said.
He looked in the rearview mirror. “Bug?”
“Yes.” Her chin was set. For once, she looked older than seventeen, and he got a glimpse of the steel underneath.
He said, “Let’s go.”
When they got out of the car, Vanessa had Annabelle’s hand, and she still had it when they were standing on the porch. Framed by the railing he’d jumped off in the cape his mom had made him, when he’d been sure that if he only flapped his arms hard enough, he could fly. Next to the driveway where he’d learned to ride a bike with her running behind him. As she’d liked to tell him, “Only about five times, because after that, you balanced. Everybody said a three-year-old couldn’t ride a bike, but you learned faster than anybody else’s child. Partly because you were just that coordinated, and partly because you were so determined.” The same driveway where he’d run himself behind Alison’s bike, and then behind Annabelle’s, his hand on the seat, shouting encouragement.
Twenty minutes ago, when Jennifer had kissed him goodbye in the hotel room, her hard belly tight against him, she’d said, “Remember one thing while you’re out there. You’re a decent person because your mom raised decent people. No matter where her body is, she’s still there with you, keeping you good, keeping you decent. You’ll never lose that, because that’s her best gift, her deepest gift, and nothing can take it away. Not even death.”
He’d held her close, kissed her hair, and thought, I want to marry you. Exactly like the day before, on the plane.
His baby boy, and Jennifer.
Loving someone deeply gives you courage.
He felt everybody shrink back when their father opened the door and stood there behind the screen. Everybody except him. His muscles bunched like he was coming off the line, except that he’d never been the tackler. Never the aggressor. He stayed out on the edges, floating free, out of the trenches.
Except now.
His dad said, “Come inside.”
They’d talked about this. Harlan said, “No. We’ll do it on the back patio.” Going inside had been a bridge too far for all of them. Like you’d be sucked into the vortex.
His dad’s chin jutted out like he wanted to order them inside, but he said “Fine. Suit yourself.”
They sat at the old redwood picnic table. It was gray now, but Harlan remembered when it was new. When they’d have lemonade and hamburgers out here on warm summer nights, on those long, late evenings when you’d still be running, playing tag, catching lightning bugs, enjoying the almost-scariness of it, after nine-thirty at night. “Magic nights,” their mom had called them, watching the evening star rise.
Now, the four of them sat on one side of the table, and their father sat on the other, directly across from Harlan. Harlan looked him in the eye until his dad looked down, then said, “You wanted to tell us something. Tell us now.”
His dad had been going to work all this time. Still selling farm equipment. Still telling everybody it was all a terrible mistake, and how broken up he’d been to discover what had happened to his wife. How he was frantic to find the real killer. Harlan had no idea how many people had believed him.
He wouldn’t be selling any more tractors now, but his hair was still neat, and so were his clothes. He still looked the same.
His dad said, “I didn’t mean it to happen. None of it.”
Beside Harlan, Annabelle tensed. He took her hand under the table and said, “Where did you kill her?”
Not “where did it happen.” It hadn’t just happened. He’d killed her.
His father sighed. “At the lot. She came in right at closing time and said she needed to talk to me, and I took her back to the office. She was upset, but I thought it was just some hysterical thing, like usual.”
Harlan willed himself still, but he could feel the tension vibrating through his sisters like they were sheet metal. His dad went on, “She told me she wanted a divorce. Asked me to move out. Told me she couldn’t live with me anymore. I was just trying to … to convince her. To hold her.”
“By the neck,” Harlan said flatly.
“I was just shaking her!” his dad said. “Trying to get some sense into her! How could I know she’d die?”
Alison made a little noise of protest. Vanessa, on Annabelle’s other side, said, “You son of a bitch.” She was up, halfway across the table, reaching for their dad, who reared back.
Harlan jumped backward over the bench and grabbed Vanessa from behind, pinning her arms. “Whoa,” he said. “Whoa. We can’t.” The others had scrambled up, too, and come to stand with the two of them. Not wanting to be that close to their father.
Harlan was still holding Vanessa with one arm. With the other, he shoved Annabelle behind him. He could feel her shaking, and she needed a shield. He said, “You didn’t mean to kill her. And yet your first thought when she, what? Fell down? Wasn’t to get her help. Your first thought was to bury her.”
“No,” their dad said. “I checked her pulse. I tried to slap her, you know, to wake her up. I walked around the office for half an hour, hoping she’d wake up, not knowing what to do. T
he worst half-hour of my life. I loved her. You have to understand that. I loved her.” He was crying now.
This rage. This rage.
“You walked around instead of calling 911?” That was Alison.
“How could I?” their father said. “How could I have explained that it was an accident? How could I take care of you all from jail? How would it have been for you to know your mom was dead? I was just trying to protect you!”
Harlan had thought that he was here to protect his sisters. At this moment, he realized that his sisters were here to protect him, because they were the only reason he wasn’t lunging at their father and beating him half to death. Them, and Jennifer and the baby.
You can’t do it. You can’t. He held himself back with the effort of his life and asked the others, “Anything you want to say?”
Alison was trembling. Shaking. Annabelle was all the way behind him, holding onto his belt the same way she’d held onto the sleeve of their mom’s coat as a little girl.
Silence, and then Vanessa said, “When you die, I’ll spit on your grave.”
“Nessa,” their father said. “You have to understand. I did it for you. I did it for all of you, so you wouldn’t suffer. You were always my girl!”
“No,” she said. “No.” She was nearly blind with rage, and Harlan grabbed her hand again, just in case.
“I have one more thing to ask,” he said. “Was she pregnant?”
He didn’t want to know. It was the last thing he wanted to know. But he had to know.
Their father said, “No. Why would you think that?”
The relief nearly sent Harlan to his knees. He said, “I think we’re done. Are we done?’
“Yes.” It was Alison, her voice shaking.
“You don’t get it,” their father said. “You don’t understand what it’s like. The pressure. The kids. The bills. You don’t know what it does to a man.”
“You’re wrong,” Harlan said. “We all get it. Alison has kids. I’m going to have a son. We all have pressure. But we were raised by a woman who loved us. That’s why we know how to do it right. And that’s how she wins. She’s stronger even in death than you’ll ever be. Because love wins.”
Shame the Devil (Portland Devils Book 3) Page 46
