“He ran across a report about Miranda having been assaulted the month before she was murdered.”
“Not by Tucker?” Anxiety jolted up Lissa’s spine.
“No, no. You won’t believe who.”
“Someone we know?”
“Darren Coe.”
Lissa’s heart stalled.
“Joe didn’t have many details, but he did say Tucker was with Miranda when she went to the police station. Something must have happened to the report, though, because— Lissa what’s wrong? You’re as white as a sheet.” Her mother came and sat her down. She brought Lissa a drink of water.
But the mention of Darren Coe’s name had badly shaken her, and setting the glass down, she bent her face into her hands, trying to take it in, saying, “I don’t believe it,” repeating herself, “I don’t believe it,” even as the kaleidoscope of images from that long-ago, horrible night in Galveston careened through her mind.
Pulling her hands from her face, she stared at her mother. “Are you sure? What exactly did Joe tell you?”
“Nothing much, honey. Just that Miranda came to the police station and said Darren had assaulted her.”
“Sexually.” Lissa wasn’t asking, and she could see that her mother was mystified by her certainty.
“Yes, she was sexually assaulted and battered. Those were the words Joe used. He said she made the statement that Darren threatened to kill her if she reported him.”
“Momma! It must be him, then. He murdered her!”
“Well, it does sound as if— But I don’t know. It was a little confusing. Joe said the paperwork indicated Tucker took photos of Miranda’s injuries with his cell phone, but they’re not in the file.”
“Why didn’t Tucker ever say anything?”
“I don’t know. I’ve felt ill, though, ever since I talked to Joe, thinking of how often Darren was in this house, pretending to be Tucker’s friend.”
Lissa shook her head. “He was never anyone’s friend. I’m not sure he knows the meaning of the word.”
“You know who I thought of right away.”
Lissa met her mother’s gaze. She knew precisely. “Holly McPherson,” she said, and looking away, she felt the weight of old guilt and remorse.
“It makes me wonder if there are others, who else he might have—”
“Me.”
“What? What do you mean?”
Lissa twisted her hands in her lap, trying to find the words, the way to answer, uncertain if she could. She had prayed this day would never come.
“Lissa, honey, you’re scaring me.” Her mother pulled a chair out from the table and sat across from Lissa, their knees almost touching.
“You’re going to be so disappointed in me,” she said.
“No, sweet. Never.” She took Lissa’s hands, locking her gaze, making her feel trapped.
“There was a party in Galveston, the summer after I graduated from high school,” Lissa began, and as she went on, telling her mother about it, her foolish behavior that night, she felt as if she were describing someone else. “A girl with no sense,” she said to her mother. “I don’t know why I was so stupid. I never took any drugs before. Never did again, either.”
Her mother touched her cheek, dabbing at Lissa’s tears. “I’m so relieved you were okay, that Evan came for you. Thank God for him.”
Lissa nodded and looked away.
“So Darren was there? Were you with Courtney?”
Courtney was Darren’s older sister and Lissa’s one-time best friend. It was logical for her mother to assume they’d gone to the party together, but they hadn’t. “I don’t remember now where Courtney was.”
Lissa had always wondered what would have happened if Courtney had been there. What she would have done if she’d seen her little brother, the brother she idolized, a Hardys Walk High School star athlete, bent over the coffee table sucking cocaine up his nose. He’d grinned when he caught sight of Lissa. She had yet to try the cocaine, but she’d had enough to drink that she wasn’t as affected by his behavior as she might have been. She wasn’t on her guard against him.
“If I’d been sober,” Lissa said to her mother, “I might have tried to get him out of there. Mostly, though, I ignored him. I couldn’t figure out what he was doing there, anyway. It was a college crowd.”
“What were you doing there?”
“I was invited by a girl who was in my summer art class. Her cousin was a sophomore at UT, and he and a few of his buddies were renting a condo on the beach. Come to think of it, that might be why Darren was there. Maybe UT was trying to recruit him for baseball even then.”
“But he was doing drugs.”
Lissa made a face that let her mom know she was being naive.
Her mother was still appalled. “He was what? All of sixteen?”
“Yep, but obviously, I wasn’t thinking about that or much of anything at all. The place was packed, and the music was so loud.” Lissa remembered the sliding glass door had opened right onto the beach. She remembered sitting in the hot tub at some point. When night fell, they’d planted tiki lights in the sand, a row of them that led to the water. She’d been out there, near the shoreline, dancing, alone, when Darren came up to her.
“It was right after I tried the cocaine,” Lissa said, not looking at her mother. “He wanted me to come with him. I didn’t want to go, so he started pulling me. He got behind me and was kind of hustling me along, back up the beach, toward the condo.” She paused, swallowing, biting her lips. She felt shrouded in the thickness of her shame, the half-remembered pall of her panic. “He pushed me behind the building, where the AC compressor was....”
She remembered her sense of the place, that it had been walled in, the size of a largish closet, built out of brick, with no ceiling. The hot air blasting from the compressor had carried the stench of road tar and fainter undercurrents of salt and fish. Darren had pinned her body beneath his against the building. She remembered his breath on her neck, rank with the smell of beer. Her stomach had rolled; she’d been sure she would be sick.
“I couldn’t move,” she told her mother. “I could barely breathe. I was so scared.”
She felt his mouth hard on hers, her pulse banging in her ears. He’d shoved his knee between her thighs and said she looked as if she could use a good fucking from a real man. She’d squirmed against him, fighting him, but that had only seemed to inflame him, so she’d gone limp, and he’d loosened his grasp enough for her to tell him that if he didn’t let her go, she’d report him. He’d laughed like he couldn’t believe it, like he’d never heard anything so stupid. “Bitch, please. You think anyone’s going to believe you didn’t want it, that it wasn’t consensual?” he’d asked.
“Oh, Lissa,” her mother said, cupping her cheek.
But Lissa shrank from her touch, saying, “No, Mom. Please.”
Her mother lowered her hand, but her eyes were bright with righteous anger and her own tears for Lissa’s suffering.
“I told him I meant I would report that I saw him doing coke. I said I would tell his coach. That’s when he slammed my back against the building again and put his hand around my neck. If you could have seen the look on his face, Mom. It was evil, pure evil, so twisted, I didn’t even recognize him. He was no one I knew.”
“Please tell me he didn’t—”
“Rape me?” Lissa said the words her mother couldn’t. “No, thank God. This other guy came around the corner then. I think he was looking for a secluded spot to pee, actually, and when he saw us, he yelled out something about it being a hell of a party. I don’t think he even realized— Anyway, it distracted Darren, long enough for me to get free of him.”
That was when Lissa found her way, staggering, half-witted and jibbering, back into the condo and into the bathroom. She’d spied the p
hone and called the office number, getting Evan instead of her father.
“Does Evan know what Darren did to you?”
“No,” Lissa said. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell him that part. The rest of what he knew she’d done that night had been bad enough. She remembered her shame, corrosive and raw, and she remembered somehow feeling, through all the ugly mélange of her emotions, the first inkling that she might love Evan and want him to love her. And she’d been panicked to think she would lose her chance to find out about him. She had been so afraid he would think she was nothing better than some wild, stupid girl and dismiss every thought of her. And so she hadn’t confided in him. Now she wondered if she would have to. He would be so angry. Not because it happened, but because she’d kept it a secret. She hadn’t trusted him. But she had an even worse regret: that by not speaking up, she had protected Darren, allowing him to assault other girls. Holly and now Miranda, and who knew how many others? Lissa put her face in her hands again.
“It breaks my heart that you went through it alone,” her mother said.
Lissa lifted her gaze. “There’s more, Momma. Darren threatened to hurt Tucker if I ever said anything.”
“He was serious?”
“I was such a chicken, I believed him, and all I could think was how I was leaving for college at the end of the summer. But Tucker still had two years with Darren in the same school.”
“Oh, Lissa—”
“Aaghh. It’s been so long since I thought of any of this! It was only a matter of weeks after I left for A&M that Darren assaulted Holly. I was sick when Tucker called and told me.”
“Does Tucker know that Darren—?”
“I’ve never told anyone, Momma. I was too ashamed. I still am.” Tears coursed down Lissa’s cheeks.
Her mother found a tissue and brought it to her. She held Lissa, and the murmur of her voice was soothing, a lullaby, and Lissa found comfort in it, enough so that she regained a semblance of composure.
She drew back, blowing her nose, dabbing her face. “What Darren did to Holly was the same as what he did to me. That’s how I knew she was telling the truth. If only I’d said something before, but I was afraid for Tucker and for me. Now there’s Miranda. If he did murder her, it’s my fault.”
“No! Honey, you can’t blame yourself. When I think what could have happened. Oh, I always knew there was something the matter with Darren—”
“Would you have been as sympathetic if you had known then? Would you have even listened to me?” Lissa was suddenly furious, as if Darren’s assault and the terrible consequences of her silence about it were her mother’s fault. But Lissa couldn’t stand to think of the harm she’d done, or the harm Darren had done because she had been a coward; she had allowed herself to be victimized. Being angry with her mother was easier. “You always had your hands full with Tucker,” she said, and her tone was hotly accusing.
Her mother stared, and Lissa saw that she was bewildered and clearly hurt, but Lissa went on, anyway. “His issues were so huge,” she said. “They took up every room. They sucked the energy right out of this house. I couldn’t add to that. You needed me to be good, to keep to the straight and narrow, and except for that one night in Galveston, I pretty much always did. This probably isn’t the right time to say all of this—” Lissa pressed her fingertips to her brow, wondering at herself, the agitated jumble of her feelings.
“I’m so sorry,” her mother murmured, “for what happened to you, for not being there for you, for your feeling that Tucker took precedence. I never wanted that, but I know it’s true, and I’m sorry for that, too.” She left Lissa and, finding the kitchen towel, blotted her face. “But you must realize how much harder on him your dad was. I always felt I had to compensate.”
At first Lissa was so astonished all she could do was stare at her mother, and when she did finally speak, her resentment was back to sharpen every word. “I didn’t ask to be favored, and honestly, I never felt Daddy spared me anything.”
“He bought you a car for graduation. Tucker got a savings bond.”
“Please correct me if I’m wrong, but that car was given to me so I’d have a fast way to get home from A&M if Tucker got into trouble. I’m always the one who has to bail him out.”
“That isn’t true, Lissa. Trust me, I’ve done my share, more than my share. You’d be surprised.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Never mind,” her mother said, but her eyes were troubled, and her hands when she reached to straighten her hair were shaking. “I’m just upset for what happened to you and everything else. I don’t half know what I’m saying.”
“No, Mom, there’s something more.” Lissa was certain of it. She wiped her eyes, settled her breath. “You were telling me about the report Joe found. Did he say Darren is a suspect in Miranda’s murder?”
“He said he’d call when he had more information.”
“Well, I can believe it, can’t you, that Darren could kill someone?” The words sounded bald and cold, but Lissa felt their truth in her bones, in the core of her heart. “When I remember how he looked that night...” She suppressed a shudder.
“You’re right, you know, about the car.”
Lissa looked at her mother.
“We did want you to have a way home, just in case.”
“Momma, don’t worry about it. I don’t know why I brought it up.”
“No, let me finish. I always knew it was too much, that we shouldn’t ask it of you, that you shouldn’t be burdened with the responsibility of your brother, but things have been different for him, harder, because of your dad, his expectations, as much as you don’t want to hear—”
“I do want to hear, if you mean you’re finally going to tell me the whole story about Dad, what happened to him in the war and what really happened that day he put Tucker in the closet.”
“You know all of that.”
“No. I don’t. I know the gist of it and that’s all. It’s like this big thing, a big jagged knife, came along and opened a wound in our family, and we’ve been pretending ever since that nothing happened.”
Her mother’s stare drifted.
“Mom?”
“Now isn’t the time.”
“Then I have to go.”
The pause they shared was impatient and sad, and Lissa regretted it. She thought of Dr. White and his upsetting suspicions and how badly she wanted to confide them to her mother. She needed her mother’s support and advice before going home to tell Evan. But this was the perfect example of Lissa’s complaint. Her mother was already stressed, already disturbed enough over Tucker and all this new business about Darren Coe. Lissa couldn’t add to that. It wouldn’t be right or fair. She went to her mother and hugged her. “I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”
Her mother held her close, then let her go.
On her way to her truck, Lissa passed Tucker on the sidewalk to the alley. She thought of stopping, of asking him why he’d never told her about the assault charge Miranda had leveled against Darren, but Tucker looked upset. He looked as if he was in a mood, and she couldn’t deal with it. He called her name and asked her to wait, but she waved him off.
“Later,” she said, “okay? I have to go home now.”
In hindsight, she would be sorry she didn’t stop to speak to him, to soothe him, not that it would have changed anything. It was just the last time either one of them would be free.
12
EMILY WAS STILL thinking about Lissa, still disturbed, when she sensed his presence, and closing the oven door on the cherry pie, she hesitated before turning to greet him. She needed a moment to switch gears, a moment to find the right way, if there was one, to tell Roy that she hadn’t ordered Tucker to leave, that, in fact, if Roy wanted it to happen, he would have to do it himself. S
he was thinking of how to word it: Tucker’s working at Lissa’s just as he said he would. Doesn’t that say something, mean something? she would say. He just needs a chance, our support, a roof over his head until he can get on his feet.... She was holding this very speech in her mouth as she turned, but it died on her tongue when she saw that instead of Roy it was Tucker who had appeared. One look at him, at his dark, disgruntled expression, and her heart fell, and for no reason she could name the smallest electric jolt of panic rocketed through her veins.
“I thought you were at Lissa’s.” She forced a smile.
One that he didn’t return. He was in a mood she knew all too well, the one where he wanted her to know he was unhappy. He would want her to fix it, whatever was wrong. All his high-flown talk last night, the promise that he’d changed, his sincerity, had been real, but only in the moment. She ought to have known better than to buy in to it. Hadn’t she heard it before, a thousand times? Didn’t she—she more than anyone—know Tucker’s temperament was more fickle than the south Texas weather?
Emily picked up the kitchen towel and folded it in half, smoothing the crease. She knew everything about him and almost nothing about her own daughter. She thought of all that Lissa had confessed, terrible things she’d known nothing about. Emily couldn’t stand it, thinking of how desperately her daughter had needed her, and she hadn’t even noticed. She’d been too distracted with worry over Tucker, too busy running interference for him, trying to stay one step ahead, trying to make up for—what?
Lissa had been there through the dark and blessedly brief number of years when her father drank, when he ranted and raved. She’d been wakened by his shouts in the night. But she hadn’t drawn her father’s attention like Tucker had. Roy loved his daughter with his whole heart, but he had poured his soul into his son, only to watch him fiddle away every last opportunity. Roy would accuse Emily of overcompensating for Tucker’s shortcomings. He would say she made excuses for him. But Roy was so impatient with Tucker, so ready to blame him when it was Roy’s own mistaken sense of failure as a man, a soldier and a father that lay at the root of his misery.
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