“When I last spoke to Grace,” his mother spoke up quickly as if she’d read his mind, “she told me you’d been to Mexico again, the Yucatan, or somewhere.”
“Mexico City. I flew there with Rafe to pick up a shipment.”
“It seems as if you’re down there all the time now.”
“If we pick up inventory there, it’s off the books. We don’t have to pay duty on it.”
“That’s illegal.” She ladled sugar into her glass, stirred dissonant circles.
“C’mon, Ma, everybody does it. Since when are you a fan of financing big government, huh?”
“It’s drugs, I bet. That’s how people like Louis Tilley get rich. They run drugs.”
Jarrett laughed, even though he’d suspected the same thing. “It’s not drugs.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’ve unpacked the crates. It’s those little statues and dumb-looking clay dishes. A bunch of junk that’s supposed to look like the old stuff. I told you, Tilley’s big into it. Not the knock-offs, but the real thing. He calls it art. I call it crap.” Jarrett crooked his little finger. “Uneducated slob that I am, I don’t have the intellect to properly appreciate it.”
“So maybe the statues are full of drugs. I’ve seen that before on TV.”
“They’re decorative pieces, Mom, part of the furnishings for the resort properties. We just finished outfitting the newest one in Phoenix. La Paloma it’s called. Arnold Palmer designed the golf course.”
“You’re a decorator?”
He made a face. “Besides finding resort property, I oversee the construction, interface with the architects, the superintendents. I get all those headaches. That’s why Tilley pays me the big bucks. The other stuff, the trips I make with Rafe, that’s more like vacation, you know? Getting to travel, to see different places. It beats hell out of going into the office every day. Anyway, Rafe’s a regular guy. I can talk to him.” Jarrett shrugged. According to what he’d heard, Salazar was worth more than Tilley, but Rafe wasn’t a bastard about it. He could enjoy a couple of cold cervezas and a plate full of nachos. He cared whether the Astros had a chance at winning the pennant this year. Jarrett thought, outside of Daryl Tibbets, who’d been his best man at his wedding, Rafe was probably the closest friend he’d ever had.
“How well do you know this Rafe person?” His mother sipped her tea.
“Not well, but—”
“But what?”
“Sometimes,” Jarrett began, stopped, went on. “Sometimes I feel like I’m getting played, I guess.” He might as well tell his mom. It wasn’t like he could air his doubts with Grace.
“By Rafe?”
“No. Tilley.” Jarrett toyed with the sugar spoon. “I get this feeling if I don’t go along—”
“What?”
I’ll lose it all, Jarrett thought. Grace, the job, the bennies. Tilley would see to it. That’s what scared him, but if he put it that way to his mother, she’d go off. Start yapping about his self respect as if that meant anything to anyone outside of, maybe, her. Money, big money, that was what counted. In Tilley’s world, money talked and bullshit walked. No one gave a damn about respect, self or otherwise.
“Jarrett?”
“Louis smokes cigars.”
“I know. They stink to high heaven.”
“He smuggles them into the States from Cuba. Or Rafe does. He has connections.”
His mother’s glance reflected disapproval.
Jarrett plowed on. Years later, when the memory of the conversation returned, he’d see how hard he’d been trying to tell his mom the truth, which was that he was afraid. Crazy afraid. If she’d asked him of what, though, he doubted he could have said. He might have told her he felt like he was at war, like he was running but not fast enough. From his prison bunk, he would see himself sitting in his mother’s kitchen that day, still a free man, and he’d think somewhere in his mind he must have entertained a wild hope that she’d see what was happening to him, the way she had when she’d saved him from drowning, and she’d stop him. He would think that’s why he kept talking, feeding her clues.
“What if some of the artifacts Rafe brings into the country aren’t knockoffs?” he asked her. “What if they’re the real thing?”
“You mean the real pieces are being mixed in with the fakes?”
“It may look like a bunch of dime store junk to me, but the real stuff is worth a fortune to collectors. Thousands, millions.”
“Are you saying it’s stolen?”
“I’m saying Rafe and I pick up these guys, big spenders from New York, Paris, Hong Kong and fly them here or to Phoenix or Vegas. We put them up in a suite in one of our hotels where these things are sitting around.” Jarrett sifted sugar from the spoon back into the bowl making a series of tiny pyramids. “It’s like they’re shopping.”
“But who or where is the stuff being stolen from? Museums?”
“Maybe, or they could be robbing the digs, you know, the actual tombs. Rafe’s got crews working for him, guys who know all the places and ways.” In fact, Jarrett had gone with Rafe a couple of times to pick up items, once near Belize. Another time they’d met a guy on an airstrip somewhere in Guatemala. There had been mountains in the distance. The Sierra Madre de Chiapas mountains, according to the map Jarrett had studied. “Customs wouldn’t know any better than me what they’re looking at.”
“Jarrett, for heaven’s sake, you have to go to the police. What if you get caught? You already have a record.”
He made a face. This was a whole different ballgame, a whole different league than the juvie stuff. “What if I’m wrong? It’s not like anybody has actually said—”
“You can’t think for one second that Louis Tilley cares what happens to you?”
“Mom, calm down.”
“I will not. He doesn’t care what happens to you. He’ll sacrifice you in a heartbeat.”
Jarrett clenched his jaw. She didn’t know what she was talking about; when had she ever? “You never believe anything good can happen. Why is that, Ma?”
“That isn’t true.”
“Guys dumber than me have been successful.”
“You aren’t dumb. You just want too much. You always have. Life isn’t a rags to riches fairy tale. When things come too easily, there’s always a catch.”
“I know what I’m doing.” He stood up.
“But you’re worried. I can see it in your eyes. You didn’t stop by because you feel good about what you’re doing. Did you?” she insisted.
The screen door slammed and Jarrett was grateful when Cort appeared. He tossed his keys on the countertop, gave Jarrett a one-armed hug. “What’re you doing here, ace? Slumming?”
“Leaving.” Jarrett gently squeezed his mother’s shoulder.
It would be a long time before they would speak so frankly to each other again. By then Jarrett would be awaiting trial for murder and his mother would be diagnosed with cancer. She wouldn’t live to hear Jarrett sentenced to death and he would always be grateful that she was spared that much at least.
Chapter 15
Saturday, October 2, 1999 - 15 days remain
Sophia finds Thomas at the far end of the fence-line, wielding the hammer. She waits until he stops to say his name, “Thomas?” and he turns, lifting his cap.
Wiping his brow with his elbow. “Hey, doc.”
“Hey, yourself.” She holds up a thermos and two cups. “I brought lemonade. I thought maybe you could use a break.”
“I should probably finish.”
She sets the thermos and cups on the garden bench near the rose arbor. “How about if I help? I’m not much with the tools, but I’m pretty good at step-and-fetch.”
“Step-and—huh?”
She laughs. “Never mind,” she says and picking up a board, she hands it to him. “Seriously, it might go faster with two of us working unless you’d rather be alone?”
Thomas says it’s fine, whatever she wants, but Sophia won’t d
elude herself that she’s welcome. His wish that she’d mind her own business is as palpable as the unhappiness that shadows his eyes. She thinks of his mother’s and his uncle’s drama that took place in the driveway yesterday and how unfortunate it is if he happened to overhear it.
She begins passing him slats and nails and he hammers them into place. They get into a rhythm repeating the process several times before he pauses.
Sophia compliments him on his expertise. She says, “I’ve got another job. What do you know about piers.”
“Piers?”
“There’s a lake on the other side of this fence.”
Thomas cranes his neck.
“You can’t see it from here, it’s beyond the trees, and there’s a pier you can sit on, but it’s old and it worries me.”
“Do you have a boat?”
“No, the lake is small and shallow and it isn’t exactly mine. I just borrow it. I think the property is abandoned. I’ve never run into anyone there. I’ve been borrowing it for years.”
“That gate with the round window, is that how you get to it?” Thomas nods down the fence line. “It’s pretty cool.”
“It’s called a moon gate. I found it at a salvage yard. I dragged some Virginia bluestone back there too and made a path. It’s very peaceful with the trees and the pier over the water.”
“It’s your secret garden.” He grins.
“Exactly.” She smiles pleased at his perceptiveness.
“Well, I can look at the pier for you; I can probably fix it, too.” Thomas gives the fence slat another hammer blow, looks at her sidelong. “But you don’t have to make up stuff to talk to me.”
“What makes you—?”
“Mom wants me to see Jarrett. She went off on me about it yesterday, then she went off on Uncle Cort; now she’s got you involved.” Thomas shoves the hammer into the back pocket of his cargo shorts and reaching around Sophia, he pulls another rough cedar slat off the stack. “It’s not going to happen.” He straightens and from his look, Sophia knows he heard at least some of yesterday’s discussion between her and his mom, but she won’t ask.
“Do you always call your dad by his first name?” she says instead.
“Usually.”
“Any reason?”
“Well, the way I look at it almost any guy can father a kid, but it takes more than biology to be a dad.”
Thomas’s answer sounds rehearsed, as if he’s repeated it dozens of times. Maybe he even believes it by now, but Sophia doesn’t. It’s a defense, a cover against what she senses in Thomas is an unraveling hem of panic and bewilderment. He’s foundering as badly as Grace. But fifteen is so young. She glances off. She was pregnant when she was Thomas’s age. It shocks her to remember this; it is like having a glass of ice water thrown in her face.
She assumes it’s this feeling that prompts her to admit that sometimes she calls her mother by her first name too. And then she suffers a twinge of anxiety at having given up this personal detail. But there is something about this boy, this soon-to-be fatherless boy, who is groping in the dark confusion of his feelings for solid ground, the ground of his family. Groping for that warm, safe, flesh and blood connection and it’s not there. In the same way that hers was not. She meets Thomas’s gaze that is hostile and difficult.
He says, “So you get where I’m coming from.”
“I do,” Sophia answers. All too clearly. The thought arcs through her brain. She can feel the slippery ligature of his anguish and his need under the rough burr of his attitude and her heart reaches out to him. She waits through a fresh series of hammer blows. “Is that why you don’t want to see him,” she says when Thomas steps back, “because you feel as if he isn’t really your dad?”
“Mom thinks I’ll be sorry after he’s dead, but she’s wrong.”
“How can you be sure though? I mean even shrinks like me can find the whole subject of death, the finality of it daunting, even frightening to grasp, especially when it’s a family member.”
His eyes reflect the flash of a smile. It is her use of the word “shrink”, she thinks, that has mollified his attitude.
But his tone of voice isn’t giving an inch. “Mom’s the one who can’t grasp it, that it’s over.” He gives the air an emphatic slice with his hand. “There’s no reason to see Jarrett again. He doesn’t care about his own life anymore much less ours. He’s done.”
“You seem very sure. Can you tell me why?”
“How come you call your mom by her first name?”
“I suppose I feel about her the way you feel about your dad. We aren’t close.” Sophia answers honestly. Thomas deserves the truth, and in fact, it is surprisingly refreshing to deliver it. It is as if a cool wind is blowing through her mind.
“What about your dad?”
“He died years ago, cancer.”
“Were you there? Did you visit him? Did you say good-bye?”
“No.” Sophia guesses where Thomas is heading before he speaks again.
Before he asks her, “Do you feel guilty?”
“The circumstances were very different,” she begins, but then she drops it. However little her father might deserve it, her every remembrance of him is encumbered by the weight of his failure of her, the sense that he was never there for her, never took her part. Never fought for her. It’s so childish and wrong to blame him for what were essentially her mistakes. As an adult and a psychologist, she knows this. Sophia fingers the nails, aligning them in the box. Dylan’s death is on her hands, not her father’s, not Esther’s, but hers. Hers alone.
“Look, I know Mom thinks I blame myself for how Jarrett called off his appeals, but I don’t. Why should I? What I said was the truth and I don’t feel bad about it. You can tell her I said so, okay?” Thomas’s eyes are hot with insult, that angst that teenagers are so practiced at. “Tell her I don’t care anymore what she does or Uncle Cort or any of them.”
Sophia holds his glance. “It seems as if you’re referring to something more than just your dad’s situation.”
He looks beyond her, into the middle distance, his discomfiture evident in the working of his jaw, the flush that crawls over his cheeks.
He knows, Sophia thinks, how his mother and his uncle feel about each other. And why wouldn’t he? Children are intuitive; she’s already felt that from Thomas. She considers asking him pointblank, but as quickly dismisses the notion. Given his regard for Cort, or in spite of it, Thomas’s emotions are bound to be in a muddle. It’s unlikely he would be at ease discussing them with her. A boy his age is scarcely at ease with his own sexuality much less his mother’s.
“It’s Bri who’s in trouble.” Thomas brings his gaze around that is adamant and brims with caution. He wants the subject changed.
But even as she follows his direction, asking, “What sort of trouble?” she wants to tell him that whatever he says to her will be held in confidence even from his mother. But to speak so directly could damage the rapport she feels growing between them and so she’s left with only her expression, the tone of her voice, to convey this meaning.
“He hardly talks anymore.”
“About your dad?”
“About anything. Mom doesn’t see it. She’s never home and when she is, all she does is harp on visiting Jarrett. It’s like she doesn’t care that going to the prison makes Brian cry, makes him throw up. I tell him jokes, try and make him laugh.” Thomas lifts his chin, draws in a sharp breath. “Bri’s the one who’s life is wrecked.”
“But how exactly? Why do you feel he’s any worse off than you or your sister?”
Thomas toes the ground.
She dips her chin wanting his attention. “Thomas? Did something happen?”
“Mom and Jarrett had a huge fight the night before Jarrett got arrested.”
The night Grace delivered her ultimatum, Sophia thinks.
“Bri was home by himself. Meggie was at Gram’s and I was over at my buddy Luke’s house. Bri was scared and like a doofus, he tr
ied to stop Mom and Dad, but they just kept yelling and he—”
“Thomas?”
“He’s a good kid,” Thomas lifts his cap, shovels a hand over his hair, “a real good kid. I’m the problem, the black sheep.”
“But that night, Brian did something that worries you?”
“Forget it.” Thomas reaches for another board. “It’s not a big deal.”
“But it seems to be.”
“Do you want to know why I went off on Jarrett?” Thomas doesn’t wait for a response. “Because I can’t stand the way he sits there looking all hang dog and saying how he’s a loser and he’s real sorry—” Thomas’s chest heaves. “Why didn’t he know better?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean everybody knows you can’t dig up stuff out of a tomb and bring it into the United States without reporting it. How come Jarrett didn’t know? How come my mom didn’t? Why was he stealing stuff anyway? Him and my grandfather? And they’re all the time telling me it’s bad and I’m not supposed to?” Thomas snorts in disgust.
Sophia withholds comment. He has a right to his grievance, a right to have someone—an adult—listen without argument, without making an excuse or trying to explain what is inexplicable. What is patently wrong.
Now Thomas mentions Rafe Salazar, saying that he never trusted him the way Jarrett and his granddad did. “The guy was so fake, always on me like he wanted to be my best buddy. ‘Call me Uncle Rafe,’ he’d say and his wife was always looking all googly-eyed at me, telling me what a handsome boy I am. Now every time I turn on the TV I get to hear her go off about how she hates my dad. I bet she hates my whole family. I bet she wishes we were all going to get the needle.”
Thomas grabs another board and Sophia hands him a nail, and another, and a third, and he pounds them with furious vigor and she thinks the noise of this, the brunt force it requires, is better than any therapeutic advice or consolation she could offer. He steps back, giving the newly-installed fence board a shake, testing it. “They came here from Guadalajara for the trial. Did you hear about that? The trial?”
“I’d like to hear what you have to say about it.”
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