Faultlines

by Barbara Taylor Sissel

  I won’t sleep, she thought.

  “I was about to give up on you.”

  Libby turned at the sound of Augie’s voice. “Oh, I know. I’m sorry,” she said. “First I got lost—again. Then I got stopped for speeding.” She made a face. “Don’t tell Ruth, okay? She’ll never let me hear the end of it.”

  He laughed and said he’d try and keep his mouth shut.

  According to Ruth’s aunt Tildy, Augie and Ruth were cousins, but so far removed only Tildy could recite the lineage that linked them. Their real connection was their work, real estate—building it, remodeling it, selling it. Between them they had it covered.

  Lifting his broad-brimmed straw hat now, Augie wiped his brow. “Where did you get pulled over?” he wanted to know.

  “On 440, not too far from here. I’d just come past the scene of an accident. There were kids all over the place.”

  Augie clicked his teeth with his tongue. “I heard about it. A couple of local boys and one of their girlfriends lost control and slammed into a tree. No names yet, though.”

  “The cop who stopped me—I think his name was Huckabee—said they were drinking.”

  “Ah, yeah, I know him. Len Huckabee, goes by Huck. I heard he was a first responder.”

  Some note of regard in Augie’s voice caught Libby’s attention. “He’s someone special?”

  Augie laughed. “Yeah, you could say—least if you get in a conversation with anyone around here that lasts longer than five minutes, somebody is going to start talking about Huck. He and another guy, John Simmons, are local legends. They took the high school in town to the state football championship back in the day. Both of them got inducted into the Texas Football Hall of Fame. I was in elementary school then, and those two guys were my heroes.” Remembered admiration lightened Augie’s voice, making him sound much younger.

  Libby smiled.

  His stare drifted down the back road of a memory she couldn’t see. “They played in college, too, on the same team, for Sam Houston State in Huntsville. Both of them on a full-ride scholarship. My dad and I never missed a home game. They were like brothers, those two. Did everything together.”

  “What happened?” The shadow in Augie’s voice prompted Libby to ask.

  “They joined the police force in San Antonio, came up through the ranks together. They were both hotshot detectives, got a lot of recognition. But around fourteen years ago, John was killed in a shoot-out with a couple of bank robbers. The crooks acted like they were going to give it up. They laid down their guns and everything, but while Huck had one of them down, the other one somehow got hold of his weapon and shot John in the head. Huck got the guy, but it was too late for John.”

  It was awful, and Libby said so.

  “Yeah,” Augie agreed. “It did a number on Huck, for sure. John’s wife, Jenna—she’s from Wyatt, too—when she moved back here from San Antonio after John died, Huck quit the force there and did the same. The Wyatt police department was happy to have him on the force here.” Augie let his gaze drift a moment and then added, “I think he’s always felt responsible for her and her son after what happened. He wanted to be close to them, to look after them.”

  “It’s hard on a boy, not having a dad.” Libby was thinking of Beck. Before his death, Beck’s father, and his mother, too, had been drunk for most of Beck’s life. Beck had quit drinking cold turkey when he suspected he might have a problem. His sister, Mia, though, was still drinking. Beck worried that one day booze would kill her the way it had their parents.

  Augie was talking about the way Huck had been there for Travis. “Just like a dad,” Augie said. “A lot of folks around here thought for sure he and Jenna would end up together. But Jenna’s got a different boyfriend now, and Huck got married a few years ago to a little Honduran gal, Coleta. He’s crazy about her. She’s a real looker—and young, a lot younger—” Augie stopped, grinned sheepishly. “I hear all this stuff from Mandy. You know.”

  Libby could have said she was learning. Mandy was Augie’s wife. She was also a hairstylist at the only beauty salon in Wyatt, called A Cut Above. Libby had yet to meet her, but Augie said she was a talker. He said she could talk the kernels off an ear of corn.

  He lifted his hat and resettled it. “Who knows how accurate any of it is when it’s a bunch of blue-haired old hens doing the yapping. That’s what I tell Mandy.”

  Libby smiled.

  “Ruth knows Coleta,” Augie said, grinning again. “Ask her sometime. Stand back, though. Last I heard, she was a little touchy on the subject.”

  “Really?”

  He winked. “We better talk about the slab before I get myself into real trouble.”

  They talked about the route the trucks would take, and parking logistics. Augie asked about Beck. “Is he coming later?”

  “No, unfortunately. Something came up. A meeting,” Libby added. “Actually, it’s a deposition. I’m a little anxious about it.” She was; she couldn’t hide it.

  Augie waited; for all that he’d repeat his wife’s gossip, he wasn’t going to pry.

  She said, “Beck told you about the balcony that collapsed at the Sea View Terrace in Bay City, didn’t he? It happened a few weeks ago.”

  “Yeah. It’s been all in the news, too. Helluva thing. All those folks dying. What was it? Nine?”

  “Yes, and several more were injured.”

  “I heard the architects were getting sued, but Beck didn’t work on that project, did he?”

  “Not officially. He and his partner, Robert, were called in as consultants. You know how it works. Sometimes with huge projects like the Sea View, the more eyes on it the better.”

  “Wonder why they’re deposing him, if that’s all his involvement was.”

  “Money,” Libby answered readily. Beck had talked about settlement figures as high as $15 million, or even more. He’d joked that with that kind of cash on the line, attorneys for both sides would depose a goldfish if they thought it would make their case.

  “But the design wasn’t the problem.” Augie talked as if he was familiar with the tragedy and had given the matter careful thought. “It was the Bituthene membrane, the plastic moisture barrier. That’s on the developer or the installer.”

  “You know how people are, though, when something like this happens.”

  “Yeah, they want somebody to pay.”

  “Not just in court, either. At least not in this case. There have been threats.”

  “You’re kidding. Against Beck?”

  “Not so far. A couple of the partners, the architects who actually worked on the design, have gotten threatening phone calls and letters accusing them of being murderers, saying they’re next. Things like that. We heard some of their employees’ cars have been keyed, or they’ve found dead animals—like raccoons—with their entrails smeared all over.”

  “Ricky Burrows—one of the guys who works for me?”

  Libby nodded; she’d met Ricky.

  “His truck was keyed here.” Augie pointed at the ground.

  “I know. I was here when the cop came to look at the damage.” Libby held Augie’s gaze.

  “You think the incidents are related?”

  Libby said she didn’t know, that it worried her.

  Augie said, “I looked at the balcony-collapse evidence. You can access a lot of it online, the reports of damage, the photos. It’s as clear as day—the dry rot was extensive, and it was criminal, all right, but not because of the design.”

  The squawk of a scrub jay pierced the air, and Libby hunted for it, glimpsing the flash of vivid blue darting through the duller green canopy of the huge cedar tree some thirty yards away on the south side of the homesite. Most of the cedar that had choked the area had been cleared, but they’d left this one. It was a behemoth, wind bent and storm battered, and quite possibly more than one hundred years old. When Libby looked at it, she saw a gentle giant, an ancient druid, leaning on a cane. Beck had humored her wish to protect it from the construc
tion upheaval, driving the stakes into the ground outside the canopy and circling it with a perimeter of orange fencing.

  She said, “It’s a lawyer’s game now, I guess.”

  Augie hooted. “Yeah, those vultures’ll be after the families of the victims like a gang of NFL scouts after a gifted quarterback. It’ll take months to sort it out.”

  Beck had predicted a settlement was years away. He wasn’t concerned, either, about his involvement. He referred to it as an inconvenience.

  Libby’s mind hung on that word: inconvenience.

  People died. How did it get to be an inconvenience? How did it get to be all about the money?

  Augie’s cell phone sounded, a series of notes from “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” His daughter had chosen the ringtone and then programmed it into Augie’s phone. She was four. Libby had been amazed when Augie told her. He’d flushed with pride.

  But now as he spoke, his expression was grave. Libby walked a little away, giving him privacy.

  “My God, this is awful.”

  Libby turned. Augie looked shaken. He kept her gaze.

  “That was Mandy. The kids in the wreck this morning? I know them. The boys, anyway. One of them is Travis Simmons.”

  “The son of the detective who was killed you were telling me about?”

  “Yeah, he is such a great kid, too. Talk about a football player. Man, his dad would be so proud of him. And not only for his athleticism but the way he will just go the extra mile for his teammates or anyone. He helped coach a Special Olympics basketball team a couple of summers ago. Last I heard, he’s still working with some of the local special-needs kids whenever he’s home from college.”

  “Was he the one who was driving?” Libby asked.

  “No. It was the other boy, Jordy Cline. Both he and Trav were Life Flighted to Austin. Wyatt Regional couldn’t handle them, their injuries are so severe. Jesus . . . Sorry, it’s just—too close to home, you know?”

  Libby waved off his apology.

  “Mandy heard if Jordy makes it, he’ll be arrested. For vehicular assault. Or manslaughter, depending—” Augie stopped again, keeping Libby’s gaze. On whether or not Travis dies.

  He didn’t have to say it. The implication hung in the air between them. It made the hair rise on the back of her neck.

  After meeting with Augie, Libby left the homesite and drove to the gardener’s cottage, some three miles west. The little house at the end of a dusty, winding trail centered a square of chippy white-picket fencing. It was shingled in cedar and sat close to the ground, reminding Libby of a little brown hen settled on her nest. No one had tended the house or the land around it regularly, though, not in years. Native grasses had almost taken over the perennial borders that hugged the cottage’s latticed foundation. Fran had said her great-grandmother Beatrice Scroggins, whom the Little B was named for, had planted the gardens more than one hundred years ago. But, amazingly, some of the long-ago plantings still existed. Thick clumps of bearded iris and silvery lamb’s ears were visible on either side of the front porch steps. In the side yard, an arbor made from cedar logs was wrapped in the thick-trunked grasp of a thorny old rose climber. Devil’s trumpet grew along the fence as vigorously as the native sumac and kidneywood.

  Libby had fallen in love with the cottage the moment she saw it. It seemed enchanted to her despite the signs of ruin. Going over it, Beck had pronounced it basically sound. Like the bones of the garden. The structure, the framework, remained—a beautiful relic waiting to be unearthed. She didn’t mind the work that would be involved in the restoration of the house or the yard. Even the idea was satisfying. She had already started bringing plants from her garden in Houston, and she was in back, watering some of them, when she heard the sound of a motor, and rounding the front corner of the cottage, she was surprised to see Beck’s pickup coming up the drive, dust hanging in its wake like a shroud.

  It wouldn’t be good news that had brought him. That was her thought, and the somber look on his face when he got out of the truck seemed to confirm it.

  3

  Sandy would remember the terror in their silence as she and Emmett drove east to the hospital in Austin. She would remember Emmett reaching for her hand, the feel of the calluses on his palm rough against her knuckles. Even though he ran the company, Emmett would say he was a salesman, but he still did the hard physical work. It wasn’t unusual for him to pitch in at a drilling site, doing whatever needed to be done, from operating a mud pump to working the rig floor. He’d come home at the end of the day as filthy as she’d ever seen him when he’d worked as a roughneck in high school. Back then he’d loved to grab her in a bear hug, making her squeal. Nowadays, she made him peel out of his clothes and wash up in the laundry-room sink.

  But the sense of him beside her, his solid presence now in the driver’s seat, the sure grip of his hand, grounded her, the way it always did. They didn’t talk much. Words came, but they crumbled in her mouth before she could utter a sound.

  Night was lifting as they hit the Austin city limits. How they found the hospital would always be a blur. Inside, the nurse at the first reception desk they came to was engrossed in something on her computer screen. A game of solitaire or Words with Friends, Sandy thought. She played those silly games, too, when she was bored or needed a distraction. She frittered her time away. That’s what her mother would say. Translated, it meant: Why can’t you be more like your sister? Disciplined? Responsible?

  Emmett rapped the counter.

  Unperturbed, the nurse glanced up.

  “Jordan Cline. He was flown here from Wyatt via helicopter with his cousin, Travis Simmons.”

  She frowned slightly. “Ah. Those two. Both still in triage, I think. Hold on, and I’ll get someone to take you there.”

  Moments later a different nurse appeared. Charlotte was a critical care nurse. “I’ve been working with both boys,” she said.

  “Are they all right?” Sandy asked.

  “Still unconscious, but Jordan’s vitals are good. We’ll have a better idea of his prognosis once we get back the results on his latest blood work and CT scan. If you’ll come with me, we need you to fill out some paperwork.”

  At the nurses’ station, Charlotte fished a clipboard with forms attached out of a stack and handed it to Sandy. She clutched it to her chest, feeling her heart beat against it. “What about my nephew, Travis? How are his vitals?”

  “As long as he’s breathing, there’s hope. That’s what I believe,” Charlotte added.

  Well, you would have to, working in a place like this, wouldn’t you? The thought passed through Sandy’s mind.

  “You can fill out the forms there while you’re waiting.” Charlotte gestured toward a large open area off the corridor that was furnished with rows of blue-padded, metal-framed chairs. “Either myself or the emergency-room doctor will keep you posted.”

  Sandy looked at Emmett, but what did she want him to do? Argue? Demand they be taken to see Jordy immediately? I’m his mother! She wanted to shout it, as if that fact alone afforded her certain inalienable rights. As if saying the very word mother would part the waters and move mountains. But that relationship carried little weight here. Other adults, experienced in ways she never would be, were in charge of Jordy and Travis. Their well-being, even their lives, depended on them now, not on her or Jenna. The revelation, its truth, was overwhelming. It made her light-headed.

  Emmett looked after the nurse, who was walking briskly away. “I’m going to see if I can find some coffee,” he said. “Want some?”

  Sandy glanced at him. Coffee? How could he think of it, of wanting anything other than to see their son? But he needed to move, after the time in the truck. “No, thanks,” she said.

  The waiting room appeared empty, and although it was after seven now, the lights were dim as if it were night. A television mounted on one wall was tuned at low volume to an early-morning news program, a local show: Austin at Daybreak. It came on at five thirty. Sandy had wat
ched it occasionally. Mornings were hectic, getting herself and her men out the door. She stood, leafing through the clipboarded paperwork, mind churning. Mercy Hospital. Was it in their insurance network or out?

  She stared into the middle distance, feeling the sand of exhaustion burn her eyes. The voice in her brain pecked away, oblivious. If they were out of network . . . God! The air transport alone must have cost thousands. Were such extreme measures even covered? She remembered a childhood friend, diagnosed with the sudden onset of a particularly virulent cancer. When she’d died six months later, her parents had been devastated. And broke. They’d lost everything—their savings, their retirement, even their house. The panic, crouched in Sandy’s belly, started to rise. She clamped her teeth against it. There was already more than enough to fear.

  She stepped into the waiting area, and that’s when she saw Jenna. Her sister was huddled in a chair in a back corner of the room, where the light was murkiest.

  Sandy went to her, sitting down beside her. “Where is Troy? He shouldn’t have left you alone.”

  “That should be the least of your worries.”

  Sandy kept Jenna’s gaze.

  “Jordy’s in a lot of trouble. You know that, don’t you?”