Jilted

by Varina Denman

  Hector studied the cuticle of his left thumb before returning his gaze to me. “Let’s just say that if Hoby had been in the cab when the truck entered the water, his body probably would have surfaced in a day or two.”

  Even though I hadn’t eaten anything for breakfast, my stomach churned in protest, and the mild nausea from a few minutes ago flared into a serious threat. My dead husband’s bloated body had risen to the surface of the lake, only to be ripped apart by animals and left to rot.

  “I’m sorry this is happening, Lynda. Hoby was a good friend.” Hector continued talking, unaware that my brain was only catching half of what he said. “Also, the Rangers sent those bones to an anthropology expert down in Austin. The preliminary report showed there wasn’t enough DNA to make an identification.”

  Bones … DNA … identification … Hoby. I couldn’t take any more of Hector’s verbiage or assumptions or speculations. My husband was dead one minute, alive the next, then dead again. Or maybe it wasn’t him at all. “I think I’ve got it now, Hector.” But really I didn’t. It didn’t make sense at all.

  He rose, walked stiffly to the door, and then stopped. He turned back to me, and his eyes were sad. “Lynda, I don’t think you fully understand what I’m saying.”

  I pressed my forearms against my stomach in an attempt to settle it. “Okay.”

  “You see … at this point, the Rangers don’t know if the bones belonged to Hoby, or if the body was in the truck when it went into the water. They don’t know if the bones were ever in the water at all. They’ll know a lot more once they get the rest of the results from Austin.”

  “What are you saying?” If he told me anything else, I might not be able to handle it, but I had to ask. I was supposed to ask.

  He held his palms in front of me as though he would catch me if I fell. He spoke slowly and softly. “I’m saying they think there may have been suspicious circumstances.” He pressed his lips together and dropped his gaze, seemingly unable to look me in the eye. “I can’t tell you everything right now, but I can tell you that things aren’t adding up.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I know, but you’re going to have to wait a few days. Wait until we have more evidence.” He reached for the doorknob. “But I need you to keep this between the two of us until I talk to you again.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m not sure who I can trust.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “Momma?” Ruthie knocked on the front door twice.

  “It’s open, Ruth Ann.” I rubbed my eyes, pulling myself up to a seated position.

  It had been four hours since Hector left, and I had sat on the couch the entire time, but at least I hadn’t gone back to my bedroom. I kept telling myself I would take a drive later today. Maybe not all the way to the windmills, but surely I could handle a trip to the Dairy Queen drive-through. After all, Clyde would expect me to get out.

  Ruthie came in the house, then stood just inside the door, arms crossed, peering at me. The look on her face was the same as when she was five years old and had to drink the thick, pink medicine—stubborn and willful. “Dodd said I had to come over here and talk to you, or he was going to go nuts. He’s not picking me up for an hour.”

  From where I sat on the couch, I could see the El Camino pulling away from the house. Apparently the reporters had given up. “He’s a good man.”

  Ruthie sat down next to me even though there were two other chairs in the room. “Yeah … he is.”

  Shooting the breeze wouldn’t help either of us, but it was the best I could do. “What’s his sermon topic this week?” I had a warped habit of asking. “Tell me it’s not forgiveness again.”

  “No, I think he’s gotten all the mileage out of that one. This Sunday he’s preaching on repentance.”

  “Ah, he’s talking to Neil.”

  “Momma, Dodd wouldn’t preach to one person in the audience. That’s not cool.”

  “I don’t see how he has a choice.”

  “What do you mean? Nobody tells him what to preach.”

  “I’m just saying Neil’s been on his mind lately, so he’s bound to be influenced. It’s just where Dodd is right now.”

  She laughed lightly. “But Neil has been on his mind ever since he started preaching here two years ago.”

  “No wonder he’s preached on forgiveness until he’s blue in the face.”

  Ruthie pursed her lips as if she wanted to say something else, but she only looked away and shook her head.

  Ruthie was hurting.

  She was hurting, and I didn’t know how to help her. I had never known, and my own pain had always overshadowed hers until I barely knew my own daughter.

  Her eyes clouded. “Why do I miss Daddy?”

  I froze, unable to think of anything other than Hector’s insistence that I not talk to anyone.

  “He’s been gone over fifteen years,” Ruthie said. “I stopped missing him years ago—or at least I stopped dreaming he’d come home, but now I miss him again. It’s stupid.”

  “That’s not stupid.”

  “Explain it, then.”

  I couldn’t explain it. “I just know I feel the same way, and we can’t both be stupid.”

  She peered at me for a few minutes, then bumped my shoulder with hers. “But you’ve missed him all along.”

  “Sure, I’ve missed him, but I also wanted to slap him. I wanted to get him back for leaving the two of us. I wanted to make him pay.”

  Ruthie’s gaze bounced around the room, looking for a place to land.

  I cringed. “But I never wanted him … dead.”

  She inhaled a shallow breath, and I could hear a stifled sob around its edges. “I know, Momma.”

  A gust swelled outside, and dust pelted the window. We both turned our heads that direction, stared without seeing, then turned back. Like so many other times, I noticed our similarities and marveled at how much we were alike. Was there any trace of Hoby in my daughter? Was there anything left of him?

  While she picked at her fingernails, I studied her. As a child, Ruthie had a gap between her front teeth, just like Hoby, but braces had changed that. She still had Hoby’s eyes, of course. Right after he left, those eyes of hers had almost driven me insane, but somewhere over the years, I had all but forgotten their constant reminder, and Ruthie’s eyes had become her own, not Hoby’s.

  She sighed. “Dodd says I miss him now because I know he’s never coming back, but it’s more than that.” She spoke louder and faster as though she would feel better—cleansed—once she had tossed the notion out into the room where we could look at it, examine it, poke it with a stick. “Now we know where he was all that time.” Her eyes widened. “He wasn’t deliberately staying away.”

  The same thoughts had somersaulted through my head, but after the sheriff’s visit, I didn’t know what to think. “It makes sense, Ruth Ann. I could always reason out why he left me, but it was wildly out of character for him to leave you.” Then I realized the truth of my words. No matter what Hector had been trying to tell me, Hoby being dead was the only thing that made sense.

  A tear trickled down her cheek. “I’ve spent so many years believing he didn’t want me.” She slumped back, seeming to let the cushions soak up her tension. “Momma, what do you think Daddy would say if he were here?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I’ve just been thinking. What would he have done if he had been at my wedding? What would he think about Dodd? Would he be happy that I’m in college? I mean, I suppose I know the answer to those questions … but still … I wish he could be part of my life.”

  I was beginning to understand. “What else have you been asking yourself?”

  “I ask myself what might have happened if things had been different. What if he hadn’
t gotten drunk? What if he had just slammed into a telephone pole or something? Yes, he would have still died, but we would have known about it. What would our lives be like now?”

  I shivered. “Things would definitely be different, but there’s no way to know if they’d be better or worse.”

  “Seems like they’d have been better.”

  My finger rubbed at a rough spot on the couch cushion. “Yeah, it does.” Sort of. My thoughts had just undergone a shift, and in my mind, Hoby was so dead, I couldn’t imagine him alive. “Let’s go get a dip cone.”

  “You just want to see Clyde.”

  “He’s not working today.”

  She lifted her head and smiled. “Okay. A dip cone.”

  As we walked down the front steps, the outdoor air felt foreign to me, and I could hear it whispering that I should go back in the house, stay home, stay safe, but in defiance I lifted my face and let the sunshine warm my cheeks. I can do this.

  Ruthie paused, squinting into the sun. “I wish I had more memories of him.”

  So do I. The most vivid memories were always the bad ones.

  “The two of you used to swing a jump rope for me,” she said. “Daddy sang a chant while I jumped. I don’t remember it, though.”

  I took one step to the car, then stopped. “Cinderella dressed in yellow went upstairs to kiss a fellow.”

  Ruthie finished the rhyme. “Made a mistake and kissed a snake. How many doctors did it take?”

  My mind wandered back to that time. Not long before Hoby left, he had been working a lot, but he had always made time for our daughter. “He was the first one to give you a nickname,” I said. “And I used to call you Ruthie just like he did. Do you remember that?”

  She didn’t answer right away, and I knew it wasn’t easy to think back that far. “Maybe. Why?”

  “I haven’t thought about that in so long. He only called you Ruth Ann if he was sad. When he left, I was mad at him, and I started calling you Ruth Ann all the time. I told everyone it was because I wanted to emphasize the names of your grandmothers, but really I was just angry with him for leaving.”

  The two of us stood in the middle of the yard, halfway between the house and the hatchback, but in the past thirty minutes, we had covered so much emotional ground, we were miles closer than we had been in years.

  She smiled. “Thank you for telling me that, Momma.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Clyde felt a wave of heaviness pressing on his chest. After he saw Hoby’s wrecker being pulled from the lake, he had expected to be sad—even angry—but the chained-down feeling surprised him, as if he was a vicious dog tethered to a post in a weedy front yard. His friend had died, and Clyde hadn’t been around to do anything about it. A match struck deep inside Clyde’s gut, starting a slow burn of helplessness that quickly flared into fury.

  He walked to the back door and peered at the old shed in the corner of his yard. It would feel so good to take an ax to the rotted two-by-fours, to relieve his stress in blow after blow on the dry wood, to vent his anger and frustration.

  But that would never do.

  Chain-link fences separated his yard from five others, giving his neighbors a front-row seat from their kitchen windows. A front-row seat to witness his rage that, even though justified, would not necessarily appear so to others.

  There were just too many things to deal with. If it were only he who was hurting, it wouldn’t be so bad. Clyde gripped the door handle with his fist, unable to hold back his fear. Fear of how Lynda would deal with everything happening in her life.

  Would she lock herself away again? Would she hold herself accountable? Clyde could only hope she’d work through the pain more quickly this time, but Lynda wasn’t good at that. She was fragile. She needed someone to help her through all of life’s battles, because she had been through too much strife on her own.

  And there was so little Clyde could do for her.

  He wrenched the door open, shoving aside his concern about the neighbors. That shed was coming down.

  ***

  Three hours later, he once again held the door for Lynda at the bookshop, hoping an outing would do her good.

  “I always thought the old post office was a strange place for a store.” Lynda’s negative comment put a smile on Clyde’s face. Sunday her eyes had shown little or no emotion, but two days later, a hint of irritation had returned.

  As they entered the shop, Clyde noticed Pamela Sanders on the other side of a display of greeting cards, just before she stuck her head around the corner.

  “Hey, Clyde. You back again?” She smiled as she wiped her forehead with the back of her pudgy wrist, but when she saw Lynda, she scooted into the open. “Oh … Lynda … I heard about what happened out at the lake, and I’m so sorry.” Her face mirrored Lynda’s pout, and she emphasized the last word as though she felt the pain herself.

  “Thanks, Pam.”

  Lynda’s eyes settled, and Clyde was surprised at the soothing effect Pamela had on her.

  “It’s not as big a deal as you would think,” Lynda half lied. “It happened so long ago.”

  “Death is always a big deal, sweetie.” She grasped Lynda’s hand briefly, long enough to solicit a slow blink from Lynda but not long enough for her to pull her hand away.

  “Had many customers?” Clyde asked.

  “Hardly any so far, but I’m still having the time of my life.” Pamela beamed. “I never realized how bored I’d gotten since Emily went off to school. This shop is just what I needed, and I absolutely love the setup in the back. Even if the reading room doesn’t take off, it gives me a place to rest my feet.” Her eyebrows lifted comically. “You should show Lynda how we changed things around. Since she’s here and all.”

  “I guess we’ll just sit back there a spell,” Clyde drawled, “if that’s all right with you.”

  Pamela’s palm went into the air as if she were swearing an oath. “Take all the time you want.”

  Lynda rolled her eyes softly, but she followed Clyde to the back room, where a leather couch and chair had replaced a few of the bookshelves. “Clearly you and Pamela are working a plan.”

  “Yep.”

  She put her hands on her hips and inspected the layout of the room, but even while she turned and frowned and sighed, Clyde got the impression she didn’t hate the space. “It’s bright in here now.” Her eyes swept the ceiling, taking in the skylight, then the fresh coat of paint on the walls. “Light yellow. I like that.”

  “Troy and Pam have worked hard on this place,” he said.

  “I get the impression you have, too. Oh goodness.” She pointed at Ellen Mendoza’s old VHS collection, displayed in a couple of stacked milk crates.

  “Aw, now … once Pam gets the coffeepot working, it’ll practically be a Barnes and Noble.”

  “Coffee would definitely help.”

  Clyde sat on one end of the couch. “The smell of old books reminds me of memories. Or imagination.” He shrugged, embarrassed he had said it. “Or something like that.”

  She perched on the opposite end of the couch and rubbed the toe of her tennis shoe across dried paint splatters on the cement floor. Her gaze wandered to the shelves of books, the scented candles on a table in the corner, the buzzing fluorescent light high above their heads. “This is better than my bedroom,” she said.

  “Yep.”

  Her eyes opened slightly wider than normal. “This was nice of Pam, wasn’t it? She’s been kind to me. Through all of it.” She shook her head. “For years.”

  “She always thought Hoby was a peach.”

  Lynda smiled big enough to show her teeth. “Exactly how Pam always described him.” Her eyes darted to the lighted exit sign above the back door, and her smile vanished. “How did you know what to say to me Sunday? When I was stuck in bed?”

  He shrugged. “I was
locked up awhile.”

  “But that was against your will. I locked myself up all on my own.”

  He wished she would let him hold her again. “Sometimes being locked up is safer than being out in the world.”

  A cricket inched its way across a rug near a squat metal shelf packed with children’s books, and Lynda watched it intently. When the insect disappeared beneath the books, she looked back at Clyde, and her eyebrows asked for more explanation.

  “For a while … in prison … it was good to be distant from the pain of what had been done to me. Against me. But once I had forgiven them and accepted my fate, then I just felt locked up, and the real imprisonment started.”

  “Are you saying I should forgive Hoby for being a drunk?”

  “Maybe.”

  She gritted her teeth. “I’m just so mad at him, you know?” She trembled. “He was so selfish.”

  Clyde wanted to tell her it would be all right, ask her to let go of the pain and get on with life. “You should read.”

  She seemed to grope for the lighter topic like a lifeline. “I’m not going to read a psych book, if that’s what you mean.”

  “I hadn’t thought about that, but it’s not a bad idea.”

  When he pretended to search the nearest shelf, she kicked him.

  “Here’s one. How to deal with crazy women.”

  The second time she kicked, he caught her foot and held it across his lap. At first she pulled against him, but when he rubbed his hand up and down her shin, she settled. Clyde kept his gaze focused on her shoelaces for a few minutes, worried she would be glaring when he looked up, but when he lifted his eyes, he was surprised to find her with her head resting against the couch cushion and her eyes closed.

  “Do I really need a psych book?” The edges of her mouth teased upward.

  “Aw, Lyn. I don’t know what you need. Everybody grieves different.”

  “How would you know?” She spoke with impatience in her tone, but she immediately shook her head. “Forget I said that. You have more in your life to grieve than just about anybody I know.”