Best Kept Secrets

by Tracey S. Phillips

  She stepped into the room. The smell of fresh sawdust mingled with other odors. Paint or stain, perhaps? Something metallic. In the center, a large table filled the room with a table saw and a lathe affixed to it. Pieces of cut wood filled a trash can in the corner, and an unfinished project, a stool or small table, lay on its side on top of the table. The workmanship was fine. The legs were ornate in the way of antique furniture. Decorative. Beautiful.

  Ekhard has a hobby. A giggle caught in Caryn’s throat.

  Books and catalogs of the trade filled shelves along the back wall. Coveys of cans containing stain, paint, and oil stood like sentinels. Small finished projects like cutting boards and platters were nested and stacked, a bowl full of finials, polished driftwood. The counter underneath was clean; as in the kitchen, there was no dust. Stacked sanding blocks and rags folded in a neat pile on the left spoke volumes of careful cleanliness.

  A white pegboard covered the wall to her right, and hanging from it were tools of the trade: handsaws and screwdrivers, carving knives and paintbrushes. Categorized and organized into groups of similar objects, each item on the board was carefully outlined with black marker.

  Nothing was out of place. Not a scrap or wood chip on the floor. Caryn ran her fingers along the edge of the table, smooth as a baby’s bottom, or so she figured.

  One end of the pegboard contained hammers. With the organization and care so obviously taken to clean, it seemed conspicuous that among the many mallets and percussive devices placed and definitively organized one was missing. One astonishing thick black outline of a hammer remained empty of its filler. A bowl with no soup. A coffin missing a body.

  The sight triggered a memory. The memory triggered something like feelings. Where the hammer was missing, Caryn felt loss and abandonment.

  She had to see him.

  This time, she would wait for him.

  * * *

  Her fingers drummed on the old wooden breakfast table—the one from the house she had grown up in. Caryn counted, passing the time. Drum, drum. Four hundred thirty-two. Four hundred thirty-three … It kept her from counting the number of ways this would play out. There were too many. Ekhard had always been unpredictable.

  Hours ago, the sun had set and lights had come on in the house across from Eks’s backyard. It was a happy scene. When the man came home, he joined his wife at the sink and kissed her. The couple puttered around the kitchen, taking care of their two small children and making dinner. Did people actually live like that?

  Children were not in Caryn’s future.

  The low rumble of the garage door opening sent a warning siren through her spinal column and out to the far reaches of her nerve endings. Caryn sat straighter, stiffening with anticipation.

  The engine shut off. A car door opened. Closed. Did she hear him walking toward the door? A rattle of keys. The garage door closed.

  Ekhard shuffled into his entryway and closed the door. He took off his coat, hung it in the closet, and turned on the light. Caryn couldn’t have been breathing. Then Eks turned and saw her there, and their eyes met. Silence ensued. He had warned her.

  His hair was longer, and he had grown a beard that didn’t match the color on his head. Caryn thought she was the only one who would know that. She was the first to speak. “Hello, Eks.”

  Her brother stood in the hallway, planted there. He seemed to grow roots in the eternity that passed before he spoke. “What are you doing here?”

  Caryn had imagined this scenario, hadn’t she?

  “You know why I’m here, Eks. They dug up Suzanne’s body. The police have located and questioned me. I’m afraid they might have me under surveillance.” Caryn held her fingers poised over the table like she was ready to type on a keyboard. “It’s over.”

  Ekhard’s eyes lit up. “That’s because you fucked up.”

  “I fucked up?” Caryn raised her eyebrows.

  Ekhard ran a hand through his hair. “You shouldn’t be here!”

  “I needed to see you. It’s been … so long, brother.”

  “Oh, you haven’t been counting the days?”

  “Six thousand seven hundred twenty-seven,” she admitted.

  “There’s my Ceecee. And how about since the last time two weeks ago?”

  “Fourteen days and fifteen and a half hours. Let’s make a new plan. We were always good at planning things together.”

  “You’d like to think that, wouldn’t you?” He sucked air through bared teeth, then coughed.

  She put her hands in her lap.

  Ekhard took a step toward his sister. “Here’s the plan. You get out of my house. Take this opportunity to run like hell away from me.”

  “Why would I do that?” she asked in the most innocent voice she could summon.

  His wide eyes narrowed, and his brow furrowed. “Because otherwise I’ll kill you.”

  “You wouldn’t do that to me,” Caryn teased.

  “I would.” He lunged at her, his hands ready to grab hair or choke and strangle.

  Her legs uncoiled like springs. Caryn stood up so fast that her chair tipped over and fell to the floor. She sprung to her right toward the sliding door, strategically putting the table between them.

  He stopped at the table, gripping it, his knuckles white and his face red with rage. “Get away from me, Ceecee.”

  Caryn placed her hands on the table, mirroring her brother. “I needed to see you. To warn you. The police questioned me about you and Suzanne. It’s only a matter of time before they find you.”

  He spit out, “That’s your problem.”

  “Can’t we make amends?”

  “Amends? Ha!” His mouth opened wide with the insanity that lit up his eyes. “There can be no amends.”

  “You can’t run from me your whole life.” She tilted her head in the same scolding way their mother had.

  “I won’t have to.” Ekhard coughed, and his chest rose and fell as he took huge gulps of air.

  “What does that mean?”

  Ekhard took a step to his right and, keeping his gaze riveted on his sister, kicked the chair out of his way.

  Caryn also stepped to her right and pushed a chair in to create a clear path of escape. “Ekhard, tell me what’s next.”

  “I’m telling you to get out.” He leaned to the left, anticipating her next move.

  “And what about you?” She thought she cared what happened to him.

  “There aren’t enough words in the entire English language to fix what you’ve done to me.” Ekhard took another step.

  “You’re blaming me? After what you did?”

  “You are toxic, Ceecee. You are poison.” Ekhard’s lips flared, showing his teeth between thin lips. “Just like our mother.”

  “Don’t ever say that! I am not like Mom.” The idea inflamed Caryn. She took another step to the right. “Do you know how many times I’ve wondered how we could patch things up. How we could live life differently. And you throw that at me? I’m like Mom?”

  Ekhard spoke in a low, seething tone. “Don’t you dare come near me ever again.”

  Caryn let go of the chair on the opposite side of the table from where this began. She wanted out now. The front door, which she had unlocked earlier, was five, maybe six long strides to her right.

  Perhaps Eks noticed her taking stock. “Get out of here! Get the hell out of my house!” His voice steadily grew louder. “I don’t want to see you! I don’t want to hear from you!”

  Caryn suppressed a smile. Ekhard caught the glint in her eye and jumped to his right, shoving chairs out of his way. He bounded toward her like a hungry carnivore.

  Caryn reached the front door in five strides and grabbed the knob. The worn mechanism jammed as she tried to open it. Ekhard got to her before she could pull the door open and slammed her face and the front of her body flat against it.

  “Let go of the doorknob.” His forearm dug into the back of her neck, pinning her right cheek and jaw to the door.

  She choke
d out, “Get off me.”

  “Don’t play stupid with me. You don’t get to see me. Ever. Do not come back here.”

  “Fuck you,” she grunted, biting the inside of her lip.

  Ekhard pressed his weight against her. Tucking his left forearm around her neck, he put his sister in a stranglehold. With his right hand, he pried Caryn’s hand off the doorknob. While keeping her immobilized, he jiggled the knob, then yanked her over to the opening.

  “You better prepare for the hell storm,” she croaked.

  Ekhard released her with a violent shove over the threshold, shouting, “Stay away or I’ll kill you!”

  Caryn stumbled onto the stoop, then fell. As she hit the pavement, her jeans ripped at the knee and she felt the sharp sting of concrete scraping the skin of her palms. Before she had time to recover, Ekhard slammed the door with a loud bang. Bleeding and bitterly angry, she stormed back to her car.

  CHAPTER 39

  CARYN: 20 Years Ago

  Ekhard sat at the crowded bar with his head hanging like an empty banana peel. Their dad’s death two weeks before seemed to have taken a toll on him. Theo died in the hospital of liver failure, lung failure, and kidney failure. A triple whammy. His death didn’t take long in the grand scheme of things, but he left a wake of disaster that needed tending: a failing business and several near-empty accounts, a stiff mortgage, and large hospital bills. Someone had to sell the house and the business to pay those bills. Caryn was only fifteen, so Ekhard became that someone. He stopped going to college to take care of his dad’s remains and the remains of his life.

  The bartender and sole owner of Billy’s Bar invited Eks and Caryn to hold Theo’s wake at his establishment. Theo had spent a good deal of his money and time there. Billy hosted the wake free of charge. Inside, fixtures with bumpy orange glass and black metal hung from chains but didn’t throw enough light. Candles in dirty glass globes threw flickering circles onto the tables. The vinyl benches were brown, maybe. Or red.

  Many of Theo’s coworkers and friends had stopped by to express their condolences. Billy and the other bartenders held court, telling stories of “Good ol’ Theo.” Still, no one was too broken up by Theo’s passing. While Ekhard sat at a stool nursing a Coke, Caryn watched them all from the comfort of a booth. People she didn’t know talked about their dad. What a nice guy. Only she and Ekhard knew how he really was.

  “You doin’ okay there, Ekhard?” Billy refilled his Coke with the spray nozzle.

  Ekhard nodded.

  “How ’bout you, Caryn? How’s that sandwich?” Billy called out across the room.

  “Great,” she called back. With her head resting on one hand, she held up a fry.

  Ekhard slid off the vinyl-covered stool, ambled over to Caryn’s table, then poured himself into the booth. “You okay?” he asked.

  “Better than you. Did you try the fries here? They’re actually pretty great. How come Dad never brought us here?” Caryn had just picked at her sandwich. Bread and lettuce lay on the table, rejected from her plate. She dipped French fries in a dark-brown smear of ketchup.

  Ekhard focused on a ragged fingernail.

  “How much longer do we have to stay?” she asked.

  Ekhard checked Theo’s heavy watch now dangling from his thin wrist. He twisted the face around so he could read it, squinting in the low light. “Maybe another half hour.”

  “Billy’s paying for this, right?” she asked.

  “That’s what he said.” Ekhard worked the fingernail between his teeth, biting, picking, and spitting.

  “I have homework to do. I have a project, a report due on Monday for biology,” Caryn said.

  “Well, you’ve got the rest of the weekend. Once we’re done here, you have the rest of your life.”

  That seemed an unimaginably long time. “What are we going to do, Eks? I mean I still need to do Driver’s Ed this winter. I can’t get there by myself.”

  “I know, Ceecee.” Ekhard crossed his arms on the table and leaned toward her, making eye contact for the first time in days. “I won’t leave you. Listen, we’ll get through this.”

  Caryn pushed the uneaten bread around on the table. She picked up the lettuce leaf and flapped it back and forth.

  “You shouldn’t worry. I’ve always been there for you, haven’t I?” Ever since Mom had left, Ekhard had taken care of his sister at his own expense. His grades fell through the floor, but he always had dinner on the table. He did things like laundry for their dad when Theo could no longer do it himself. Ekhard drove him to the doctor and made sure he took his medications. And Ekhard always showed up to take care of Caryn.

  “You’re the best,” she said.

  Ekhard chewed his nails, seeming distracted.

  “What’s wrong?” Caryn could read him like an open book.

  “Nothing,” he lied, looking at his nails.

  Caryn pushed her plate to the far side of the table. “Bull. What’s wrong?”

  Not making eye contact, Ekhard shook his head and muttered, “It’s just that … I thought …”

  “What? Spit it,” she demanded.

  “I thought Anna Clare would come.” For a long time they had referred to their mother by her given name. It had been more than seven years.

  “Today?” Caryn’s mouth scrunched into a grimace. She shook her head. “I haven’t thought of her in over a year.”

  He plunged what was left of his fingernail back between his teeth.

  “Maybe she’s dead,” Caryn said.

  “You’re right. She doesn’t care about us,” Ekhard said, the corners of his mouth turned down. “Maybe she never cared. She was probably a crazy, cold-hearted bitch.”

  “Why would you say that?” His flip statement made Caryn worry about herself. She had learned about genetic traits in school and the idea that her mother was crazy felt uncomfortably right.

  Ekhard didn’t answer.

  “Most of the time I don’t care,” she admitted. “I don’t give a flying fuck about any of my friends. I don’t care that Dad died either. Good riddance, you know?”

  “That’s not true. You cared about him. You care about me. If you didn’t, you would have run away a long time ago,” Ekhard reassured her. “You always wanted to when you were little.”

  In full entertainment mode, Billy was laughing out loud and making a show of his bartending skills. A different crowd entered, not Theo’s friends, and the hostess seated them for dinner.

  Ekhard examined his nails. “We should go.”

  Caryn slid out of the booth and stood, stretching her legs. Ekhard trudged to the bar and shook hands with Billy, thanking him. Caryn waved from the door.

  Outside, her eyes adjusted to the light. The setting sun brightened the crisp fall day. After the wake, they stopped at home to change out of their dress clothes and get warm jackets. Ekhard had planned something fun for the evening.

  While he drove south on the interstate, away from Indianapolis, Caryn wrote her report in a spiral notebook in her lap. It was dark when Ekhard slowed down and turned onto a dirt road in the middle of nowhere.

  “Where are we?” Caryn asked.

  The car bumped up the unlit road. “Somewhere between Brownstown and Salem.”

  “Massachusetts?”

  Ekhard laughed. “No, silly. Indiana.”

  “We were on the road for a long time,” Caryn said.

  “Not that long,” he responded. “Forty minutes.”

  Caryn put her notebook in her backpack. In the headlights ahead of them, a battered house missing half its roof appeared. “I hope you know how to get home.”

  “You know I do.” He reached behind Caryn’s seat and lifted a heavy brown paper bag to his lap. “I brought something for us.”

  “What is that?”

  He took a large bottle out of the bag. “Bourbon. From home. Consider it a gift from Dad.” Ekhard’s mouth twisted into the first smile in weeks. He removed the cap and raised the bottle to his lips. After taking a he
arty swig, he smacked his lips, then handed the bottle to his sister.

  She tipped it back, spilled some down her front, and coughed. “Ugh. Who would want to drink this?”

  Ekhard took the bottle and a second swallow. “It’s better after a couple drinks. It gets smoother.”

  She grimaced in disbelief. “If you say so.”

  “Come on, Ceecee.” Ekhard turned off the headlights and hopped out of the car. He zipped up his jacket, the bottle under one arm.

  For miles, the sky and surrounding land were pitch-black without a single light or hint of civilization to be seen. Ekhard flipped on a flashlight and led the way up the road. The only noises were the sound of their shoes crunching on the dirt road and the very distant hiss of cars on the highway.

  “What is this place?” Caryn could see her breath in the cool air.

  “This is the house that Anna Clare grew up in,” he explained.

  “How do you know?” Caryn took the bourbon bottle from Ekhard and swigged.

  “I’ve been here before.” Ekhard hurried up the path.

  “When?”

  “Mom brought me a few times.” He shined the flashlight ahead on the front porch of the house. Broken in spots, the railing and porch ceiling had begun to collapse, but the windows were intact. “You were here, too, when you were really little.”

  “Nobody lives here now?” Caryn ran to keep up with her brother.

  “Nope.” When Ekhard halted, Caryn’s trainers lost traction on the gravel. She slid to a stop beside him.

  The light circle shone on a closed front door.

  “Is it locked?” She asked.

  “I have an idea.” He handed the flashlight to Caryn, then ran back to the car to retrieve something. An owl hooted while Caryn waited. Light from the flashlight died into the blackness surrounding her. Ekhard returned with a hammer in his hand.

  “What are you doing with that?”

  He took another hit from the bottle, then leaped up onto the porch. “You’ll see. Hold the flashlight.”

  On the porch, he stepped over the loose floorboards and looked around. With a hand held above his eyes, he tried to see inside the dark house through the grimy glass. In his hand, the shiny new steel hammer glistened.