Tell No One

by Taylor Sissel, Barbara

  Here’s what he remembers from his earliest days. The main thing: his parents fighting and his mom crying—a lot. He remembers yelling, dishes breaking, the punch of fists, hiding under his bed. He remembers leaving Oklahoma, where they’d lived until he was six, in the middle of the night. His mom wakened him and carried him in his pajamas to a car. Someone—a woman he didn’t recognize—was driving. His mom got into the front seat, still holding him in her lap. He remembers her tears seeping through his sleep-mussed hair to his scalp. He remembers cycles of waking and drowsing, punctuated by the sound of low conversation between his mother and the woman. He remembers the lulling hum of the tires rolling over miles of interstate and the occasional flare of oncoming headlights swamping the car’s interior. At dawn, he sat up and saw the sign that read WELCOME TO TEXAS. His mom had bedded him down in the back seat by then, and turning to him, she’d said, “We’re going to be safe here, honey. I promise.”

  Harris doesn’t talk about it. He never has. Out of concern for his mom. Why upset her? Why bring her down rehearsing all that crap they went through? Holly thinks he’s holding on to the pain of some unknown—to her, anyway—childhood trauma. She says it’s eating a hole inside him. He picks up his to-go mug, but he can barely hang on to it, he’s so shaky. He wants to think it’s lack of sleep, too much emotion, but he knows better. Knows he’s got to get something to level himself out.

  He can’t go to school shaking like this, feeling sicker than a dog. He tries to think where he can go to get some relief. Who can he hit up? Not Gee again, he tells himself. By God, he can’t give that punk the satisfaction. Harris stares through the windshield. But who’s he kidding? Gee knows where Harris is at, knows his need—that it’s crossed a line, crashed through entire highways of lines. He wipes his hands down his face. How has it come to this? But he knows, and while his excuse, old back injury, is legitimate, it only covers the first serious tumble down the rabbit hole some eight years ago, when he had surgery to repair a disk he’d herniated in college. Since then he’s had two more painful surgeries. Never mind the physical therapy that hurts like hell. He needed something to take the edge off. No doctor argued that. But he wanted the stuff—needed it—longer than what his doctor thought was reasonable. In June, the last time Harris saw his doctor, Ben Cooper, he suggested Harris might have an issue, which is total bullshit. He’s always been able to stop when he wants. He can go weeks, sometimes as long as a couple of months, without the meds.

  It’s only in recent months that it’s started to get out of hand. It’s the stress, the sense that he’s got to go, run, hide somewhere. Then there are the nights when he sweats and shakes and can’t sleep, and when he does, he has the nightmare. When he described what was happening—everything except the nightmare, which he didn’t like talking about—to Cooper, the doc said he couldn’t help; the symptoms had nothing to do with Harris’s back. Cooper said it sounded more like Harris was suffering from anxiety. A shrink Holly found and insisted Harris see diagnosed posttraumatic stress and put him on Zoloft. What had caused the PTSD, the psychiatrist couldn’t say. He recommended Harris see him once a week; they’d delve into it. Harris didn’t last through the second session. He bolted in the midst of it without explanation or a backward glance, took off like the hounds of hell were after him. He wondered what in God’s name he’d been thinking, going to see a shrink in the first place. There wasn’t a way to tell it. There weren’t words. He knew that. He’d known since he was a kid that he’d carry it until he was dead. He never saw the psychiatrist again. He told Holly it cost too much. The Zoloft went too. After it caused him to lose his sex drive, he flushed it down the toilet and called Zeke.

  Dr. Zeke Roman was the Aggies’ team doctor when Harris played baseball at Texas A&M back in the nineties. He’s retired now and lives alone on the northern outskirts of town, on the highway toward Greeley, where he still sees a handful of patients. He knows Harris’s history. He was at the ballpark when Harris, barely twenty at the time, sustained the initial injury to his back, sliding into home plate. Zeke has been writing Harris scripts for pain meds ever since or handing him samples of whatever he’s got on hand, Oxy, fentanyl, Percocet, Dilaudid, as long as Harris doesn’t ask for the favor too often. The old man doesn’t like seeing Harris in pain.

  Now there’s a sharp rap on the passenger window of his truck. Harris’s jaw clenches when he sees it’s Gee and the smirk on his face. The kid, whose full name is Gander Lee Drake, points to the lock, wanting in. Shifting his gaze, Harris imagines keying the ignition, speeding away, leaving Gee in the street. If only. He releases the lock. Gee opens the door, plunks himself down.

  “What’re you doing here, Coach? You’re late for school.”

  Harris doesn’t answer.

  “You look strung out. Maybe you need a little something to get you through the day?” Gee holds up a small plastic bag, jostling it.

  From the corner of his eye, which is all the attention he wants to give it, Harris can see the pills. Yellow tabs, look like Oxy. A sound rises from his gut, a groan, maybe a whimper. He bites his teeth together, catching it in his throat. The fury and disgust and the bitter tang of self-loathing that come are enough to choke him. He swallows. He’s not this person, goddammit. He’s a coach, the head baseball coach at the high school. He’s the fucking Wyatt Warriors’ athletic director, for God’s sake. He’s got a name, a reputation, in this town. He’s a husband with a wonderful wife and two fantastic sons. And Gee’s a kid, one who’s going off the rails. Harris has known this for a few years now; in the past he’s tried to help Gee. But somewhere along the line, the ground between them shifted, and now Harris is here, risking everything and everyone he loves. Why? What the hell is wrong with him? Why can’t he stop, quit this thing?

  He turns to Gee. “How much?” he says, reaching for the baggie.

  Gee pulls it away. “Didn’t say I was selling.”

  “Why are you here, then?” Harris wants to punch the kid. He wants to grab the dope, shove Gee out of his truck, and take off.

  “You seriously don’t know?”

  Harris takes a closer look at Gee and sees something hectic working in his eyes, like he’s hyped, agitated, or excited. Hard to say. The kid is unpredictable. But not from dope. Gee swears he doesn’t take the drugs he sells. If asked, he’ll say he’s too smart to start. Harris used to think that way too.

  “Dad and I had visitors this morning,” Gee says. “Seven o’clock we got cops knocking on the front door. A Madrone County sheriff’s deputy from Greeley named Steve Wayman and this other cop from here in Wyatt, Sergeant Carter, Ken Carter.”

  Harris has never heard of Wayman, but he knows Ken. Not well. They went through school together here in Wyatt. Ken is a couple of years younger.

  “I guess you know why they were there,” Gee says.

  “Not to arrest you, obviously, since you’re here.”

  “They asked me what I knew about the bunch of robberies that went on last fall.” Gee’s look is knowing, cocky.

  Harris doesn’t respond.

  “They said they’re talking to all the kids in school, the seniors, anyway. It’s like they know—something.” He waits.

  Harris has got nothing for him.

  Gee says, “So did they come and see you?” Harris feels his gaze but doesn’t meet it. “You tell them what you saw last Thanksgiving?”

  “I told you I wouldn’t.”

  “You’re in it as deep as me—you know that, right?”

  Harris loosens his gaze, remembering that day. He wants to blame it on Holly, all those women she’d invited over to share the Thanksgiving meal—his mom and three of Holly’s Realtor friends, two who were divorcées and one who was a widow—to keep them from being alone. If it hadn’t been for them, Harris might never have left the house. But once bottles of wine were opened and the women started drinking, the female chatter went on nonstop. Everyone, including Connor and Kyle, surprisingly, was joking around, shrieking laug
hter like a bunch of stoned hyenas—it got to Harris. He felt on edge, wanted to punch something. He left the house, figuring a ride around town and a couple of Oxys might settle his nerves. Oxys he’d bought from Gee.

  Gee, of all people, Kyle’s former buddy and current teammate, a kid Harris has known since elementary school, is his supplier. Harris coached Gee in Little League, and until the fight between Kyle and Gee broke their friendship, Harris was a mentor to him. He tried to be a steadying influence on Gee. Now he’s buying his dope off the kid.

  It’s so wrong, what he’s doing. The risk—to him, to his family, even to Gee—is always on Harris’s mind. It was what he was thinking about last Thanksgiving Day while he was driving aimlessly, waiting for the Oxy to kick in. The decision to pull over on the sparsely trafficked two-lane blacktop outside town wasn’t conscious. Harris didn’t know then that the house halfway up the hill from where he sat in his truck belonged to a family named Guthrie, but he damn sure recognized Gee’s pickup when it appeared from the opposite direction and veered off the road into a jumble of shrubbery-choked juniper.

  At first Harris, feeling fairly mellow by then, didn’t think too much of it, not until Gee and his partner, a dude in his thirties who Harris learned later was Gee’s cousin, disappeared into the thicket. He watched them threading their way through the trees, thinking it wasn’t the route expected guests would take to the house, not when there was a perfectly good driveway and a sidewalk leading from there to a wide front deck. Harris kept watching, waiting to see them go up to the front door. Instead they disappeared around back. Ten minutes passed before they reappeared, this time busting the front door wide open, coming out at full speed, fueled by adrenaline. Gee was carrying a canvas gym bag. The other guy had a handled shopping bag, sides bulging. Harris straightened up in his seat, eyes wide. He knew about the robberies occurring around town on a regular basis. Everybody in town did.

  When classes resumed on Monday, the news was all over school about how the Guthrie family had been away for the holiday and come home to discover they’d been burglarized. The thieves had taken jewelry and small electronics. They’d even taken a penny bank that contained the life savings of the Guthries’ seven-year-old son. The police captain, Clint Mackie, appeared on local television on Friday night, cautioning those who lived in more rural areas, where the robberies were occurring, to be vigilant. He asked for help to identify and stop the thieves.

  After a near-sleepless night, Harris picked up his phone to call Mackie on Saturday morning, but then he figured he should give Gee a chance to explain, to turn himself in. They met later at a deserted strip shopping center on the outskirts of town. Gee brought dope. Harris told him the meeting wasn’t about that. He didn’t say it to Gee, but he swore to himself he was done, that he was going to help Gee, turn himself and the kid around.

  “I saw you coming out of the Guthries’ house Thanksgiving Day.” Harris said it right off, the minute Gee got into his truck.

  Gee didn’t blink. “What were you doing there?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Harris said.

  “Yeah, see, it kinda does,” Gee said. “If you, like, went to the cops or something stupid like that. Did you?”

  “Not yet. But listen, there’s still time to stop this, Gee. You can do the right thing, right now, and maybe you can still salvage your future. I know your family will help. Your folks have got the kind of money it’ll take to keep this thing quiet, make restitution some way that doesn’t involve jail. You could still sign a scholarship to play football, kid. But it’s got to stop now, dealing drugs, robbing houses—” Harris broke off at the look he was getting from Gee, like he’d sprouted horns, a second head. When Gee laughed, the sound was dissonant, brassy. Dismissive.

  Then quickly gone.

  Gee’s expression flattened. “You are kidding, right? You do know what happens if you go to the cops, that it’s your ass too.”

  Harris didn’t answer.

  “C’mon, bro, you think I won’t take you down with me? Why? Because you’re the coach? You’re the man, the hero, the guy all us kids look up to? You’re nothing but a doper. Just another fucking way for me to make money.”

  “You don’t mean that, Gee.” Harris wanted so badly to believe it, that he could fix it, fix them both. “You’ve got it all, the smarts, the physical ability. You could make millions playing pro ball, and you could get drafted that quick.” Harris snapped his fingers. “Don’t throw it all away doing this kind of penny-ante shit.”

  Gee laughed again, and the sound was somehow both hard and easy.

  “C’mon, kid.” Harris was begging now. “Let’s make a deal. I’ll lay off the dope, and you lay off breaking in to people’s houses.”

  Gee couldn’t give a damn what Harris was saying. It was all over his face. Harris had seen the same smirk plenty of times when he was on his soapbox, going on about something in the locker room. But this was more and went deeper than that. It was in the very atmosphere between them that Harris had no authority here. There was no coach/player hierarchy in place. Gee was all done with that. He knew it, and Harris knew it. And the knowing for Harris was like ice in his gut. When he’d come out to meet Gee, he’d had so much hope. He’d wanted to be to Gee what his dad had been to him. Not his real dad but his stepdad, Hoff. Harris guessed it was thinking of Hoff and everything Hoff had meant to him that made him go on and try again to reach Gee. “You’re smarter than this, kid. You’ve got to know it’s only a matter of time until you get caught. Give me your word the Guthries’ was the last one, the last break-in.”

  Gee grinned. “Sure, Coach, whatever you want.”

  “You swear?”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  Driving away that afternoon, Harris knew it was a joke. But when the weeks passed, when even the Christmas holidays came and went with no news of another robbery, he began to hope that maybe Gee’s promise was for real.

  He turns to Gee now. “You think the cops are onto you?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. I’ve kept my promise, right? You haven’t heard about another break-in. So why were the cops at my house? Why today?”

  “You think I know? I don’t.”

  “If you didn’t sic them on me, who did?”

  “Your cousin?”

  “Darren’ll never talk. If they put a gun to his head, he’d take the bullet before he’d give them my name. He owes me,” Gee says. “Big-time.”

  Gee doesn’t provide details, which is fine with Harris. He knows too much about Gee’s dark side already. He thinks of Gee’s future, laid out in front of him like a yellow brick road. That was how Harris’s stepdad, Garrett Hoffman, put it when he talked about Harris’s future. Harris wanted to grow up and become the kind of man Hoff was, a father, a mentor, a role model for young men. He doesn’t want to think about what Hoff would say if he could see Harris now. He looks at Gee. “You know how bad you’re jeopardizing your future?”

  “You’ve said, like, a hundred times. Like you’re one to talk,” Gee adds.

  Harris talks over him. “Breaking in to houses, selling dope. For God’s sake, Gee—”

  “Can the lecture, okay? All I want to know is what you’re gonna say if the cops ask you questions.”

  Harris pinches the bridge of his nose. His turn is coming. The Wyatt police aren’t about to drop the investigation. Harris has seen the local cop, Ken Carter, around campus, talking to students and teachers. He’s heard both the principal and the vice-principal have been interviewed. He’s scared he’ll spill it, everything he knows. It’s the right thing, what he should do. He’s an idiot to buy Gee’s promise. It’s only a matter of time until the kid robs some other family, and he needs to be stopped. Gee needs help. Normal kids don’t burglarize houses for the rush it gives them. Normal kids, those with the kinds of advantages Gee has, don’t commit crimes, period. But to Harris’s knowledge most people have never seen Gee’s dark side; they don’t know it even ex
ists.

  Gee tosses the baggie at Harris. “Oxy’s on me this time, a little incentive.”

  Harris looks at it, where it’s landed on the seat next to his thigh.

  Gee gets out of the truck, pokes his head back in. “You talk, your life’ll go bad real quick, man. That’s my hot tip for the day.” Retreating, he slams the door.

  Bad doesn’t begin to describe it, Harris thinks, watching Gee walk away.

  7

  Caroline—Tuesday, January 9

  It wasn’t until after she’d arrived in Wichita and checked into her hotel room that she looked at her phone messages. There were only two. One from Lanie said she was thinking of her. The other was from Nina. She’d talked to Dad, she said. “I’m worried. Please call.”

  Caroline sat on the bed’s edge, cradling the phone in her hands, torn between wanting and dreading the conversation with her daughter. How much had Rob told Nina? He wouldn’t have said a word about the business. If Nina was worried, it was because he’d told her about Caroline’s car accident. Maybe, like Caroline’s mother, he’d have said she was off on a fool’s errand looking for her dad when it happened.

  Where’s your daddy? Nina had been five or six years old the first time she’d asked Caroline. She’d had a sleepover with Cherie, her best friend at the time. Cherie’s mother’s father had died a few weeks before, and Cherie had evidently chattered half the night to Nina about the funeral. People had kissed him, Nina had reported Cherie telling her. On the lips, she’d said, adding, Ewww. She and Caroline had been in the kitchen, shelling snow peas from the garden, and Caroline, looking down at her small daughter kneeling on a stool, had mirrored Nina’s distaste. They’d already had many talks about respecting one’s own and other people’s space and what was proper and improper touching. Caroline wasn’t sure on which side of that line kissing a dead person fell. She’d been trying to decide when Nina had asked if Caroline’s daddy was dead like Cherie’s mother’s daddy. Nina had known about death by then, having already buried two goldfish, a parakeet, and their Yorkie, McTavish, in the backyard.