Tell No One

by Taylor Sissel, Barbara

  “Yes, but what if all I accomplish is to reopen an old wound?”

  “No,” Caroline said, suppressing an inward shudder. “That wouldn’t be right. I don’t want to do that either.”

  Lanie didn’t come back to Caroline’s mother’s house for dinner. In part it was the ongoing tension between the women, although Caroline knew they would make the effort to be congenial on her behalf. Still, Lanie was too worn out. Caroline felt terrible that she was to blame, but Martha had reassured her that any visit from Caroline was food for Lanie’s soul. She loves you like her own, Martha had said.

  Caroline and her mom were cleaning up the kitchen after dinner—Caroline had brought home pulled-pork sandwiches—when her mom asked about Lanie. “How is she?”

  She was wiping the counter near the sink, her back to Caroline, but she didn’t pause. Her inquiry seemed almost offhand, as if she didn’t really care.

  Caroline was incensed. “She’s dying, Mom. How do you think?”

  Her mother went still, and while the look she shot Caroline was pained, it was also sharp with warning. You’re pushing it. That’s what she’d have said if Caroline were still a child. It irked her. “You always make me feel as if I have to choose between you,” Caroline said.

  “You always make me feel as if you prefer her company to mine.”

  “No—”

  “It’s easy to be the good witch in the fairy tale when you don’t have the day-to-day responsibility of raising the princess on your own.”

  “Aunt Lanie spent as much time raising me as you did, when you couldn’t get out of bed. When you couldn’t so much as find the energy to feed yourself, much less me.”

  Her mother’s shoulders slumped.

  “Oh, Mom, I’m sorry.” Caroline was; she had no wish to enliven the old pain between them.

  “Do you know how much regret I have for those years?” Her mother raised her eyes, filmed now with tears. “It was so difficult for me after your dad left. It was as if all the light in the world went out. I look back now and wonder why I gave him so much power to hurt me like that.”

  “But he did hurt you, Mom, in the worst way.”

  She wiped the air with her hands, a dismissive gesture. “I sent you to Lanie—who was only too willing to take over my role—because I knew I was in no shape to be the mother you needed. You left me food, do you remember? You were like a little elf with your bread crumbs, trying to entice the troll out of the cave. It was appalling to me, and it shook me, but not hard enough.”

  “I was scared for you.”

  “Of course you were. I could see that, but all I could do at the time was get you away as much as possible. Lanie didn’t mind. She loved you as much as Hoff and I did.”

  “I think you suffered from depression, Mom. I don’t mean the garden-variety ‘I’ve got the blues’ depression. I mean the clinical kind. They didn’t have the treatment for it then that they do now.”

  Her mother sniffed, wiped her face. “I remember when it lifted, or started to, the day you got your first period. Do you remember that? You were eleven, going on twelve. Everything then was drama. You cried when you saw the blood in your panties because you didn’t know—no one had told you to expect it. I was horrified—”

  “At Lanie?”

  “No. Myself. I don’t know why it was that particular neglect of you on my part that made such an impression on me, but I do remember the realization of your ignorance of the mechanics of your own body—how it took my breath.”

  “You gave me a tampon and coached me through the bathroom door on how to insert it.” Caroline was smiling.

  Her mom smiled, too, and quickly sobered. She came to Caroline, and cupping her cheeks, she searched Caroline’s eyes. “I can’t imagine what it was like . . . I know you felt Hoff and I both abandoned you. Lanie made a difference then.” Lowering her hands, she went on before Caroline could speak. “I’m grateful to her. If I’m angry at anyone, it’s myself. I take it out on her. She doesn’t deserve it.”

  “I’ve never thought of you as the bad witch, Mom.” Caroline was amazed by her mother’s candor; she felt drawn to it.

  “Well, you have thought of me—rightfully—as neglectful, and perhaps not as rightfully, judgmental, controlling, and rigid.”

  Caroline held her mother’s gaze. “I have admired you too. For how you brought yourself out of the cave. You got a great job at the bank. You were a single mom, raising me without any support from Dad, at least not after he dropped out of sight.”

  “As parents we’ve been hard on you, Caro, and I’m so sorry.”

  “I love you both, Mom. Even Dad. He’ll always be my dad. But he betrayed you, betrayed us both. I didn’t get it when I was a kid, but I do now.” Caroline shifted her gaze. “I realize he wasn’t always a good person.” She said what she was thinking.

  Putting her hands on Caroline’s upper arms, her mother rubbed them briskly, twice, before pulling Caroline into her embrace. “We’ll work it out, Caro. Okay? I’m here, right here for you,” she whispered, and her breath stirred the fine hair at Caroline’s temple.

  She was upstairs reading in her old childhood bed when her phone rang. She didn’t recognize the number and ordinarily would have let the call go, but for some reason she answered it.

  “Caroline Corbett?” a man’s voice asked.

  “Yes?” Caroline straightened, shifting the book from her lap, turning it facedown on the bed. “Who is this?”

  “Kip Penny. I got a message that you’re looking for me.”

  “Yes.” Heart pounding, Caroline swung her feet to the floor.

  “You’re Hoff’s daughter?” Obvious curiosity tinged Kip’s voice.

  “Yes. You must wonder why I’ve called. I . . . Dad and I lost touch . . . many years ago.” It killed her confessing this, the source of so much private pain, to this stranger. “This is going to sound crazy—it’s been so many years—but I was hoping we could talk about the investigative piece you and my dad were working on back then that involved Tillman State—their athletic department, specifically the football team.”

  “Where did you hear about that?”

  “Tricia DeWitt. She said if I wanted to find Dad, I should talk to you.”

  He laughed. “Tricia DeWitt. You talk about a blast from the past.”

  “You remember her?”

  “Oh yeah. No way could I ever forget her or the story. It was a doozy, pretty juicy stuff. But I can tell you one thing: Ms. DeWitt wasn’t privy to everything that was going on.”

  “She alluded to my dad being involved in recruiting violations.”

  “Yes, well, I got to know your dad. We were pretty close friends, and I can tell you it went a little deeper than a few simple violations.”

  “What do you mean?” Caroline couldn’t help it when her voice rose.

  “Maybe we should talk in person,” Kip said. “You’re in Houston?”

  “Yes,” Caroline said. Had she mentioned that to whomever she’d spoken to at the Herald? The Courier? Was that how he knew? Her pulse tapped lightly in her ears.

  “I’m in Texas right now too. On the coast. Port Aransas. My parents’ place. Clearing it out. My mom died recently, and my sister and I moved Dad into assisted living. He’s pretty bad off with Alzheimer’s.”

  “I’m sorry,” Caroline said. She might have mentioned she was moving her mother, too, though the circumstances weren’t so dire, but she wasn’t going to sidetrack the reporter with talk of their aging parents.

  “It’s a bastard,” Kip said. “The disease, not my dad.”

  “I’m—I’m trying to locate my dad, Mr. Penny. I was really hoping you would know where he is.”

  “I don’t,” he said. “I’m sorry. I haven’t spoken to him in years.”

  Caroline felt the drag of disappointment in spite of herself. “Well, can you say—I know it was a long time ago, but do you mind if I ask when the last time was that you saw or heard from him? Tricia mentioned you cam
e to her apartment in 1989 when Dad was there—”

  “I did meet him there. It might have been—it probably was the last time we got together,” Kip answered. “He was pretty stressed, too, as I recall. It was the summer after the accident, the fall he took in the winter of ’88? I’m sure you know—”

  “He left without a word to anyone, Mr. Penny. He dropped completely from sight after he left Omaha, sometime near the end of 1989, as near as I can tell. I haven’t heard anything from him, not in twenty-eight years.”

  “Huh. Well—that’s—I don’t know—the story we were putting together, it’s pretty complicated—”

  “You said we could talk in person.” Caroline gripped the mattress edge. “Is that possible?”

  “I’m free Saturday morning if that works for you.”

  “Yes, absolutely. There’s a bakery here in the neighborhood, Neilson’s. Good coffee and danish. Is ten o’clock a good time?” When the reporter agreed that it was, she gave him Neilson’s address.

  10

  Harris—Friday, January 12

  His tread is heavy on the stairs, his heart even heavier in his chest. He stops on the landing and fishes Zeke’s World Series ring out of his pocket. Since finding it in Kyle’s dresser drawer on Wednesday, he can’t think about anything else. He’s barely slept. His mind wants an explanation different from the most obvious one: that Kyle is responsible for putting it there. Harris knows his son, knows Kyle is not a thief. But teenagers are notorious for being secretive. Or possibly Kyle, like Harris, is leading some other life he and Holly know nothing about. Harris closes the ring in his fist, loosening his gaze, staring at nothing. Another alternative, one that sickens him, jitters in a corner of his mind.

  That Gee is somehow involved.

  Gee and Kyle were friends once, if you could call it that. It was some kind of growing-up-male mishmash of brotherly love spiked with the antagonism that exists between rivals. Kyle instigated the fight that ended the friendship. It happened a few years ago when he discovered Gee had stolen his baseball bat. Harris knows about the incident because he happened to be in the dugout at the Little League ballpark when Gee and Kyle, who were behind the dugout, got into it. The bat had been Kyle’s favorite, an aluminum Easton bat he’d named Lucky. It had gone missing from his canvas duffel after a game the previous week. Kyle saw it again when Gee brought it back to the park in his own duffel. He’d retaped the grip and marked it with his initials, but Kyle knew his own bat when he saw it, and he demanded Gee return it.

  Kyle called Gee a dirty thief.

  Harris opens his hand, studying the ring, Gee’s response echoing in his mind.

  Prove it! he taunted. What’re you gonna do, sissy? Why don’t you run home to your mama, sissy? Your pussy mama . . .

  Bringing Kyle’s mom into it, labeling her with that profanity, set Kyle off. It brought Harris out of the dugout and around it in time to see Kyle take a swing at Gee, landing a glancing blow on Gee’s jaw. While the boys are near the same height and weight now, over six feet and near two hundred pounds apiece, Gee was taller and heavier than Kyle back then. Gee beat Kyle to the ground in the minutes it took Harris to put a stop to the fight. He was breathing hard, enraged on Kyle’s behalf, but in the aftermath, he knew better than to wade in, knew it could damage Kyle’s pride if he were to so much as offer comfort. Thankfully, Kyle’s injuries weren’t serious, a busted lip, a swollen black eye, and when he asked Harris to stay out of it, Harris reluctantly agreed.

  But a day or so later Darren Drake, Gee’s dad, waylaid Harris in the high school parking lot, claiming Kyle had provoked the fight and bruised Gee’s ribs when all Gee had been trying to do was return Kyle’s bat, which he’d picked up by mistake. My son doesn’t lie, Darren said. My son doesn’t steal. When he demanded payment for Gee’s medical expenses, along with an apology from Kyle, Harris laughed in his face. You’re damn lucky I didn’t call the law on your kid, he said. Harris was royally pissed, but still, before he stomped off, he suggested Darren pull his head out. Your kid’s got issues, he said. You might want to look into getting him some help before they get too big to handle. It didn’t go over well. Harris has never spoken to Darren again. Neither have the boys been friends, so far as Harris knows—unless something has changed.

  Like maybe the guys are buddies again and keeping it on the down low, knowing their respective parents wouldn’t approve. That would be bad, but the even worse possibility—the cliff edge Harris’s mind wants to step off—is that Kyle might be doing the robberies with Gee. They could both have gone into Zeke’s house and taken the ring.

  Or Gee went there, solo, got the ring, and planted it in Kyle’s room. As some kind of warning or threat or who in the hell knows? Since Wednesday, the scenarios have looped endlessly through Harris’s mind, scaring the hell out of him. He wants to get to the bottom of it, but he’s had to wait for the opportunity to be alone in the house with Kyle. Finally, today Holly’s gone to the grocery store for something she needs to cook dinner. Cilantro, Harris thinks. She’s a stickler when it comes to preparing meals. The ingredients have to be fresh, farm-to-table fresh. Connor’s gone with her. He’ll beg for some damn thing, gummy bears or iced Pop-Tarts—something sugary. He’s still such a kid.

  Outside Kyle’s door, Harris shifts his weight from one foot to the other. The ring is a hot coal, burning his hand. His blood pounds roughshod in his ears. He knocks on Kyle’s door. It’s a rule in their house.

  “Yeah, come in.”

  “It’s Dad,” Harris says, opening the door.

  Kyle looks at Harris from where he’s sitting with his phone on the side of his bed—if there is a bed underneath the mountain of crap surrounding him. It’s the usual sight, so ordinary and normal—all the litter and garbage everywhere, and Kyle’s face is so open, and when he says, “What’s up?” he sounds so relaxed—Harris can only stare at him as his heart is seized in a fist of love mixed with panic so strong it loosens his knees. He has to take a quick step to disguise his weakness.

  “Jeez, Dad, watch it. Those are my good jeans you’re standing on.”

  Harris bends down, picks them up, tosses them at Kyle. “Why the hell can’t you ever clean up in here?” Annoyance burns through the softer fog of his love and concern.

  “If you came in here to lecture about how I keep my room—”

  “No. I came in here to ask what you know about this.” Harris opens his hand.

  Kyle’s glance dips. “What is it?”

  “Zeke Roman’s ring, the one he got when the Dodgers won the World Series in 1963. You remember. I told you the story. How Zeke came from nothing, how he worked his ass off on the baseball field, earned a scholarship, got drafted by the Dodgers—”

  “Yeah, Dad, I know all that. He went to med school, became a doctor. He’s your hero—I get it. But the only time I ever saw that ring was when Dr. Zeke showed it to me and Connor when we were at his house. Did he give it to you or something?” Kyle stands, reaching for it.

  Harris pulls back his hand. “No. I found it in your dresser drawer.”

  “You were snooping in my drawers?” Offense rings in Kyle’s tone.

  “Looking for your wallet. Remember? You were out of gas?”

  “All right. But the ring—no way was it in my drawer. Which one?”

  Was it worry Harris heard in Kyle’s voice? “Top, right hand. If you didn’t take it and put it there, who did?”

  “I don’t know, except it wasn’t me.”

  “I want to believe you, son, but you’ve got to admit this looks pretty bad.”

  “Why would I rob that old man? I don’t even know where he lives.” Kyle seems truly perplexed.

  “You’ve been there.” Harris is pushing, harder than he needs to, probably, but he’s got to. There’s too much at stake.

  “Not in a long time. It’s not like I remember the way. I can’t believe you’d think I could do this, Dad.”

  There is what sounds like real pain in Kyle
’s voice, his expression, and Harris’s heart falters. But he knows how easy it is to play someone, to act the part of the good guy. “Yeah, well, it’s not like it would be the first time. You stole a Hershey bar when you were five and a Playboy magazine when you were twelve.” Harris cites the second thing—that he knows about—that Kyle stole. He and Gee took it from Gee’s dad’s collection. That was before they had the fight that broke their friendship.

  “Are you serious? So because I took a candy bar and a damn magazine when I was a little kid, now I’m stealing jewelry? Jesus, Dad. Next thing you know you’ll be accusing me of all the other robberies around town. Maybe you should call the cops. Maybe I’ve got all the loot from those houses stashed in here.” Kyle is red faced, pissed as hell.

  Harris keeps his gaze. “I can’t help you, can’t protect you, if you don’t tell me the truth.”

  “I am telling you the truth. I don’t know how Dr. Zeke’s ring got in my dresser drawer.” Kyle shoves a hand over his head. “If you found it on Wednesday, why are you just now asking me about it?”

  “I don’t want to involve your mom. She’s got enough on her plate, dealing with Connor and his busted finger.”

  It took a while to get Connor settled down on Wednesday night. He was upset, worried his finger was going to cause him to miss the whole season. Harris sat with him longer than usual, trying to reassure him they’d work it out. When he finally joined Holly, she was in bed, book open on her upraised knees, reading. Harris had hidden Zeke’s ring by then under his socks in his dresser drawer. He wanted badly to tell her about it, along with everything else—Gee, the robberies, the dope. He dawdled in the bathroom a long time, rehearsing how he’d confess that when he couldn’t get the meds he needed from Zeke, he bought them from Gee. But then the realization hit him—how Holly would know then that she was right in her suspicion. He was back taking dope. Not only that, but he was buying it off a high school student. That would be the part that would break her heart. Worse, it would break their marriage. He knew he couldn’t do it, and leaving the bathroom, he crawled into bed beside her without a word, and he lay there with his back to her and his spine rigid, miserable in his self-disgust.