“I looked up to you, you know?”
Kyle’s voice cracks, and Harris’s heart staggers. He wants to grab his son and hold on to him. He wants to bring Kyle down into his lap and rock him as if he were a baby. But Kyle is grown now, a man, and life isn’t so simple anymore.
Kyle gets hold of himself, and when he says, “Growing up, I wanted to be just like you,” he’s speaking through teeth clenched hard against his hurt, the sense of Harris’s betrayal of him. How has it come to this? How is it that Harris has failed so completely to become the father he dreamed of being, the one he never had except briefly in Hoff? His mind flashes on that other father, his birth father. He feels revolted. He feels an oily scrim of fear flood his mouth. He doesn’t know why, where it’s coming from. Somehow now the light is dazzling—
“You’re pathetic.” Kyle releases Harris, shoving him back against the truck’s door. The handle bites into Harris’s back. “I told Mom she should divorce you.”
“Does she know where you are? Did she send you after me?” Harris fights to stay present.
“Are you serious? No way. She’s sick of you too. Sick of your lies.”
“What about Connor?”
“What about Connor?” Kyle mocks. “Like you care. He wants you to come home. Poor kid doesn’t know better.”
They stand silent, squared off, toe to toe, gazes locked. Nothing in the silence between them but the sound of the wind, the occasional passing car, now an incongruous burst of laughter down the way. Harris is conscious of Kyle’s breath, labored, heated. Harris can barely feel the air going into and out of his lungs. They have reached an impasse, a point of no return. They are lost, Harris thinks, in a foreign country without a map. He doesn’t know what to do. His mind feels scrambled. He can’t think why he’s here. He should get out, get to his mother. She’s in danger—
“What the hell is wrong with you, huh, Harris?”
He staggers when Kyle shoves him. He wipes his hands down his face. “Look, I’m sorry—”
“It’s too late for that bullshit now, Harris.”
His name from Kyle’s mouth is like acid, burning Harris’s face, his heart. Not Dad. His teeth clench against the pain.
“It’s all over town,” Kyle says. “By Monday it’ll be all over school. Everyone knows you’re a doper. Gee’s your dealer. Are you robbing houses with him, too, Harris? You part of his posse? You and Gee, BFFs forever? Is that how it is? God! What are you? Like, ten? Connor’s got way more going for him than you.”
“What do you mean, it’s all over town?”
“Amber read the texts on Gee’s phone about you buying dope off him and the break-ins—all the shit you and Gee are doing.”
“I’m not part of that, robbing the houses,” Harris says, but something is happening inside his head. Where is his mother? He can hear her groaning, crying. Jesus God, he’s got to get to her. But he is nothing, nothing at all, against the madman who has her—
“She told Sam.” Kyle talks over the noise in Harris’s brain. “Sam told me last night.”
“Your mother—?” Harris can’t articulate more. Panic has thickened his tongue. A sound comes, the whoop of a siren—a cop’s siren, giving notice. Over Kyle’s shoulder, Harris catches a glimpse of it on the other side of the parking lot. He looks back at Kyle, eyes wild, questioning, doubting, despite the gut punch of his feeling, his understanding that Kyle is responsible.
Kyle has summoned the law.
“Yeah. I did it. I called the cops. I told Mom somebody’s got to stop you and Gee.”
“Jesus Christ! Do you know what you’ve done?” Harris turns, jerking open the truck door, intent on escape. He’s off balance when Kyle’s arm circles his neck. The pressure of Kyle’s biceps swells against his throat, crushing bone and sinew, pinching off his carotid artery. The sound of his heartbeat thunders in his ears. But now his mind reels, and the old dream that has haunted his nights is alive around him. The images that jab his brain fuel a terror inside him that is old, nearly as old as he is. His mother’s screams grow louder; they are primal, horrified. A figure lurches into the scene. Harris looks through splayed fingers, a child’s fingers. The monster he sees, with its round marble eyes, is real; he’s here.
The darkness deepens, eating away at Harris’s peripheral vision. He’s a boy, fighting the monster, fighting for his and his mother’s lives. In some warped pocket of his mind, though, he recognizes there’s a difference this time. He’s no kid anymore. He’s bigger, stronger, than his opponent. Acting on practiced instinct, he squats, kicks his foot behind his faceless attacker, and in the same moment that he unbalances him, Harris takes the monster down. He feels the impact of the concrete jar the length of his body; he hears the attacker’s grunts of pain. Now Harris has him pinned between his knees. He smashes his fist into the monster’s face once, again, feeling the flesh give way, feeling the attacker’s blood slick his knuckles. He is only subliminally aware of the voice that calls out, pleading, “Dad! Dad, stop! Please stop!”
Harris doesn’t stop, not until someone comes up behind him and grabs his wrist, wrenching it down and behind him. His other arm is caught, too, in an iron grip. He’s pulled to his feet.
The man holding him, speaking near Harris’s ear, says, “That’s enough.”
Seconds pass before the haze begins to clear from his brain, and it hits him, what’s happening, that the man, a sheriff’s deputy from his uniform, has handcuffed him, that he’s been informed he’s under arrest for assault—of his own son. Harris can’t take it in. His shock makes him light headed, weak in his knees.
The officer sets him against the side of his truck bed, telling him, “Wait here,” and, “Don’t move,” before turning to Kyle and offering him a hand. Kyle’s face is blood smeared; one eye is closed, already darkening. He swipes at a cut on his mouth.
The sight sickens Harris. “Kyle, are you all right?” Does he ask out loud? Harris can’t hear his own voice above the noise of panicked horror in his brain. “Jesus,” he says, and he repeats it, “Jesus.” Prayer or curse? He doesn’t know. “Is he all right?” Harris appeals to the law officer, who, like Kyle, ignores him.
The deputy wants to call an ambulance, but Kyle refuses. He’s eighteen now, as of last month. An adult. The law can’t make him do anything, and neither can Harris.
“I just want to go home,” Kyle says, and his voice trembles.
Harris’s throat closes. “Son, I’m sorry. I lost it. I didn’t know—I thought—” He stops. Never tell . . . The admonition falls across his brain, severing whatever words, whatever explanation, he could offer. After so many years the habit of secrecy is ironclad; it’s part of him, flesh and bone. He blinks up at the sky, fighting tears. When he levels his gaze, Kyle meets his eyes but only briefly. “I’m so sorry.” Harris says it again. His knees are weak at the sight of his son’s battered face, the idea that his fists—his hands—have caused the damage. The same hands that cradled Kyle as a baby.
Harris felt an urge to cry on the day of Kyle’s birth too. Looking down into Kyle’s tiny face, scrunched and red, frowning mightily, Harris’s heart swelled, and his head went light with a frothy glow of sensations he couldn’t name, some combination of love and joy and wonder. He caught Holly’s glance, and her jubilant, smiling image blurred in the prism of his tears. He remembers thinking he had never understood the nature of love before, how in the space of moments he was seized with devotion, the commitment to protect this little being, this tiny bit of life, with all he had in him. Whatever it took. If he were called on to give his own life for Kyle, he would. Instead look what he’s done. What would have happened if the cop hadn’t come? How far would Harris have gone? Would he have come to himself, stopped himself?
Kyle walks past him to the car he drove here in.
The deputy takes his elbow, escorting Harris to the patrol car.
“Is he okay to drive, do you think?” Harris asks as the lawman guides him down into the back seat.
Wayman is the deputy’s name, according to the name tag over his uniform shirt pocket: S. WAYMAN. Harris has heard the name before, he thinks. But where? From whom? He can’t remember.
“Yeah, if you can call driving with one good eye okay.” A mix of pity and disgust is evident in Wayman’s tone, his demeanor. He slams the squad car door, goes back to Harris’s truck.
Harris stares at the seat back. He knows Wayman’ll find it, the packet with the four tabs of Oxy. He should have taken them all. He should have bought all Cal had and downed it. Maybe it would have been enough to kill him.
At the Greeley County Jail, a booking officer, not Wayman, hounds Harris for information: his name, where he lives, his age. He’s frisked again; they take his stuff, wallet, car keys, cell phone, the change in his pocket. He’s asked for his shoes and socks. An officer reads him his rights and asks if he understands them. He’s told that he’s charged with assault and possession of a controlled substance. Again he’s asked if he understands. Even as he answers, “Yes,” he wants to tell them, “Hell no,” though in his heart he knows he’s put himself here, in this god-awful place. The observer in his brain wonders how he could have let it happen, allowed himself to sink so low.
He’s taken to a phone hanging on the wall at the end of a short concrete hallway and told he can call someone, an attorney, a member of his family. It’s Saturday, but if a judge can be found, if Harris can lay hands on the cash, it’s possible he could be bonded out. Harris lifts the receiver. Who to contact? Who wants to hear what he’s got to say? Who would want to help? Not Holly. Not after the damage he’s inflicted on their son. She’ll have seen the evidence by now. She’ll know about the drugs, how he’s enabled Gee. She’ll want nothing more to do with him, and he can’t blame her. He imagines his mother will feel the same way. He returns the receiver to its resting place.
“I’ve got no one to call,” he tells the officer.
He’s given an orange jumpsuit, a stack of bedding, and rudimentary hygiene supplies: a comb, a toothbrush, a paper-wrapped bar of soap. After he’s strip-searched and showered, he’s led to a cell, roughly six by eight feet. There are two metal beds topped with thin mattresses bolted to one wall, one above the other. A sink/toilet combo stands in one corner. He’s the only occupant. He sits on the edge of the bottom bunk, skin crawling with shame.
Time passes, enough that it loses meaning.
Nausea comes over him in waves. He loses count of how many times he’s sick. He feels on fire; sweat soaks his jumpsuit, turning the rough fabric to ice, making him shiver, making his teeth clack together. His brain and his very bones ache with need. It’s tearing him open from the inside. Sometimes he cries aloud; at least he thinks the noise comes from him. The sound is harsh, like sandpaper against his throat.
Lights go off and come back on.
Metal doors are racked open and shut.
Someone calls his name. Lifting his gaze, he sees a shadowy figure outside his cell door, grinning in at him, mocking him. It looks like Gee, morphs into Zeke’s likeness. Now Hoff’s image. Now Holly’s, Kyle’s, his mother’s, in quick succession. He rolls onto his side, knifing his hands between his drawn-up knees, putting his back to their leers, their fingers raised in accusation.
17
Caroline—Sunday, January 14
Caroline flinched at the sound when her cell phone went off on the nightstand next to her bed. Up on one elbow, she fumbled for it, thinking: Steve. But when she answered, it wasn’t his voice she heard; it was Martha’s. She was at the hospital, Martha said, St. Joseph’s, in the emergency room, where an ambulance had brought Lanie shortly after three in the morning.
Dread gripped Caroline’s stomach. “I’m on my way,” she said, shoving the covers aside. She was dressed and on the road within minutes. The streets were mostly empty at this early hour, and she drove well above the speed limit, heart racing. Please, please. But even as the prayer repeated in her brain, she knew the futility of it, that one day, no matter how hard she begged, she was going to lose Lanie. Just not now, not today. Please . . .
Caroline parked, and entering the hospital, she found Martha in the waiting room outside the ER.
The women embraced.
“The doctor hasn’t been out yet,” Martha said when they sat down.
“What happened?” Caroline asked.
“I stayed with her last night. Something told me I needed to. Of course she argued, and she flat-out refused to let me sleep in a chair in the dining room with her. She wanted me to go upstairs, get in a regular bed.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No. If I was going to do that, I might just as well have gone home. I bedded down on the living room sofa next door and kind of catnapped. I checked on her a couple of times before midnight, and she seemed okay, but when I looked in on her a little before three this morning, her breathing was labored. I didn’t wake her, didn’t bother to ask her permission; I just called 911. I’m pretty sure she’s furious at me.”
“It’s my fault,” Caroline said, stricken with remorse. “I should never have told her yesterday about the man in Lone Pine, that he might be Dad. I thought it would give her a boost.”
“Well, I think it did. She was so hopeful after you left.”
“But maybe it was too much excitement.” It hadn’t occurred to Caroline such news might have the opposite effect, sinking her aunt instead of buoying her. “I should have kept my mouth shut until I had a chance to check it out.”
“She did say she wanted you to call that private detective—”
“Thomas Williamson, I know, and I tried. The number’s no longer in service.”
“What about another detective? You shouldn’t go to see the man alone.”
“I’ve left a message with someone, an old friend who’s in law enforcement.”
“Lanie will be relieved,” Martha said.
Caroline thought of how Lanie would tease her. Steve Wayman? she’d say, and she’d have that knowing twinkle in her eye. Caroline imagined it; she prayed Lanie would be well enough again for such a moment.
Martha said, “How about coffee? I’ll see if I can find some that’s decent.”
Caroline thanked her, and leaning her head against the wall, she thought of her mother. She’d been appalled that Caroline intended to pursue the lead Jace had given her.
He ran you off the road. You could have been killed. What if the information he gave you is some kind of trap? You should go to the police, Caroline.
Her mother had been so insistent that Caroline had been forced out of defense to say she’d contacted Steve. “He’s a cop, Mom, a sheriff’s deputy. He’ll know how I should handle it.”
They were in the kitchen, doing the dinner dishes. Her mom was washing, Caroline drying. Her mother didn’t respond at first, but after several moments she shut off the water and asked, “Is there something going on between you?”
“Steve and I?” Caroline was dumbfounded. “No! Why would you think—?”
“Last October, when you saw him—something about the way you talked about him, it was—”
“Nothing,” Caroline said, but it hadn’t been nothing, had it? Her feelings for him now weren’t nothing . . . she dropped her glance, feeling dismayed.
“The summer you dated before you went off to college, I worried you were too serious.”
“Yes, well, I went to Iowa, didn’t I, and met Rob.” And got pregnant. Those words were there, but it was unnecessary to say them. Her mother knew. Caroline set a plate on the stack in the cabinet, making a clatter. She had never for an instant regretted having Nina, but if she wasn’t careful, especially lately, she could get angry all over again at her decision to have casual sex with a guy she hadn’t been sure she’d loved, and she could deplore her negligence when it came to swallowing her nightly birth control pill—for all the good it did.
“Caro?” her mom said tentatively.
She twisted the dish towel in her hands. “I guess the marriage, i
t’s not—it’s not turning out too well.”
“I’m so sorry, Caro.” Her mother’s expression softened. “Have you decided what you’re going to do? Is there any way to work it out?”
“I don’t think so. Maybe if Rob would step up, if he’d take responsibility, but I don’t see that happening.” Even as she spoke, Caroline wondered, Was she being honest with herself? Was it only Rob’s failure behind her lack of hope, or was her discontent deeper? It felt as if her unhappiness was of longer duration than her discovery last fall of Rob’s dishonesty. But she’d soldiered on in service to some long-ago vow not to end up divorced like her parents.
“You can’t trust him.”
Caroline glanced at her mom. “No,” she answered, and she felt certain about this one thing at least. Maybe her principles were more inflexible than she’d like them to be, but Rob had crossed a line as far as she was concerned. He’d pulled this same stunt twice—years apart. But all of that aside, she knew she’d question anything he said from now on.
“Well,” her mom said, “if anyone knows there’s no love where there’s no trust, it would be me.”
“I’m sorry, Mom. I mean if my looking for Dad—if it’s hurting you.”
“No, I understand. He’s your dad, after all. It’s not as if I haven’t wondered myself where he is, how he is. We had some good—some wonderful years. And,” she had said, taking Caroline’s face in her hands, “we had you.”
They’d both been fighting tears by that point.
Even now, recalling the conversation, Caroline was still surprised at her mother’s candor. I’m glad you’re getting help from Steve. That had been her final comment.
Caroline could only hope she would hear from him, but she wasn’t confident. Her message to him had scarcely been cogent. She’d stammered out an apology for her behavior last October, saying something to the effect that she usually didn’t drink so much. She’d made reference to Rob, his legal troubles; then, backtracking, she’d said it wasn’t Rob she needed advice about. It’s my dad, she’d said. He’s missing. Who knew what Steve would make of that? In any case, when she’d been in the midst of leaving her number, her phone had cut off. She wasn’t certain now if he’d have a way of returning her call if he wanted to.
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