Tell No One

by Taylor Sissel, Barbara

  But Steve had always been perceptive and sensitive and kind. He’d had a tender heart. Clearly he still did. How hard must it be to be a cop with a nature like his? She wondered how he managed it. She could have asked, but it seemed too personal. She finished her coffee and set the thermal mug in the cup holder on the wide console between them. “It’s got to be hell, watching your parent do that to himself. Take drugs, I mean.”

  “A parent with any kind of addiction has got to be hell on a kid.”

  “You were close with your dad, I remember. Close to both your parents. I envied you that. Do you remember those weekends we went to your folks’ house on Lake Livingston? I loved spending time up there,” Caroline said wistfully. “Your parents were always so much fun and so comfortable to be around.”

  “They liked you too.” Steve found her gaze. “I hate having to tell you this, Caro, but they were killed a few years back.”

  “Oh, Steve, no! I’m so sorry.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “How? I don’t mean to be nosy—”

  “No, it’s okay. It was a boating accident, two years ago. Drunk driver T-boned them. Hit them full on, doing eighty, eighty-five. He never knew he hit them.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “Well, it may sound horrible, too, when I say it was a good thing. Going that fast, hitting them that hard, my folks probably didn’t know what happened either.”

  It was reflex when Caroline reached out to him, putting her hand on his arm, dropping it for the briefest moment to his thigh. He met her gaze when she withdrew her hand as abruptly. She couldn’t read his expression. If he’d asked, she couldn’t have defined her own feelings in the moment any more than she could have last night. The idea that she might have abandoned Steve out of fear was appalling to her. She’d grieved over his loss for weeks, had been grieving when Rob had initiated a conversation with her that day in the library at Drake. Rob had pursued her, and she’d let him. Even now he didn’t know about Steve; she’d never talked about him. It would have been too painful—that was what she’d told herself. Steve was the past; she’d told herself that too. It bothered her now. What kind of girl did that?

  Steve broke into her thoughts. “Is this the place, do you think? Cactus Café? Does that name ring a bell?” He was slowing the truck as they approached a building on the left-hand side of the highway. “We’re about four or five miles north of Lone Pine.”

  Caroline looked in the direction he indicated. “It must be it.”

  The café was old, ramshackle; the red gingham curtains in the windows were faded. Steve pulled in alongside a semi. The parking lot was littered with them.

  “You good?” Steve looked at her as he came around the front of his truck.

  “A bit nervous,” Caroline admitted.

  An old-fashioned bell jingled when they opened the door.

  “Sit anywhere you want, folks,” a waitress said in passing. “I’ll be right with ya.”

  Instead of taking a seat, Caroline followed her to the counter, digging her dad’s photo, one she’d pulled out of an album at Lanie’s, from her purse. “I’m looking for information.” She edged her way onto a stool. Steve came up behind her.

  The waitress set the coffee carafe she’d been carrying on a burner and, wiping her hands on her apron, turned to look at Caroline. Her glance dropped to the photo.

  “Do you recognize this man?” Caroline asked. “He would be a lot older now.”

  “Yeah, that’s Raymond Berry,” the waitress said. “Don’t ever call him Ray either. He won’t answer.”

  Caroline’s heart rose. “He said that?”

  “Oh yeah. He’s a stickler. Full name or nothing.”

  “Is that significant?” Steve asked.

  “Raymond Berry, the football player, wouldn’t answer to anything but his full name either,” Caroline answered Steve. “Dad told me about it, how his dad was called Ray and he wanted to distinguish himself and insisted that everyone call him Raymond.” Caroline turned back to the waitress, feeling almost breathless with anticipation. “He lives around here, doesn’t he? Can you tell me how to get to his place?”

  “What’s your interest in him? He’s not much for company.”

  “I think he’s my dad.” Caroline kept the waitress’s gaze. She wasn’t going to back down now.

  “Really?” The waitress looked at the photo and back at Caroline. “I can see a resemblance. You got the same eyes, that high forehead. Come look at this, Pat.” She—her name tag read MAUREEN—waved over another waitress.

  Pat listened to Maureen explain Caroline’s errand. She examined the photo Maureen held, and looking between it and Caroline, she said, “Well, I’ll be. Y’all do look alike. He never said nothin’ about a daughter, though.” Pat looked from Caroline back to Maureen. “You ever hear him talk about having a daughter?”

  “No,” Maureen said. “But that don’t mean he didn’t have one. Lotta men want to disown their kids. Buncha deadbeat dads trying to get out of child support.” She shot Caroline a sympathetic look.

  Caroline didn’t want to take the time to correct her impression. Her dad didn’t fall into that category, or at least he hadn’t neglected paying child support until around the time he’d disappeared.

  Beside her, Steve must have sensed her impatience. He said, “Can you give us directions?”

  “His place isn’t easy to find.” Maureen reached for a napkin. “Not like you can program it into your GPS.”

  Pat handed Maureen a ballpoint pen. By the time she’d sketched it, the map ran the length and width of the white rectangle. She handed it over. “Good luck,” she said.

  Back in the cab of Steve’s truck, Caroline looked down at the napkin. “Turn right when you see the windmill? Take the left at the old falling-down barn?” She looked over at Steve. “What happened to street signs?”

  He smiled. “You left those back in the city.”

  Twenty minutes and a few wrong turns later, coming down an unpaved road, they saw the battered mailbox Maureen had noted on her drawing. Steve slowed as they approached the small, run-down house it fronted. Maureen had indicated there was a live oak near the building, but she hadn’t said the house, which was little better than a shack, would appear to be leaning into the tree’s embrace.

  “Want me to turn in?” Steve’s nod indicated a driveway that bore only remnants of the crushed granite that had once, perhaps in better times, provided its surface.

  “I guess.” Caroline wasn’t at all sure. Her heart seemed to have stalled in her chest. She didn’t want to think of her father living here in this small, dark, sad place. The windows that flanked the front door were covered in cardboard; the door itself hung aslant in its frame. It made her shiver to imagine the winter wind blowing under it.

  “Do you want me to go with you, or do you want to go alone?”

  Caroline looked at Steve. “You are so kind,” she began, but then a noise pulled her gaze and Steve’s forward. A man had come out of the house onto the sagging front stoop. Cold sunshine illuminated the planes of his cheeks, highlighted the shape of his brow, the set of his ears and jaw. His longish hair was silver and reached the collar of his flannel shirt in back. He raised his hand as if in greeting, or maybe he was going to touch his temple. Her gaze was riveted by the movement, studying that long-fingered hand, the heavier but narrow bone of his wrist. She knew that hand. Lifting her gaze, she knew that face, the shape of the man’s head. His eyes were in shadow, but she knew him, and in that moment of knowing, she drew in her breath.

  “Dad?” she said, and the word came on a sigh.

  20

  Harris—Thursday, January 18

  It’s his first morning back at his mom’s, and they’re in the kitchen when his cell phone rings. He sees it’s Zeke. Glancing at his mom, he says, “I’ve got to take this,” and he’s relieved when she doesn’t stop him from leaving the room, when she doesn’t demand to know who is calling him.


  “I’m in town,” Zeke says without preamble.

  Harris walks out the front door onto the porch. In the distance, a plume of dust rising into the air draws his eye. A vehicle is heading slowly up the drive. His breath freezes in his chest. Almost unconsciously he steps back. The porch is wide, L-shaped, and he sidesteps toward the deep, shadowed corner.

  “I heard the cops are headed your way,” Zeke says.

  “Do you know what they want?” He was released just hours after his mom had left the jail yesterday, following his bail hearing. His trial is set for March, unless he makes the deal Wayman talked about. His mom is pushing hard for it, but Harris wonders if it’ll happen now. His mom heard when she was arranging for Harris’s bail that Gee has dropped from sight. Talk is his folks have packed him off to Europe or Mexico.

  Zeke says, “It depends who you talk to. People are upset, Harris. There’s a bunch of folks who’re convinced you were in on the robberies with Gee, that it’s how you supported your habit, selling off stolen electronics. Maybe the cops think there’s something to it.”

  “It’s bullshit, Zeke, and you know it.”

  “What I know is you just spent the last three days detoxing in a jail cell.” Zeke is pissed and torn up over what Harris has done and the consequences. You’re worse off than you know, Harris, going after your own kid, he said when the two made contact yesterday. Jesus Christ, what were you thinking? Then: I know you had no choice, but you can’t go cold turkey off opioids. There’s a process to it.

  Evidently going cold turkey is dangerous. Not that law enforcement gives a crap about that.

  “You make an appointment to see your doctor like I told you?” Zeke asks.

  “Not yet.”

  “Let him help you, Harris. Let him get you into a rehab facility. If you can do the deal the DA is offering, get out with only probation—and it’s possible, it really is, since this is your first offense—the judge is bound to recommend a program of some kind in any case.”

  It amazes Harris that these people—Zeke, his mother, Wayman—imagine they know how best Harris can recover his life, make amends, be forgiven.

  As if any of that were possible, as if he were even worthy of another chance.

  “Yeah.” Harris is watching the car’s approach. It’s still too far away to see what kind it is or who’s driving. But he knows—in the back of his mind he has no doubt—Zeke is right. It’s the police. From either Wyatt or Madrone County.

  “Harris?” Zeke prompts. “There’s no shame in asking for help.”

  “Honestly? I think the best thing for my family, Holly and the boys and Mom, is for me to get out of here.” Harris is retreating farther now, backing toward the stairs that lead off the side of the porch. His truck is on the drive behind the house. He’s left the keys in it. He thinks maybe he knew it might come to this. His gut is in a knot; his ears are ringing. He’s about to descend the steps when his head swims bad enough that he’s got to stop, grip the stair rail to keep himself upright. Lack of sleep, he thinks. Or maybe it’s the dope sickness, the wasting and persistent effects of withdrawal. But more likely he’s just plain scared out of his mind. He stands still, waiting for the black dots that are eating his peripheral vision to clear.

  “What do you mean, get out of here?”

  Zeke’s voice needles Harris’s ear. “I mean leave Texas, maybe go to Mexico. It’s easy enough to get there, easy enough to disappear. Gee’s done it.”

  “Son, you aren’t thinking straight.”

  “Look, Zeke, I appreciate you, man—”

  “You understand how it’s going to look if you run?”

  “I don’t care how it looks—”

  “There was another break-in last night.”

  “Yeah. I heard. Gee’s gone, so it’s got to be the cousin or some copycat. It was the same MO.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” Zeke says. “The robbers—and there were two of them—had a gun.”

  Harris’s heart drops.

  “Joe Moncrief, the homeowner, got shot. You know Joe, don’t you, Harris? He’s got a kid, a daughter, at the high school. Lucky for him it was only a flesh wound, but you see where I’m going with this, right? It’s not just a simple break and enter now. Whoever it was, they’re on the string for armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon and who the hell knows what all. It’s a damn sight more serious when you bring a gun to a crime. That’s significant prison time, Harris. And your name is messed up in it.”

  “I didn’t do it, Zeke. Ask Mom. I was home with her all night.”

  “That’s fine, son, just fine. You got your mom to cover for you. Moms lie for their kids all the time. I don’t care how old the kid is. Family members lie for each other. You think the cops are going to believe her?”

  Believeherbelieveherbelieveher . . .

  Zeke’s words echo away in Harris’s brain. He touches his temple, frowning. It’s not the lies you tell everybody else that matter so much, but the lies you tell yourself can kill you.

  Hoff’s voice comes from nowhere, bringing with it a sense of the man so strong it weakens Harris’s knees. He sits down hard on the stair, gripping the rail. He is dry mouthed, blind. Shaking. It is all coming apart, and he’s powerless to stop it.

  “Harris, you still there?”

  “Whatever happens, however I can fix this, it’s not for me. I don’t really care what happens to me.” Harris struggles to keep a hold on what is solid and real, the wooden step under his butt, the stair rail rough against his palm, his concern for those whom he loves . . . Holly, his children, his mother. But his vision has gone watery; his eyes burn.

  “Then who, son? Who are you willing to throw away your life for?”

  Harris ignores Zeke’s question. “She had no choice. You get that, don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t understand—who’re you talking about?”

  “She only wanted to protect me.” Harris is aware on some level as he speaks of the sound of car doors slamming nearby, one, then two, but he feels separate from the noise. He might be in another country or at the back of the moon.

  He feels the vibration when whoever was in the car walks up onto the porch. The knocks on the front door are official sounding and loud, and he hears those too. He knows it’s the police, and now, despite what logic tells him, that it’s not possible, he’s certain they’ve come for his mother. He’s brought the cops to her doorstep when he swore he never would.

  21

  Caroline—Thursday, January 18

  I’m scared, Maggie. Scared of myself—for myself. The line from her dad’s letter to her mother was present in Caroline’s mind as she approached the man on the stoop. Her dad had clearly felt threatened when he’d written it, and he looked ready to bolt now.

  She felt Steve come abreast of her, and she was grateful when he cupped her elbow. His presence steadied her. Her father squinted at them. He wasn’t wearing a jacket and had his arms tightly crossed against the morning chill. A fitful breeze ruffled the feathery wisps of his white hair. She waited for a sign that he knew her. She pictured how it would happen, the way he would step down from the crooked little porch and come toward her, recognition lighting his face. She imagined their embrace.

  But he remained where he stood, watching, intent. His expression didn’t lighten with the joy of recognition or any recognition. It weighed on her, his lack of a reaction. Still, when he said, “Can I help you folks?” she took a hopeful step toward him.

  “Are you Raymond Berry?” she asked.

  He came down to their level, into the light. “Yeah. Who’re you?”

  Caroline kept his gaze. The resemblance was so strong . . . the high brow, the shape of his head, the set of his jaw . . . but she saw now it wasn’t him.

  Her brain shut down. Her breath left her in a gust. Raymond—this Raymond Berry—wasn’t her dad. Had it not been for Steve’s grip, she might have fallen to her knees. She had counted on this man being her father, and he wasn’t. Where would sh
e go now?

  “It’s not him?” Steve asked, quietly, gently.

  “No,” she whispered.

  “Who are you?” Raymond Berry asked again. “Are you the cops? The repo guy already got my car.”

  “We’re not here to cause you any trouble,” Steve said. “My friend thought you were someone else.”

  “Well, if you don’t got no business here, I suggest you git off the property. I don’t much like strangers comin’ around.”

  Steve apologized. His grasp tightened on her elbow, signaling they should go, but somehow Caroline’s feet were rooted where she stood. Her gaze was still hooked on Raymond Berry’s face, as if by some miracle looking could make him be her father.

  “Go on now. Git.” Berry shooed them with his hands.

  Steve brought Caroline around. Putting his arm across her shoulders, he propelled her toward his truck, opened the door, assisted her into the passenger seat. Caroline stared sightlessly through the windshield. She didn’t look at Steve when he joined her in the truck’s cab. They didn’t speak. The porch was deserted when they backed out of the drive, but Caroline saw Raymond Berry’s face at the window, the face that was so like her dad’s. Stop, she wanted to say. Maybe if I saw him again . . . Maybe he just doesn’t remember who he is . . . Maybe if I were to sit with him and talk . . .

  “Is there any chance it could be him? Any doubt in your mind about it?” Steve seemed to read the direction of her thoughts. “I can turn around—”

  Caroline met his eyes. “No. My head knew it wasn’t Dad probably from the first glance. The resemblance is uncanny, but that’s all it is.”

  “You wanted it to be him.”

  “I so wanted to bring him to Lanie.” She clamped her teeth, locking hot tears of disappointment behind them. What use were they?

  “I know. I’m so sorry, Caro . . .”