“No, I’m sorry for wasting your time,” she said once she could trust her voice.
“I was glad to do it, glad to be there, if it helped.” They reached the highway, and Steve made a left turn, heading south, back toward Greeley.
“It did,” she said. She was afraid to say how much, afraid her emotions would overrun her.
“I guess you’ve had someone run his banking and social security information. He’d be over sixty-five, wouldn’t he, collecting a check by now? Would he have had retirement? Investments? Anything traceable like that?”
“There’s nothing—not that either of the private investigators could find, anyway.”
“So what’s left? Plan B?”
“Contacting Julia. Yes, I guess so.” Dread pooled in Caroline’s stomach at the thought. She picked at her thumbnail. “What information can she have, though, that isn’t nearly as old as what I already know—and that’s assuming she doesn’t hang up on me?”
Steve changed lanes.
“And now, there’s Harris’s arrest . . . his issues with drugs . . .” Caroline trailed off, picked up again. “It’s not great timing, is it? Not that any time would be easy. You said earlier he was released?”
“Yesterday morning. I believe his mother, Julia, got him out on bail.”
“What a horrible thing for a mother to have to do. Has Harris been arrested before? Do you know? Can you say?”
“His record’s clean. Not a speeding ticket on it. The story I’ve gotten is that he was prescribed Oxycontin from a doctor when he had back surgery a few years ago. He was probably hooked before he knew it. It happens to a lot of folks.”
“It’s all over the news,” Caroline said, and it was wrong of her, but she was relieved that their conversation had turned away from her troubles. She thought it was deliberate, that Steve understood how shattered she was, and he was creating a distance, giving her a safe space to breathe. “It’s terrible how people—ordinary people—start taking prescription drugs and end up addicted and losing everything. Jobs, families, homes—their lives.”
“What I hear, Harris is one of the good guys. Really well thought of in Wyatt. He’s the athletic director at Wyatt High School. Head coach of the baseball team, too—or he was.”
“I heard that. It seems strange to me, though. Dad raved about Harris’s football skills, how devoted he was to the game.”
“You couldn’t compete. I remember you telling me that once.”
She held his glance for a moment before he turned his eyes back to the road. She was touched by how much he remembered of what she’d told him so many years ago. She said, “I thought Dad finally had the son I could never be.”
“How old was Harris when your dad disappeared? Do you know?”
Caroline thought for a moment. “Twelve, maybe thirteen? We’re something like four years apart, I think.”
“Must have been as tough for him as it was for you.”
Something in Steve’s voice made her look at him.
“Harris mentioned his dad when we spoke. I could tell the guy meant a lot to him. It seemed as if it really bothered him that he never got to say goodbye. I know how he feels. I didn’t get to tell my folks goodbye either.”
Caroline touched Steve’s arm, although she knew she shouldn’t.
“Do you remember I told you about that domestic I had, the war vet with PTSD?”
She did, Caroline said.
“Paranoia and delusions are symptoms of posttraumatic stress. Do you know much about PTSD?”
She shook her head. She’d never known anyone who was afflicted.
“When the car backfired, the husband went for his gun the way he would, the way he’d been trained to do, in a combat situation. His wife was the only one home, so he thought she was responsible. She was the enemy, out to kill him. In his mind, he was only taking steps to defend himself. It could have been the same for Harris. Sometimes opioid use can lead to the same type of paranoia and hallucinations.”
“He thought his son was someone else, a stranger out to get him?”
“He could have. When I questioned him at the scene, he told me he’d taken Oxy. When he was strip-searched, they found a fentanyl patch. He said he’d been taking more drugs, more steadily, lately. And his kid did admit to trying to restrain his dad by grabbing him in a choke hold. I’m no doctor, but it’s possible lack of oxygen played a role. It would be instinct to fight back in any case when you’re under attack.”
“Kill or get killed.”
“PTSD can operate like that.”
Caroline suppressed a shudder.
“Just a possibility. I’m not trying to excuse the guy.”
Steve turned in to the Ramada and pulled up alongside Caroline’s rental car.
She turned to him. “I don’t see how I can call Harris or Julia now, given what they’re dealing with.”
“It’s a bad time, but what if your dad’s disappearance—what if it’s something they know about and can explain, or what if it’s impacted Harris in a way that affects him even now?” Steve’s look was intent. “Sometimes when folks fall into this kind of situation, it’s got its roots in the past. Stuff that happened back when.”
“Do you know of something—specific, I mean?” It was Steve’s demeanor that made Caroline ask.
“Just a feeling I got from talking to him. His situation, what happened with his son—I don’t know. People like Harris don’t belong in the system.”
Caroline didn’t know what to say. What had gone wrong? That was the question in her mind.
“It’s possible he can help us with another case, a series of residential break-ins in Wyatt.” Steve broke the silence.
Caroline looked at him.
“There’ve been a couple of robberies up this way, too, between Wyatt and Greeley. Turns out Harris saw one robbery going down last November, on Thanksgiving Day. He can ID the two guys who are responsible. One’s a senior at Wyatt High, the quarterback for the football team. All-state, all-American—had his pick of colleges.”
“That’s awful. He’s blown his whole future.”
“Pretty much.”
“A house was broken in to in Wyatt last night, wasn’t it?” Caroline said. “I heard about it on the news this morning. The homeowner was shot. Was it the same kid? The football player?”
“Yeah. He and his cousin are in custody now. The Wyatt police chief called before I picked you up and said they were caught in a stolen car west of San Antonio. They were probably headed to Del Rio or somewhere where they could cross the border into Mexico.”
“If Harris saw them breaking in to a house back in November, why weren’t they caught then?”
“He didn’t report it. Long story,” Steve said in answer to Caroline’s questioning look. He turned toward her, keeping her gaze, and the moment lingered, long enough that she grew warm beneath his regard; she felt physically embraced by it. It seemed to her the world had shrunk to enclose her with Steve in the cab of his truck.
He said, “You have no idea how many times since last fall I’ve wanted to call you.”
Her yielding to him, to the desire that seemed implicit in his voice, was almost imperceptible, no more than the smallest shift of her shoulders, the forward tilt of her head. “I wish—wish you had.” How often in the months since she’d seen him had she imagined it, whole conversations with Steve, and then, feeling guilty, had shoved such notions away? But now he was so close, and his feelings for her were so clear in his eyes, and her longing to know this man, to have him in her life again, was wild inside her, sweeping caution away.
“I don’t want to be the guy on the side or the one who breaks up a marriage,” Steve said.
“No,” she said. “I would never want it that way. I couldn’t put you in that position . . .” She respected him way too much. Neither did she want to hurt Rob.
He touched her cheek, and pulling loosened strands of her hair away, he tucked them behind her ear. Her heart paused. S
he eased her hand over his, feeling the shapes of his knuckles, even the thrum of his pulse. Or was it her own pulse she felt? She had no answers for the questions in his eyes.
“I should go,” she said.
“Back to Houston?”
“For now, until I get Mom settled.”
“And after that, will you go home to Des Moines? Are you—are you working things out there?”
Caroline lowered her hand and her gaze to the broad console that divided them. “I don’t think so.”
“I’m so sorry, Caro. I know what you’re going through is painful. I would help you if I could. You know that, don’t you?”
He meant it; she could hear the genuine caring in his voice, and it closed her throat. Her gaze rose when he took her hand, and she watched, mesmerized, as he kissed her palm, the inside of her wrist. His gesture, the intimate sensation of it, opened an ache deep inside her and enlivened a memory from their past, and she saw them in her mind’s eye, lying together in the bed in Steve’s apartment. Their legs were entwined, and he was tracing the path from her breast to the curve of her hip.
She knew, looking at Steve, he was remembering such a moment too. He returned her hand gently to the console, and facing front, he said gruffly, “You aren’t free,” and it was true. She wasn’t.
“I wish I were,” she said, and she knew her desire for Steve was a betrayal of her marriage vows, vows she probably should never have made. But she couldn’t go back, couldn’t correct her past mistakes. She could only go forward, being as honest with herself and everyone else from now on as possible. She got her purse, opened the truck door, and got out, wincing at the cold. Looking at Steve across the seat, she thanked him for going with her.
“It was nothing,” he said.
They couldn’t seem to break their locked gaze or the silence that was packed with words, all of them impossible.
Steve flashed an abrupt grin. “If you’re ever back this way, call me. I’ll let you buy me dinner again.”
She smiled. “Only if we can go back to Bo Dean’s.”
“Was it the food or the ambience?”
“The company,” she said. “Maybe I’ll be back sooner than you know,” she added, and she felt her face warm with dismay, a kind of vexation. As Steve had said, she wasn’t free.
“I hope so,” Steve said. He gave her a small salute and a one-cornered smile. “Be safe,” he told her.
She nodded and, shutting the truck door, went to her rental car and got in, and within moments the rearview mirror captured his image at the wheel of his pickup as he passed behind her on his way out of the parking lot. She thought of going after him, but it would be wrong of her on too many levels. She got out her phone instead and called her mother to tell her the man in Lone Pine wasn’t anyone they knew.
“It was a wild-goose chase after all,” Caroline said to her mom.
“I was against it only because of how hurt and disappointed you would be.”
“I know, and I am, but I’ll get over it. I’m worried about Lanie, though. She so wanted to see him. How is she?”
“In and out,” her mom said. “I think there’s not much time left.”
Caroline said she was on her way, that she would come to St. Joe’s on her arrival. She glanced at the time on the dashboard panel. “I should be there by six or so,” she said, and hanging up, she called Nina.
“Oh, Mommy, I’m so sorry,” she said when Caroline explained once again that Raymond Berry wasn’t any relation. “I’m coming down there,” Nina said. “Daddy’s coming too. Gramma says we should if we want to see Lanie before—while she can still know—”
“No.”
“No, I shouldn’t come?”
“Of course you should, but your dad and Lanie aren’t close.”
“I don’t think it’s Lanie he wants to see.”
Caroline didn’t answer.
“He thinks you’re going to file for divorce.”
“He said that?”
“Are you?”
Divorce. The word hung in the space behind Caroline’s eyes. Her mind walked around it, viewing it as if it were a foreign object. Divorce? a voice asked.
“Mom?”
“I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“I don’t want to choose sides, not that I like what he’s done—”
“We would never expect that, Nina. Whatever happens, we both love you. None of this is your fault.”
“Yours either.”
“I’m not so sure of that, but I am sure it’s nothing to do with you.”
“He said I’ll probably have to leave school. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to afford it if he has to pay back taxes and fines and I don’t know what.”
“He said that?” Caroline’s disbelief was tinged with annoyance, even pity. Was Rob trying to scare Nina? Did he want her to feel sorry for him?
“I didn’t understand half of what he was talking about.”
“Listen to me, Nins”—Caroline spoke strongly, with a confidence she was only beginning to feel—“I’m going to do everything I can to see to it you can continue going to school. I’ll ask Gramma to help us if I have to. It’ll be fine, I promise. Try not to worry.”
“You too, Mommy. Okay?” Nina’s voice caught.
“Text me your arrival time when you’ve made your reservation,” Caroline said. “I’ll pick you up.”
“What about Dad?”
“Are you okay to come on your own?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I’ll speak to him, then. There’s no point in his making the trip. It doesn’t sound as if he can afford it anyway.” Her remark might have been funny, she thought, if it had not been so painfully true.
Her call to him, moments later, rolled to voice mail. “Please don’t come down here, Rob,” she said and paused, trying to think of what else to say. But there was nothing else. “Please,” she repeated.
She was some thirty or so miles south of Greeley when she saw the exit sign for Wyatt, and she wasn’t entirely conscious of it when her foot backed off the accelerator. The sign loomed at her, growing larger on her approach, and when at the last minute she veered into the right-hand lane and onto the exit ramp, no one could have been more surprised.
But how could she go back to Houston, back to Lanie, walk into the hospital room and tell her beloved aunt, who was dying, that she’d failed? She had to see Julia and Harris first and find out what they knew, and damn the timing. Caroline would never forgive herself if she were to learn after Lanie was gone that they knew her dad’s whereabouts, and if only she’d asked them she could have found him and brought him to Lanie, granting her last wish.
Of course, once she reached the center of town, she had no idea how to find the Fentons. It was past midday, after two, according to the clock mounted high on the face of the turreted courthouse. She circled the town square once, then again. The impulse that had led her here seemed foolish now. She spotted a café. CRICKET’S, the sign read. Her stomach rumbled, and it occurred to her she hadn’t eaten all day. She would stop and have a sandwich, she decided, and then be on her way.
A woman behind the counter looked up when Caroline tried the door. A man seated near her on a stool shouted, “We’re closed.”
The woman laughed, waving him off, and coming to the door, she unlocked and opened it. “We are closed, but if you’re desperate, I can figure out something.”
“I’m light headed,” Caroline said. “If that qualifies me.”
“It does. I can’t have you fainting on the sidewalk.”
Caroline followed the woman inside.
“Have a seat.” She indicated the row of stools. “I’m Gilly, and this is my friend Jake. He’s not usually so rude.”
“I’m trying to talk her into helping me bake cookies for my daughter’s kindergarten class.”
“He’s the homeroom mom,” Gilly said.
Caroline smiled. She noticed Jake’s fingernails were painted a shade of
blue as true and unblemished as a fresh summer sky. “I wouldn’t want to get between a man and his baking,” she said.
“Sit down,” Gilly said. “We have plenty of time.”
“She makes great cookies,” Jake said. “Great everything. Try the chicken salad. Trust me, it’s the best in Texas.”
The glance Jake and Gilly exchanged was somehow intimate and teasing at the same time. Caroline thought of Steve and wished she wouldn’t. She said, “Chicken salad would be wonderful.”
“Here or to go?” Gilly asked.
“You should have a slice of her peach pie too.” Jake was grinning now.
“Is it the best in Texas like the chicken salad?” Caroline joined in their fun.
“World famous,” Jake said.
Gilly’s face flushed with some mix of embarrassment and delight. “Lord, will you hush?”
“If y’all don’t mind, I’d like to have it here. It’s hard to eat and drive.”
“Don’t mind at all,” Gilly said. “Back in a jiff.” She disappeared into the kitchen.
Jake asked, “What brings you to Wyatt?”
A wild-goose chase. Her mother’s answer came glibly to her tongue. Caroline was at a loss, though. “I—it’s complicated.”
When she thought about it later, she would guess it was Jake’s lack of a response that caused her to go on, the fact that he didn’t comment, didn’t press. And there was the silence. Although it was broken by the small domestic sounds coming from the kitchen as Gilly made Caroline’s lunch, it seemed to wait, a cup that needed filling. “I drove up from Houston yesterday. I’m looking for my dad. We lost touch years ago, but I know he lived here in Wyatt once, back in the eighties. He’d remarried by then to a woman here. She had a son . . .”
“What’s your dad’s name? I know pretty much everyone in Wyatt.” Jake’s grin was wry. “Small town.”
“Garrett Hoffman. He goes by Hoff. He isn’t here now. I’m sorry. It’s confusing.”
Gilly came with Caroline’s sandwich. Setting the plate in front of her, she asked, “What can I get you to drink? I’ve got some peach tea left, or maybe you’d rather have coffee. It’s chilly today.”
“Peach tea is fine,” Caroline answered.
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