Tell No One

by Taylor Sissel, Barbara

  Caroline had forgotten that.

  “He also had a lot of connections. I thought maybe things would work out. I think even you were feeling better about him, weren’t you, Harris?”

  “Yeah. If he’d been himself, if he could have gotten back to that person, he would have made a great coach. He was so good to me and Mom, the best dad a kid could ever ask for.” Harris’s voice was furred with emotion.

  “What happened?” Steve sat forward, elbows on his knees. He wasn’t in uniform, but he was every inch a lawman, even dressed in civilian clothes.

  “I came in through the kitchen door,” Julia answered. “It was dark in the house, which seemed odd. There were strange noises, thumps, what sounded like scuffling. It flashed through my mind someone had broken in, but Hoff’s car was in the driveway, and I knew Harris was home. I’d spoken to both of them when I called from school to tell them I was going to the store. Hoff asked if I’d pick up a can of shaving cream for him. He didn’t sound upset at all. Harris seemed fine too. It was barely an hour later when I came in here, right into this room, and found them. I thought at first they were playing some kind of game—”

  “Mom—” Harris said.

  He wanted Julia to stop. Caroline could almost understand his impulse. She would want to protect her mother as far as she could too.

  “Hoff had his hands around Harris’s neck, choking him. It was horrible. I shouted at Hoff to let Harris go.” Julia’s voice rose, and her own breath was shallow as if from recalled panic. “I don’t think he heard me. I don’t think he knew where he was. His eyes—they were empty, as if he was gone. I knew if I didn’t stop him, he’d kill Harris.”

  “No . . .” Caroline’s protest was little more than a moan. Her eyes on Julia’s were hot with pleading.

  Julia’s eyes were dark with sorrow. “I’m so sorry—”

  “What did you do?” Steve brought her back to her accounting.

  “I grabbed Hoff’s arm and dug my nails into his flesh. He let Harris go—”

  “And grabbed her.” Harris glanced at his mom.

  “I got away, though, and went for the phone,” Julia said. “The landline, over there.” She indicated the table against a far wall, where a phone receiver sat up on a base.

  “Hoff jerked the cord out of the wall,” Harris said. He looked at Caroline. “The son of a bitch was a maniac. His face was twisted like nothing you ever saw. You wouldn’t have recognized him.”

  She crossed her arms tightly over her middle. She had never known her dad to so much as raise his hand in anger.

  “When did the gun come into play?” Steve asked. “Whose gun was it?”

  “Hoff’s,” Julia said.

  “He had a gun?” Caroline asked. It was news to her. But then, she hadn’t really known her dad, had she? Not since she was a very little girl.

  “He kept it in the glove compartment of his car,” Julia said. “He was on the road so often in remote areas he felt he needed it for protection.”

  “How did it get inside the house?”

  Caroline thought with the way Steve addressed Julia, the way he was looking at her, she might have been the only other person in the room.

  “I—somehow I got Hoff off balance,” she said. “When he fell, it gave me enough time to get outside to his car.”

  “Mom, no.” Harris sat forward, putting a hand on her arm, wanting her to stop.

  Julia went on as if he hadn’t spoken, wasn’t present. “Hoff’s car was parked near the back door.”

  “I can’t do this!” Harris was on his feet now, staring down at his mother. “I can’t keep the promise anymore.”

  Still she ignored him. “It was unlocked, and it took only a moment to grab the gun from the glove box. I knew if I didn’t stop Hoff, he’d kill Harris, kill us both.”

  “You didn’t stop him!” Harris turned to Caroline, locking her gaze. “Mom didn’t shoot Hoff. I did.”

  24

  Harris—Friday, January 19

  Harris hears his mother groan in protest, and it hurts his heart. It’s the last thing she wants, for the truth to come out, and the last thing he wants is to cause her more pain. In 1989 when it happened, the story she invented to protect him was that Hoff left them for another woman. Now she’s told the story they agreed to tell if the original story of Hoff’s disappearance were ever exposed as a lie, and Harris has let her do it, let her take the blame, even though since Caroline’s phone call last night he has been on fire to come clean. He didn’t anticipate, though, how hard it would be to break this promise so long kept. But it is the right thing, the only way out of this hell for him and his mother.

  He feels her grip his wrist, hears her say his name, but he doesn’t—can’t—acknowledge her, and keeping Caroline’s gaze, he says, “There was no way Mom could get away from Hoff. He was too strong.”

  Caroline looks anguished, confused.

  What would she have done in his shoes that night? Harris would like to ask her. He’s glad for Wayman’s presence, glad the deputy and Caroline are friends, that along with Harris and his mom, Caroline, too, has Wayman for support.

  His mom releases his wrist, and he turns to her, and the sight of her tears falling, how they speckle her hands clutched in her lap, shakes his resolve. But he can’t let her take on the burden of his guilt. He doesn’t care that he was only a twelve-year-old boy at the time. He’s a man now, and he’s killed someone. And his shame and remorse, the aching remnants of his love for the man, Hoff, who was his victim, are eating him alive.

  “I set him off that day,” Harris says. “When I came home from school, I saw his car and knew he was home, probably drunk or getting there. It pissed me off. I was so sick of taking his bullshit. When I came in the house, I slammed the back door on purpose. I was looking to get a rise out of him. It was stupid, but I was a kid.”

  “Was he drinking?” Steve asks.

  “Yeah. He came busting into the kitchen, yelling he had a damn headache and I should show him a little consideration, a little respect.”

  Respect? Harris hears his kid self shout in his mind. Like the kind you show my mom when you’re punching her? The memory dances behind his eyes. A real man would never hit a woman, he said. Hoff lunged at him then, but Harris sidestepped him, and when Hoff fell, Harris laughed.

  Laughed like a hyena.

  Goddamn, I’ll show you, you little bastard, Hoff screamed.

  C’mon with it, then, Harris taunted. He was so confident he could take Hoff. Too confident.

  “He got me in a choke hold,” Harris says now. “I couldn’t breathe.” Harris looks at Deputy Wayman. “He would have killed me if Mom hadn’t come home right then.”

  “She distracted him? You got free?”

  “Yeah, but then he tackled her. He got her down, put his hands around her neck, and he was strangling her. Her eyes rolled back. All I could see were the whites. Her lips turned blue. It’s like Mom said—if we—if I didn’t stop him—”

  Caroline’s whimper interrupts Harris. He sees that she’s white faced, shaking all over, and he’s sorry for her, but he’s desperate, too, for her to understand. “If you could have seen him—” He locks her gaze. “If you’d been there—” Harris stops; tears scald the backs of his eyes, pack his throat. “I loved him, you know?” His voice thins, breaks. He swallows, goes on. “He was the only dad I ever had, but after his head injury he turned into a monster. He was twisted up inside, like when he cracked his skull, nothing went back together right.”

  “Hoff had your mother pinned to the floor?” Deputy Wayman’s is the cooling voice of reason.

  “Yes.” Harris turns to the windows; the floor beneath them is where Hoff took his mom down. She’s looking there, too, and he knows she sees it, Hoff sitting on her. She will feel his weight again, crushing her ribs, the grip of his hard, callused hands squeezing her throat.

  She’ll hear the same thing Harris does: Hoff’s groaning. The sound is unearthly.

 
Crazed.

  Harris stands as if mesmerized, and then he wheels, running out of the living room, down the short hallway to the kitchen, and out the back door. Reaching the car, he yanks open the passenger-side door and fumbles in the glove box for the gun, a Ruger, a .22 caliber standard with wood grips, that Hoff got from a buddy of his who’d served in the Marines back in the seventies in Vietnam. Hoff keeps the gun loaded. It’s heavy, and Harris grips it with both hands.

  Heart banging the walls of his chest, he rushes back to the living room. Hoff is still sitting on his mother with his hands fastened around her neck. In his rage, his jaw is clenched. His knuckles and face are white. His mother’s face by contrast is an unearthly shade of blue. Her eyes bulge from their sockets. “Get off her!” Harris shouts, but Hoff doesn’t. It’s as if Harris isn’t even there, begging for his mother’s life. He thinks from her look he’s too late, that she’s already gone, and a wail of protest, of sorrow, bursts from his chest. He is barely aware of it when he pulls the gun’s trigger. The recoil makes him stagger; the blast rattles his teeth, deafens his ears. Hoff turns to him, disbelief crowding the mania from his expression, and his gaze softens as if in that instant he remembers the man he was and the love he and Harris shared.

  “He fell over,” Harris says now, addressing Deputy Wayman. “He didn’t move again.”

  25

  Caroline—Friday, January 19

  You want me to believe it was you and not your mom who shot my dad.”

  “It’s the truth,” Harris said. He looked drained. Sweat beaded his hairline, ringed the neck of his shirt.

  “You were twelve,” Caroline said, as if, like drinking alcohol or getting married, a person had to be a certain legal age to commit a murder. She didn’t want it to be possible, didn’t want to believe Harris. But what she wanted didn’t matter. No one could make up the story Harris had told. The horror of it ached in her mind. She wished she’d never come here, never heard—she locked Harris’s gaze. “For all I know you’re protecting your mother.” Caroline didn’t know why she continued to challenge him. “Dad cheated on her, and she shot him. Men have been killed for less.” She repeated Steve’s line. Was it preferable, believing in that scenario? What difference did it make how it had happened? It was sickening, and her dad was just as dead all the same.

  “If I hadn’t shot him, my mother wouldn’t be here. It’s that simple, no matter how sorry we are.”

  Caroline switched her glance to Julia. “You lied just now to protect Harris.”

  “You’re a mother. What would you do? Turn your child in?” Julia didn’t wait for Caroline’s answer. She appealed to Steve. “Harris would have gone on trial. Even at twelve, he might have been charged as an adult. I couldn’t have afforded to hire any legal dream team either.” She looked back at Caroline. “All it would have taken to convict him is one juror like you who doubted Harris’s story. I wasn’t about to have my son spend the rest of his life behind bars for saving my life.”

  “Did you ever report the previous incidents of abuse to the police?” Steve asked. “Ever go to the hospital? Do you have photos?”

  “No.” Julia looked down and away. “I didn’t want people to think ill of Hoff. I kept hoping he’d come back to himself, to the way he was before. We were happy, so happy, until he—until he fell—” Voice breaking, she paused, then said, “Your dad was a good man, and I know you felt you had lost him to us, but he loved you so much, and he grieved for you, for the breach between you.”

  “It can never be healed now,” Caroline said, not with malice, not even with anger. But her mind was in such turmoil that she truly had no idea what her feelings were.

  “What did you do with Hoff’s body?” Steve asked.

  Julia pressed her fingertips to her eyes.

  “We had a tractor,” Harris said in a wooden voice, and he went on, describing the hole he had dug with the machine near the back property line some four or five hundred yards distant, out of sight of the house, beyond a wooded area. They had maneuvered Hoff’s body there.

  Caroline felt sickened. Crossing her arms, she bent over. Where was the end of all this horror?

  Steve laid his palm on her back for a moment; then, addressing Harris and Julia, he said, “I need you to show me.”

  “Now?” Julia asked.

  “Yes. I’ll need to loop in local law enforcement. Clint Mackie, the Wyatt police chief—do you know him? The county coroner too—”

  Caroline stopped listening. It was too hard. But her own thoughts were no easier. How was she going to tell Lanie that her brother had been murdered? There would be no final conversation, no mending of past hurt.

  “A forensic team will be called in,” Steve was saying. He found Caroline’s gaze. “Your dad’s body will be exhumed.”

  She nodded as if that made sense, but nothing did.

  “If you want to be there, I’ll see if I can arrange it.”

  “No,” she said. Drawing her purse into her lap, she wondered if she could stand, if her legs would hold her.

  Steve continued. “His remains will be transported to the coroner’s office, and an autopsy will be performed. Once the results are in, they’ll release his body back to you for burial.”

  Caroline nodded. What would be left of him? she wondered. How long was it after death before a body’s bones turned to powder? Her aunt Lanie had asked to be cremated. She had asked that her ashes be scattered in the wind. Somewhere pretty, she had said. Somewhere that brings you peace. She didn’t want mourners at a grave site. She didn’t believe she would be there. I’ll be the wind in your hair, she had said to Caroline. I’ll be the sunshine warming you on a cold day.

  “Are you good to drive?” Steve asked. They were in the front hallway now, waiting while Harris and Julia got their coats from the closet.

  “I think so,” Caroline said.

  “I didn’t know details. When Harris called me, he only said there had been a death some years ago and that criminal charges might be involved. I suspected it might have to do with you and your dad—God, Caro, I would have spared you if I could.”

  “It’s so horrible, Steve. All these years, I thought—then I had so much hope for finding him—” Her voice broke.

  He cupped the side of her face, and she leaned into his touch, feeling her tears dampen his palm. His eyes on hers were tender. If they were alone, he would have embraced her, and she longed for it. Even standing inches from her, he was a shelter, a source of comfort. “I’m so sorry for all this,” he said softly, thumbing her wet cheek.

  She nodded and stepped back, knowing if she didn’t, his kindness would undo the last of her composure. She wiped her eyes, wanting to thank him, to say she was so grateful for his involvement, that it was only his presence that had made it at all bearable, but before she could articulate a word, he left her to usher Harris and Julia out the front door.

  Harris was a half step beyond Caroline when she reached out and touched his elbow.

  He jerked around, eyes wide. Caroline was surprised by her gesture, too, but she thought she might never have another chance or the will to speak to him again. She said, “When your mom said a while ago that you made a promise to her, what was it?”

  “That if Hoff—if somehow what happened was ever discovered, I’d let her take the blame.”

  “She must love you very much.”

  Pointing that out hurt Harris. Caroline could tell by the way his jaw trembled. She could see the fight he waged for control of his emotions in his expression.

  “I would take it back if I could,” he said when he could speak. “There hasn’t been a day that I haven’t regretted—” His voice broke, and he stopped and looked away. When he looked back, if it was possible, his eyes were even more raw and grief filled. “I ended my life, too, in a way, when I shot him. I’ve carried it, you know? I always will.”

  “I wish he’d gotten help,” Caroline said.

  “Yeah,” Harris said, and giving her a brief no
d, he left her to get into the truck with his mother and Steve.

  Watching him go, Caroline encountered Julia’s gaze. You’re a mother. What would you do? Turn your child in? Would she? Caroline wondered. If she knew Nina had killed someone, would she alert the authorities? She’d known for months that Rob had broken laws, but she hadn’t reported him—for Nina’s sake, she realized. Her instinct, like Julia’s, was to protect her child. The circumstances were vastly different and yet similar in a way that allowed Caroline a glimmer of understanding, even compassion for the Fentons’ actions.

  She waited until they were out of sight before opening her car door. The wind was blustery, lifting her hair, sighing through the leafless trees. She pulled her black blazer more tightly around her. Somewhere in the distance she heard the shrill cry of a bird.

  Hawk, she thought. It sounded lonely.

  EPILOGUE: SIX MONTHS LATER

  Harris—July 4

  Holly sets the platter holding the hamburger patties she’s made for the backyard cookout in the refrigerator alongside a package of hot dogs. All the meat is organic. She’s a fanatic. Standing at the counter, slicing onions and tomatoes, Harris remembers how he used to tease her about her penchant for reading labels. He called her the food police. One day, he hopes he’ll be able to tease her again. For now he’s grateful to be here with her and the boys, grateful for her willingness to include him in their plans.

  Getting sober and making amends has been slow going, but he doesn’t care if it takes the rest of his life. He’s not going to screw it up, this gift of a second chance. He knows it every time he visits and sees Connor’s face light up. Kyle is still watchful—waiting for Harris to fall off the wagon is Harris’s guess. He doesn’t blame Kyle. Harris’s past, all that happened—it’s a hell of a lot for a kid to process about his dad. The publicity was brutal in the initial days after Harris and his mom were taken in for questioning. Telling Holly and the kids the truth about Hoff and all that had happened had to be one of the hardest things he’s ever done. But it’s a relief, too, now that his family—now that everyone—knows. And while there are some who go out of their way to avoid him, a good many don’t. Coming out of drug rehab, knowing he’s got nothing to hide, no secrets to keep, has given him confidence it’s going to stick this time. He’ll likely never coach again, but he’s working toward getting certified as a drug-rehab counselor. He’s no do-gooder; he’s got no grand illusions he can save anybody, but like his shrink says, while he can’t undo the past, he can try to make things right from now on.