“I hope there’s enough food,” Holly says. “It looks like we’ll be feeding a couple of Kyle’s friends.” She’s looking through the french doors into the backyard, where four boys, Kyle and Connor among them, are slugging a birdie over a badminton net. It’s a game for sissies, one of them shouts, and they laugh. Holly’s parents and Harris’s mom are sitting on the deck, watching the boys, and they laugh too.
“It’ll be fine,” Harris says. “If we run out, I’ll go to the store.”
“I always overdo it, don’t I?” She meets his glance, and he imagines touching her mouth, tracing the curve of her slight smile with his fingertip. A timer goes off, and she pulls a fresh-baked cherry pie out of the oven.
“Should I start the grill?” Harris asks.
“In a bit.” She’s back at the french doors. “Your mom seems more like herself finally.”
“Yeah. At least we know neither of us is going to prison.” He laughs, a rough syllable.
Holly doesn’t. “Thank God,” she says, “and Roger Yellott.”
Roger is the local attorney Harris’s mother contacted last January, the day following Caroline’s visit. While they were free on bond after their arraignment, Harris and his mom were advised not to leave the area, that the investigation into the circumstances surrounding Hoff’s death was ongoing. Steve Wayman suggested they’d be smart to hire an attorney. He gave Harris’s mom Roger Yellott’s name. Harris didn’t want legal representation. He didn’t give a damn what happened to him. But once Roger heard the story and was familiar with the extenuating circumstances, he asked Harris to let him do his job for both Harris and his mother. By that point lab techs had exhumed Hoff’s body. They’d come into the house one day and conducted a thorough examination of the living room where Hoff had died, too, taking scrapings of the base and floorboards and clipping fibers from the carpet. That same afternoon, after the police left, Roger stopped by and found Harris and his mom sitting in the kitchen. Harris felt numb. His mother was mute. Even her tears were silent. Harris watched them slide off her chin. That was the moment he turned to Roger and told him to do whatever it took. “If you have to represent me, too, to get my mom off, do it,” he said.
Roger didn’t waste any time. Through what remained of January and most of February, he interviewed everyone he could find who had known the Fentons during the time Hoff was a part of their family. Harris’s mother’s coworkers spoke of days when Harris’s mom had come to school heavily made up or wearing a scarf to disguise her injuries. She was astonished and horrified to learn Hoff’s abuse of her was common knowledge. Harris was sickened learning the extent of it. One of Harris’s mother’s closest friends in those days told Roger she’d been afraid Hoff would kill Julia.
“If she were to have x-rays taken,” the friend said to Roger, “I’m sure they would show the damage. I know Hoff broke her collarbone. He fractured two of her ribs. One of her front teeth is an implant. Hoff knocked out the real one.”
At Roger’s insistence, Harris’s mother had x-rays made, and they mapped in graphic black-and-white detail the badly healed history of Hoff’s abuse. When word got out, a lot of folks were distraught. Many of those who’d been aware were regretful of their silence, which had left a twelve-year-old boy and his mother vulnerable to a man they declared had become a monster.
Five weeks after their arrests, in a move that caught Harris but not Roger off guard, the charge of involuntary manslaughter against him was dismissed, and in a further act of legal leniency, his mom was given deferred adjudication, a term of five years, for her failure to report Hoff’s death and for concealing his body. Harris felt light headed on leaving the courthouse. His mom clung tightly to his arm. A handful of folks who knew his mother either as a teacher or guidance counselor came up to them and, hugging them, thanked Harris for saving her life. He was precariously near tears when he spotted Caroline on the fringes of the small crowd. He got the sense she wanted to speak to him, but by the time he had a chance to break away, she was at the bottom of the courthouse steps. He’d never know where the impulse came from that sent him after her.
He called her name just as she turned the corner.
She paused and turned slowly to face him. A cold March wind whipped her hair around her face, stirred the grit on the sidewalk under her feet. Other than the two of them the street was deserted.
Despite his misgivings at having followed her, Harris closed the distance between them, and she watched him, her eyes intent. The directness of her gaze was disconcerting. He shouldn’t have approached her. “I just wanted to tell you again how sorry I am,” he said when he got within speaking distance. He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets.
“I don’t hate you,” Caroline said after a moment. “I used to when I was a kid and thought you’d taken my place with my dad. I don’t hate you now, knowing how Dad died. I’m sorry for what he did to you and your mom, sorry for his circumstances, that he didn’t get help.”
Harris couldn’t answer. His eyes burned. Maybe it was the wind. He shifted his gaze.
“The way you described him when you first knew him,” Caroline said, “that’s who he was. When you said he was the best dad a kid could ask for—that’s how I remember him, how I want to remember him.”
Harris met Caroline’s gaze. “You’re—you seem so—so okay,” he said, and it was difficult, getting the words out around the sorrow packed in his throat.
“I’m getting there. I can’t claim to have forgiven you and your mother, not all the way, but it’s what I want to do. I want to let it go. I want that for you too. I’m relieved you didn’t have to go to jail.”
“How? How can you be so—?” He couldn’t finish.
“My aunt, Lanie—she was so wise.” Caroline paused, jaw trembling. “She died not long after I was here in January, but before—before she slipped away, I was able to tell her—everything. I didn’t want to, but she always had a way of getting to the truth, you know? She asked me not to hold on to the anger. She made me see how pointless it is. She said it would kill my joy.”
“That’s—I just—I don’t know what to say.”
“There’s something else.” Caroline paused, as if to consider, but then looking back at Harris, she locked his gaze. “You may or may not believe this, but she said she saw Dad, and he was all right. He was waiting for her.”
Harris held Caroline’s glance a long moment. He didn’t know how to respond or whether he believed in such occurrences. He thought from her demeanor Caroline did believe, and she derived comfort from it.
Harris thanked her for sharing the experience. He said, “You remind me of Hoff, the best of him,” and she seemed pleased.
She smiled, touched his hand. He thought, watching her walk away, that it was unlikely he would ever see her again.
Not everyone has been so kind, though. Gee has yet to go to trial, and his family and the team of lawyers Gee’s dad has hired to defend him are doing all they can to discredit Harris. Last week during an interview on local television, Gee’s lead attorney wanted to know who in their right mind would take the word of a murderer and a drug addict over that of a gifted and disciplined athlete? Harris wishes he could talk to Gee, but Roger has warned him against it. Harris doesn’t know what he’d say anyway. That he’s sorry he was such a piss-poor role model? Maybe he’d just like to tell the kid not to give up, that he can come back from this. But it’s laughable to assume Gee would care what Harris has to say.
“It isn’t that I’m angry at you, at least not so much anymore.” Holly turns from the french doors. Her face is in shadow. Harris can’t read her expression.
Her glance lights briefly on his face and flits away. He waits, wanting to hear what more she might say even as he’s afraid of it.
“What I can’t get over is that you didn’t trust me,” she says. “This terrible thing happened to you . . . What did you think? That I couldn’t handle it? Am I that—what? Self-absorbed, overly sensitive, too emotional?”
“You’re none of those—”
“I could have helped you, been here for you.”
Zeke said the same thing. He was pissed that he hadn’t known the history. He felt he’d been used by Harris, betrayed by him. And as far as Zeke is concerned, Harris’s mother had no damn business asking a twelve-year-old to keep such a terrible secret. Zeke also said if Hoff were still alive, he’d kill the bastard himself.
“I try to imagine what it must have been like,” Holly says. “Connor’s the same age. Just thinking of him—that he would have to—be driven to get a gun and shoot—”
“Honey, don’t.” Harris takes a step toward her.
She waves him off. Tears stand in her eyes.
He opens his mouth to argue or possibly to plead with her.
She cuts him off. “I know the man you wanted me to see, the boy—the childhood you invented, where for a while you had a dad named Hoff whom you adored, who abandoned you and your mom. Now that I know the truth, how much more horrific it was, I have to, like, reshape every assumption, every perception, because the two boys, the one with the sort of normal childhood you told me you had, and the real boy who dealt with abuse and ultimately got a gun and shot his stepdad—that boy would grow up to be a very different man from the one I thought I knew.”
“No, I don’t feel—”
“I fell in love with the man I thought you were, Harris, but for our marriage to work, I need to know—I need to fall in love with—the man you are, the one who is not on drugs, who’s working through the nightmares from his past, not running from them.”
Hope. Harris’s head feels light with it.
“I need time,” she says, and she takes a step toward him as if he’s asked. “I don’t know what the future holds for us.”
“That’s all right,” he answers. “Today is good. Today is enough.”
There is a sound now of the french doors opening. Within moments Connor clatters into the kitchen, and as if he can sense a softening of the air between his parents, his face cracks into a grin. He’s across the room in an instant, taking their hands, drawing them to him, now gripping their waists. They have no choice but to make a circle. Harris puts his arm around Connor’s shoulders, and on encountering Holly’s arm, he lifts his gaze to hers, and her smile lights him up from the inside. His throat closes, and he prays the moment will last, that, while fragile, it is the beginning of a new life for him and the beginning of healing for his family.
He looks around for Kyle and finds him standing at the table, mouth downturned, eyes wary. Harris thinks he may not live long enough to regain Kyle’s trust, but he’ll never stop trying.
Letting his gaze drift now, he wonders what Caroline is doing on this holiday. Barely a day goes by that he doesn’t think of her. They’ve spoken twice since January, and both conversations have been difficult, but each time he has felt they are reaching for a resolution, some sort of mutual understanding. Not long ago he realized that if she had not been persistent in searching for her truth, he would never have begun the search for his own.
He hopes one day he can thank her.
Connor tugs his hand. “Dad, when are you gonna light the grill? I’m starving.”
Harris ruffles his youngest son’s hair. “Guess we’d better do it right now.”
Caroline—July 4
They were on the road early, hoping to avoid the worst of the holiday traffic. Caroline was driving. Her mom rode in front beside her, and Nina sat in back with the small wooden chest that held Lanie’s ashes and those of Caroline’s father. They were finally going to scatter them, having agreed the farm outside Nacogdoches that Lanie and Hoff’s grandparents had once owned was the right location. Caroline’s mother had suggested the farm. In particular she recalled a pond there from long-ago visits. Hoff had called it the old swimming hole. He and Lanie and later Caroline’s mom had picnicked there. It had always been a good time, she said, a happy place. The farm had since passed to a distant cousin, but when Caroline’s mom had called him and explained why she wanted to visit, he’d been warm in giving his consent to the plan. He’d assured her the stock pond shaded by live oaks that she remembered and the old tire swing were still there.
“I doubt it will look the same,” she said now.
“When was the last time you visited?” Caroline glanced at her mom.
“Before you were born. I probably won’t recognize the place.”
Caroline met Nina’s eyes in the rearview mirror when she looked up briefly from her phone. She was obviously texting someone. Probably Oliver. A fellow student at the University of Houston, Ollie was the new guy in her life. Nina had finished out the semester at DU and then enrolled in summer classes at the University of Houston, where she’d met Ollie. Caroline was half in love with Oliver herself. Out of gratitude, she thought. There was nothing like a new love to ease the pain of a forced relocation.
The decision that she and Nina had made last spring to pack up life in Iowa and begin anew in Texas had been as difficult as it was inevitable. The timing had made it especially hard. First there’d been the shock of learning of her father’s death; then within hours, Lanie was gone too.
That awful and bleak January afternoon, coming back from Wyatt, Caroline had vowed Lanie would never know what had happened to her brother. The drive itself would always be a blur, except for the moments when, from nowhere, a detail, a word—monster, they’d called her dad a monster—or an image, Julia rubbing her thumb again and again over her palm, would rise in Caroline’s brain, and she’d be choking, crying. She pulled over a few times. She was exhausted and pretty much cried out by the time she made it to St. Joe’s. She sat in her car outside the hospital, gulping air, trying to settle herself, steel herself, to face her mother, to see her aunt—who according to her mom was hanging on to her life by the barest thread.
“I think she’s waiting for you,” her mother had said when Caroline had called her a final time from the outskirts of Houston. “I told her you were on your way, that you would be here soon. Hurry, darling,” her mother had said.
In the waiting room outside the ICU, Caroline’s mom and Martha greeted her with warm hugs. Her mom held her more tightly than Caroline could ever remember. “Don’t be so kind to me,” she whispered against her mother’s cheek. “I’ll lose it.”
“Just from the little you’ve told me, I can’t imagine what you’ve been through.” Grasping Caroline’s upper arms, her mother set Caroline out of her embrace, searching her eyes.
“Lanie mustn’t know,” Caroline said, and her mom agreed.
Because of the circumstances, the understanding that Lanie would in all likelihood not last the night, Caroline, her mother, and Martha were allowed into Lanie’s cubicle together. Caroline went to Lanie’s bedside, which was remarkably free of equipment. There was a machine to monitor her vital signs and an IV drip, but everything else that might have been in place to sustain her life had been removed, per the DNR. Caroline took Lanie’s hand very gently, not expecting a response. She’d been warned that Lanie’s comalike state was deepening. But at Caroline’s touch, and at the sound of her voice when she bent to Lanie’s ear and whispered, “I’m here,” Lanie’s eyelids fluttered open.
She lifted her hand from Caroline’s grasp and cupped her cheek. “My darling girl,” she said, and while she was hoarse, her eyes were clear and bright. “You’ve had such a horrible time, haven’t you.”
Lanie seemed to know. How could she know? Caroline couldn’t answer her. Lanie’s image shimmered in the prism created by her tears.
“He’s all right now, you know—Hoff. I’ve seen him. He’s waiting for me.”
“Oh, Auntie Lanie.” Caroline smoothed wisps of her aunt’s fine white hair back from her brow.
“No, no, none of that. I want you to tell me. Can you?” she asked. “How did it happen? How did Hoff die?”
Caroline looked from Lanie to her mother for guidance, but her mother, looking visibly shaken, could
only shrug. Who would know what to do?
Caroline looked back at her aunt. “I don’t want to burden you with it.” She said what she was thinking.
“I don’t have all the time left in the world, sweet, and you need to tell it to be rid of it.”
So Caroline began, speaking in fits and starts. Lanie’s eyes never moved from her face. She kept a hold on Caroline’s hand. She was lucid, quiet, and completely present, and when Caroline finished, she said, “Well, it relieves me now that I didn’t take you there.”
She meant in 1989, when Caroline’s dad had wanted Lanie to bring Caroline to Wyatt, forcing her to meet the Fentons. Caroline had thought about that, too, driving back from Wyatt. Possibly by refusing, Lanie had saved her. But wasn’t it equally possible that had Caroline gone, had she seen the shape her dad was in, she could have saved him? She would never know; nor would she burden her aunt with her doubt. Lanie found her gaze.
“You know, honey, that you have to forgive Harris and Julia. Not for them, but for yourself.”
“I’m not sure I can.” Every fiber of Caroline’s being resisted the idea. “I understand why it happened. If Dad was that way, if he did those things, if he was the monster they claim—”
“But you see, none of that really matters. Even if they murdered Hoff in cold blood, you would have to forgive them or else spend your life being bitter. That’s a death sentence. Can you understand? That’s as confining, as limiting, as a prison cell, only you made it yourself.” Lanie’s eyes were steady on Caroline’s.
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