“I don’t think it’s worth dying over!” Ed squeaked.
Davis laughed. “I agree, Ed, I wouldn’t die over Wanda. And I don’t expect you’ll have your ridiculous Elvis emporium much longer. So if you want to vamoose like a scared rabbit, go ahead.”
“The Institute of Elvisology is not ridiculous! Celebrity collectibles are a growth industry!”
“Ed, shut up!” I snapped. I pressed fingers against my aching temples. I wasn’t in the mood to discuss the comparative economic gains of peddling Elvis trinkets. “Look, none of us knows anything that Clevey or Trey knew, right? We’d admit it, right?” Nods of assent went around the room. “So we’re not in any danger, right?”
“Unless the killer thinks we know,” Davis said. “Then it doesn’t matter what the truth is.” God, sometimes I don’t like lawyers.
Sister was curled in a fetal position on her bed when I got home. Her quiet “come in” was barely above a whisper. I sat on the corner of her bed, afraid to touch her, nearly afraid to speak.
“I just got back from Junebug’s,” I said. “He sure is worried about you.”
The clouds didn’t let much moonlight through her window, but there was enough where I could see fresh tears on her face. “Junebug. God, he thinks I did it. He thinks I killed Trey in cold blood.”
“Of course he doesn’t. He has to take himself off any case where he’s got a personal connection.”
“Crap! He’s got personal connections with half the town. He did it so he won’t be the one to arrest me when they finally issue the wairant. He doesn’t want to put the handcuffs on the woman he claims to love.”
“Where were you today, Sister?”
“I told you, I told him. I needed quiet time, so I went for a long drive, out on the roads between here and La Grange and Bavary. I went down to Mears Creek. You know that’s where Trey proposed to me, don’t you? That was… our place.”
“Who gave you the black eye, then?”
“I told you! I stumbled against a tree.” She shifted her face into the pillow, and I knew this phase of the conversation was over.
“I want Mark to see Steven Teague,” I started, but she didn’t let me finish.
“Who?”
“He’s a therapist. A counselor. I think Mark needs help dealing with what he saw.”
“Jordy, I know you have good intentions. But I’d made it clear I didn’t want Mark to be around his father. You had no business interfering.”
“I’m sorry.” I felt miserable. “I’m sorry he saw what he did. I know you’re pissed at me, but, at least, he got to know that his father loved him.”
Sister gave a shuddering sob. I couldn’t tell if it was anger or despair that racked her body.
“Sister-”
“I’m sorry I hit him. I’m sorry he didn’t get to see Mark as Mark really is. Why? Why did he have to leave us?” she cried.
In the six years Trey had been gone, I’d never heard her ask that question. Of course I had no answer. Instead, I took her in my arms. She cried for a while, then pulled her face away from my shoulder.
“Stupid crybaby.” She sniffed, wiping her face with her robe’s sleeve. “I should know better.”
“His leaving never made sense to me.” I pushed an errant lock of hair out of her face.
“God. Now he’s gone, truly gone.” Sister stared at the moon-limned clouds in their dreary, dark parade southward. “A part of me always believed he’d come back. Isn’t that the most idiotic thing you ever heard?”
“No, it’s not.” Silence hung between us for a minute.
“Sister?”
“Yeah?”
“Did Trey send you money-support-for Mark?” Trey’d alluded to that twice, once at the library, once at Truda Shivers’s, but both times I’d been convinced it was a lie to salve his ego.
Sister lowered her eyes. “Yes. Every month for the past six years. Sometimes he’d miss a month, but he’d always make it up. And always with a money order. The letters were postmarked from all over.”
I let my breath out. And I’d called Trey a liar. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“I don’t know. I put most of it in an account at the bank. I want Mark to go to college. Sometimes I had to tap it, when times were hard, but most of it’s in that account.”
“So Trey wasn’t entirely a deadbeat dad?”
Sister’s tone grew cold. “He wasn’t here. Money doesn’t replace a father’s love. That’s what I don’t understand. Okay, our marriage wasn’t perfect. There were times that we fought. But leave Mark? How could he abandon his own flesh and blood?”
In that last phone conversation with Trey, I could hear the joy, the anticipation of seeing his son. “I don’t know. I only know that he loved Mark, even if he wasn’t here to show it.”
She threw herself on the pillows. “I don’t want to talk about him now! Go to bed, Jordan. We’ve both had horrible days.”
While she was in this state of honesty I wanted to ask about the batik scrap I’d found; but I couldn’t. Not without it sounding like an accusation I wasn’t ready to make. I got up and went back downstairs. Candace had gotten Mama down for the night and was sipping a ginger ale and watching the news from Austin.
“Thanks for staying over.” I went and kissed her on the mouth. She kissed back for a moment.
“You want me to sleep with you? Or in the guest room?” she asked softly. “I never stayed here since we’ve been dating.”
“It can’t make any nevermind to Mama, but, for Mark’s sake, it’d be best if you slept in the guest room.”
She didn’t take it as rejection. “All right, babe. You doing okay?”
I looked down into her cool blue eyes. I wanted to say no, I wasn’t doing okay. I was scared shitless by the two options that seemed to be looming before me; either my sister was a killer or my friends were being murdered for some hidden reason from boyhood days. Death has a long shadow, my grandfather used to say, and I never appreciated what he meant until now. I wanted to explain this to Candace, but instead I kissed her again and said I was going to bed.
It was only after I pulled myself between the cold, lonely sheets and lay back on my pillow that the most disturbing thought of the day came to me: what if Trey had been killed simply because he’d come home?
9
“Not like that,” Trey scolded me. “You always, always get on a horse from the left, not the right!” He yanked the reins out of my hand and patted the horse’s side.
“Well, excuuuse me,” I retorted. “I was on the left.”
“Not your left. The horse’s left.” Trey took me by the shoulder and led me around to the proper side.
“You didn’t say that,” I said indignantly.
Trey pushed back his black cowboy hat and shook his head in smiling resignation. He was fourteen, but he already looked sixteen, filling out and growing more quickly than I had. I still looked like a scrawny little kid next to him.
“I swear, Jordy, you are the most impatient person I’ve ever met. Now, let me tell you what to do, and wait until I’m done”-here he fixed me with a steely gaze-“so’s you don’t rush off and kill your fool self.”
I nodded. He went through the steps again: placing the reins over the horse’s neck and grasping them in his left hand, putting his left shoulder against the horse, facing its tail, and gauging his weight against the horse’s brown shoulder. Finally, he turned the stirrup from back to front before putting his foot in it (he stressed this step to me so I wouldn’t twist my leg wrong once I was up in the saddle). He demonstrated by swinging gracefully into Fafnir’s saddle, his whole body an exercise in control and power. The huge horse obeyed the boy without a tremor.
“See. Ain’t so hard. You’re gonna do fine,” Trey assured me, dismounting and giving Fafnir a pat.
I went for a second try. Fafnir regarded me with disdain; the smell of my fear was probably palpable to him. Trey’d said he’d teach me to ride if I helped him with history, and now I was thinking I’d gotten the raw end of the deal. The horse moved uneasily, as though unwilling to give me a chance at mastering him.