I wonder if Jo will forgive me for not bringing her with us, although it doesn’t seem all that important right now. Nothing does. Numbness grips me, a slow-acting poison that drugs the Susans to sleep and yet still allows my hands to build perfectly tidy little towers of clothes. Clothes that have mingled intimately in the washer-Lucas’s Army underwear, Charlie’s flannel pajamas with the pink cotton-candy sheep, my neon running shorts.
Lucas is slugging a beer at the end of the couch, watching CNN and rolling his briefs into tiny eggrolls, Army Ranger-style, then aiming and tossing them at my head, my butt, whatever is a good target. We’re pretending to be just fine while the clock ticks the seconds off my sanity. Because after Terrell dies, then what?
Keep folding. The doorbell rings, and Lucas is up, opening the door. Probably Effie dropping off a food bomb. I glance at my watch: 4:22 P.M.-a couple of hours before I have to pick up Charlie from practice.
“Is Tessa home?” A nerve, plucked like a guitar string, as soon as I hear his voice.
Lucas’s feet are planted deliberately, blocking my view of the door. “And this would be regarding what?” The drawl pulls out every bit of the West Texas in him. In slow motion, I see Lucas’s left hand, the support hand, casually rise and rest on his upper chest. The fingers on his right hand, clinching. The ready position for the fastest way to yank a gun out of your pants. He’d demonstrated for me in the back yard not an hour before.
“Lucas!” I jolt myself away from the couch, toppling three of the piles. “This is Bill, the lawyer I’ve told you about who is handling Terrell’s appeal. Angie’s friend.” All I can see beyond Lucas is the tip of a Boston Red Sox cap. I’m behind Lucas, pushing uselessly against hard muscle. I feel around his waist for a gun that isn’t there. His movements a few seconds ago, just the reflex of a wary man. I realize that while Bill can’t see my face, he has a perfect view of my hand curled intimately near Lucas’s crotch.
Old resentment flushes heat into my face. This macho idiocy from Lucas is the primary reason we were drawn to each other when I was a scared, hormonal eighteen-year-old, and the primary reason we broke up. He descended from a generation of men who sent hearts skittering in terror with the one-two clunk of their boots. Who lived life like everyone was about to quick-draw. Lucas leaps eagerly at cat screeches, car backfires, knocks on the door. He’s a good man and a terrific soldier, the best, but as an everyday life partner, he electrocutes the roots of every hair on my skin.
“Lucas, move.” I shove a little harder.
Lucas steps aside slightly so I can wriggle beside him.
“Bill, Lucas,” I say. “Lucas, Bill.”
Bill sticks out a hand. Lucas ignores it. “Hello there, Bill. I’ve been wanting to meet you. I’ve been wanting to ask how involving Tessa at this very late date is a good thing. Don’t you think it’s time to step away? Ride off in your BMW out there? Give Tessa and my daughter the peace they deserve?”
For a moment, I’m speechless. I had no idea Lucas was pulsing with this kind of anger. We were melting down, every one of us. I step firmly onto the porch. “Lucas. Butt out of this, OK? Whatever I’m doing, it’s my call. Bill isn’t forcing me.”
I shut the door in Lucas’s face, not for the first time. “You can wipe off that expression, Bill.” Not exactly what I meant to say. Not, I miss you.
“So that’s your soldier?” Bill asks.
“If you mean Charlie’s father, yes.”
“He’s living here?”
“On a short leave. Long story, but Charlie was scared after that night of the… vandal. She Skyped Lucas about it and shortly after that he showed up on my doorstep. He has an understanding boss and was overdue for a leave to visit Charlie anyway. I didn’t invite him, but I’m not sorry he came. He’s on… the couch.”
“That doesn’t seem like a very long story.” Bill’s voice is cool. “If you’re still in love with him, just say so.”
My arms are crossed tight against my thin sweater. I have no interest in inviting Bill inside and refereeing between the two of them.
“This isn’t a conversation… we need to have,” I say. “You and me… we can’t be a thing. We slept together for the wrong reasons. It’s not like me to do something that impulsive. I’m not that girl.”
“You didn’t answer the question.” I meet his eyes. Flinch. The intensity is almost unbearable. Lucas had never looked at me like that. Lucas was all hands and instinct.
“I’m not in love with Lucas. He’s a good guy. You just caught him at a bad moment.” Already I’m wondering if Bill’s laser gaze is for real, or if it’s method acting with an on/off switch. Useful for withering a witness, or stripping a girl down to her scars.
Lydia had always sworn no one could reach her vagina with his eyes but Paul Newman, “Even though he’s ancient.” She hadn’t met Bill. I wouldn’t want her to meet Bill. To tarnish this, whatever this is.
Why am I thinking about Lydia right now?
Bill plunks himself down in the swing, clearly not going anywhere. I reluctantly position myself on the other end. For the first time, I notice a large manila envelope about two inches thick, in his hand.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“I brought you something. Have you ever read any of your testimony from the trial?”
“It never occurred to me.” A lie. I’d thought about it plenty. The jury ogling me like I was an alien and the sketch artist scratching long, swift pencil strokes for my hair. My father, sitting in the front row of a packed room, petrified for me, and Terrell, in a cheap blue tie with gold stripes, keeping his eyes glued to a blank piece of notebook paper in front of him, the one for his notes. He never once looked at me or took a note. The jury interpreted it as guilt.
So did I.
“I’ve pulled out a few sections for you,” Bill says.
“Why?”
“Because you feel such guilt about your testimony.” Bill halts the swing abruptly. He taps the envelope that now rests between us. “Please read this. It might help. You are not the reason Terrell sits in prison.”
I cross my arms tighter. “Maybe you’re just thinking that the more I take myself back there, the more I might remember something that would help Terrell.”
“Is there something wrong with that?”
My heart begins to pound, hating this. “No. Of course not.”
He pushes himself up and the swing bounces and jerks in protest. “Jo told me about the tooth. I wish you’d let us know you were going to your grandfather’s. I wish you weren’t so intent on shutting me out. Are you planning to dig somewhere else?” He’s stilling the swing with his hand while I get up.
“No. It was the last place. Is Jo… mad?”
“You’d have to ask her.”
He’s moving away, bristling with frustration. At life. At me. I grab the envelope off the swing and follow him to the steps. “Tell me the truth. Is there any hope at all for Terrell?”
He starts to step off the porch before swiveling halfway around, almost knocking me back. I am already there, only inches away. “There are a few more appeals to file,” he says. “I’m driving to Huntsville to see him for the last time next week.”
I grip his arm. “The last time? That doesn’t sound good. Will you tell Terrell… that I’m still trying very hard to remember?”
Bill’s eyes are glued to my fingernails gripping his sweatshirt, always unpolished and cut short, still crumbed with dirt from my grandfather’s garden. “Why don’t you tell him yourself?”