Safe Keeping

“Dad!” Lissa protested. “We’re already upside down on that job.”

“Yeah, well, do you think losing Pederson is going to put us right side up?”

“Look,” Evan said, “we could use Tucker’s help out at our place, right, Lissa? He could lay the floor in your art studio, for one thing.”

“That would be great,” Lissa said. “I’m dying to have a real place where I can paint again.”

Evan found Tucker’s gaze. “We can’t pay you much.”

“I don’t want any pay. I’ll just be glad for a job, the chance to show everyone I mean what I say.”

“It’s a deal, then,” Evan said. “You want to start tomorrow?”

“Is eight o’clock too early?” Tucker said, sounding as eager as a child.

Evan laughed, and Lissa said it was fine. She said, “The floor tile for the studio is at the office,” and a discussion ensued among the three of them about the logistics of transporting it to the house.

Emily looked at Roy when he shifted his fork from one side of his plate to the other, the noise drawing her attention. She knew what he was thinking, that this was another of Tucker’s empty promises. He would say people don’t change, that they were incapable of it. She didn’t know how much he based his opinion on his own experience, the ongoing war he waged with his own demons. She didn’t hold his gaze when their eyes met. She couldn’t. She was too afraid of what she might reveal. Why hadn’t she told him immediately when Tucker was arrested last fall? A confession now would sound so much worse. She stood up, and began stacking plates, pausing when Evan mentioned the lake house.

“I think I know how we can engineer the deck off the master bedroom to extend over the water the way you want it to,” he told Roy. “If you’ve got a set of plans here, I can show you.”

Emily exchanged a wondering glance with Lissa, who shrugged.

Catching them at it, Evan grinned. “Roy did say he wanted to be able to fish from bed.”

“Please tell me that’s a joke,” Emily said, feeling a warm surge of delight mixed with relief. Suppose Evan could convince Roy to take up his project again? Suppose Tucker did even half of what he promised? Suppose he was right and the police were finished with him? Suppose her worry over what Roy might or might not know about Joe Merchant was needless? Then life might be as it had once been. She wondered if she was asking for too much.

Tucker said the house plans were upstairs, that he’d get them.

Lissa stored the leftover cake.

Emily carried the dishes to the sink. “I don’t have a clue how Evan can fix the problem with the deck, but I’ll be beyond ecstatic if he can get your dad back to work on that house.”

“Me, too. Evan’s as worried as we are about him. He thinks Daddy’s in a lot more pain than he’s letting on.”

“He is, but we both know how he feels about seeing a doctor. He won’t even let Dr. White look at him.”

“If only Tucker would get his act together, that would help.”

“Maybe he will this time. I’ve never heard him sound quite so—” Emily paused, hunting for the right word.

“Committed? Contrite?” Lissa supplied two. She dampened a dishcloth and wiped the countertop. “He has to grow up sometime.”

Emily opened the dishwasher. “He said he has receipts, proving he was in Austin over the weekend when Jessica was murdered. Did he give them to the police, do you know?”

“They’re in his glove box. He has to get his car back first.”

“That should take care of it, right?”

“Maybe, but you know, if it doesn’t, if the police insist on pursuing him, we’ll have to get a lawyer.”

Emily wouldn’t say it aloud; she didn’t want Lissa to worry, but she wondered where the money to pay a lawyer would come from. She wondered why the police focus on Tucker continued. It was as if they wanted him to be guilty. A year ago, when the police fixated on him, the media raised the outrageous possibility that whoever killed Miranda had likely killed the other two victims who’d been found at the same location in previous years.

More than one reporter speculated that the I-45 serial killer had moved his base of operations from the Galveston area north, seventy or so miles, to the piney woods. They associated the location with Tucker’s home—her home—by describing it as “near where Tucker Lebay, a person of interest in the murder of Miranda Quick, lives.”

It horrified Emily, the very idea that her son’s name was forever linked in some people’s minds to such brutal crimes. And it was complete insanity, anyway. The math didn’t work. Tucker wasn’t old enough to have committed the first two murders. He wasn’t capable of such violence in any case. These crimes were the work of a monster, one who was still out there, still on the loose, which could only mean more women would disappear, more bodies would be found. And more families, good families, like the Quicks, would suffer heartbreak and loss, while the police wasted time hounding Tucker, while they drove him even further back into the black cave of his unhappiness and frustration.

Lissa came to stand beside her.

“I wish Tucker could be more like Evan.” Emily was sorry even as she said it. Even as she felt Lissa’s arm slip around her waist, the surge of her love was tainted with regret. She shouldn’t compare them, these three who would always be children to her.

She had mothered Evan, too, the same as Lissa and Tucker, ever since Roy gave Evan a job when he was barely seventeen, nothing more than a scrawny boy. As a nine-year-old, Tucker almost instantly idolized Evan. But even Lissa, at thirteen, was drawn to him, although she had pretended the opposite. Still, the seed of their attraction for each other had been visible from the beginning. Tucker’s admiration was less self-conscious. So often when he needed someone strong, when he needed a sure and steady guide, Evan was there.

He possessed every admirable trait a parent could want in a son, despite his own complicated upbringing, which involved a father who’d walked out and a mother who was indifferent. Emily would never understand it. Evan’s parents were so careless with him, and yet, he never caused them, or anyone, one moment’s worth of worry or doubt.

“Some people seem to lead a charmed life, while others struggle,” she said now, and there was a bite in her voice that was unintentional, and she rued it.

Lissa moved away. “Evan hasn’t led a charmed life, and neither have I. Tucker has the same opportunity as anyone to make better choices. Not even Daddy can stop him.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“I know, Momma. It’s okay.”

Emily glanced sidelong at her daughter. “I know you’ve pretty much decided not to have children, but if you were to change your mind and become a mother, you’d understand. There’s just this drive to protect, especially when your child is—” Emily shrugged. She didn’t want to say impulsive or high strung, or oversensitive or—she didn’t know. Just hardwired, differently, in some nameless, unfathomable way.

* * *

Lissa and Evan had left, and Roy had gone upstairs to bed, when Tucker found Emily, as she had hoped he would, outside on the porch, tucked into a corner of the swing.

He sat down beside her. “What are you doing out here? It’s cold.”

“I think that woman is calling your dad,” Emily said without preamble.

“What woman?” Tucker asked, as if he didn’t know.

“The one who had you arrested for stalking her last fall,” Emily answered shortly. “Revel Wiley.”

“What makes you think—?”

“I’ve been getting calls on my cell phone from her number, and I’ve ignored them. Now, in the past few days, the same number has started coming up on the landline caller ID. When I answer, she hangs up. But if your dad answers, he talks away. He’s acted odd when I ask about it. I’m afraid it’s her, that she’s stirring up trouble again.” Emily couldn’t keep the edge from her voice. “Every time I think how you involved me in that mess, Tucker, I’m angry all over again. I wish you hadn’t put me in the middle of it.”

“I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t know who else to call.”

“I posted your bail. I paid Revel a thousand dollars to drop the stalking charge altogether because you said that would end it. I should have known better.”

“I’ll talk to her.”

“No! For heaven’s sake, Tucker, if you can only do one thing for me, please, please promise me you’ll stay away from those women, the clubs, that life.”

He scrubbed his hands down his thighs, shifted his feet, jarring the swing.

Emily’s initial jolt of exasperation was softened by her regret for his inadequacies and his struggles, his aura of unhappiness. It was the constant war of her own emotions that weighed on her, that rendered her nearly useless when it came to making a stand. At one moment she would feel she didn’t love Tucker enough, or in the right way, and then at another, she would feel as if she loved him and catered to him too much. She slid her palm over the back of his hand. “You know I want to believe what you said earlier, that you want to change, to take responsibility, but for that to work out, you’re going to have to stay away from Miranda’s friends—”

“Revel misunderstood me, Mom. I only wanted to help her get out of the business and out of the rat hole she was living in.”

“Yes, but she and the rest of those girls aren’t your responsibility. You can scarcely take care of yourself.”

Even in the half-light, Emily could see his shoulders sag. She saw his defeat and his aggravation written into the line of his jaw, the crease of his brow. He hitched forward, setting his elbows on his knees. “I’ll be up a shit creek with Pop if he finds out.”

Emily was worried, too, for the possible consequences, which was why she’d talked to Joe and solicited his help. She felt as though the slightest pressure could send Roy reeling off an edge. A breeze kicked a hash of dried leaves mixed with road grit along the curb, making a ruckus, and she looked in that direction. “He’s done so well for so long,” she said.

There had been episodes of irrational behavior as the result of lingering post-traumatic stress, but none so terrifying as what occurred on the occasion of Tucker’s fourth birthday. That awful day when she left Roy and Tucker napping to run last-minute errands, only to come home and find Tucker locked in a closet, and Roy pacing the house with a loaded gun, drunk, and raving about shelling from the enemy. When she tried to reason with him, he angrily informed her that she was a fucking idiot if she didn’t realize they were at war in a country where even the women and children carried weapons. Couldn’t she see that he had secured their position to save her and their home? It took every ounce of her strength and diplomacy to convince him to hand over the key to the closet and scoop Tucker, eerily quiet, alarmingly covered in blood, into her arms.

Weary by then, and sobering, Roy slumped to the floor. He allowed her to take the gun, his old Colt service revolver that he’d carried in Vietnam, and to bring Tucker around the corner to Anna’s, where they found he was bleeding from a cut on the heel of his bare foot. When Emily asked how he’d gotten hurt, he only stared at her, eyes stunned, uncomprehending. He didn’t speak again for six days.

The single saving grace that came out of the whole ordeal was that it frightened Roy badly enough that he finally sought help. It wasn’t until after his six-week stay in the VA hospital that Emily found out Tucker inadvertently set off the whole tragic sequence of events when he wakened before Roy and went into the bathroom for a drink. It was the sound of the water glass exploding against the tile floor when it slipped from Tucker’s small hand that jerked Roy upright. Caught in the throes of one of his war dreams, the nightmare came with him as he rose, terrified, into an altered reality.

For him the house was a battleground, Tucker the enemy.

To this day, Emily couldn’t bear to think what might have happened had she not come home when she did. She would have taken the children and left Roy then, and he knew it. He stopped drinking entirely. He packed away his collection of guns, only getting them out again, years later, when Lissa and Tucker expressed an interest in learning to shoot. As a family, they took every recommended step, and eventually they mended. Normal life resumed.

A new normal, Emily thought now, scarred by a feeling that, as parents, she and Roy had failed Tucker, failed to protect him, to keep him safe. She flattened her palm on his back, remembering the awful days when he hadn’t spoken, remembering, too, the sore number of weeks that passed before he would stay even for a moment in the same room with his dad. Tucker’s trust had been broken, and it had made her heart ache, watching Roy work to regain it, watching his hope fade a bit more each day that Tucker didn’t reach out to him. They hadn’t forced it; they’d been advised to give it time. And then one day, Tucker wasn’t a little boy anymore, and Emily realized he wouldn’t ever reach out to either Roy or her in the way that small children do again. They were out of time.

She rubbed a circle between Tucker’s shoulder blades. “Maybe I’m wrong, and it isn’t Revel who’s calling your dad. She did tell me she was going back to Oklahoma, where her folks live. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” Emily didn’t know why she was saying any of this when she knew perfectly well Revel was the caller, and while Revel had made a promise about leaving Texas, Emily had no real hope she’d kept it.

Tucker didn’t look as if he believed it, either. He said he didn’t really care anymore what Revel did.

“The trouble with people like her is that when you give in to them, it’s only the beginning.” Emily repeated a line from the lecture Joe had given her when she’d called him for advice after Revel made a second, nerve-jangling demand for more money. He’d gone with her to meet Revel, and flashed his badge at her, warning her not to contact Emily or Tucker again or there would be legal consequences, all of which was completely false. Even Emily knew Joe acted outside his authority. He claimed it was nothing, but Emily was still angry at herself and at Tucker that Joe had put his career in jeopardy for them.

She wanted Tucker to know this, to know the cost of his actions to others.

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