Charlaine Harris (80 page)

Gracie didn't speak, but she smiled at us. That was the more significant because she's not a smiley girl. She doesn't look a thing like Mariella; but then, my sister and I hadn't looked alike, either. Gracie looks like a little elf: she has greenish eyes, long wispy pale hair, an aggressive little nose, and a cupid's bow mouth.

Maybe I'm not a kid person. I find Gracie more interesting than Mariella, though this confession sounds simply cold. For all I know, real mothers have secret favorites, too. I'm pretty sure I don't show this partiality. I'm waiting for Mariella to do something that interests me, and I was delighted that she was happy about the book. If Mariella turned out to be a reader, I'd find a way to connect with her. Gracie had been so sick, at the same time I'd been sick. It had been the unstable taking care of the weak; I'd been laid low by being struck by lightning, and Gracie had had chronic chest and breathing problems.

“Are you a bad woman, Aunt Harper?” Gracie asked. The question came completely out of the blue.

This “aunt” business had originated with Iona, who'd thought we were so much older than our sisters that they ought to address us with respect. But that wasn't why I was so dumbfounded. “I try not to be bad,” I said, to buy some time until I found out what had prompted that question.

Iona made herself mighty busy with her coffee, stirring it with a spoon over and over. I could feel my mouth clamp down in anger, and I was trying to keep the bitter words inside. After a moment, it became clear Iona was going to act like she wasn't involved in the conversation, so I went on. “I try to be honest with the people I work for,” I said. “I believe in God.” (Not the same God Iona worshipped, apparently.) “I work hard and I pay my taxes. I'm the best person I can be.” And this was all true.

“Because if you take money from people and you can't really do what you say you can do, that's bad, right?” Gracie said.

“It sure is,” Tolliver said. “That's called fraud. And it's something Harper and I would never, never do.” His dark eyes drilled holes in Iona. Gracie looked at her adoptive mother, too. I was sure they were seeing two different people.

Iona was still not meeting our eyes, still stirring the damn coffee.

Hank came in the garage door then, which was good timing. Hank was a big man, with a broad, high-complexioned face and thinning blond hair. He'd been very handsome when he was younger, and he was a good-looking man still, now that he'd reached forty. His waist was barely thicker than it had been when he and Iona had married.

“Harper, Tolliver! Good to see you! We don't see you-all enough.”

Liar.

He kissed the top of Gracie's head and chucked Mariella under the chin. “Hey, you two!” he said to the girls. “Mariella, how was that spelling test today?”

Mariella said, “Hey, Daddy! I got eight out of ten right.”

“That's my girl,” Hank said. He was pouring some Coca-Cola out of a two-liter bottle. He chunked a few ice cubes into the glass and pulled up a folding chair that stood beside the refrigerator. “Gracie, did you have a good time in chorus today?”

“We sang good,” she said. She seemed relieved to be on familiar conversational ground.

If Hank had noticed the tense atmosphere in the tiny kitchen, he didn't comment on it.

“How are you two doing?” he asked me. “Find any good bodies lately?” Hank had always talked about our livelihood as if it were a big joke.

I smiled back faintly. “A few,” I said. Evidently, Hank didn't read the newspapers or watch the news on television. I'd been mentioned more often than I wanted to be in the past month.

“Where you traveled to?” Hank also thought it was amusing that Tolliver and I were always on the road, pursuing this strange living of ours. Hank had been out of Texas when he was in the army, but that was the extent of his traveling experience.

“We were in the mountains of North Carolina,” Tolliver said. He paused to see if either Iona or Hank would pick up on the reference to our last, most notorious, case.

Nope.

“Then we went to another job between here and Texarkana, in Clear Creek. Now here we are in Garland to see you-all.”

“Any big news in the corpse-finding business?” Again with the teasing smile.

“We have other news,” Tolliver said, irritated by Hank's facetiousness. This happened every time. Every damn time. I looked at Tolliver, saw the intent way his eyes were focused on Hank.

Uh-oh
, I thought.

“You found you a girlfriend and you're going to settle down!” Hank said jocularly, since Tolliver's lack of a steady girlfriend had long been the subject of many pointed jokes from both Iona and her husband.

“As a matter of fact, I have,” Tolliver said, and the smile on his face made me close my eyes. It was bright and hard.

“Well, listen to that, girls! Your uncle Tolliver has got himself a girl! Who is she, Tol?”

My brother hated it when someone abbreviated his name.

“Harper,” Tolliver said. He reached across the table and took my hand. And we waited.

“Your . . .” Iona almost said “sister,” but recalled the word in time. “But . . . you two?” She looked from me to Tolliver. “That's just not right,” she said hesitantly. “You two . . .”

“Are not related,” I said, smiling brightly at my aunt.

The girls were looking from one adult to another, confused.

“You're my sister,” Mariella said suddenly.

“Yep,” I said, smiling at her.

“Tolliver is my brother,” she said clearly.

“Also true. But we're not related to each other. You understand that, right? I had a different mom and dad from Tolliver.”

“So,” said Gracie, “you gonna get married?” She looked pleased. Confused, but pleased.

Tolliver looked across the table at me. His smile gentled. “I hope so,” he said.

“Oh, boy! Can I be in the wedding?” Mariella said. “My friend Brianna was in her sister's wedding. Can I wear a long dress? Can I get my hair done? Brianna's mom let her wear lipstick. Can I wear lipstick, Mom?”

“Mariella, we may not have a big wedding,” I said, since I could guarantee that wasn't going to happen. “We may just go to a justice of the peace. So it might not be in a church, and I wouldn't wear a long white dress.”

“But whatever we do, you can be there, and you can wear whatever you want,” Tolliver said.

“Oh, for goodness' sake!” Iona said, sounding thoroughly disgusted. “You two got no business getting married! And if you do, which God forbid, Mariella and Gracie sure wouldn't be there!”

“Why not?” Tolliver asked, in that dangerous voice. “They're our family.”

“It just ain't right,” Hank said, his face serious, giving us the correct and final verdict on our relationship. “You two was raised too close for comfort.”

“We're not related by blood,” I said, “and we'll get married when we want to.” Then I realized I'd been sucked into the argument much further than I'd counted on. Tolliver was grinning at me. I closed my eyes.

Apparently Tolliver had just proposed and I had just accepted.

“Well,” said Iona, her lips pursed in the old Iona way, “we got us some news, too.”

“Oh, what is it?” I was willing to be interested. I was willing to dispel the angry atmosphere that had made my sisters so unhappy. I made myself smile at my aunt to show a decent anticipation.

“Hank and I are gonna have a baby,” Iona said. “The girls will have a little brother or sister.”

After a long moment of intense struggle not to blurt out, “After all these years?” I managed to say, “Oh, what great news! Girls, aren't you excited?”

Tolliver's hand found mine under the table and gripped it hard. We'd never considered that Iona and Hank might have a baby of their own, and, speaking for myself, I'd never been curious about why they didn't have any. In fact, I'd just regarded the two as inconvenient irritants who got in our way when we wanted to see our sisters. However, they were mighty convenient when it came to doing the day-to-day care for those two little girls, who were no walk in the park to deal with.

In a flash of clarity, I realized all this, and I knew we couldn't possibly interfere with Iona and Hank's relationship with the girls now. I looked into Mariella's face and saw the uncertainty there. Neither she nor Gracie needed any other problems to handle at the moment. The girls were trying to feel happy about the baby, but they'd been thrown for a serious loop.

I could sympathize.

AT
the Texas Roadhouse the next night, we'd already put our name on the list for a table when Mark arrived. Mark looks like he's Tolliver's brother, all right; they have the same cheekbones, the same chin, the same brown eyes. But Mark is shorter, thicker, and (an observation I have kept to myself) not nearly as smart as Tolliver.

I had so many great memories of Mark, though, that I knew I'd always be fond of him. Mark had done his best to protect all of us from our parents. Not that our parents had always intended to hurt us . . . but they were addicts. Addicts forget to be parents. They forget to be married. They're only addicted.

Mark had suffered a lot because he had more memories of his dad when his dad was a real person than Tolliver did. Mark remembered a father who'd taken him fishing and hunting, a father who'd gone to teacher conferences and football games and helped him with his arithmetic. Tolliver had told me that he remembered that passage in his own life a little, but the last few years in the trailer had overlaid most of that memory until the hurt had extinguished the flame that kept it alive.

Mark had recently become a manager at JCPenney, and he was wearing navy slacks, a striped shirt, and a pinned-on name tag. When I spotted him entering the restaurant, he looked tired, but his face lit up when he noticed us. Mark had clipped his hair very short and shaved off his mustache, and the cleaner look made him seem older and more confident, somehow.

Tolliver and his brother went through the guy greeting ritual, thumping each other on the back, saying “Hey, man!” a number of times. I got a more restrained hug. Just at the right moment, we got a buzz to tell us we could be seated. When we were in a booth and supplied with menus, I asked Mark how his job was going.

“We didn't do as well as we should this Christmas,” he said seriously. I noticed how white and even his teeth were, and I felt a stab of resentment on his brother's behalf. Mark had been old enough to get his teeth aligned, unlike Tolliver. By the time Tolliver should have been getting his middle-class-American-teen complement of braces and acne medicine, our parents had started their downward spiral together. I shook off that unworthy twinge of resentment. Mark had just been lucky, on that count. “Our sales weren't as high as they should've been, and we're going to have to scramble this spring,” he said.

“So what do you think happened?” Tolliver asked, as if he gave a rat's ass why the store wasn't performing as well as it ought to have.

Mark rambled on about the store and his responsibilities, and I tried to show a decent interest. This was a better job than his previous position managing a restaurant; at least, the hours were better. Mark had put himself through two years of junior college, and he'd taken night classes since then. Eventually, he'd earn a degree. I had to admire that dedication. Neither Tolliver nor I had done that much.

The truth was that though I made sure I looked like I was listening, and I truly was fond of Mark, I was bored silly. I found myself remembering a day Mark had knocked down one of my mom's visitors, a tough guy in his thirties who'd made a blatant pass at Cameron. Mark hadn't known if the guy was armed (many of our parents' buddies were), and yet Mark hadn't hesitated a second in his defense of my sister. This memory made it easy for me to pretend I was hanging on Mark's every word.

Tolliver was asking relevant questions. Maybe he was more into this than I'd thought. I wondered, for the hundredth time, if Tolliver would have enjoyed having a regular life, instead of the one we led.

But I figured he'd pretty much set that fear to rest the day before.

We'd left Iona and Hank's in a very subdued state. We'd been stunned equally by Iona's news. Though we'd tried to congratulate her and Hank with enthusiasm, maybe we hadn't sounded excited enough. We'd been a little shaken by their reaction to our relationship, and it had been hard to be delighted for their good news since they'd been so aghast at ours.

Of course the girls had picked up on all the stress and anger. In the course of a few minutes, they'd gone from being happy for us to being confused and resentful about all the emotions swirling around. Hank had retreated to his tiny “office” to call his pastor and consult with this unknown man about our relationship, which had made something tiny in my head explode. He'd taken Tolliver with him, and Tolliver had emerged looking indignant and amused.