Faultlines (21 page)

“He e-mailed me—Beck did, a couple of years ago.”

“Two years ago? Are you kidding? Jesus Christ, this is all such a fucking mess—”

“Because of me. Go ahead, say it. We both know who you’re blaming.”

A breeze kicked up as it was wont to do late on summer afternoons, but it was hot, restless. There was no relief in it. Sandy pulled off her gloves. She unstuck her hair from her cheek, the corner of her mouth, lifted it off her neck.

“Jordy told me you e-mailed the guy, asking for his help—money, basically. Jordy is pretty blown away that you did that—out of the blue, you contact your ex-lover? But maybe you’ve been in touch all this time.”

“No, absolutely not, Emmett. I lied about the affair, it’s true, but not now, not about that. I was never in contact with the man until now. Even when he wrote to me two years ago, I didn’t respond.” Sandy couldn’t read Emmett’s expression; the bill of his cap shaded his face, and it irked her somehow. She was frightened, too. She slapped her gloves across her open palm. “You weren’t here, Emmett, and your advice to me was to liquidate Jordy’s college fund. Your mind was on your mother. You barely listened to my concerns. There was no discussion. Just clean out the college fund, and to hell with whether or not Jordy would ever be able to go back to school.”

“That life is over, Sandy. Face it. The family we had, the life we shared—the one where Jordy and Trav were students at UT, and you, me, Jenna, and your folks were here, their home base—that routine is not coming back. And Jordy may well get his degree, but it’ll be through some prison program, if he can even survive in one of those hellholes.”

“Jordy is not going to prison. Not as long as I’m breathing.” Sandy stepped toward Emmett. “I will take money from the devil himself to keep that from happening.”

“But you won’t cash in his college fund? You’re not making sense.”

“Do you believe him, then? Because when you left here, you acted like you weren’t sure.”

“You don’t believe him, either, according to Jordy, and it’s killing him. You could at least fake it.”

“Is that what you’re doing? Faking it?”

“You know what scares the shit out of me? That he’s got Huck and the rest of the cops in Wyatt on his ass, doing everything they can to see to it he’s convicted.”

“Roger hired a private detective. He’s hoping to find another witness since Nat Blevins changed his story.”

“Yeah. I heard. Roger’s right; Huck probably did put pressure on him. I just wish I knew why—”

“You’ve talked to Roger?” She felt faintly dizzy.

Emmett disregarded her question. “I don’t know how we’re going to pay a lawyer, much less a detective.”

“I’ve thought of asking Mom and Dad for help.”

“They’re in deep with Jenna. If our medical bills for Jordy are through the roof, hers for Trav are astronomical. Plus, there were all the funeral expenses.”

Sandy hadn’t even considered that Jenna would be saddled with Travis’s medical bills. She wondered how they even existed. “He died,” she said, and she knew her protest was unreasoning. Still she questioned it. “How can they charge her when Trav died?”

“That’s how the system works. Showalter tried. It cost a bundle. Your dad thinks Jenna may have to declare bankruptcy.”

The fist of her tears slammed the wall behind Sandy’s eyes. “It’s so wrong. All of this!” She shook her gloves. “I should be with her—”

“It needs time.” Emmett’s voice was rough with emotion.

She looked at him, searching his eyes for a sign that if she were to walk toward him, he would meet her, with open arms, but she found no certainty of that within him or herself. “You’re in touch with Jenna, my folks?”

“Your dad, mostly. The business—between us we’ve been handling the operation. And it’s a good thing, because we for damn sure need the income.”

Sandy picked up her trowel and shoved its blade into the ground.

“I’m staying with Grant and Brenda, in their garage apartment. It’s not leased right now, and they’re letting me camp out there.”

Sandy straightened. “I saw Brenda last week at the grocery store. She never said a word about you. She barely spoke.”

“I asked her not to. She was probably afraid she might if she stopped to talk. I’ve put her and Grant in a bad spot. That’s why I came today.”

“All this time, I’ve wondered why they didn’t call or come around. I thought it was because they didn’t support Jordy. Are you telling me they do?”

“Honestly, I think they’re waiting for the trial. They think he’s a good kid, but they know like we do that he lies.”

Sandy looked off, hating it that Jordy was being judged and labeled—and as his mother, so was she, by inference—in unflattering ways. She didn’t care how many times the so-called experts said parents weren’t responsible for a child’s bad behavior—she felt guilty and ashamed all the same. She felt accused. She felt the stab of fingers pointing at her.

“How is your mom?” She brought her gaze back to Emmett.

“Doing much better. I found someone, a retired nurse, who comes by every day and stays a few hours with her and Aunt Leila.”

“So, what does it mean, Emmett, that you’ve been back nearly a month, living in the Kennedys’ garage apartment, without telling me? Are we separated? Do you want a divorce?”

“Jordy’s got to be the focus right now, don’t you agree?”

Of course she did. Sandy plucked her trowel from the dirt, turning it in her hands. The metal was hot enough to burn her fingers. “All this time, the nights he was gone—he knew how worried I was. You must have known it, too. But the two of you just let me go on thinking the worst?” She couldn’t keep the hurt from showing.

“That’s on me, and I’m sorry. I should have come here right away when I got back.”

She could have asked him why not, but she didn’t need to. She didn’t want to hear more about his reluctance to be anywhere near her.

He said he had to go. “I’m picking Jordy up. He’s working at Libby Hennessey’s. You knew that, right? I’ve been driving him to and from.”

The look she gave him was sour; she could nearly taste it—the bitterness. She wasn’t proud of it.

Emmett lifted his cap and shoved his hand over his head before resettling it. “I know you don’t like the idea, but it’s his right, and only natural he’d want to know who his real dad was. She’s the only way he can do that now.”

“Blood doesn’t make a dad real, Emmett. Being there, loving your kid, caring for him, guiding him, teaching him—all the things you’ve done Jordy’s whole life—that’s what makes a real dad.”

“Spare me the bullshit speech, okay? Maybe blood doesn’t count, but the truth damn sure does.”

“I didn’t answer the e-mail from Beck two years ago because nowhere in my mind did he have any place in our lives.”

“How could you make that decision, though? How could you—how can you think it was only yours to make?”

Sandy didn’t answer. She couldn’t say her secrecy then had made sense to her, that it was only now, today, standing here under the hot glare of a late-summer sun, caught up in Emmett’s even hotter and more offended glare, that she saw the scope of her miscalculation. She couldn’t say to him if the accident had never happened, if you had never been called to give blood . . . 
if if if
. . . 

So much more than her honor was lost.

“You realize you’re going to have to tell Jordy, don’t you? That you turned down the opportunity for him to know his birth father? If Libby Hennessey hasn’t already.”

“He’ll hate me.” Her voice broke, tears came, and she blinked them away.

“You owe him the truth. All of it. I’ve told you that. You’re going to have to do the hard thing, Sandy.”

He was right, Sandy knew he was, but the prospect only made her heart pound more heavily in her chest.

“You know what gets me?”

Sandy met Emmett’s gaze.

“Before this I would have said I knew you better than I know myself. I would have said I knew your heart and your secrets. Out of everyone I’ve ever known, I have trusted you without question. But you’re a minefield, you know it? One wrong step and boom, I get set down on my ass by some new revelation. I don’t know even know if I’ve heard the whole story.”

“I’m sorry, Emmett.” It was everything Sandy could do to work the words by the knot in her throat.

“Yeah, that’s the hell of it,” he said, “because I know that, too.”

His gaze on hers seemed to soften, and for a moment, she thought he might relent. He might embrace her. She would feel the strength of his arms around her; his breath at her temple would stir the fine hairs there. She thought if only she could bring him that close, she wouldn’t let go of him. She would make it right; they would work it out between them and save Jordy, too. It wouldn’t ever be the way it was, but it would be something better and more. If only he would take that step.

And he did—backward, saying he’d let her know if he would be bringing Jordy home. It depended, Emmett said, on what Jordy wanted to do. “I’m sorry you were worried,” he said. “I won’t let it happen again.” And then he turned, taking more steps, and every one took him, and Jordan, too, farther down a path away from her.

“I’ve located Jordy,” she said to Roger when he answered his cell phone.

“You’ve spoken to your husband.”

“So, you did know he was here—all this time.”

“I’ve encouraged him to talk to you.”

She went to the kitchen window and stared out.

“You’re pissed, and I don’t blame you. I’m really sorry for how this went down, my part in it.” Roger’s apology sounded heartfelt.

“I don’t understand why—”

“Look, Jordy is my client. What’s between his parents is beside the point. I can’t get sidetracked by it, can’t be involved in it.”

Really?
The smart-ass who lived in her head goaded her to ask. “Okay, but this morning, you knew I was worried sick about where Jordy was—”

“When you called, I had no better idea than you, and that’s the truth. I don’t keep tabs on him. He could have been anywhere.”

Sandy believed Roger. Later as she showered and washed her hair, she thought it was because he didn’t try and make her believe he was telling the truth. He simply stated the facts; she could take them or leave them.

She was sorting the laundry that had piled up when she heard the sound of an engine.
Jordy,
she thought, and went to look. Instead it was Roger, carrying a brown, handled shopping bag. Foolishly, despite her aggravation, she was glad to see him. At least when he looked at her there was no scrim of disgust in his eyes. At least he didn’t think of armed-and-dangerous minefields when he thought of her—if he thought of her. More foolishness.

“What have you got there?” she asked once they were inside.

He set the sack on the counter and began removing the contents, enumerating them as he did so. “One bottle of crème de menthe, one bottle of crème de cacao, and a quart of whipping cream. And I’m hoping you have a little nutmeg—that is, if you like nutmeg sprinkled on top of your grasshopper.”

“You brought this for me?”

“Yes, as a peace offering. But maybe you’d rather take a punch at me?” He stuck out his jaw, and she laughed.

“C’mon. Take your best shot.”

“No. Maybe before I would have, but I’m past it now.”

His eyes held hers, and she was almost undone by his smile, the tender concern in his glance. “I’ve got to tell you, now this is out in the open, when I heard from you this morning, I was worried. I thought Jordy and his dad might have gotten on a plane.”

Sandy hadn’t considered the possibility before, that Emmett might be the one to spirit Jordy out of the country. Would they go and not tell her?

Seeing the look on her face, Roger said, “They would have taken off by now if that was their plan.”

“Yeah, probably.” She realized Roger wanted to reassure her. She had the sense he would like to touch her, that it was costing him not to.

“So it must be a good thing, right, that Jordy’s been hanging out with his dad? It’s what you wanted, isn’t it? For the two of them to see they have a relationship in all the ways that count?”

“Yes. But I’m not sure Emmett does see it. He’s so angry at me. It’s as if he can’t get past it. Maybe he never will.”