Jaxson's Song (12 page)

She jerked her head in
some semblance of a nod. “But I couldn’t let her do it. I can’t let
her—” She inhaled and placed her palms flat on the smooth, cool
marble in front of her, on either side of her mug and plate. “It’s
too much…Kate cannot stay in that house.”

When her aunt only stared
at her, she took a fortifying sip of cocoa and sighed. “That house
does not hold good memories for Kate,” she began, glancing at both
of the kitchen’s other occupants, even though she’d already
confessed all of this to Alexandra. And, just like last night, she
was careful of how much she revealed. But Aunt Carrie immediately
drew her own conclusions.

“
It has to do with your uncle Stan, doesn’t it?” Carrie
tutted, full of sympathy. “You girls used to visit every summer,
until…” She shook her head.

“
You think this is about Viola’s husband committing suicide?”
Lilly asked, refusing to refer to Stan as an “uncle,” even now. Her
memories of him were dim, faded with time, just snatches of
conversation and a sandy blond mustache that twitched up in one
corner when he smiled. She couldn’t even clearly recall his face,
but she remembered that smile. She hated it. She hated him, even
ten years later, for the harm he’d inflicted upon her
sister.

“
I heard that Kate found him hanging, but I never—it must have
been awful.”

Lilly frowned. “Kate
didn’t find his body. Viola did.” She took a deep breath. “They’d
come home one evening, and Viola was the first one in the house. He
was swinging from a plant hook in the front parlor, er, from a
rope, you know what I mean…” she said awkwardly, and took another
sip. “Viola covered Kate’s eyes and got her back outside in a
hurry. Or so I’m told. That was the summer I got the measles, and
I’d stayed home with Mama while Kate was sent here for the usual
visit with Aunt Viola and Stan. She was eight that year, I think.
Aunt Carrie…please promise me this doesn’t go any further than
right here, right now.”

“
Lilly…?” Her aunt leaned forward. “What are you trying to
say?”

“
Stan wasn’t what anyone thought. After he died, Mama came
here and stayed to help Aunt Viola clean out his things. They were
boxing his clothes and books, stuff they planned to donate to
Goodwill, and they found pictures of Kate.”

“
What do you mean
pictures of
Kate
?” Carrie raised a hand to her
chest. Beside Lilly, Alexandra shifted uncomfortably on a
stool.

“
Pictures of her at school, at the park, pictures of the two
of us walking home from school. He had cut me out of all the
photographs. There were even shots of Kate’s bedroom, of her in bed
sleeping, taken through the gap in the curtains.”

“
Oh dear Lord,” Carrie gasped. “How did he—”

“
He’d been lying to Aunt Viola. There were never any business
trips. Stan became obsessed with my sister…apparently he’d been
stalking her for years.”

“
Dear Lord,” Carrie repeated and buried her face in her hands.
Her head snapped up a moment later. “Was he abusing her? Oh, God,
he did, didn’t he? What did he do to her? Oh honey, did he hurt
you, too?” She turned stricken eyes to her own daughter.
“Alex?”

“
No, Mom. He never hurt me.”

“
He never did anything to me, either.” Lilly pushed her plate
aside. “He didn’t exactly hurt Kate, either…not really.”

“
What do you mean?”

“
He didn’t do—what you’re thinking. Don’t get me wrong,
there’s no doubt in my mind he would have, eventually. But Mama
said Kate denied that he’d touched her.”

“
But he could have.” Carrie sighed.

“
Maybe,” Lilly acknowledged. “Mama seemed to take Kate at her
word. But…he scared Kate.”

“
How so?”

“
I’m not sure. If Mama knew, she didn’t tell me that part of
it, but Kate didn’t speak at all for weeks after that visit. Not
one word. Something had her spooked, bad. My sister spent months
looking over her shoulder and jumping at shadows.” Her mouth
tightened into a grim line. “So, now you know why I can’t let her
live in that house. She doesn’t think I know what happened all
those years ago. But Mama told me everything, the summer I turned
fourteen. I’d always asked why we never went back to Florida, why
you and Alexandra and Uncle Mark came to see us every couple of
years instead. Why Aunt Viola hadn’t been up to see us in
years.”

“
After Stan killed himself, Viola rarely left the house,”
Carrie murmured.

Lilly nodded. “That’s what
Mama said, too. She’d always made excuses, but that year, she
finally told me what had happened when Kate and I were kids. I
don’t know why she chose to open up then. She was sick by that
time, so maybe she figured it was her last chance to tell me.” She
chipped at her nail polish before meeting her aunt’s gaze again. “I
told my sister I eloped today. And that I’m on my way to Nevada.
So, now she’s selling the house and getting a place with me at the
end of the month.”

“
Oh, Lilly, tell me you didn’t—”

“
No, of course not. And I’m not really going to
Nevada.”

“
You bet you’re not. You will stay right here with us.” Carrie
sniffed and came around the counter to envelop her niece in a
fierce hug.

“
Thanks.” Lilly returned the embrace and began to feel a
little calmer, a shade stronger. “But I can’t stay here. I can’t
take the chance of running into Kate in town. And what if she ends
up stopping here for a visit?”

“Then w
hat are you going to do?”

“Alexandra
’s driving me to Alabama.
I’m staying with Aunt Sylvia for a few weeks, until Kate is
free.”

“
And then you’ll have to come clean with her,” Carrie mused.
“Are you sure it wouldn’t have been simpler to be straightforward
with her? She’s always seemed like a reasonable young
woman.”

Lilly shook her head
sadly. “My sister has spent her entire life taking care of everyone
else. And she can’t help it, but she’s stubborn. She’s sacrificed
so much for me already…now it’s time for someone to look out for
Kate, for a change.”

Chapter
Eleven

Bait

“
I
love
you
too,” Kate murmured to the dead air that was left behind when her
sister hung up. She stared down at the cell phone she was barely
aware of holding, before clicking it off and placing it carefully
on the coffee table. Long moments passed while she sat perched on
the edge of the gold-and-floral print couch, statue-still, while
image after image of her sister assailed her reeling
senses.

Lilly on her first day of
kindergarten, standing proud in brand new white socks and a purple
daisy patterned dress, holding tight to Kate’s hand while Mama and
Daddy instructed them to smile for the camera. Then Lilly had
turned around and insisted they hurry and get a picture of her My
Little Pony backpack before the school bell rang… Lilly’s purple
sneakers squeaking as they walked down the crowded hallway a year
later. She’d wanted Kate, not their parents, to walk her to the
classroom, because she was a big girl.

Lilly curled up, fast
asleep in Kate’s bed—the space closest to the wall—after a storm
had awoken her in the middle of the night.

Lilly, head bowed, pressed
to Kate’s side as the rain poured around them and they stood over
the casket and said their last goodbyes to Daddy.

Crayons, dress-up,
lightning bugs in a jar, whispered secrets, pretend games, and
summers at the local pool… Doctors, tests, hospitals; Lilly perched
on a striped green chair pushed close to a small round table,
working on her spelling words while Kate spooned ice chips into
Mama’s mouth.

Boyfriends, hopes and
dreams and broken hearts; Lilly breaking curfew.

As for herself, Kate
couldn’t remember ever having a curfew. Not that it had mattered;
she’d only been out a few times. Memories continued to flood her
senses. Late nights long gone, her candle burning at both ends
until it was nothing but a ragged, frayed wick and a puddle of
melted wax.

The final images crested
on the wave of Kate’s emotions before crashing and evaporating into
nothingness, into the past. Where it belonged. Lilly. Stiff
shouldered, arms crossed at Mama’s funeral, broken-hearted and
convinced she was forever done with everyone and everything. Lilly
screaming, slamming the door. Unreachable.

A stray tear tracked its
way along her cheekbone, and she automatically reached for the
phone. She keyed in the first four digits of her sister’s number
before she changed her mind and dialed Lindsey’s
instead.

“
Hey-hey Kate. Whatcha up to on this fine day?”

Kate smiled, in spite of
the fact that her life was in the process of crumbling in tiny,
dysfunctional pieces. “Hey,” she said, clamping her lips together
when she heard the shakiness of her own voice.

“
Uh-oh,” Lindsey intoned, falling silent for a few seconds
before curiosity got the best of her. “What happened?”

“
Am I that easy to read?”

“
Yes,” Lindsey said, automatically. “What’s wrong?”

Kate sighed, and the urge
to hang up the phone—and toss it into a drawer—was suddenly
overwhelming. The words that a moment ago had been begging to come
out, to be forced into some sort of order that made sense, now
stuck in her throat. Talking it out with Lindsey, or anyone, wasn’t
going to help, she realized. For a problem of this magnitude, she
needed alcohol.

“
Kate?” Lindsey prompted.

“
Lilly called this morning.”

“
O-kay…”

“
She’s married and on her way to Reno.”

On the other end of the
line, the sound of glass shattering accompanied a whole lot of
clattering and a muffled curse before Lindsey voice boomed in
Kate’s ear, “Did you just say—”

“
Yes,” Kate interrupted, her own voice grim.

“
Oh. My. Gawd.”

“
Pretty much. Does the name
‘
Chad’ sound familiar to
you?”

“
Chad? No. Why? Is that who she ran off with?”

“
She says they dated in Georgia. I’ve never met him.” Kate
cradled the cell phone between her ear and shoulder, slipped into
her shoes and began to hunt for her purse. “I thought maybe you
might remember seeing him around, or have heard of him.” Damn it,
where had she put it?

“
No. The only guy Lilly ever brought home was Troy. Junior
year, wasn’t it?”

“
She had a couple of dates with someone named Brandon.
Beginning of her senior year, but nothing came of it.”

“
Oh, right. Brandon.”

“
As far as I know, she hasn’t dated anyone in
months.”

“
Apparently we were wrong on that score…”

“
Looks like.” She tapped a fingernail on the smooth surface of
the kitchen counter and finally spied her purse draped over the
back of a chair. “Between you and me, I’m already having fantasies
of taking this Chad guy apart.”

“
I’ll help you,” Lindsey said darkly. “So, we know exactly
nothing about him?”

“
Zip. Nada.” She sighed and looped her purse strap around her
fist, and wished like hell that Lilly’s
“
husband” was standing in front of
her, preferably with his hands tied behind his back.

“
What kind of man elopes like that, with an eighteen-year-old
girl? Oh Lord…she’s pregnant. Oh Kate, tell me she’s not
pregnant.”

“
She says she’s not.”

“
Well…what are we going to do?”

“
She wants me to go to Reno with them.”

“
She does?” Apprehension was clear in Lindsey’s voice. “Well,
that’s good. But what about the house? And your job? I take it
Lilly has dropped out of school.”

Kate’s head began to
pulse, the pain settling into a dull, throbbing ache. “I’m calling
the realtor tomorrow, right after I give my two-week notice at the
hospital,” she said, and for the sake of her own sanity, she
steadfastly refused to think about words like “sister” and
“college” in the same sentence.

“
Okay,” Lindsey said after a moment. “I’ll put in my
two-weeks, too. How many boxes will we need to pack the house, you
think? Ten medium and five or six small?”

“
I can’t let you do that,” Kate said gently, not surprised in
the least at her best friend’s declaration of loyalty. “I’ll be
fine. I just—”