T's Trial: A Bone Cold--Alive Novel (20 page)

“Okay.” His appetite had improved with her arrival. Now he laid his fork aside and crossed his arms in front of himself on the table.

Bertie looked off through the window toward the lake. “I used to spend a lot of time up here. Beautiful place. Of course, if you knew Lyla’s grandfather, it’s just hard to imagine how such a man ever built this. Not much beauty and grace there. I guess it was hidden, being saved for Lyla.” She turned back to them. “I used to baby-sit Hannah. You know about Hannah?”

Fletcher's ‘no’ contrasted sharply with T's ‘yes’. Then they quickly stared at each other and changed their answers.

Bertie puckered her mouth. “Well, which is it?”

T remained silent. Fletch started. “We know she had a daughter, we just don’t know much about her, that’s all.”

“Boys, don’t lie to old Bertie. Where all’ve you been?”

“Lost Oaks.” T found firmness in his voice as he ignored Fletch’s warning look. Fletch hadn’t been with Bertie and T down at the Quik-Lee Wednesday and earlier today. Fletch didn’t know what all had passed between the two of them. He didn’t know that T had dug up a streak of honesty. “And her room.”

“So you got it all figured out.” Her attention was on T now.

“More confused than ever.”

“Then let me help.”

“What’s in this for you?” She raised her eyebrows in a silent question. “I mean, we’re strangers here, Bertie. Why trust us? Why tell us anything?”

“Cause you’re what I’ve been praying for, for Lyla. I’ve watched her suffer all her life. I’ve seen happiness literally ripped from her hands and nothing much there to replace it. Tib’s a good man, but Tib’s not the answer. If he was, they’d’ve settled that long ago.” She rose and they followed suit.

*  *  *

Guilty schoolchildren. Yes, that would about describe how he felt, Fletch thought as he sat side-by-side with T on the edge of Lyla’s canopied four-poster bed. Fletch’s shorter legs barely touched the floor from the high bed. Bertie stood about five feet in front of them. She surveyed the windowless wall they all faced. It was a framed gallery of photos and certificates. Beneath it ran a short two-shelf bookcase loaded with albums, books, and trophies. The night before, Fletcher and T had sat on the floor in front of it and carefully removed and perused most of them. They had paced in front of the twenty-foot wall and noted every nuance of smile or frown visible in the photos, read every word of the documents. They had pieced together a reasonable facsimile of Lyla’s life. However, nothing beat the real thing and Bertie, it seemed, was prepared to teach.

“Where do you want me to start?”

“The beginning. Assume we know nothing.”

Bertie turned to T. It was obvious to Fletch that what was coming was for his benefit and that he, Fletch, was merely along as a concession to politeness and convenience. Bertie moved closer to the wall and began with a collage of schoolgirl photos from Lyla’s childhood. “As you can see, Lyla was a pretty little thing, really outgrowing all that blonde cutesiness I guess before she was twelve. She settled into average.” She sneaked a look back at T to see his reaction, but he just smiled at her. She tapped the collage and the one next to it. “She and Wes. Together from third grade on. Tib never really had a chance, but I don’t think he gave up on it for years.” They progressed to State Tournament ribbons and medals. “Lord, she could play. Took first in state two years running. I don’t know who was prouder, her grandfather or Dub and Red. Her mother had died by this time and that left just Lyla and the old man. Now there was one for the books.”

She craned her head to see a set of photos higher than she was. First Lyla as a child, then a girl and young woman, her arm linked each time with a progressively older man, his stance turned more toward the prize fish or deer he’d killed. There were about ten snapshots in the series, the last two with Wes and a baby. “Lord, if there was ever a scoundrel it was Jacob. Wasn’t worth the bullet it would have taken to shoot him. Far as I know, he never held a real paying job. Married just the sweetest girl alive and then proceeded to work her to death. Ran Lyla’s father off. Made her mother feel worthless. And still everybody loved him.” She crossed her arms and glared at the photos. “But he was sure proud of her. Just goes to show you never can tell. Well, enough about him. Where were we?”

“State piano contests.” Fletcher spoke before he remembered he was the interloper here. He was fascinated. His and T’s viewing was like seeing the previews of coming attractions at the cinema. This was the real show.

“Oh, yes. Well, there wasn’t a contest, really, least not as far as we were concerned. Lyla was just head and shoulders above all the rest. Not that she was a prodigy, mind you.” She looked over her shoulder at T. “You were a prodigy, weren’t you?”

“Why do you think that?”

“Just answer.”

“Yes.”

“And what have you done with it?”

“Made a hell of a lot of money.”

“And did it make you happy?”

“I thought it did. But now I know it was all a sham.”

Fletch’s guard went up. There was more between these two than he knew.

Bertie humphed and turned again to the wall. “So the question becomes: what does a very musically talented young woman do? Well Jacob, he was inclined for her to stay home and keep house for him. I’m proud to say that there was a movement afoot to rescue Lyla and we did.” She was surveying the acceptance letters to five colleges. “I led the charge. I sat that old goat down and told him how it was going to be.” She paused. “We compromised, of course. Lyla went to the closest university that wanted her and agreed to come home most weekends. Well, that straightened itself out as time went on and she had more to do there than could be done during five days. Jacob adjusted right well. I’d say he took to drinking more except I don’t think you’d have been able to tell.”

“Where was Wes all this time?”

“He and Tib were off at Texas A&M, getting their degrees in wildlife management or some such. They were interested in saving the same critters Jacob, Dub and Norm were so all-fired intent on putting on their walls.”

“I thought Wes was a professional guide.” Fletch couldn’t help himself. He still smarted from the knowledge that Bertie probably knew who T really was.

“He was.”

“But a degree in management?”

She turned to him with her hands on her hips, a thoroughly disgusted squint to her eyes. As if to a child, she started explaining. “You’ve got to know how to keep the populations up and healthy if you want to keep on hunting. I don’t think Wes really thought he could make a living for a family as a guide, so he worked at it from a different angle. Of course, come to find out, his touch just got better the more experienced he got and pretty soon he quit thinking about the management business and worked the other side, so to speak.”

“So he had wanted to do what Tib does?”

“That was before Tib came back.”

“Where was Tib?”

“If you boys would just quit getting ahead of me, I’d explain it all in due time.” They nodded contritely. “That’s better. Let’s see. Lyla’s got a degree in music. Wes and Tib are going to save the animals and everyone figures it’s about time Wes and Lyla tied the knot. Just knew they would that summer after college. Even old Jacob seemed happy about the prospect. Either that or he figured she’d be around more and he could fall back in to her taking care of him. Anyway, it just didn’t work like that at all.” Having got halfway down the wall, she tapped a framed letter of acceptance to Berklee Music College in Boston. “Lyla’s professors wanted her to study some more and encouraged her to apply to all those foreign places not in Texas. And she gets accepted to this one and comes home and announces she’s leaving in August for those ghettos up North.”

Fletch laughed at her turn of phrase. T punched him in the ribs and the commotion on the bed caused Bertie to turn to them.

“Now I know you’re all sophisticated and everything, Mr. Fletcher, but you got to understand Lyla’s family never took her any place. Their world ended at this river. Why, my sister and I offered to take her to London with us on our second trip, even pay for her. She was twelve already, but they wouldn’t even consider it. So she might have been to college, but it was only an hour or so from here, and she knew all about Dallas and probably Fort Worth and the artsy-fartsy life there, but to country folk, Boston is just about the end of the world. Not as bad as New York, of course.”

Fletcher was taken aback. Bertie in London? That would have been a trip. He recovered sufficiently to comment. “A ghetto? Berklee’s in the middle of the most cosmopolitan—”

“You can argue all day, but I’m telling you how this was eleven—twelve years ago.” She turned back to the wall. “Mr. University-educated Wes wasn’t much better than old Jacob. If she left, what about marriage? What about him? Well, she said, he could just wait. Or he could find someone else.” She paused. “So they broke up. All those years—then—poof!” She shook her head. “What a disaster of a summer. I swear it was like a tomb. Wes came home and worked for his daddy waiting for something to open up with the game department and Tib went off to fight forest fires in California or Colorado. Lyla moped around here and Wes moped around the whole lake. He dated someone from in town and then she did. I tell you, it was a blessing Tib was already gone or he’d have stepped in and told her he’d wait and that would have been all there was for Mr. Wes Lee.” She studied a panoramic shot of a blazing mountain. “Come July, Tib calls home and says they need more fighters and Wes gets the itch and decides he’s going. First of all, of course, he calls and tells Lyla so she can worry all proper about him.”

“So Wes wasn’t a saint?” From T.

“Make no mistake, Sam, Wes Lee was a good boy, a fine man. Even though we tend to forget the bad the dead have done, he was good through and through. Kind, sweet-tempered, got along well with everybody no matter what their age. The sort of son every mother wants.” She nodded. “But he was stubborn. Had to be to survive with Dub I suppose. And there was a bit of a temper.” She looked back down the wall to the school pictures. “That red hair didn’t skip a generation from Red to Harrison. It traveled straight through. Still he probably thought a bit before he called and told Lyla he was leaving. And she probably thought a bit before she agreed to meet him. And neither one of them thought any at all before that night was over.”

She advanced farther to the right. “He goes to fight fires, she starts packing for Boston. He gets home a week after she leaves. Two months after she gets up there, she flies back home. The official line is that she just didn’t like being so far from home. So they get married the first part of October.” She shook her head again. “If there’s something you’re trained to do from the beginning in the country, it’s count between the marriage and the birth of the first child.” She leaned forward to a formal studio portrait of Lyla and her firstborn. It was all soft edges and fuzzy light. “That baby was born the first of April. Weighed seven and one half pounds. Hell of a size for a seven-monther.”

Fletch nodded. He and T had come to the same conclusion Thursday night. Now they sat silently.

“Well, of course when they get married, Dub and Red give them the Quik-Lee for a wedding present. Probably figured it was cheaper than feeding them if he never got on at the wildlife department. Tib’s back by now, gets the first job. That’s okay with everyone, far as I can tell. Wes starts guiding during the summer season. Pretty soon, he’s doing less at the store and more in the boat. Just kind of lapses into it full time. Lyla’d been teaching music on the side for some extra money, but she quit as the store responsibilities got to be too much. And then old Jacob goes and has a heart attack on the water and they move in here.

“She gets pregnant with Harrison two years after Hannah.” There were myriad family snapshots now, the crème de la crème of the albums housed below. “Just the perfect little family.” Bertie leaned down and ran her fingers over the albums, obviously hunting for one in particular.

“It’s the navy one,” T offered. He knew what she wanted. Its pages had stayed with him for a long while the night before, the memory of the yellowed newspaper articles still strong in his mind’s eye.

“So it is.” She hefted it out. “You saw all this?” She carried it to the bed and laid it between them. Carefully, she turned back the front cover.

T felt his stomach invert again. Why had Lyla kept this heartache? As torture? What purpose did this constant reminder serve? Here it was, only a hand’s reach away, the five-year-old yellowed newspaper articles encased in photo album plastic, their stories interspersed with 35mm pictures. It was the fickle destruction only a tornado can do. There was even a national weekly magazine’s color spread. Close to a billion dollars in damage scattered over four marinas, hundreds of large yachts upended, telephone poles tossed about like toothpicks. Miraculously, it said, there had only been two deaths, a father and his young daughter, caught out in a small bass boat by a fluke weather pattern that blew in before the weathermen could predict it. An inhospitable happening in the middle of an otherwise perfect spring day. Next article, please, next disaster.

“Why does she keep this?” T’s eyes implored Bertie’s for some reasonable explanation.

“I don’t think she looks at it like she used to, if that’s what you’re thinking. She doesn’t dwell on it.” Bertie’s hand had a slight quiver to it as she turned the pages and studied the shots of the wreckage. “That was an awful day. It was a Monday or no telling how many people might have been out on the lake and been killed. Just two. But why those?” Her voice was almost a whisper now. “Dub’s marina was the worst hit, but still he tried to be all big and brave for Lyla and Red, ’cept by the time the ‘amen’ was said, he was blubbering like the rest of us. I think it was the saddest funeral. You know, when you get to be my age, most funerals are just logical extensions of life. Not this. No.” She abruptly closed the album and carried it back to its place on the shelf. “Lyla withdrew from us for a while. That was understandable. She quit playing for a while, gradually went back to it. But not like she had before.”