Where the Broken Lie (20 page)

“Son!” I shout.

He stops, turns around and faces me.

“Tucker?”

Running toward him now, I say, “What the hell are you doing, Son? Put her down.”

“She’s not breathing, Tucker! She’s not breathing!”

“Put her down,” I command. “What did you to her, Son? What the hell did you do?”

“Do to her? Tucker … this is my daughter.”

Son Settles a father? It didn’t seem possible. And until this moment, I wasn’t even a hundred percent convinced Swinging Girl was even a real person.

“Your daughter?”

“Yes! I came to take her home and when I honked, her hands slipped from the chains and she fell off the swing. The fall must have knocked her out, but why is her face turning blue?”

Gum
.

“Here, give her here.”

Sitting on the ground, I hold her back against my chest, slide my arms under her armpits, and locked my fingers in front of her chest. On the third attempt, a wad of gum comes shooting out of her mouth. She coughs and gasps for air the way I do after my choking dream. It makes me thirsty for air myself and I inhale as much of it as I can.

“Oh, thank God. Thank God,” Son repeats, and he is crying.

Son Settles’ daughter started breathing again, and he is crying.

I stare at him, count the tear drops on his cheeks as if they are tiny measures of his love.

Swinging Girl leans back against my chest. I inhale deeply again, trying to breathe enough for the both of us.

Just keep breathing, little girl. Keep breathing forever.

“Come here, baby girl,” Son says, and Swinging Girl crawls into the arms of her father.

Looking at me over his daughter’s shoulder, Son says, “Thank you, Tucker. Thank you.”

I stand up and walk over to where that Dodgers cap is lying on the ground. I pick it up, dust it off, and hand it to him.

“You’re welcome, Son.”

That night, I ask Tammy to go up to the tavern with me and she surprises me with a yes. We tuck Tory into bed and leave her in the care of her great grandfather, then walk up town to Mustang’s.

Son is back behind the bar and there are a few more patrons than I had come to expect. I seat Tammy at a table by the window and go to the bar to get drinks.

“Hey, Son. Give me a draught and a Malibu and pineapple.”

I must have said it quietly because Son cups a hand over his mouth and loudly whispers back at me, “It’s okay. It’ll be our little secret.”

Laughing, I say, “No, the Malibu is for my wife.” I motion to the table by the window.

Son takes a peek over at Tammy who waves.

“Well, I’ll be darned. Say, where’s the dog?”

“What do you mean? What dog?”

“You know, the dog that helps her cross the street and stuff.”

“Yeah, yeah. Just get the drinks, huh?”

“Bring’em right over,” he says, still laughing at himself.

As I walk away, he calls out to me. “Hey, Tuck—”

“You’re welcome, Son.”

Son brings the drinks to our table and makes like he is doing it for his old buddy and not just to get a better look at Tammy. He puts the Malibu and pineapple in front of me and acts surprised when I slide it across to Tammy. Quite the charmer, that Son.

“First round’s on the house,” he says when I hold out the cash for the drinks.

I introduce the two of them and make small talk long enough that I suspect it might get the second round on the house, too.

When he leaves, I tell Tammy some of my Son Settles’ stories.

“So I guess you’re not enemies anymore, huh?”

“Ah, it sounds worse than it was.”

And that was the truth. We’d had our run-ins, sure, but hell, we managed to co-exist in the same small town for ten-plus years. Ninety-nine percent of the time, we were just two guys without much in common who got along fine.

Tammy stares down at the table and smiles.

“What? What’s so funny?”

Looking up she says, “Not funny. Nice. This has been nice.”

I survey the tavern and its patrons. Dark and smoky, dirty and outdated.

“Yeah, nothing but the best for my baby,” I say.

“You know what I mean, it’s nice being together like this. It’s been nice being here with you.”

I reach over and grab her hand.

“Tam, it’s nice being anywhere with you.”

“Well, I’m glad that you talked me into coming to stay here. It’s been good for Tory, too. She was really missing you. She needs her daddy.”

“Her daddy needs her. I’m glad you guys came. I didn’t really think you would.”

“Tell the truth,” she says. “Part of you didn’t want us to, did you?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe that part of me that likes to get drunk and feel sorry for himself.”

“It’s okay. I’ve got a part of me that likes to pull the blankets over my head and cry in bed all day.”

“Yeah, but you don’t, do you? Hell, you couldn’t. Not with me around. You had to take care of Tory.”

Tammy and I both know I’m selfish. She left it unsaid.

“Has it helped? Being here, I mean,” she says.

It’s a good question. Saying yes justifies coming here, but is it true? I was still drinking. I didn’t miss Ethan any less. Yet the memories of the town. Of my childhood. There were moments in the day where my mind went places without Ethan. The memories of Katie Cooper and Slim Jim gave me something different to be sad about, which I welcomed. Seeing old friends and swapping stories. Seeing familiar places and retracing childhood footsteps.

“Yeah, it’s helped some. I’m no less sad, but maybe a little happier—you know?”

As we sit there and get drunk together, I tell Tammy everything that has happened in the days since I returned to Willow Grove.

I had told her years ago the story of Katie Cooper and Slim Jim, but I had told it with the detached objectivity of a court report. A detective assigned to the case—
just the facts, ma’am
. But this night, I told the story in a voice that cracked and creaked like Grandpa and Grandma’s front screen door. I told her all the me-and-Katie stories I could remember—our secret spot, the pennies on the tracks, the flowers I had given her—all of it. I had cared deeply for that little girl. Tammy sits quietly and just listens. I can see that she is learning to love Katie herself—through me.

“And here I thought I was the only girl you had written poetry for.”

“Well, I’m not sure that what I’ve written for either you or Katie could really be classified as poetry. Just a bunch of sappy words I made rhyme.”

She gave me a look.

“I mean, it wasn’t
just
sappy,” I scramble. “My love for you moved me to write you those poems. I’m just saying that nobody is going to confuse me with Shakespeare.”

“Right. And your love for Katie moved you to write her that poem, too.”

“I suppose. But I was just a kid. You can’t call it love.”

“Yes, you can. I can.”

I reach across the table and grab her hand. “I’m sorry. That bothers you, doesn’t it?”

She squeezes back.

“Maybe a little. Mostly I just think it’s sweet. You’ve always been sweet.”

I smile.

“And Katie sounds like a very special little girl,” she adds. “I can’t even imagine what losing her must have felt like to you at that age.”

I start to respond, then something inside stops me. I was going to tell her how sad it had made me—sad for Katie, sad for her parents, sad for myself, but I realized that it was even more than that. Maybe for the first time, I was understanding the impact that Katie’s death had on me. My eyes search the table between me and Tammy, seeking and finding more emptiness there.

“When Katie Cooper moved to town … I don’t know if what I felt was love or not. But if it wasn’t, then it was a sneak preview into what love is. And maybe just knowing that life offers something like love is even more powerful than the love itself. Katie brought some kind of beautiful awareness to me when she came into my life. And when she left … 
how
she left … well, I had another kind of awareness.”

I looked up at her.

“Tam, the world as I knew it … it died. You know?”

She nods, an offering of tears rolls down her cheeks.

“That’s how it is with Ethan, isn’t it? Nobody ever met him or even saw him. All he ever was to this world was a possibility. But he was our son, Tucker, and we know he was real. Right, Tucker? He
is
real?”

I hand her a cocktail napkin and she dabs at her tears.

“Yeah, Tam, he’s real.”

“People know what it’s like to love a child and they can imagine the possibility of losing one. But they don’t really feel it. They can’t, because feelings aren’t feelings until you feel them.”

When Tammy returns from freshening up in the ladies room, I tell her more details about my exchange of letters with Mr. Innocent and my plan to go to the cemetery that next morning and stake him out, which concerns her.

“I don’t know. Are you sure that’s wise?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, let’s say you do catch this guy and let’s say it turns out he did kill Katie. You really want to be alone at the cemetery with a murderer?”

“Oh, that doesn’t seem likely, does it? Anyway, he’d probably deny everything. I mean, you think he’s going to confess to murder because I catch him picking an envelope up off the ground at the cemetery?”

“I don’t know, Tucker. It just doesn’t seem too safe.”

“Tell you what, I’ll bring my cell phone and I’ll tell him that I called Sheriff Buck when I saw him pick up the letter. Okay?”

“How ‘bout you actually do call Sheriff Buck.”

“Fine.”

We clink our glasses together.

Then from behind me comes a familiar lisping taunt.

“Hey there, Thathafrath.”

Edie Dales stands at the front door, a big gummy smile on his face.

“I thure hope you’re in a better mood tonight.”

I don’t respond. Turn back around to face my wife.

“I take it that’s the guy you were telling me about? The one you got in a fight with the other night?”

“Well, yeah, that’s the guy. But it’s a bit generous to refer to what happened between us a fight.”

“Let’s get out of here, Tucker.”

Tammy grabs her purse and puts it over her shoulder.

“I’m going to finish my drink,” I say.

“Thay, no hard feelings about the other night. Things jutht got a little outta control, right? Bethides, you threw the firtht punch.”

Still not facing him, I take another sip of my drink. Say nothing.

He raises his voice and repeats, “Hey! I thaid no hard feelingth. I’m offering my hand.”

I don’t respond, and I can hear Edie move across the floor toward me.

“Maybe you’re not hearing tho good tonight, Thathafrath,” Edie says, slamming a hand down on my shoulder.

But before he can spin me around to face him, another hand grabs hold of Edie’s wrist.

It’s Son Settles.

“Let go of him, Andrew. Let it go.”

I look over my shoulder at Son. His eyes are tender—not only for me, but for Edie, too. Edie looks at those same eyes and sees weakness. He gives a wheezy, breathy laugh, the fetid stench from his rotten mouth filling the air.

“Go to hell, Thon.”

He takes a wild swing at Son with his free hand, but Son blocks the blow and strikes Edie squarely in the nose with a right jab that drops Edie to the floor. Out cold.

Son looks over at me and gives a cowboy tip of his Dodger cap. I finish my drink and headed to the door with Tammy, stepping over Edie on our way.