Crosscut (32 page)

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Authors: Meg Gardiner

Tags: #USA

BOOK: Crosscut
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She hadn’t called me that since I was about fourteen. The tightness in my throat worsened and my eyes began to sting.
“Mom, I know it’s a shock, but this baby is an extraordinary gift.”
She looked as though she couldn’t begin to find the words to explain how many things were wrong with what I had just said. I fought the tears away.
“What happened to saying that I should hold on to Jesse?” I asked. “To telling me I should give him your love and that you think we’re building something strong and—”
“Evan, that’s not it at all.”
“It kills me that you aren’t happy.”
She took hold of my arms. “I’m frightened out of my wits for you.”
I blinked against the bright sunlight. “That’s it? Oh, Mom, I’m scared too. Some of my classmates . . .” My voice caught. “They had pregnancies that . . .”
I couldn’t bring myself to say it, not here in a graveyard, not in relation to a life I was creating. Mom’s eyes were full of pain.
“You know about those children, don’t you?” I said.
“I talked to your dad about all of this.”
“All of this?” I stepped back. “God, he knows I’m pregnant? What did he say?”
“Ask him yourself.” She nodded across the scraggly lawn. “There he is.”
Beyond the grave and the assembling crowd, I saw my father striding toward us. I shrank inside.
“You two have been tag-teaming me all week long,” I said. “What are you going to do, tell me not to rush into things? That’s what Dad said yester—”
Yesterday.
I exhaled. No wonder I’d felt as though he were picturing me walking up a church aisle in an immaculate white dress.
Don’t do anything rash
. He didn’t just mean marriage; he meant,
Don’t jump into a shotgun marriage
. Damn him and all his unspoken subtext.
Rounding the mourners, he walked up, touched Mom’s elbow, and pecked her cheek. His face looked as strained as hers: dry, windblown, and tough as cactus.
“Angie. You’re looking great.”
“Philip.”
He spread his arms and waited for me to step into his embrace. I hugged him, feeling nervous and outmaneuvered. At the grave, the priest adjusted the purple stole around his shoulders and beckoned to stragglers.
“Come on,” I said.
I avoided Dad’s eyes. Linking arms, we walked together to the grave.
 
The priest raised his hand to offer a final blessing. In the front row Scotty Colfax sat slumped like a sack of rice. At the edge of the crowd Tommy stood watchfully. I saw other police officers among the crowd, people I recognized from the station. I held on to both my parents, feeling rough.
None of us spoke. We didn’t need to. The tension was a choking vine.
At the final
amen
, people began heading to their cars as fast as decorum allowed, eager to escape the heat. Dad led us toward the parking lot, shading his eyes to peer at the horizon. Hazy with distance and altitude, the Sierras thrust into the sky.
Mom followed his gaze. “Been a while, hasn’t it?”
“Town feels different. Though that may be the circumstances.” He glanced at her, his expression oblique. “But the mountains look the same as the day we arrived.”
We approached his car. Tommy walked over, looking as alert as a cat, and shook Dad’s hand.
Dad brightened. “It’s been a long time. Good to see you, son.”
“Sir.” He lowered his voice. “After the casket’s interred, Scotty’s going to place the flowers and the teddy bear. From that point we’ll have officers surveiling the cemetery twenty-four/seven. Then we see if we draw Coyote to the bait.”
He scanned the crowd, already looking for him. Then, remembering himself, he shot Dad a smile.
“Congratulations. You must be a proud papa.”
“Excuse me?” Dad said.
“Father of the bride. Even if her dude does live to take on the Man.”
He winked at me. Excusing himself, he left to talk to another officer, pulling out a pack of cigarettes as he went.
The wind flicked against my hair. I asked the heavens for courage.
“Dad, Mom told me you know about the baby.”
He gave me his slow gaze and opened his mouth to speak. I stopped him.
“This is unexpected, but it isn’t unwelcome. It’s serendipity, like catching gold dust in my hands.” I swallowed. “If I’ve let you down, I’m sorry.”
His face softened and he clasped me to him. “Kit, you haven’t let me down. I don’t give a rip about all that. Your health and happiness are what matter to me.”
“Please understand. Please.”
God, again with the tears. At this pace I was going to dehydrate. Luckily, in a cemetery nobody considers an outburst of crying out of order. Dad hung on, rocking me back and forth, trying to calm me.
“Ssh.” He put his lips near to my ear, whispering, holding me tight. “It’s all gonna be okay. You’ll get through this.”
I scrubbed a knuckle across my eyes. “Damn straight. And then we’re throwing the biggest, in-your-face wedding bash this side of ancient Rome. Later, when we pull out the albums, we’ll just hope the kid can’t count to nine months.”
His breathing slowed, and the rocking stopped.
“What?” I said.
His arms were tight around me. “If you want a big wedding, that’s . . .”
I looked up at him. “What is it?”
“Nothing. That all sounds wonderful.” Loosening his grip, he began leading me toward his car. “Let’s get you out of this sun.”
I wiped my eyes. He kept his arm around my shoulder.
“Where’s Jesse? I thought he was going to be here,” he said.
“So did I.”
“Didn’t he . . .” He exchanged a glance with Mom. “Didn’t he drive up?”
At his tone, disquiet wormed around me. He gazed straight ahead. Mom was peering strenuously at the Sierras.
I slowed. “What’s going on?”
“He said he was going to join you. Given the circumstances, I would expect him to hold to that.”
The air thickened. I stopped. “I can’t get him to answer his phone. Something’s wrong. What do you know that I don’t?”
They looked at each other.
“Dad?”
I felt as if I’d just been hit in the face with a pie. One made out of hammers and ball bearings.
I have some things to take care of here
.
“You didn’t go and talk to him, did you?”
He didn’t need to answer; his face said it all. Mom’s too.
“Oh, God. What did you say to him?”
Caution came into his eyes. “Just spoke about your future.”
“Just.
Just
about our future?”
And, oh, the look that crossed his face with that possessive
our
. I had misunderstood him. I knew then how awful the talk with Jesse had been.
“Not our future. My future.” I blinked, dizzy. “You don’t see a future that’s ours, do you?”
Mom stepped forward. “Phil. Tell her.”
For a moment he held still, ruminating. “We talked about the pregnancy, yes.”
“Tell me you didn’t shoot him,” I said. “I need to sit down.”
I walked to his rental car, opened the back door, and plopped down.
“What did you say to him?”
“We talked about . . .” He frowned, and it looked to me as though he were questioning his own resolve. “We talked about you having this baby.”
All at once I wasn’t hot anymore. I was ice-cold.
“You did what?”
And a deeper chill seeped through me, biting and vile. “You don’t think I should have the baby?”
My parents stared at me. Pins and needles danced in my fingers.
“You want me to end the pregnancy?”
Dad crouched down to eye level with me. “Honey, I know the idea seems excruciating, but—”
“How dare you?”
Mom leaned into the doorway. “Ev, calm down for a second and listen to reason.”
I shrank from her. “You agree with him?”
I turned away, crab-crawled my way across the backseat, opened the far door, and climbed out. I stared at them over the roof of the car.
“You went to Jesse and told him I should get rid of his child? You wanted him to go along with that? How the hell . . . Jesus Christ, how could you?”
Dad’s face was sad. “He understands how dangerous this pregnancy is.”
“Dangerous?”
“Kit, you saw the video of Dana. You heard her husband. And you know that’s why Coyote killed her and eradicated that clinic.” He continued giving me that sad look. “Jesse understood that. That’s why I asked you where he is. I expected that he’d already talked to you about it.”
That cut me through and through. The ripping sound, the one from my dream, tore through my head.
“Are you telling me he goes along with this?”
Mom looked sad now too. “Sweetheart, don’t think badly of him. It’s an awful thing for him to have to face.”
The noise in my head got louder. I walked away from the car, across the parking lot under the sun, feeling short of breath. This wasn’t happening.
My eyes unfocused until all I saw were the Sierras chaining the horizon. Beneath those mountains Jesse had spoken to me in the moonlight, telling me he would not let my life become a compromise. He had promised. He said he would fight.
For a moment I stood with the wind slapping my hair. I turned back around.
“You’re lying.”
Mom’s face pinched. I walked toward my parents.
“That’s not what happened. Jesse fought you, didn’t he, Dad?”
Dad tried to cover it, but I saw a flicker in his eyes.
“He refused even to consider it. I know he did.”
Mom looked at Dad. Dad looked at me.
“What did you use on him? Lies? Guilt?” That elicited a twitch near his eye. I strode closer. “How did you phrase it to him? Make him think I was having this baby out of pity? Make him feel he was saddling me with not only a child but with . . .”
I had to grit my teeth to keep from spitting or shouting. “You didn’t. Tell me you didn’t take away his pride.”
I clenched both fists and raised my hands and stepped right up in his face. I was so close to hitting him that I didn’t know if I could stop myself.
His voice was steady. “This is life-and-death. I’m not proud, but I couldn’t hold back. Nothing is more important than you. Not even Jesse, no matter how much you care about him.”
“What did you say to him?”
He didn’t reply.
“Tell me.” I stared him in the eyes and refused to look away. “He hasn’t shown up, and it’s because of what you said to him. Tell me what you said.”
Slowly, painfully, the resolve ebbed from his eyes.
“I asked him to dig deep inside for the most honest truth he could find. I asked him how much he loved you.”
“What did he tell you?”
He had one last moment of hesitation, gazing into the distance, as though he were taking not only Jesse’s measure but his own.
“He said he loves you more than his own life.” His eyes met mine. “I told him it was the right answer.”
The chill ran down to my bones. Jesse wouldn’t choose death for me or the baby. He would choose something else. The dream flashed in my mind and I saw him sprinting toward me through the surf, only to be ripped away. In that instant, I had never hated anyone as I hated Phil Delaney.
Dimly I heard my name being called. Tommy was striding toward us, phone pressed to his ear. Captain McCracken was with him. His face was flushed.
“There’s a break. LAPD was able to lift a print from your boyfriend’s shirt. They got a hit on it,” Tommy said.
“Oh.”
“We have a lead. Come on; we need you over at the station.”
 
The house and yard were noisy. Chimes, clanging, and metallic ringing surrounded him. It was the tinning of the windmills and mobiles and rickety sculptures in the backyard, some kind of art garden.
Through the kitchen window Coyote saw the woman scurrying around. She was stuffing clothing and vitamin supplements into a duffel bag. Then prescription bottles and about five ounces of what looked like Colombian weed. She didn’t look like a woman preparing to go back to work after a funeral. She looked like a woman getting ready to bug out of town.
He tapped on the window. It sounded like a tumbleweed scritching at the glass. She turned around. Jumped.
He waved.
Hand pressed to her chest, she crossed the kitchen and unlocked the door. “Christ, you startled me. What are you doing at the back door?”
“Admiring your sculpture garden. What do you call that, junk art?”
Antonia Shepard-Cantwell waved him in. “Bricolage. It’s art made from objects at hand. Robin, you should know that term.”
Hanging garbage was the term that came to his mind. The tinsel in the scrawny trees mimicked the garish earrings tangled in her long hair. Fortunately, the neighbors wouldn’t mind the trash menagerie. There were no neighbors. The house was ten miles outside of town.
She returned to the duffel bag, jamming in tie-dyed skirts and a pair of Birkenstocks and a sketch pad.
“Where are you going?” he said.
“Taking a little vacation. I have plenty of sick leave stored up with the school district. This is all getting too close for comfort.”
“Why?”
She packed. She couldn’t look him in the face. She felt uncomfortable with his bitch-princess smile and queer androgynous voice. She always had. From the beginning he had presented her with a surface that discomfited her. Not only did she never look beneath it; she never looked directly
at
it. She never saw him at all.
She saw only the money.
“People are beginning to figure out that your friends in the government have been keeping tabs on the exposees. It’s a bit hot for me right now.”
“Who, Toni?” he said.
“Tommy Chang and Evan Delaney went by my husband’s office. They were after information from him. They’re onto the connection with the explosion. Chang went bonkers and grabbed Tully.” She kept packing. “I know you were planning on the usual amount. But for this information I think I deserve more.”

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