Hidden Things (29 page)

A half-familiar car was waiting in front of the house when they pulled back into the yard, engine running and plumes of heated exhaust fogging the freezing air around its taillights. Her mother clicked her tongue—a mark of disapproval that Calliope thought she might not even know she did. “You should just go in the house and get your things together,” she said. “I know it's later than you were hoping.”

Calliope gave a halfhearted laugh. “I'm so far beyond the expected time frame, Mom, it hardly matters.” She rubbed at her neck. “And I think I should talk to her, anyway.”

Her mother's short, sharp laugh had more force behind it than Calliope's, but less amusement. “I'm afraid I'll have to pull you two out of a snowbank.”

“I'm not going to get in a fight, Mom.” Calliope let her exhaustion seep into her voice. “I'm not twelve.”

“No . . .” Phyllis brought the pickup to a stop behind and to the left of the car, shut it off, and swung her door open. “But it's not just you I'm worried about. Don't let her grab your shoulder.”

“Sure.”

The older woman shut her door and headed toward the front of the house. As she did, the driver's-side door of the car opened and Calliope's sister got out. She leaned forward over the door, mittened hands gripping the top, and said something to her mother—a question—that Calliope couldn't make out. Phyllis didn't turn her head or even look at Sandy, but Calliope heard her give a reply. The words were short and didn't take so long to say that her mother had to slow down or stop on her way to the front door. Sandy's eyes widened at whatever was said—mostly in surprise, it seemed to Calliope. She straightened up, her hands still resting on the top of the car door, and watched their mother stump up the stairs of the house and go inside. Only after the door closed—without a single backward glance from Phyllis—did Sandy turn her attention back to Calliope.

Their eyes met through the slowly frosting front window of the truck and the swirling fog of car exhaust, and Calliope got out of the pickup.

Cold air bit at her face. The snow didn't crunch under her feet as she walked toward her sister; the temperature had dropped to the point where it almost seemed to squeak when stepped on, like Styrofoam. She stuffed her left hand into the pocket of her coat as she went, and let the right hang.

“Hi, Sandy.” Calliope supposed she had the right to indignation and anger and a sense of betrayal, but even the thought of mustering that kind of emotion wearied her.

“I guess you took care of the sheriff.” Sandy's voice was hard and clipped, driven into a higher register by anger and other emotions that Calliope didn't particularly want to think about. Her job with Josh had given her years of experience dealing with people in bad situations who'd been driven to the edge of what they could handle. Her sister's voice—her whole demeanor—was uncomfortably similar. On the one hand, it gave Calliope an idea of what to expect and how to deal with it, but on the other it made the whole thing seem like someone else's problem—not her life, at all.

“There was nothing to take care of,” Calliope said. “We visited for a while in his office. Then he called the friendly detectives back home and everything got straightened out.”

“Back home.” The corner of Sandy's mouth twitched downward. Her face was pale and pinched, her eyes hard, bright and wet. Calliope thought that on some other day, in some other situation, she might have gone to her, offered her a hug and a few whispered words—something to ease her obvious pain. Maybe. Maybe not; she and Sandy hadn't been close for a very long time—Calliope was only now starting to realize just how long it had been bad between them. Regardless, the maybes didn't matter; it was cold and the sun was going down and she'd spent a lot of time in the sheriff's office. “You mean out in the city.”

Calliope gave her a short nod, unwilling to let what she was feeling show on her face. “That's my home, yes. I pay a mortgage and everything.” She blew air through her teeth and watched the fog spin away from her face, mixed with the exhaust fumes. “I have a job, I have friends, and I know police detectives that tell Jim Fletcher that I'm a great help and a pleasure to work with.”

“Nice trick.” Sandy's voice shook. “Nice deal you must have made.”

Calliope clenched her jaw, then let her instinctive anger go. After the sheriff's office, she simply didn't have the energy for another shouting match. “It's not a trick, Sandy.” She pushed her hair out of her face with her right hand, wincing only slightly. “It's a life. I didn't have to call in a favor, and I didn't have to pay anyone off. I just let a friend speak for me.” It was strange to refer to Darryl Johnson that way, but it felt right.

“Lucky you.” Sandy made a face. “I'm sure you've got a whole city full of friends who think you're just perfect.” Her voice was bitter and accusatory. “Living your perfect life with your perfect friends, doing . . . whatever you want.”

Confusion furrowed Calliope's brow. “No. I don't. At all.”

The laugh Sandy barked out was no kind of laugh at all. She waved her arms to either side. “Well, you never come back here, so it must be pretty.
Fucking.
Perfect!” The word sounded so unfamiliar in her sister's mouth that Calliope almost laughed, but the truth of the emotion behind the words kept her sober. It was hate she heard in her sister's voice, but also pain, and something worse.

“I'm not living some kind of dream,” she said, keeping her voice quiet and even. “I'm sorry you think that, but I'm not.” She shoved her hands deeper into her pockets. “I'm just living.”

“You're playing detective.” Sandy sneered. “And before that, you were in a band, which you made me promise never to tell Mom and Dad, 'cause god knows what they would think.”

“I know; you were really good about controlling what information they got,” Calliope replied. “I figured out which letter you finally showed them.” She looked up at Sandy. “Once I was ‘well out of the state'? A month of getting to the mailbox before Mom, without her noticing? Must have been exhausting.” In her mind's eye, she could see her younger self, hunched over a cheap desk in a cheaper motel in a cruddy little town, writing letter after letter, crying less and less, slowly giving up on her family. Even that only made her sad; the anger was drained out of her. Chances lost. Time wasted. Regrets.

For a moment, Sandy's eyes went wide in shock and shame, then they hardened and went wider still. “Great!” She flung her arms over her head like a cheering sports fan. “Chalk up one more point for Calli California,
Super
Detective. Meanwhile the rest of us are here, at
home,
stuck in old houses, doing the same things we've
always
done, with the same people we've
always
done them with, where nothing ever changes and no one
ever
gets what they want.”

“You make it sound like it's my fault that you didn't get to have some other life,” Calliope said.

“I got married.” Sandy gestured at herself, her chin jutting out. “I had three kids. I didn't get to go running off all over, or move somewhere else, or even
do
something else.”

Calliope made a face. “You're absolutely right, Sandy.
You
got married, and
you
had kids. That's your life; you did that instead of something else. If you didn't get to do some other thing you wanted to do, it's because that's what you chose, and it doesn't have anything to do with me.” She gestured at her sister. “It wasn't the only option you had.”

“I couldn't—”

“You wouldn't,” Calliope continued. “I'm sorry if you want to blame me for everything in your life that you didn't get to do, but . . . fuck off.” She waved her hand through the fogging air, shoving her sister's sorry protests away like the trash they were, and almost didn't notice the twinge of pain. “Your fantasy about my life works great for you, but it's a little too Lucy Gayheart for me, so no.”

“Of
course
it's not your fault,” Sandy shouted. “How could it ever be—”

“You grew up,” Calliope said. Her voice was calm, but it cut through Sandy's and left wintry silence behind.

“Of course I did! It happens.” The angry light in Sandy's eyes dimmed. Her gaze dropped to the snow at their feet. “It just happens.”

“Sure, but that doesn't mean—” Calliope looked up at the cloudless, sunset-glowing sky. “It doesn't mean giving everything up.” She dropped her head, trying to see her sister's face. “It still doesn't, even now.”

“Don't—don't
lecture
me.” Sandy's eyes—stony chips of flint, like their father's—came back up to Calliope's. “You always have to try to
fix
everything, even when it's none of your business.” Again, she gestured at herself. “I'm stuck here. We're
all
stuck here. I can't leave.”

You won't,
Calliope thought.
You're afraid. You hate everything that—
Then: “Oh.”

Calliope's expression made her sister pause. “What?”

He is standing at the very top of the blocky jungle gym. It's his favorite place to stand because he can see so much of the playground and everyone can see him. He's standing at the very top.

It's his favorite thing to do. It makes him feel safe. It makes him feel important. He can see Joshua climbing up to him, shouting something. He tries to ignore it, but Josh keeps climbing, keeps getting closer, and finally he can hear him shouting to stop, to let someone else on top.

He gets mad. He doesn't want to stop. It's the only thing he has.

He reaches out with his foot and shoves, and Josh falls away.

Too far.

Humpty Dumpty.

Calliope pulled her gaze, gone nowhere in particular in the November sky, back to Sandy. “I . . .” She shook her head. “Just something about the . . . case I'm working on.”

“Wonderful. I've got to go.” Sandy turned, yanked open the car door, and got inside.

“Sandy—”

“I have kids to feed,” her sister snapped. “I have responsibilities, and it's
way
too late to change any of that.”

“Then I guess you'll always be mad about it,” Calliope replied. Her only answer was a slamming car door. The car pulled past her, sucking its exhaust along with it, and left her alone in the dusk-cold in front of her parents' house. She didn't watch her sister leave; as much as she knew that nothing there was fixed—maybe never would be—she couldn't spare time on Sandy right then, couldn't shake the feeling she was looking at a puzzle to which she might have finally found all the pieces.

Still thinking, she walked up the steps and into the house to say good-bye.

“Now . . .” Her mother walked briskly into the kitchen from the laundry room near the back of the house, carrying Calliope's cleaned sweater and pretending she hadn't been watching her daughters through a window. “I don't want to get you worked up again, but are you
sure
you don't want to stay here?” She raised her hand to forestall Calliope's protest. “If your friend is out there, he'll still be there tomorrow, won't he?”

“He's still in
trouble,
Mom,” Calliope explained. “He still needs help, even if he's not dead.” Her hesitation before that final word was almost undetectable, even to her. “And no one else is going to help.”

“Why—” Phyllis shook her head, sniffing once and blinking her suspiciously wet-bright eyes. “Too many questions.” She held out the folded sweater to Calliope, who pressed it gently back toward her.

“Keep it. I'll come back and get it and try to explain everything.” Calliope stepped in close and gave her a one-armed hug. “I'm sorry,” she murmured.

“I'm sorry,” her mother choked out. Calliope realized she was crying. She pulled back. “Mom—”

“You were sixteen,” Phyllis blurted out, her face a sudden mask of raw emotion. She raised a trembling hand to cover her mouth.

“I was impossible,” Calliope said.

“We were
both
impossible,” Phyllis replied, blinking her eyes and turning back to her laundry. “But you're supposed to be, at that age.” She sniffed, rubbing tears from her cheek with the heel of her hand. “And I should have been better.”

Calliope forced a smile, tears on her cheeks. “Can we agree to let it go for now? Call it a tie.” She gave her mother another hug.

Phyllis squeezed back, hard. “I don't think either one of us has ever been very good at settling for a tie,” she whispered. “But okay.” She stepped back, sniffed once more. “Okay.” She glanced at the kitchen window and the violet-to-blue horizon. “Better get going. It's almost dark. Keep that shoulder clean and for godsakes wear a helmet with your friend's motorcycle. Better yet, rent a truck.”