No Way Home (23 page)

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said, as if she were somehow responsible for the conflict she had stumbled into. She hurried to her desk, her eyes lowered. Pink tried to catch her eye, ready to offer some jocular explanation, but Reba’s face was grim and she kept her eyes downcast as her hands fluttered over the papers on her desk. “I’ll be out of here in a minute,” she said rapidly. “I just need the spec sheet for that house on Larkspur and the keys. Where are those keys?” The phone rang and Reba grabbed it up gratefully. “Burdette and Associates,” she trilled with a false cheeriness. “One moment please. Who shall I say is calling?” She nodded and turned to Pink, the phone outstretched to him.

“This is young Tyler Ansley for you. The sheriff’s boy.”

Pink looked automatically at Lillie but turned immediately from the bitter accusation in her eyes. “I’ll take it,” he said. He stood holding the phone, his hand over the mouthpiece, as Reba quickly gathered her things.

She sidled out past Lillie, giving her a brief, embarrassed smile. “I’ll close the door,” she said.

“Thanks, Reba,” Pink said as she pulled the door to behind her. He turned his back on his wife and spoke into the phone.

“Hello, Tyler,” he said. “That’s right. I did.”

Lillie considered pulling the phone out of the wall. But what was the point? Pink would find another phone. The throbbing bruise on her face attested to his determination.

“Yes,” he was saying. “There’s a man who’s been nosing around here. My wife’s ex-husband, as a matter of fact, and he’s got the notion that it was you. Now he’s coming out there to try and make you talk, and you better watch your butt because he’s out to get you.”

Pink listened for a moment, an irritated expression on his face. “What I’m telling you is to keep your mouth shut. In fact, you’d be a whole lot better off if you didn’t let him get ahold of you at all, because if you let something slip there is no telling what he’s going to do. He’s out for blood.”

Pink listened briefly and then interrupted loudly. “No, no, listen here, boy. I’m telling you this for your own good. This guy is after you. What? Jordan Hill. He just left, so he could be there in five or six hours. I don’t know. You figure it out. Tell the truth, I wouldn’t care if he did beat your ass, but we agreed to keep this thing quiet and, by God, you better see that you do. All right.”

Pink slammed down the phone. He turned to face Lillie, his eyes defiant, in time to see the door shut behind her. She was gone. Pink’s shoulders sagged, and he felt a weight, like a cannonball, on his chest. He wanted to cry, but instead he reached for the phone and dialed again. It was too late for tears. Grayson and Royce would both have to know. Grayson first. That was the call he dreaded the most. He had promised to protect his son and he had botched the job. In the state Lillie was in, there was no telling what she might do. They had to try to make her see reason before it was too late.

SHE DESCENDED THE STAIRS,
almost running, but when she reached the sidewalk the cold air hit her like a slap, and she felt dizzy and dazed. Her heart was pounding out of control and she could not remember where she had parked. Passersby glanced at her and their glances frightened her, as if they all knew, as if they were incredulous that she had only now found out. Her frantic gaze fell on the comforting colors of her car and she stumbled toward it on wobbly legs, but once she was safely inside, she just sat, her hands trembling too much to turn the ignition key. She wanted to get to Grayson and leap at him like a wildcat and shake him like a rag doll and scream out at him “Why?” but her quivering fingers would not turn the key so she sat at the wheel and shivered, trying to think. Grayson. Her baby. Her son. He had always been the independent one. Pushing her away from her earliest memories of him. Wanting to do it himself. The opposite of Michele, who had turned to her, needed her so, welcomed her love. No, Grayson was the baby, but he was the strong, healthy, breezy one. Out the door and on the run, Michele watching adoringly as he piled up his successes. She idolized him. And he let her die.

Lillie put her hands on the wheel and smeared blood there from her palms, which she had punctured squeezing her hands into fists. She tried to think. Where would he be? There was a football game next week and this afternoon he would be at practice, leading the team as they practiced their plays. The captain of the team, the vice president of the student council, the leadership award winner. He had stood by. He had let Tyler Ansley murder his sister and stood by. And then the lies. The lies too. All of it. Lillie felt as if the weight of it could crush her. She was going after him. That was all she knew. He had never sought her advice, and from time to time, when she would offer it, he would fidget impatiently, that long-suffering look on his face. Well, he would listen to her today, by God.

She waited a few more minutes, until she felt composed enough to be able to drive safely, and then she headed to the high school and drove around back to where the athletic field was. The Cress County Cougars were out on the field, all right. It was muddy because of the rain, and the bright white-and-purple uniforms were streaked with rust-colored mud. The coach blew his whistle and shouted unintelligible instructions as the boys lined up to hurl themselves at the tackling dummy.

Gripping her car keys tightly in one still-bloody palm, Lillie walked out to the front of the bleachers and stared at the tussling young men on the field. She craned her neck to peer at the various numbers on the uniforms but she could not spot number five among them. Usually she could recognize him by his brash, careless stance alone, but she could see no sign of Grayson among the players.

A voice called her name and Lillie swiveled around to see who it was. High up on the bleachers, a lone figure was hunched over against the chill, dressed in a pink dungaree jacket and cowboy boots. Instantly Lillie recognized the flame-colored hair of Allene Starnes. Lillie’s heart flipped over at the sight of her. She felt a surge of unreasonable anger as the girl gave her a timid wave.

“Grayson just got called inside to the phone,” Allene called down to her. “Some kind of emergency.”

Lillie knew immediately who it was. Pink. Telling the boy she was on her way. “Allene,” she demanded, “what are you doing here?” But she knew. She knew that this frail, unstable girl was waiting there for her son.

“I’m supposed to meet Gray after practice,” Allene admitted sheepishly.

Ordinarily Lillie would have minded her own business, kept out of it. Ordinarily she would have trusted her son. But this was not an ordinary day. And her son did not deserve to be trusted. He did not deserve the attentions of a girl, any girl. Much less this fragile, vulnerable girl.

“Allene,” she said sharply. “Come down here. This instant.”

Allene started to protest and then slowly she gathered up her pocketbook and climbed down from the bleachers, her cowboy boots clattering on the wooden slats. As the girl made her way down the steps, Lillie glanced back out on the field. No sign of Grayson yet. He and Pink were no doubt still busily discussing their secrets, trying to avoid her wrath. But Grayson was not going to get away from her this time.

Allene reached the bottom seat. Lillie reached out a hand to her and helped her as she jumped off. The small-boned freckled hand was cold in her own, and Lillie felt as if she were guiding the girl down from a high ledge where she had gotten herself trapped.

Oh, no, Lillie thought furiously. Grayson was not going to have a chance to run roughshod over this girl, or any other girl, because she was not going to let him. He who had not even had the guts to defend his own sister. He was not fit to have a girlfriend. He was not going to hurt anybody else, ever again. She would see to that.

“Allene,” Lillie said sternly. “Do your parents know that you’re seeing Grayson again?”

Allene shook her head sadly.

“Well, you better just stop seeing him, or I am going to tell them. I mean it, Allene. Forget about Grayson. Don’t waste yourself on him. He’ll only hurt you. He doesn’t care for you.”

Lillie half expected the girl to be defiant but instead Allene shrugged and shoved her hands in her pockets. “I know, I’m sorry,” she said.

“Don’t you be sorry,” said Lillie. “You just scoot.”

“Grayson’ll be mad,” she said worriedly.

“I’ll take care of Grayson,” Lillie said grimly.

“Miz Burdette, please don’t tell my mom.”

“Not unless I catch you hanging around with him again. Now go.”

The girl hoisted her pocketbook onto her shoulder and said good-bye. Lillie watched as she disappeared around the corner of the bleachers. Then she turned and looked back across the muddy field. Grayson was coming out of the locker room.

He must have glanced up to see if Allene was still there admiring him because he had already spotted his mother and was on his way to her, loping toward the bleachers, his handsome face a study in feigned innocence.

“What happened to Allene?” he asked by way of greeting.

“I sent her home. Get over here,” hissed Lillie. She could feel her heart thudding in her chest as she turned her back on him and started down the aisle.

“Mom, I’ve got practice,” he said stubbornly.

Lillie turned on him, her eyes flashing. “Don’t pretend you don’t know why I’m here. I know that was your father on the phone. Now do as I tell you,” she spat out at him. “I am still your mother.”

Her tone silenced him and he lowered his languid blue eyes. A redness crept up his neck above the dirty uniform. He glanced up at her and saw the bruise forming beneath her eye and across her cheekbone. “Mom!” he exclaimed. “Where’d you get that?”

“Never mind that,” she snapped.

“Sorry,” he said with a shrug, and followed her docilely to the end of the bleachers.

Lillie, trembling with rage, did not turn around until she was satisfied that they were out of sight of the others. She wanted to say every vile thing that was on her mind. She had come prepared to rail at him, to vent her fury on him like a storm. She wanted to hurt him, humiliate him, accuse him. But when she turned and saw him standing there obediently behind her, his helmet on one hip, his fair hair mussed as if from sleep, his wide eyes on her, as if he only wanted to ease her mind, she felt the fury deflate inside her and what remained was confusion and disbelief. This was her son. Her little boy. Pink must have gotten it wrong somehow. He would never have deserted his sister that way. Maybe he wasn’t even there. Maybe Tyler just said that. There had to be some other explanation.

“Grayson,” she began, her tone severe, her voice shaking, “as I’m sure your father just told you on the phone, I heard what happened. That Tyler Ansley killed your sister and that you stood by and let him.”

Grayson gripped his helmet and stared at her, wide-eyed, the flush gone from his neck, his skin now pale.

Lillie hesitated in the face of his silence. It isn’t so, she thought with a sudden, wild hope in her heart. He’ll tell me that it did not happen. That he wasn’t there. That Tyler made it up. “Is this true?” she asked.

Don’t answer that, she thought.

Grayson looked away from her, squinting out, unseeing, over the field, and then shifted his weight to the other hip.

“Well?” she said.

Grayson shook his head. His voice was small. “I’m sorry, Mom. I hoped you’d never find out.”

To her surprise, his admission stunned her, almost as if she had never heard a word of this before. “Grayson,” she whispered. “My God…”

“Mom,” he pleaded. “Mom, I’m sorry. It was just…it was a freak thing…”

Lillie struggled to retain control. But she felt as if she couldn’t breathe. “You tell me what happened,” she said, and the words burst forth between gasps. “I cannot believe…what your father told me…was the whole story. That you let him…kill your sister. Grayson, I have to know…how could this be?”

His face was contorted and tears fell from his eyes. “Mom, I know you’re mad at me…“he said.

“Mad?” she cried, almost wanting to laugh at the inadequacy, the incongruity, of the word. “Grayson, look at me. I know you. You’re my son. You wouldn’t…you couldn’t do that. Just leave her there. Let her die. I mean, you and Michele, you loved her…” Her voice was high, pleading.

“I did. You know I did,” he cried. “But I swear, Mom. I never thought Tyler would hurt her. I thought he was just kidding around.”

He looked at her miserably, waiting a moment for her to speak, but she did not. “We were drinking,” Grayson said. “I know we weren’t supposed to, but all the kids do, you know.”

She was peering at him as if it were a struggle to understand him, as if he were speaking a foreign language.

Grayson shifted uneasily under her gaze and continued haltingly. “Michele actually…she wasn’t supposed to be there. I mean, she overheard us saying we were going down there and she just insisted on tagging along. I tried to tell her to go home but she…she liked him, you know. I guess she thought it was a good chance to be around him or something.

“So, anyway, we were drinking and she was teasing him, and he was waving the baseball bat around, and Michele was laughing and then
bam, bam
. Before I knew it, he hit her. And she fell.”

“Stop it,” Lillie shrieked, clapping her hands over her ears. She could not stand to hear it. She did not want to picture her little girl struck down. She could not bear to hear her son recounting it, the way he would some incident at school.

“Mom, listen,” he said urgently. “How did I know he would hit her?”

“You should have…You should have taken care of her,” Lillie cried.

“Mom, I couldn’t. Please.” He stepped toward her. “Don’t.”

She was backing away from him, flailing one fist feebly at him, as if to keep him away. She bumped into the bleacher and grabbed on to it, tears blinding her again. She wiped her eyes angrily.

“So,” she declared in a cold, cruel voice, “this boy killed your sister and you stood by like a complete coward and did nothing. Except to lie about it and protect him, of course.”

“No,” he yelped. “No. I jumped on him. I hit him. It was too late. Mom, you weren’t there. I’m telling you. Nobody could have prevented it.”