The Ninth Step (27 page)

Over the dull thudding in Cotton’s ears, he heard Scott say, “Yeah, Cotton’s always been good with his hands.”

“He’s done some real nice work,” Wes said.

Nikki brightened. “I know! Why don’t all of you come to my party later, then you can see it.” She shot her dad a sideways glance. “We’re having a cook-out, hot dogs and stuff, for my birthday,” she added.

Beth and Megan immediately raised a clamor. “Can we? Can we?”

“No,” Sharon said, “I’m sorry, but we have to go back to Seattle today. In fact,” she glanced at Scott, “we should be heading to the airport, shouldn’t we?”

The group of them started in the direction of the parking lot.

Before Nikki climbed in, she looked at Cotton over the roof of her dad’s car, squinting against the reflected sunlight. “You’re coming, right?”

Cotton nodded not trusting his voice. He hugged Sharon and the girls. Embraced Scott, who didn’t let him go right away and Cotton was grateful.

“You call me once it’s done, okay?” The vein of worry threading Scott’s voice was as thin as razor wire.

“If the cops’ll let me.”

“If you need me, I’ll come. I’ll find some way.”

They split apart. Cotton walked up the hill back toward the gravesite. Empty of everything. Thought. Sense. Any plan. He almost ran headlong into Sonny.

They shook hands. Cotton thanked him for coming.

Sonny said, “You look whipped. Let’s go for coffee.”

Cotton saw Gus and Kat coming toward him. He didn’t see Livie. “Yeah, hold on a half sec.”

He went around Sonny, put himself in front of the women. “I appreciate that you came,” he began and the rest of his speech, his apology, his regret for the pain he had caused them, was poised on the tip of his tongue, but Kat didn’t give him a chance.

“I didn’t come for you,” she said. “I came for Livie because for some ungodly reason she cared about your mother and I care about her.”

“We both do,” Gus said. “And if it were up to me, my daughter wouldn’t come anywhere near you.”

Cotton said, “I know she’s been through--”

“You don’t know the half of it.” Kat’s eyes blazed with fury, but there was something else in her expression, some anguish that made Cotton go cold.

“What happened?” he asked her.

“Ask Livie,” Kat said. “Ask my sister.”

#

Livie refused to go when Kat and her mother insisted she should leave with them.

“You started this,” she told Kat.

Then she let Cotton take her hand and lead her to the Mercedes where they sat with the windows down. There wasn’t any breeze and the air was thick and stifling.

“We could go to the house,” Cotton said.

Livie didn’t answer. She looked out the passenger window as if a parking lot could have a view of something other than cars and concrete, sun glare bouncing off metal. “I was talking to Max earlier,” she said. “He told me he saw your mom walking that afternoon and when he pulled over, she told him she was going to the liquor store and to leave her alone. He thought she shouldn’t be out in the heat so he drove her there. He feels terrible, Cotton.”

“I killed someone, Livie, on our wedding day. Driving to Dove Lake, I ran a stop sign and clipped the rear fender of a car, headed it straight into a telephone pole.” Cotton skidded his right palm off his left. He heard the sharp intake of her breath and looked at her.

“No,” she said.

He looked away.

“Oh, Cotton. I imagined so many things, but nothing like that.”

“I’m so sorry for what you’ve been through because of me, that you thought for one second it was because I didn’t love you. That’s as hard as--” He stopped.

“The police didn’t come?”

“I called 9-1-1, but I didn’t wait. I left--left the scene, left the state. I think I would have driven straight off the west coast into the ocean, but I ditched the truck.”

“Were you drinking? I know you were at the rehearsal dinner and afterward, when you went out.”

“A Bloody Mary, just a light one, for the hangover. It’s no excuse. I know that.”

“You’re sure about the person who was killed? I mean if you left--”

“I’m sure.” He hesitated. “There was someone else, a passenger.”

Livie raised her brows.

Cotton told her about Nikki.

“But how could you, how could you just leave her alone with her mother who was--? When you were the one who--?”

“I already had one DUI conviction when I was nineteen and I knew when the cops found out about it, I’d go to jail. I figured they’d probably get me for murder. I lost it. I panicked. I left.” Cotton pressed his palms down on his thighs.

“I don’t believe this.”

“I couldn’t either.”

“So you drank from then on? All this time?” Livie’s voice rose. “I was terrified, Cotton. I was sick at heart and so angry. Did it never occur to you how I would be effected, how others would be, your friends, your mother? The people who worked for you?”

He apologized again. He didn’t know what else to do. He said, “I know it must have--”

“No! You don’t know!” She flailed her arms as if she might hit him and he wished she would. He wished it were that simple. He wanted to reach for her, to hold her, but he understood she wouldn’t allow that.

“I never knew you, did I?” Livie flung the words at him. “You were never honest with me.”

“The guy I was until our wedding day?--the one you dated and who you were engaged to?--he thought he knew who he was. He thought he was good enough to be married to you, to make a family with you.” Cotton looked at her. “I wanted that more than anything in the world, Livie, but I screwed up in a way that was so huge even I couldn’t live with myself, not sober anyway. How could I expect you to?”

“If you had called me, if you had let me know what happened and waited there, I would have come. I would have stayed with you. I would have helped you deal with it.”

“That’s what I was afraid of; that’s why I didn’t. Why should your life be wrecked?”

“So you left instead.”

“You deserved someone better.”

She shook her head. “Don’t make this about me, how good I am versus how terrible you are.”

“C’mon, Livie, what sort of life would it be, me in prison, you waiting out here?”

“So you made my choice for me and you think you did me a favor?”

They sat through a length of battered silence.

“Those people, the Latimers, they deserve to know the truth, too,” Livie said.

“I’m going there this evening to Nikki’s party. After that, I’ll tell Wes.”

“He’ll call the police.”

“I guess, or he might take care of it himself.”

“What do you mean?”

Cotton told her about the robberies that had led Wes to borrow a gun. He said, “I don’t know if he gave it back or not.”

“That’s who’s after you, isn’t it? The woman who called--?”

“She was my AA sponsor in Seattle. She went a little overboard--”

“But you just said Wes Latimer has a gun and he’s still grieving and angry about how he lost his wife. Cotton, your sponsors are right, you should turn yourself in, let the police handle it.”

Cotton said he’d think about it. He set the key in the ignition. “I’ll drive you home now, if you’re ready.”

Livie said. “After you left, I lost our baby,”

Chapter 21

His eyes widened and she watched as comprehension came over him. He didn’t want it; she could see in his gaze that he was hunting a way out, but there was only simple evidence of the truth, an arrow of harrowing knowledge that sank its tip into his heart. Deeper, into his core. His head fell hard against the seat back. Livie heard the rasp of his breath. She saw the tears bead the corners of his eyes and raised the back of her hand to his cheek.

He caught it, brought it to his chest and turning, gathered her into his embrace. They held each other without speaking and there was nothing in that well of time and space except two parents grieving the loss of a child they had made from their love. Livie felt oddly comforted that she was no longer alone with her grief. Cotton shared it now; he felt it too in the marrow of his bones the way Livie did and he always would the way she would. No matter what else happened.

She pulled away, but stayed within his arm’s length, letting him touch her cheek, trace the path of her tears. He cleared them from the rim of her jaw, then cupped his palm against her neck. “I wish we could go back, do it over.”

“But that isn’t possible, is it? We aren’t the same people anymore.”

He broke away from her with a groan.

“I wasn’t perfect either,” she said and when he looked a question at her, she told him about her loneliness and the way it drove her up the walls of despair until there was nothing to do but become someone else. Someone in a red dress. Someone who didn’t care. She told Cotton about Joe. She said she was having a baby and that since she’d found out, the fever, the awful dark mood was gone. Every bleak vestige. She didn’t feel it anywhere inside herself anymore.

“It’s a relief,” she said.

He didn’t say anything at first, but his face was ash; his face bore a collision of emotions. “It’s so much worse than I thought.” He reported this as if he were surveying the untold damage in the aftermath of a storm.

“But it’s over now. It was crazy, I was crazy for so long, but you know, I found out I’m stronger than I thought. I found out I’m not my mother.”

Cotton grimaced. “She and Kat hate me.”

“I’m sorry.” Livie’s smile was rueful.

Cotton lifted her hand, addressed it. “If there was ever anything I could do to help you--”  He stopped, pressed his fingertips to his eyes.

And Livie knew he was struggling against tears again the way she was and she waited. She made herself breathe. In her mind, she said:
Please. . .
. And she meant it as a prayer for them both. “What will you do now?” she asked.

“I’m going to take care of business the way I should have six years ago,” he answered.

“I know the sheriff in Lincoln County,” she said, because she thought she understood he meant to turn himself in. “The accident happened on Route 119, right? I’m pretty sure JB’s the one who would have jurisdiction. I could call him for you and let him know you’re coming, but I think you should have a lawyer first.”

“I’ll call Nix,” Cotton said.

#

Livie closed her front door and leaned back against it, mouth tingling from Cotton’s kiss, body alive with its memory of his touch. She was full, overfull of his smell, the sound of his voice . . . his sweet one-cornered grin. The sensation of his palm was still warm on her neck and she put her hand there, sorry for her longing, saddened and enticed by it. She fought an urge to open the door and call him back. He shouldn’t go alone to the sheriff. Her mind produced images: Cotton in handcuffs, Cotton locked in a cell. How could she allow him to face that alone? But it wasn’t her place to stand beside him.

Not anymore.

She forced herself through the routine of evening chores, freshening the water in the hen house, collecting the eggs. She called Kat who had left an anxious message on her cell phone.

“I’m not kidnapped,” Livie said.

“What happened?” Kat demanded.

“Nothing. I’m really tired. Can we do the postmortem later?”

“I think I should come there.”

“No, I’m fine, honest. Where’s Mother? She isn’t answering her phone.”

“Really? Huh. I guess she’s out, probably with whatshisname, you know.”

“Kat?” There was something too offhand in Kat’s response, something too contrived and it raised the hair on Livie’s arms. “What’s going on? What is Mom doing?”

“Nothing that I know of. I mean she was worried when we left you at the cemetery with Cotton. We both were, but you’re home now so--”

“I’m all right. I’ll call later, okay?” Livie hung up before Kat could argue.

She tried her mother again, got her voice mail and tossed aside her cell phone.

She thought of calling JB to see if Cotton had arrived, but he had asked her not to. He didn’t want her smoothing his way. He had instructed her to forget him, as if their almost marriage, almost life, had never happened. As if now that she knew what had prevented him from appearing at her side on their wedding day, she could dismiss it as nothing more substantial than a nightmare.

A simple switch she could turn off in her mind.

That terrible collision.

The fact that he’d run.

What was she supposed to do with all of it? She knuckled her fist to her mouth. She had such an awful feeling, a sense of things spiraling out of her control or anyone’s control. She caught the sound of engine noise. That old Mercedes? But no, it was Charlie’s truck. She was disappointed and relieved and when she heard Charlie shout from the porch, “Livie gal, you decent?” she opened her door to him and lost her composure.

Charlie got one look and opened his arms. “It’s okay, gal,” he murmured, “let it out now, just let it all go.”

#

When she had recovered, while Charlie made grilled cheese sandwiches for their dinner--he insisted Livie had to put something in her stomach--she told him about Cotton, what he’d done, where he’d fled to afterward. She found a tissue and blew her nose and said, “He’s devastated, Charlie. He wants so badly to make it right.”

“Nothing he can do is going to give that woman her life back.”

“No.”

“I think he’s got a hell of a lot of nerve coming here, raking it all up.” Charlie banged the griddle down on the burner and adjusted the flame.

“What should he do, now that he’s sane and sober and facing it? Burn in hell?”

“I would think you of all people--”

“If you want me to hate him, I can’t.”

Charlie maneuvered the spatula under the sandwich, flipping it, flattening it. The air was redolent with rich smells of cheese and butter and Livie’s stomach waffled in revolt.

“Forgiving him doesn’t mean I condone what he did,” she said. “But people make mistakes--”

“Once I left a man to die. In Viet Nam. We were under heavy fire, jungle fog so thick you couldn’t see two feet. I tried to get to him and couldn’t. I had a hard time living with myself after that. When I got back to the States, I went to see his family.”