Blue Moon Bay (29 page)

I jerked my arm back, but Clay's fingers squeezed tighter. “There's not . . . There's n-nothing to know.” He forced a lopsided, wavering smile before a shiver coursed through him. “I'm not on dr-drugs, Hess. I was just . . . tired. Too m-many late nights.”

“With Amy? With Amy, whom you're so crazy-serious about that you're texting with some chick from Fort Worth? Tara somebody? What's going on with you, Clay? That's not even like you. You've never been this way with people—lying, cheating, this whole line about taking over the restaurant, but you're never there. You're not exactly working yourself to death learning the business. If all of this is some sort of scam, you have to come clean. Now, Clay. Before things get any worse. You could have died tonight.”

Tears pushed into my eyes, blurred my vision of him, spilled over. He met my gaze, and through the sheen of water, I saw the little brother who had been my only reason to keep moving forward through the most violent storm of my life.

The words I hadn't been able to find then came to me now. “I love you, Clay.” I realized it had been years since I'd said that to anyone, since I'd allowed myself to feel the raw vulnerability of love. A tomb inside me cracked open, a slumbering spirit rising like Lazarus. I remembered how it felt to really love. “I don't want anything to happen to you.”

His fingers slid down my wrist, and he took my hand in his, pulled it toward him, tucked my fingers under his chin like he used to when he was little. Fresh tears filled my eyes. I remembered all the nights I'd sat by his bed, comforted his hurts. All the times we'd walked in the woods together, when I'd played along with his games of Robin Hood and Star Wars.

“I love you, too, Hess,” he whispered, his eyes earnest, compelling, tender, seeming completely lucid now. “I just fell asleep . . . and the p-parking brake . . . it's old. That's all. I promise . . . I'm not on dr-drugs, all right?”

“All right,” I answered. Then I just sat watching him, trying to decide what should come next.

The river reveals its mysteries in its own time.

—Anonymous
(left by Herbert Hampton, undertaker, Moses Lake)

V
alentine's Day dawned bright and sunny. Clay was still sleeping on the cottage sofa when I walked up the hill for breakfast. I'd checked on him several times, and he seemed to be fine, just exhausted and embarrassed about what had happened. His admonitions not to worry Mom and the uncs swam in my head as I crossed the veranda. What possible good could come of my keeping it a secret that, if not for Roger, Clay might have drowned or been found on the lawn this morning, hypothermic or worse?

But in the back of my mind, there was a still, small voice. A memory of the look in Clay's eyes when he begged me not to tell. If I outed him to the family, would he do what he had often done in the past when one of his card castles came tumbling down—simply take off for parts unknown, disappear into the wide, wide world until he decided he was ready to turn up again? What if this time, he disappeared forever?

But did I really have it in me to tell Mom and the uncs what Clay wanted me to tell them—that the Ladybug was marooned on a fig tree because it had rolled down the hill unoccupied? They would never know the difference, of course. Morning sun had caught the lawn. The frost was already melting off in glistening, watery patches, Clay's footprints and mine bleeding together in an indiscriminate slug trail. Slipping through the back door, I took one last look at the truck, listing like a shipwreck as moisture drew streaks in the layer of grime. What was the right thing to do?

Inside the house, Mom and the uncs were gathered on the sun porch. Snatches of an ongoing conversation floated in the morning air, but the flow stopped abruptly when they heard me in the kitchen.

“Is that Heather?” Mom called.

“It's me.” I leaned back from the counter to see if she was coming into the kitchen. When she didn't appear, I poured a cup of coffee and headed for the sun porch, glancing into Uncle Herbert's office as I passed. The desk was stacked with carefully-arranged piles of what looked like papers and receipts, and on the overhead shelf, an old mantel clock had been wound, its steady
ticktock
the only noise in the room.

Everyone turned my way in unison when I entered the sun porch. They were gathered around the wood stove, avoiding the winter chill at the edges of the room. The white shutters were closed on the back windows, barring the low-angled morning sun off the lake, which explained why Clay's marooned truck hadn't yet been noticed. I had the distinct feeling that I was interrupting something, though.

“So what's the deal with the guy working in the office?” I asked, stalling for time, trying to decide what to say about Clay. I couldn't just pretend I hadn't seen his vehicle balancing at a forty-five degree angle in the backyard.

Mom's lips curved upward. She was trying to look cucumber-cool this morning, but she wasn't. There was something haggard and haphazard about her appearance. She hadn't combed her hair and plaited it in the usual braid. It hung loose around her shoulders, and mascara circles rimmed her eyes, as if she'd gotten out of bed in a hurry and come straight downstairs. “He's just going over Uncle Herbert's books from the funeral business—you know, getting everything ready for the sale.”

“The sale to you and Clay?” I was determined to pin her down. “Why would the books from the funeral home have anything to do with that? I thought you were buying the house so you could open a bed-and-breakfast, not a funeral home.” I stressed
bed-and-breakfast
, so as to let her know that I didn't believe any of it. The entire time I'd been at Harmony Shores, I hadn't seen Mom working to refit the house for use as a bed-and-breakfast any more than I'd seen Clay frying catfish.

Mom squirmed in her chair. “We just want to get everything squared away.” Scooting forward, she glanced out the side window toward the driveway, where the funeral sedan and the hearse were parked right now. “Have you seen Clay today?”

It was my turn to be uncomfortable. I felt the moment of truth upon me. To tell or not to tell?
Tell
, a voice insisted in my head.
Tell them about last night
.

But I remembered the way Clay looked at me—just the way he used to when the kids at school had picked on him or passed him over for a dodge ball game, or he'd forgotten to do some assignment and received a bad grade. Disappointing everyone and admitting failure, when he finally had to stop pretending and face it, was almost more than he could bear. All his life one big plan after another had come tumbling down upon him, like buildings constructed on sand. “He's down in the cottage, asleep. He locked himself out last night,” I heard myself say. Guilt slipped over me, heavy and itchy. “His truck rolled down the hill. It's stuck on the fig tree.”

That revelation, of course, was enough to end the morning conversation. Mom and the uncs hurried out to see about the truck. There was some discussion about waking Clay, but as usual, everyone was weirdly sympathetic to the fact that he'd kept himself out all night. They decided it would be just as well to let him rest, since there was really nothing he could do about moving the truck, anyway. In short order the uncs had made a few phone calls, and we were waiting for Blaine to show up with a tractor. He soon arrived wearing a faded barn jacket and jeans that were haphazardly tucked into the tops of muddy cowboy boots. The well-used boots called up a memory that unfurled, full and clear in my mind.

My father and I were at the farm when I was little. The barnyard was muddy, but he carried me over it, his feet sinking into the muck, his jeans tucked into the tops of his boots.

Closing my eyes now, I could smell the fresh scents of hay and Irish Spring soap. Dad set me on the tractor seat, then walked through the mud and opened the gate while I played with the steering wheel and the levers, pretending to drive. Finally, he climbed onto the seat behind me, and I half sat, half stood between his arms, my hands wrapped on the wheel next to his as the tractor chugged out of the barnyard. After we passed through the gate, we turned the wheel, pointing the tractor down the dusty lane that led past scrappy fencerows overgrown with mustang grapes and wild roses. The remaining animals on the farm were old and tired, seemingly unmotivated to challenge the ragtag barriers. My grandfather was known for being frugal to the point of patching the fences together until they were as threadbare as a hobo's pants. Inside the pasture, the grass was short, the cattle shearing it down near the soil.

I pointed to a broken place where only one wire and a cedar tree kept the little herd of Angus cattle from making their way to the lane, where high grass awaited.

“They could get out,” I said, gazing back at the pasture. The bull looked massive and mean. I didn't know much about cattle, but my grandmother had warned me many times to stay out of the cow pasture because the bull liked to chase people.

“They won't get out,” Dad assured me. “There's always been a fence there.”

“But there's not a fence there now. Not really.” Even at nine years old, I was inquisitive, prone to questioning—a kid who liked science fairs and wanted electronics kits for Christmas when my mom insisted on buying me sets of watercolors, blank journals, classic novels, musical instruments, and weaving looms, trying to bring out my sadly anorexic whimsical side. The truth was that I wanted to be like my dad, to align myself with him, not with her. My dad's world was measured, secure, reliable, while hers seemed unpredictable, like waves on a stormy sea.

In a weird way, I had a feeling that the very thing I disliked about her was what drew my father in. She ignited a different sort of passion in him, tossed glitter and spatters of bright color over his black-and-white life.

Then again, he was gone on business at least half of the time. He didn't have to deal with the parties she threw to keep herself occupied when he was away. On those nights, there might be strangers in the living room discussing art-for-art's-sake or rehearsing lines for community theater at all hours of the night, seemingly oblivious to the fact that there were children nearby who needed a snack and a bath, or a fresh diaper and a bedtime story. By eight years old, I had assumed responsibility for the practicalities of caring for Clay. Unless my father was there, I took care of baths, baby food, and read
Cat in the Hat
a million times.

That day on the tractor, Dad had rested his hands over mine on the steering wheel, forming a physical connection between us. “I want you to listen to me, Heather. A lot of people out there are like those cows, and they can go along that way their whole lives. They get comfortable in one place, even when it's small and dirt bare, like that pasture. You know why they do that?”

I shook my head, thinking,
Because cows are stupid?
But I knew he was probably looking for a better answer than that.

“Because they don't use their minds,” my father said. “Because they make assumptions. Those people don't change the world, Heather. They just live in it. They're like those cows who'll stand all their lives behind one strand of barbed wire, not because they can't get out, but because they're convinced they can't. You keep your mind sharp, all right? Always look for yourself. Never let other people tell you where the fences are.”

“Okay, Dad,” I answered. My nine-year-old mind only grasped the fringes of meaning behind his comment, but I understood the thing that mattered most. My father thought I was capable of great things. He believed in me.

When we started down the lane again, he put my hands on the wheel and pulled his own away, resting them on his knees, so that his arms were like steel bars on either side of me, holding me in place. “You drive,” he said. “You're big enough.”

All of a sudden, I felt ten feet tall.

That was one of the things I missed most about my dad, I realized now. He'd made me feel like I was capable of anything. I wished he were here now. I wanted him to tell me what to do about Clay, to make me believe that I could somehow solve the problem and have everyone in the family come out of it in one piece.

Watching Blaine on the tractor, I tried to conjure up that connection to my dad, to decide what he would be thinking, what advice he would give if he were with me. He loved Moses Lake so much. When we'd moved so he could bring the new Proxica plant online, he was so happy. But the longer we stayed, the more he'd been preoccupied, distant, lost in his own thoughts. Something was very wrong those weeks before he died. Moses Lake was wrapping itself around him, dragging him down in a way I couldn't understand.

Was history repeating itself? Was this place trying to claim my brother, as well?

Blaine glanced my way as he jumped down to unhook the chains from the Ladybug. He did a double take, cocking his head to one side as if he wondered why I was staring grimly into space. “Want me to drive the truck up the hill for you?” he asked Uncle Herbert.

Uncle Herbert shook his head. “Naw, that's all right. We'll get it. Doesn't look like too much damage done, except to my fig tree. Can't imagine how this truck ended up rolling off like that, though. Lucky it didn't make it to the lake.”

I shuddered, thinking of my brother plunging into the icy water, sinking below the surface, passed out, unaware, trapped in the car. I remembered the dream that had awakened me last night. I saw Clay's face pale and gray, his body in my father's coffin. Even the warmth of the midmorning sun couldn't keep the chill off my body as the uncs studied the front of the truck like a couple of golfers gauging a putt, and Mom checked the inside of the cab, looking for something.
What?
I wondered, but there seemed to be no point in asking, so I started up the hill toward the house, instead. I needed a cup of coffee and a chance to clear my head.

The tractor passed by me on the way to the house, and Blaine parked on the pavement, then cut the engine. He was waiting when I reached the top of the hill. We went into the house for coffee.

“You all right?” he asked, leaning against the counter, his hands wrapped around the steaming cup. “Where's Clay, anyway? Seems like since he's the one responsible for the truck, he ought to be out there with the rest of us.”

“He's still sleeping.” I felt myself sneering when I said it. “And no, I'm not . . . all right. I . . .” My voice trembled, the admission cutting close to the core. “I don't know what to do, Blaine. I really just . . .” Tears pressed harder, and I blinked, stuffing down the emotion. Crying wouldn't do any good. What I needed to do was think. Think of a way to solve the mess my family was in. I needed help.

Blaine's hand slid up my arm, into my hair, offering comfort, solace, sympathy of a sort that made me want to fall into his arms and give into the need to lean on someone. “Hey, what's going on?”