Blue Moon Bay (34 page)

“And he was my husband,” she countered, as if to measure my grief against hers. “And we may have had our issues. We were two very different people who fell in love when we were practically children and ran away together on a whim, but we were trying to make it all work.”

I thought of the countless times, even before my father's death, that she had made our lives difficult, with her flightiness, her need for constant change, her insistence on running off to symposiums, poetry conferences, and music festivals, leaving my dad with the problem of arranging for our care and paying for her antics. “My father gave everything to you. Everything he had. Everything we had,” I hissed.

Her jaw formed a hard line, the muscles clenching with determination. This had always been the way with my mother and me. At each other's throats, in each other's sore spots. “That man, the man you saw me with, was not who you think. He was an agent with the Department of Justice. He told me that if I didn't cooperate, they'd send your father to prison. I was terrified, Heather. Where would we have ended up then? I didn't have any way of supporting two children, of paying for lawyers and dealing with a husband in federal prison.”

“Federal prison?” My voice rose again, a sardonic laugh following the words. What kind of story was she coming up with now? What kind of nonsense? “My father never did anything that would have gotten him in trouble with the government or anyone else.” My father was the most honest, upright man I'd ever known. His faith and his principles ran deep.

“He worked for Proxica.” Mom's gaze darted around, checked the storage room door cautiously. “They were investigating Proxica for disposing of chemicals illegally on their farms, and I don't even know what else. The workers on Proxica farms had no idea what they were handling, what they might be living with right around their homes, underneath the yards where their kids were playing. What could be getting into their food and water. The Justice Department thought your father was taking money to keep quiet. He'd gotten a bonus for bringing the Proxica operation in Kentucky on line in record time. The Justice Department wanted me to provide documents—look for things in your father's briefcase.

“I was scared, Heather. I didn't know what to do. I cooperated for a while. I thought I could give them what they needed, and your father would be cleared. I knew he wouldn't willingly participate in something that was hurting people, especially so near Moses Lake. I thought I could clear his name, and then, other than looking for a new job, our lives would go on as normal. What choice did I have? You were about to go to college, but we had Clay to raise. Your father was dealing with losing his parents. I thought I could . . . get us out of this mess. I could do what the Justice Department wanted, and it would all go away.”

“But it didn't.” My mind tripped and stumbled, dropping over a precipice, ending in a place I'd never anticipated. “It didn't go away, did it?”

Gooseflesh rose on her arms, and she rubbed it away. “No, it didn't. Your father heard rumors in town. He heard that I'd been seen with someone—a man. He confronted me about it. I had to tell him the truth. I begged him to pack up, to take us out of Moses Lake. If he wasn't working for Proxica anymore, he wouldn't be of use to the Justice Department, I thought. But your father wouldn't do it. He wanted to stay here, look into it himself, gather evidence, see if his bosses knew what was going on, see if there really were barrels of chemicals being buried.

“Someone ran your father off the road one night on the way home from work, and he was afraid it wasn't an accident. That's why he got that stupid shotgun out of the closet. That's why I packed the suitcases. That's why we were fighting before he died. I wanted to just get in the car and go, all of us. I told him if he wouldn't leave with us, that I'd take both of you and I'd leave him.

“I didn't mean it. I just wanted him to come with us. I just wanted us to run.” She looked away, concealing whatever emotions she felt.

I stood mute, scrambling to assimilate the tidal wave of information, to blend it into what I knew about my life. What I thought I knew. “Why did the police take you away right after he died? Why were you gone overnight? If all this is true, why keep it a secret for so many years? Why didn't you tell me?”

Her shoulders quaked as though a shiver had rattled her, and she hugged herself tighter. “They put me in a room, and they told me that if I said anything about what had happened, if I did anything to hamper the government's case, they'd see that I was prosecuted for murder. I didn't care by then. I didn't care about anything. I just wanted to . . . crawl into the casket with your dad. I didn't know how I was going to survive, how I would take care of you kids. I didn't know if whoever ran your father off the road might come after us. I didn't know where to go or what to do. I was so lost without him. All those months afterward, I couldn't breathe. I couldn't function.

“By the time I started to take in air again, the issue with Proxica had been swept under the rug. I never heard from the agent again, and life went on. Your father's bosses played golf with governors and congressmen. Who knows what happened? Who knows how many payoffs they gave out? I couldn't fight it. I could barely keep my head above water.”

I pressed my hand over my eyes. On the dance floor, the song changed to a polka melody that seemed incongruous with the tension between my mother and me. “This is what Clay is into, isn't it? That's why he's here, and that's why you're here. You two are trying to finish what Dad started.”

“Yes,” she admitted. “A few months ago, when we were initially talking about selling the land, things began coming up. I heard that Ruth had cancer, and that her husband had died of cancer, and that one of her nephews had leukemia. Clay and I started talking to the uncs more about it, and we began putting it all together. All of us wanted to do what we could to see Proxica punished.”

“All of us?” I rubbed my fingers over a rush of blood that made my forehead seem to swell painfully. “Everyone? The whole family? The uncs, you, Clay. You were all in on it?”

She nodded. I watched her in narrow slices through my fingertips. She was looking at the bleachers, not at me. Words wedged in my throat, then came out all at once. “And none of you thought you could trust me? None of you had the confidence in me to tell me what was going on and why?”

“You were connected to Proxica, Heather. Richard let something slip during our talks about the real-estate deal—something about the broker having a corporate buyer in a hurry for the farm property that was zoned for a commercial operation, which ours was, because the family had run the dairy there years ago. Between that and things Amy had overheard at work, we could see what was happening. It will be over my dead body that Proxica puts so much as a tire track on any land we own.”

I shifted from one foot to the other, vacillating between anger and shock. “You should have told me. You should have
trusted
me. I loved my father. I would have done
anything
for him. It killed me when he died, and now you've put Clay in the same danger. Do you realize that he could have died last night? He was in that truck when it rolled down the hill. He almost ended up in the lake. Where is he? Where is he right now?”

Kneading her hands in front of herself, she looked toward the door. “He and Amy were going to get into the Proxica plant tonight to see if they could find some old records about the Armidryn and where it might have been disposed of. Amy said there would only be a skeleton crew there right now, with it being second shift and Valentine's Day. She and Clay were planning to take whatever they found out to your grandparents' farm after that. Clay has been working out there.” Her lips formed a worried line as she checked her watch.

He's been working out there.
Everything made sense now, including Clay's disappearing acts that seemed to have nothing to do with learning to run a catfish restaurant.

“I'm going out to the farm,” I told her, but the idea of revisiting that place, the place where my father had died, sent a wave of nausea through me, created a foreboding that rooted me where I stood. I didn't want to go there alone. For some reason, I thought of Blaine. “He knew, didn't he? Blaine knew what you and Clay were doing. He was in on it, too.”

“Yes,” she admitted. “He knew, but . . .”

I'd heard all I needed to hear. Without waiting for anything more, I turned away and left her there, then headed for the door. Somehow, I had to get my brother out of this mess. Tonight. Before tragedy struck our family a second time.

The more silent the surface, the deeper the water.

—Fisherman's proverb
(Left by Jim Shivers, an angler watching rain make rivers)

T
he tires squealed and the back end fishtailed as I rounded the last few curves on the two-lane road, headed for the farm. I had to get Clay to end this crazy plot before it blew up in his face. If someone connected to Proxica had run my father off the road when he drilled too close to their secrets sixteen years ago, why wouldn't they come after Clay now? Whatever information my brother had discovered should be turned over to the authorities, and the sooner the better.

If, by interfering with the family's plan, I angered them and none of them ever spoke to me again, I'd gladly live with that to know that Clay was safe. Had it never occurred to him that there were state and national agencies—actual branches of law enforcement—charged with regulating companies like Proxica, with protecting the public health? Hadn't he thought about the fact that, by digging into the situation himself, he might actually be contaminating evidence or worse yet, putting Proxica on alert so that they could further conceal their crimes before a government agency could investigate? If Clay had proof of this Armidryn thing, why was he still playing vigilante? Why were the rest of them going along with it? Why were the uncs, my mother, even Blaine willing to let Clay put himself at risk?

Blaine . . .

I couldn't even think about him right now, about what he'd done. Was it his job to distract me, to give the rest of them room to maneuver, to convince me that there might be something special for me in Moses Lake, a chance at everything I'd always wanted but couldn't find—family, a connection, a history . . . love?

I pushed the word away, not even knowing what it meant anymore, what it should mean. Maybe I was too damaged, too messed up to ever find it. Maybe I just wasn't meant for family life. The people you loved, the people who loved you were supposed to be the ones you could trust, the ones who trusted you. Yet everyone here assumed that I knew what Proxica was doing, and I just didn't care. They thought I was the kind of person who had no personal code to live by, who would do anything to come out ahead in business.

My boss saw that person when he looked at me, and so did Richard.

What kind of people assumed the worst of you?

Not people who care about you. As Reverend Hay had put it,
Love sees in you the best possible version of yourself.

Emotion rose in my throat, and I pushed it away impatiently. I just needed to settle things here and get away, to go home to Seattle and really think. Maybe Seattle wasn't even the place for me, but there had to be someplace where I would fit—somewhere I could combine work and meaning. I had money in the bank. I could take some time off, start looking, send resumes all over the world—perhaps land in an exotic location. Paris or Milan. Istanbul.

There were no ties to bind me. None at all. I could move to the far side of the world, and if Proxica did expand in Moses Lake, I would never even know it.

The idea pinched, bringing a painful little nip as I rounded the final bend in the road and the farm gateway materialized at the edge of the headlight's glow. My father had risked his career, maybe even his life, to stop Proxica sixteen years ago. If they expanded to the family farm, it would be as if the concrete and steel were being laid over his grave. As if his life, his sacrifice didn't matter. Proxica had won once, and if I had come to Moses Lake for no other reason, perhaps that was it: Maybe I'd been brought here for an atonement of sorts. Perhaps I was meant to help finish what my father started. Perhaps the one way I could finally make peace with his death was to protect my family and this place my father loved.

Determination filled me, feeling hot, solid, and righteous as I skidded into the driveway and careened up the lane. If Clay was still here, we were going to have a serious talk, and if not I would figure out exactly what kind of evidence he'd been collecting and storing, how long he'd been doing it, and what kind of laws he was breaking. Hadn't it occurred to him that he could end up in jail for sneaking into Proxica facilities? Was that what he was doing last night before the incident with the Ladybug?

Another possibility struck me, the impact sudden and startling. What if someone had tried to bash his skull in last night and that was why he didn't want the family to know about the accident? Was he afraid Mom or the uncs would blow his cover if they found out? Was he worried that they'd call an end to this thing?

Goose bumps prickled under my sweater. Leaning close to the window, I scouted the growth of trees along the lane, dark and silky in the moonlight, thick enough to hide anything, anyone.

My heart fluttered in my neck as the car rattled over a cattle guard at the low-water crossing, then kicked up gravel in the washed-out ruts on the other side. Could those same people have followed him tonight, could they have caught up with him at the Proxica plant? Was that why he and Amy hadn't shown up at the dance?

A cold feeling settled over my skin as I topped the hill and the trees parted, revealing the farmyard. The two-story house my grandparents had built was silent, the curtains drawn, the windows black, the porch steps littered with pecan shucks and fallen branches now that the renter had moved away. No vehicles were parked out front, but in the small turn-of-the-century stone house next door, a light shone. Would Clay have been doing his work in there? In the house where we'd lived during those months before everything in Moses Lake went terribly wrong? The house where my father died?

I let the car roll to a stop in front of it, sat behind the wheel, the burn of my anger abandoning me when I needed it most. As far as I knew, the stone house had been locked since my father died. How could Clay bring himself to go inside? How could he spend time there? What happened in that place sixteen years ago was the end of everything for us. The end of our family. The end of the laughter and the gaudy Crayola-colored days of childhood. The small, brown door in my nightmares was there.

Even in my dreams, I didn't have the courage to step through that door.

I closed my eyes, tried to imagine it, tried to see myself turning the handle, passing through, finally reaching the other side, finally remembering whatever had happened in the minutes after the gunshot exploded through the little house. All these years, those moments had been blank. I remembered the thunderous sound, the cellar door, and then the memory jumped forward, skipping like film that had been spliced, a broken piece cut out. The next thing I knew, I was bolting through the kitchen, looking for Clay, wanting to save him from seeing . . .

From seeing what?

What had I witnessed that day?

My mother said she had run into the cellar from the subterranean steps on the back of the house, stopped me before I could get down the stairs, before I could view the horrible scene below.

But there was blood on my hands. I remembered it now. I could see it in my mind, see my hands underneath the water at the kitchen sink, rubbing, trembling, a voice—my own voice—keening in my ear.

I'd rushed to wash the blood out of the sink as Clay came up the hill—just a little blond-haired boy, carrying some sort of treasures bundled in the front of his shirt. He stopped to playfully kick a soccer ball and watch it, having no idea that life had gone terribly wrong while he was playing in the woods. I turned off the water, then ran out to stop him, in case he was headed for the cellar door to show his treasures to Dad. I didn't want my little brother to see . . .

Closing my eyes, I pushed the memory away, stuffed it into the quiet, tightly-wrapped place where the other side of the door had stayed all these years. I didn't want to think about whether my father's death was an accident, or whether everything that was happening, his whole life tumbling down at once, was simply more than he could handle. The depth of my fear was too staggering. It drilled to the center of my soul, carved a clean, round path, like the massive metal bits that cut through soil and rock to take core samples, testing the stability of building sites before structures go up.

If my father had left us on purpose, if he'd meant to do it, it would be as much my fault as anyone's. I'd turned on him during those months in Moses Lake, abandoned him when he needed our love and support, as he planned my grandmother's funeral, then watched my grandfather wither away. I'd been so angry with my dad for moving us to Moses Lake that I'd never even considered what he was going through, losing both of his parents in such a short span of time.

The last words I'd said to him were,
I can't wait to get out of this house, and when I do, I'm never coming back.

If I could have five minutes with him now, I would tell him I didn't mean those words. But there were no more chances to talk to him, to open up and throw my arms around his broad shoulders and have him lift me off my feet in a bear hug.

I didn't want to return to this house, where all those future opportunities had been whisked away. Whatever happened in that basement was stronger than I was. It had been winning the battle for sixteen years. How could I possibly believe that I could defeat it now?

Love is both a sword and a shield,
Reverend Hay's sermon whispered in my mind.
It is all the armor we need.

I did love my family. I loved my father. In some hollow, wounded part of me, I'd been wandering since the day he died and our family fell apart. I'd tried to fill the emptiness with substitutes—work, success, nice clothes, a career that provided the achievement of designing massive structures that would stand for generations to come. I'd tried to pack inanimate things into the gaping hole. But brick and mortar, lines on paper, accolades and achievements, all the things money can buy can't fill the soft, tender place where people should be.

I thought of Ruth and her sister, Naomi, praying on the fire escape, trapped by an evil they couldn't even begin to understand.
God walks with us through the fires of life,
she'd said, her conviction filled with such faith. Deep inside I knew, I'd always known, that there was no way to the other side of this pain but through the fire. There was no way out for me but through that house.

Opening the car door, I stepped out, and started across the yard. On the porch, the swing rocked in the breeze. I remembered sitting there with my father when I was little. I was wrapped in a quilt, curled against him as he talked about growing up on the farm—something about a horse that belonged to a neighbor and my father sneaking out to the barn with the intention of riding it. He had no idea that the horse had just come off a racetrack and didn't know how to stop or turn, only how to run like the dickens. . . .

My lips quivered at the memory, and I was caught between laughter and tears as I crossed the porch and tried to peek in the windows. The curtains were drawn, but the door fell open before I touched it. I wasn't surprised. One of the things that had driven my mother crazy about this house was that, if you slammed the door too hard, it would pop back open. Clay always slammed the door. My mother had scolded him for that over and over. Dad had only laughed at Mom and called her a city girl.
Who do you think's going to break in, a grizzly bear?

Her eyes had widened.
There aren't really grizzly bears around here . . . are there?

Just one,
he'd said, then lifted his hands like claws and chased her and Clay around the room.

A puff of laughter caused my breath to plume in the night air as I stood on the threshold between past and present. Warmth flowed out of the house, chasing away the vapor and the laughter. Someone had been spending time here. The heat was on. Clearly, Clay was either here now or intended to return yet tonight.

Stepping in, I pushed the door closed behind me, softly, so that the latch clicking into place was almost soundless. If Clay was in the house, I didn't want to provide any advanced warning that would allow him to hide whatever he was doing. I spotted his backpack on the table in the dining room, to the right of the entryway. A floorboard creaked under my feet as I moved closer, the scent of dust and stillness filling my nose. A laptop computer sat beside the backpack, the screen in snooze mode, a laser light show twirling idly on the monitor, sending flickers around the dimly-lit room.

Papers, books, ziplock bags with soil and bits of plants inside littered the table. I flipped on the light, moved closer to look at them, found stacks of pictures of Proxica farms, each photo carefully labeled with the location and corresponding notes that seemed to be written in some sort of code. Beside the pictures sat an official-looking black folder, the results from chemical tests on water samples run at a lab in Houston. Tucked in the side pocket, a similar document appeared to be an analysis of several soil samples. In another file, there were names and case histories of people who'd worked on Proxica farms or in the production plant—their ages, their health problems. Ruth and her husband were listed. Behind the documents about human illnesses were photos and papers detailing unexplained problems with livestock—cancers, birth defects, lack of weight gain, mysterious deaths, pictures of dairy cows with cancerous growths on their skin and protruding from their eye sockets. An autopsy of a dog.