Safe Keeping. Barbara Sissel Taylor

knotted her hands.

      “Because, he blamed Miranda when he got arrested, remember?” Evan said. “He accused her of ratting him out. He got fired because of her. He was pretty pissed off. Maybe it was the same with Jessica.”

      “Hite’s full of shit.”

      “You don’t think Miranda or Jessica were working with the cops?” asked Evan.

      “Hell, no. Miranda would have told me,” Tucker said. “Look, there were a lot of people at the party in Galveston. A lot of guys. Hite could have been there, I guess, but I doubt it.” He sounded forlorn now. Pressing his palms together, he knifed his hands between his knees. “Goddamn it, I do not want to see Pop. Do you guys?”

      “We could get something to eat,” Lissa said. She wasn’t hungry, but she didn’t want to face their folks, either.

      “I could go for a burger.” Evan pulled into the parking lot of Ace’s Grill, a diner and pool hall near Lissa’s parents’ house, and while Evan and Tucker went inside to order their hamburgers and beers, Lissa called home. She was relieved it was her mom, not her dad, who answered, even though she had to reassure her mother a dozen times that Tucker was fine, everybody was fine.

      “We’re just getting a hamburger, Mom,” Lissa said.

      “I roasted two chickens,” Lissa’s mother said. “There’s plenty for everyone.”

      “Oh, I’m sorry. We didn’t know. The guys are already inside ordering. Will it keep until tomorrow?”

      Her mother said she imagined it would get eaten one way or another. She said, “You’re sure Tucker’s okay now, he’s in the clear?”

      Lissa said she hoped so. She said they’d be there within the hour.

      Tucker and Evan were already eating when she joined them. She unwrapped her burger.

      “Your folks okay?” Evan asked.

      “Mom made dinner for everyone,” Lissa said.

      “Uh-oh. Should have known.” Tucker took a swallow of his beer. “Is she mad?”

      “No. You’ll have it for lunch tomorrow.” Lissa set down her burger; she wiped her fingers on her napkin. “Listen, Tucker, about this morning, at the house, I didn’t mean anything.”

      “I know. It’s all right,” he said, but he wouldn’t look at her.

      “It isn’t that I don’t believe in you.”

      Now he met her eyes. “I said I know.”

      Lissa held his glance a moment, then picked up her burger again. “Where did you go, anyway, after you left? Where did the police find you?”

      “Morgan’s apartment. I was taking her car back to her. They got me in the parking lot there.”

      “Who’s Morgan?” Evan asked.

      “There wasn’t any reason not to go with them,” Tucker said, as if he hadn’t heard Evan, or maybe, Lissa thought, Tucker was ignoring him. Maybe, for once, he was embarrassed to admit he’d been picked up by yet one more woman, a total stranger, and spent the night with her, in her bed.

      “I don’t understand why you would talk to them, though, without a lawyer, Tuck.” Lissa rewrapped her burger. She couldn’t finish it, or her French fries, or her beer.

      “You’re done?” Evan asked. “Was it bad?”

      “No, it’s fine. My head hurts, is all.”

      “It’s hurting all the time lately,” Tucker said.

      “Too much of the time.” Evan wiped his mouth, wadded his paper napkin and tossed it into his empty burger basket. “Do I have to make an appointment with Dr. White, or will you?”

      “If you don’t do it, Liss, I will,” Tucker said. “You can’t whip up on us both.”

      She dipped her glance; she didn’t want them to see that she was afraid.

      * * *

      Their mother wasn’t more than a silhouette, a dark sketch under the porch light, when they pulled up in front of the house. Still, it seemed to Lissa that she could feel the worry rising off her in waves, or maybe she was conditioned to expect it from long experience. She wondered how many hours her mother had logged on the porch, looking up and down the street for Tucker, consumed with anxiety for him, praying for any sign. Lissa had done time on the porch, too. Hard scary time. She could name the day it started, the first time Tucker disappeared. It had been the week after they were to have celebrated his fourth birthday.

      Dad hired a circus clown for the occasion. He bought a movie camera. Unable to sit still, Lissa’s mother dropped her at a friend’s house to play. Lissa ended up spending the night there, and the following day when her mother picked her up, she wasn’t the same. Nothing was. She tried to explain it, how Daddy’s mind broke from all the terrible things he went through during the war, and somehow this made him lock Tucker in a closet. She said she needed Lissa to be very brave, because Daddy was gone for a while to the hospital, and Tucker was still so badly frightened, he wasn’t talking. Lissa remembered her own panic. She remembered Tucker’s hollow stare and the grim set of her mother’s mouth.

      She remembered the day a week after her father left when she walked out onto the front porch, hunting for Tucker, anxious about him and her parents, her dad’s absence, her mother’s and Tucker’s terrible quiet. She expected to see her little brother playing in the yard, but instead, she saw the front gate hanging open, idly squeaking on its hinges, and beyond it, nothing.

      A white aching space.

      As if along with Tucker the whole world had vanished. The police were called in, and they found him just after nightfall, after everyone was good and scared, none the worse for his adventure, in a ravine nearly a mile from their house. The story he told was that he’d been trying to catch a dog, a little puppy. He said he followed it because it looked so sad and lost, and he wanted to bring it home and take care of it.

      Lissa remembered Tucker hiding from their dad on his return from the hospital weeks later. Even though he was calmer and seemed to keep a better grip on his temper, it took Tucker a long time to warm up to him again. Thinking back now, Lissa didn’t remember the movie camera ever making it out of the box. It was probably packed away somewhere along with Momma’s habit of humming and Dad’s laughter, which was rare even then.

      She didn’t know exactly, because even as a child she’d been reluctant to ask, to talk about her dad’s absence at all. She had always thought there was more to it; she still did.

      Evan took her hand, and they followed Tucker up the sidewalk.

      Their mother came to the top of the steps. Tucker joined her, and she took hold of him, bending her forehead to his chest. She wasn’t crying, but she was close to it, and Lissa was glad when Tucker slipped his arms around her.

      “Come on, Ma. It’s nothing,” he said. “It’s over.”

      “Are you sure?” She tilted her gaze to look at him.

      “They wanted to ask me some questions, that’s all.”

      “You didn’t know her, then? Jessica Sweet? You told the police you didn’t?”

      Lissa’s heart sank. She ought to have warned her mother, but there hadn’t been time, and truthfully she hadn’t wanted to. “Mom? I think he’s going to need a lawyer.”

      “No, I told you—”

      “You talked to the police without an attorney, Tucker. They know you had a relationship with Jessica. Nothing’s over. When they find her killer, then it will be over.”

      6

      TUCKER SAID LISSA was making too much of it, that it was no big deal.