Safe Keeping. Barbara Taylor Sissel

in the horror, closing himself off from her, not wanting to burden her, he said. They’d worked through it eventually, but it had taken a near-tragedy to bring him around.

      She tapped on the door. “Coffee’s ready,” she said through the panel, and she was relieved to hear his acknowledgment, to hear the leather creak as he rose from his chair. He followed her into the kitchen, and she thought the drag of his step sounded more uneven than usual. She wanted to turn and look, to ask if his pain was worse, but he didn’t like her fussing over him.

      She unsheathed both papers from their plastic wrappers and set them, still folded, on the table, and that’s when she saw it—a piece of the missing girl’s, Jessica Sweet’s, face. It was looking out from the front page of the Chronicle. Above it, Emily glimpsed two words: found and dead, and her heart slammed into the wall of her chest. Any moment now, Roy would see it, too.

      She brought the toast to the table and sat across from Roy. She was aware of the newspaper between them and was seized by a sudden, heated and irrational urge to tear it to shreds. She imagined Tucker coming through the door. He would put his arms around her; he would say how sorry he was to have caused her such concern. She would tell him about the dead girl, show him her picture, and he’d be sorry for her, too. But he wouldn’t know her. He wouldn’t have loved her or shared a messy, emotional history with her the way he had with Miranda Quick.

      Emily picked up her slice of toast and then set it down, thinking if she had to sit here through another day without word from Tucker, or about him, she would come out of her skin.

      She caught Roy’s glance.

      “What?” he said.

      “Why don’t we ride out there?”

      “Where?” he asked, but she was certain he knew.

      “Indigo Lake.”

      “What for? There’s nothing to see,” he said. “A slab, pipes, a frame. I ought to get Evan to send a crew out there to pull it down. I’ll sell the land.”

      Evan had worked for Roy in the family construction business long before becoming Lissa’s husband. Evan and Lissa ran the company now since Roy’s retirement. Tucker would have had a share in running it, too, if he was in the least reliable.

      Emily touched Roy’s hand. “I think you should finish the house. It would take your mind off—” She didn’t want to say Tucker, so she said, “Things, you know. You need a project. Once it’s finished, if you don’t want to keep it, you can always sell it then.”

      “Why the sudden interest? You’ve already said you won’t move out there.”

      “I could change my mind.”

      “Why would you?”

      Emily looked into her coffee cup. For you, she thought. But if she were to say that, he’d think it was out of pity. “A change of scenery,” she said softly. “I think we need a change of scenery.”

      Roy made a sound that could have meant anything. He took his cup and plate to the sink, thanked her for the toast. It was only after she heard his office door close behind him that she realized he’d taken the Houston paper with him, and her head livened with a fresh buzz of anxiety. He was bound to see the photo and the article now, she thought, and she closed her eyes. It was happening again just as Roy feared. She could feel it to her core. And this time, when Roy insisted they cut their ties to Tucker, he would mean it.

      2

      LISSA PULLED HER pickup in behind her dad’s truck and killed the engine, but she didn’t get out right away. Instead, she distracted herself, looking along the sidewalk in front of her parents’ house where the sharp morning light planked an angular path across the generously proportioned front porch to the door. How many times did she and Tucker paint that porch, all the balusters and assorted gingerbread trim? Tucker had resented every minute, but Lissa hadn’t minded. She loved the house her great-great-grandfather, Hiram Winter, built. It was one of several of his designs in the neighborhood, a Queen Anne. He had favored the Queen Anne and Georgian styles. Deep porches, cornices, pilasters, colonnaded verandas and gingerbread were architectural details that Lissa loved, too. The classically fashioned bungalow she and Evan recently finished building on acreage west of town, in a newish subdivision, was a compromise. They were in the process of completing Lissa’s art studio and a gazebo, too, in a style to match the house.

      She gave the front porch another look. The newspaper was gone, which meant her parents had been up long enough to retrieve it. It would be lying open on the kitchen table, folded to show the dead woman’s photo, and her mom and dad would be sitting over it in a worried stew of complicated silence, suffering the same nasty jolt of déjà vu as Lissa. It was inevitable given the eerie similarities between Miranda’s and Jessica Sweet’s deaths. According to the news report Lissa heard earlier, Jessica’s car was found abandoned in the same strip shopping center where Miranda’s car was found, and now Jessica’s body had turned up in the same location, a mere matter of yards from where Tucker discovered Miranda’s body a year ago. The manner of death was the same, too. Both women appeared to have been strangled. While the report hadn’t mentioned Tucker’s name in connection to Miranda’s case, which remained unsolved, Lissa thought it was only a matter of time.

      She looked out at her parents’ house. She didn’t need to see them to know they were as panicked by the news as she was. What could she say to them, anyway? It will be fine? She couldn’t offer that kind of reassurance, not now. Maybe later. Maybe if she gave it a little more time Tucker would show up. She started the truck.

      “Hey!”

      Lissa froze, as if she could pretend she hadn’t heard her dad’s shout, hadn’t caught sight of him from the corner of her eye, crabbing his way down the front steps. She looked through the windshield at her dad’s pickup, at the license plate that had Disabled Vet printed across the top. He would allow the tag that labeled him a cripple, but if anyone were to suggest the use of a cane, he’d growl like an injured bear.

      He met her at the gate, swinging it open for her. “Guess you came looking for your brother and thought you’d just skip on by if he wasn’t here.”

      “No, Daddy, I was coming in.”

      “The hell you were.”

      “You look like hell,” she said. Up close, she could see his face was sweaty and pale under his iron-gray buzz cut. His leg was bothering him again, or she should say the lack of his leg. The pain was worse, Lissa guessed. Ordinarily, he was never bothered by it. In fact, people who knew him often forgot he was missing a limb. According to her mother, though, the ill effects of her dad’s amputation, the aching and tenderness, had resurfaced recently. Probably the result of stress, Lissa thought. He wasn’t handling retirement very well, and there was Tucker, always Tucker. Lissa loved him—they all loved him—but the joke, the painful family joke, was that he could drive God to drink.

      She followed her dad into his office. When she and Tucker were young, her dad kept it locked because of his gun collection. Of course, the precaution only heightened their curiosity; they had looked for ways to be in here, to handle the weapons, and their wish was granted. Over their mother’s protests, Daddy schooled them—the same as their mom—in their use. He taught them to hunt and claimed Lissa had a dead eye.

      She sat in a club chair across from him now, and she was wary. She couldn’t quite sort out his mood. She asked if he was okay.

      No answer. There was only the sound of his breath, the creak of the leather as he shifted his weight in the tall wingback desk chair.

      Dropping her glance, she saw the morning newspaper folded on the desk’s corner, the photo of Jessica Sweet staring out. It looked as if it had been taken from a high school yearbook of roughly the same vintage as Tucker’s. Lissa thought she had read somewhere they were the same age, thirty-four, and it worried her. It made it seem more likely Tucker might have known her. She started to say something, to make some comment, or offer the customary reassurance, but then she saw the ledger—the