Safe Keeping. Barbara Taylor Sissel

are you doing with that?” she asked.

      “Not the right question,” her dad answered.

      “So, what is?”

      “Oh, I think you know.”

      They sat, eyes locked, while silence rose, like a rigid wall. Lissa’s dad, the former decorated United States Army drill sergeant, said a guilty man, a soldier in her dad’s case, who had something to hide, couldn’t handle the silence. Pretty soon, he’d break down, say whatever came into his mind just to fill the void. Eventually, he’d hang himself. Her dad was waiting for that now, for Lissa to hang herself.

      She set her teeth together.

      “I’ve been going over the numbers,” he said finally. “You and Evan have been bullshitting me. We’re not in good shape the way you said. In fact, this is looking like the worst year we’ve had in the past five. You want to tell me why you lied?”

      “About the numbers?” When had he gotten the ledger? Lissa tried to put it together even as she said, “I don’t know what you mean.”

      “Come on, Lissa!” Her dad smacked the desktop with the flat of his hand. “I’m retired, not senile.”

      “I understand that, Dad, but I assumed that since you retired and turned over control of the company to me, and to Evan, that meant you trusted us to run the place.”

      “I built that goddamn business from nothing, worked it thirty years. You can’t push me out.”

      “Oh, Daddy, we’re not trying to!” Lissa was nonplussed at the emotion in his voice, the way it slipped and caught.

      He held her gaze, and she saw that his eyes were dark with anguish and, amazingly, filmed with tears. In her entire life, she had never known him to cry; he counted a man’s tears as weakness. It alarmed her; it hurt her heart. He could be gruff, even hard; he might take your head off if you made a foolish mistake. But the very same man had spent hours building her the exact replica of a dollhouse from an illustration in a book she’d fallen in love with, and she could still recall the shapes of the calluses that spanned his palm from all the times he’d taken her hand when he’d walked her to school. He’d taught her to drive and never once raised his voice, not even when she’d driven them into a ditch and he’d had to call a tow truck to get them out again.

      “Look,” she said quickly, “maybe we did overstate a bit. It’s been tough the past several months, you know that, what with the economy, and then ever since—” She stopped before she could say Tucker’s name, say how badly business had been affected by last year’s notoriety, but her dad knew what was in her mind.

      He inclined his head in the direction of the Houston Chronicle and said, “Yeah, well, it looks like the shit’s about to hit the fan again.”

      “You don’t know that, Dad.”

      A silence fell.

      Her father broke it. “Your mother tried to call the cops to report him missing this morning. She would have, if I hadn’t stopped her.”

      “She wants to find him, that’s all.”

      He shook his head. “She’s losing it.”

      Lissa didn’t ask what he meant, whether he thought it was her mother’s faith or her mind that was going. He looked at the newspaper, but she looked at him. She thought he was the one who was losing it. He looked so distraught. But he’d caused this, hadn’t he? He’d put himself in this position.

      As if he felt her gaze, her father looked at her and said, “What?” in that tone he used when he meant to prick a nerve.

      “Momma said you told Tucker to get out and not come back.”

      “So?”

      “So, you got what you wanted.”

      “He called me, his own father, a fucking bastard and said he was a grown man and could take care of himself, which I’d like to see—just once.”

      “Well, he could, if he had a job, if he had a paycheck. You cut him out of the business, Daddy! You basically disowned him. What was he supposed to do, fall all over you with kisses, his heartfelt thanks?”

      “You know he blew another meeting with Carl Pederson.”

      She nodded. She and Evan were as irked at Tucker as her dad, as Carl himself, was. It wasn’t easy to find a good cabinet man.

      “If it was anyone else, screwing up as consistently as your brother has, I’d have fired them a long time ago,” her dad said. “Even you and Evan would have. You know I’m right.”

      Lissa picked at her thumbnail. He wanted her to say he was justified in cutting Tucker from the business. And maybe he was. “Tucker is your son, not just some employee,” she said.

      “I’ve given him every chance, bent over backward. Like I said to your mother this morning, the boy needs to grow up....”

      And if that means he has to hit the bottom... Her dad went on.

      Lissa tuned him out. Some things weren’t worth fighting over.

      “Where’s Mom?” Lissa waited to ask until her dad was quiet.

      “Upstairs. She’s pissed because I won’t go to the lake and see about finishing the house.”

      “What’s going on with that, Dad? You always said after you retired, you were going to build that house and fish until you died.”

      “I’ve got no appetite for it anymore,” he said, and his voice was raw. “You get a crew out there, pull the frame down, use the material somewhere else. Tell Evan—”

      He stopped, but Lissa kept his gaze while a hundred thoughts crowded her mind. She could offer him comfort, but she didn’t know how he’d take it. He’d never needed her comfort before.

      He brushed his hand over his face, and the breath he took in was huge and ragged. “Go on, little girl, and check on your momma, will you? I’m worried about her.”

      “Daddy?” Lissa felt a fresh jolt of alarm. She could see his eyes were filmed with tears again. Her own throat constricted.

      He waved her off. “Just let me be now.”

      “Tucker will come home soon. It’ll be fine, you’ll see.”

      “Sure,” he said. “It always is, isn’t it?”

      She eyed him a moment longer, then left, pulling the door closed behind her. When she heard the click of the lock, she looked back, and the thought came that he shouldn’t be alone now, not with all those guns, and it chilled her momentarily. She thought of asking him to let her back in, but he’d only refuse, if he answered her at all.

      Her head throbbed with every step as she climbed to the second floor. She had wakened with another brutal headache this morning that had only gotten worse. She’d had a series of them recently. They had to be sinus related, she thought.

      “Mom?” she called, reaching the upstairs hallway.

      “Back here,” she answered.

      Lissa went toward the sound of her mother’s voice and found her sitting on a footstool in the linen closet. Her mother looked up. “Honey, what’s wrong? You’re so pale.”

      “Headache,” Lissa said. “I think it’s sinus. I took some Advil, but it’s not helping.”

      “Dr. White gave me something good for that last time I went to see him.” Her mother went into the bathroom next to the linen closet and returned with a glass of water and a tablet. “It works, and it won’t make you sleepy.”

      Lissa took the pill and a swallow of water.

      “He said to remind you that you’re overdue for a checkup.”

      “I