Tell Me No Lies (12 page)

Dad was enjoying this far too much. If Jake had spent a less
exhilarating day off, he might have energy left to take umbrage at his father’s
ruthless teasing. But then his father so rarely had the opportunity or
ammunition to poke fun at his fine, upright son, Jake could hardly begrudge the
man his moment. And he’d been caught anyway, fair and square. Which was his
father’s point. No use trying to keep secrets in a town this size, they always
came out anyway and it was best to take the lumps up front.

Jake
did
have secrets, but this couldn’t be one of
them.

“Some things can’t be rushed, Dad. I waited until the timing
was perfect before I made my move. She never saw it coming either. I swept her
off her feet. And for the record, everyone,” he turned to catch them all in a
stern glare, “she was totally worth the wait. Any questions?”

Silence. But when he turned back to his father, somebody
wolf-whistled and somebody else said, “Wooooo!”

Next they’ll be singing “Jake and Tess, sittin’ in a
tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G
”.

He thought about that tree. It could work. He’d need at
least two hundred feet of rope and some solid attachment points. Maybe a buddy
to help rig the suspension. Maybe Seth’s brother Drew, who’d demonstrated
rigging a few times at the club Jake went to in the city. Tess was pretty
strong and flexible, which meant he had a multitude of poses to choose from. He
wondered if he could convince her an anal hook was a good idea and something
she needed to try.

Happy thoughts like these carried him through the morning,
through the worst of the teasing. His dad took off after an hour or so, having
apparently exhausted his store of affectionately snarky comments.

At lunchtime, Jake tried Tess’ cell phone but it went to
voicemail. Thirty minutes later, more voicemail. He made himself wait an hour
to try again, his concern making him so edgy in the meantime he could barely
concentrate on editing the piece about the township’s recent special council
meeting on sewage.

She answered this time, but he’d barely greeted her before
she interrupted him. “Can I call you back? I’m really sorry, but I’m at my
dad’s and I can’t talk right now.”

She was at her dad’s? The cat must be well and truly out of
the bag. “No apologies necessary, kitten. Call me when you get a chance.”

“I will. I will.” Then she whispered, “You wanna come over
tonight? I have furniture now. We can talk.”

God, she was cute. And now he was hard. “I was always
planning to come over tonight.”

“Um. Okay. Thank you.”

“No, thank
you
.”

Around three-thirty, Mikey Moore ambled into the newspaper
office, bypassing the receptionist and ignoring the startled glance from the
layout guy. He made his lumbering, teenage way over to Jake’s glass-walled
enclosure and stood in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest.

He looked more grumpy than belligerent. Still, Jake pushed
back from his desk, freeing up some space in case he needed to defend himself.
“Mike.”

“Jake.” He pronounced the name as though it pained him.

Jake raised his hands in a pacifying gesture. “Nothing but
the best intentions, man.”

“What?” His face screwed up in obvious confusion.

“Toward your sister?”

“Oh. Pfft. I know that, I’m not here about that. I mean, I
wish I hadn’t had to hear about it, you know. But whatever, you’re old enough
to— I’m not here because of that.”

He closed the door behind him, glaring through the glass at
the curious faces for a second before slumping into the chair opposite Jake.
His expression changed from tough teenage bruiser to miserable kid in the blink
of an eye. “I was gonna ask my dad but Tess is over there. And Lindy and
Allison are too weird about stuff like this. It’s like I never know when I’m
accidentally going to say something that triggers all this memory stuff, and then
they all start crying and looking at old pictures and shit.”

Baffled, Jake nodded and tried to pretend he had some clue
what Mikey was talking about. Fortunately, the boy clarified for him.

“You knew Tess pretty well, even when you guys were little
kids, right?” At Jake’s nod, he continued. “So is it true, what she said? About
how after my mom died, my dad got weird for a while and Tess had to take care
of me?”

“Oh.
Oh
. Is that what she’s talking to your dad about
now? I called and she was over there, and sounded kind of—”

“Yeah. I guess so. I told her she should talk to him. Like,
I said she sounded like
he
does sometimes or whatever. So if she was sad
she should talk to him, because he’d know what to say. So? Is it true?”

“Yeah, she took care of you,” Jake said, his mind more on
Tess than on Mike. “You and Lindy. For like two, three years. Your dad was hit
hard, I guess.”

To his surprise and horror, Mike started to cry. Huge,
obnoxious sobs that everyone outside the office could obviously hear. Jake’s door
wasn’t soundproof, and they could see everything anyway. Bella, the
receptionist, was giving Jake the stinkeye. She clearly thought he’d said or
done something to make Mikey cry.

“Um. Damn. I didn’t mean to upset you, Mikey. I should’ve
been more tactful. Here, have some tissue. That’s—no, no, keep the whole box
over there.” The kid’s first attempt to staunch his tears and blow his nose
went horribly awry. He would probably need a second box of tissues before long.
And Jake would need to clean his desk when Mike left.

“I never knew she changed my diapers and potty-trained me
and all that shit,” Mikey burbled out. “Nobody ever told me
any
of that.
Like, she
cared
and that’s why she was the way she was. Because she
practically raised me when I was a baby. I always thought she was just getting
up in my business because she was a bitch. I’ve been such an asshole. Why
didn’t somebody
tell
me?”

Fuck
. He was going to have to hug the boy, that much
was obvious. Even though he didn’t usually do guy-hugs. He’d spent a lot of
time recently consoling various Moores, but at least with Tess he felt
responsible for bringing on the tears in the first place.

Poor Mikey though. Poor Tess, poor Lindy, poor Stuart Moore,
who was a nice guy but always seemed at least a bit sad even now, a whiff of
wistful, resigned tragedy trailing in his wake.

Jake rounded his desk and stood awkwardly by Mike’s chair,
patting his shoulder, trying to imagine what it would feel like to lose his own
mother or his wife. He thought of Tess, then of losing Tess.

He corrected himself instantly, because logic told him it
was too soon to think that way. But logic could go piss off a bridge, because
Tess was part of his life and the idea of losing her made his throat close up.
His fingers must have clenched too, because Mikey flinched under his grasp.

“Ow, man.”

“Sorry. Sorry. Can I get you something? Some water or
something? I’m really sorry.”

“No, I should go. Coach said I had to be back in an hour.”
Mikey stood, honking into another wad of tissue then tossing it overhand into
the wastebasket. Then, to Jake’s continued astonishment, Mike threw his arms
around him, bear-hugging him so hard he feared for his bones. “Thanks, Jake.”

Jake patted his shoulder, trying to breathe. “No problem,
Mikey. It’s all gonna be okay, you’ll see.”

Backing off, the kid nodded and sniffed again. “Uh, I’ll
still beat the shit out of you if you hurt her, you know.”

Jake accepted that with solemn dignity. “Understood.”

They shook hands. Mikey walked out. Jake stared through the glass
at the newspaper staff, who stared back at him.

After far too many seconds of that, he grabbed his coat and
shrugged it on, leaving his computer to go to sleep by itself for once.

“I’m done for the day,” he announced on his way out the
door.

Chapter Eleven

“You want a cup of coffee? I think I have some pop in the
garage fridge. I oughta stock up before the weekend.”

This weekend, when everyone in the family started arriving
for Allison’s wedding.

Tess shook her head. “No thanks, Dad.”

Stuart Moore was sitting in his recliner like he always did.
Well, not exactly like he always did, because the television was off and the
recliner was fully upright. He looked about as comfortable as she felt, perched
on the edge of the couch with her hands sandwiched between her knees, her heels
bouncing in an anxious rhythm.

“Something to eat?”

“Dad.”

He nodded, pressing his lips together. Stopped trying to
offer her things she didn’t want or need.

For the first time, the impulse to shut him down gave Tess a
pang of something. Not quite guilt, not sorrow, but a sense that she didn’t
just have to yearn for things to be different. There was a chance, however
vague and slippery and distant, that things might
be
different. If she
could only work it out, or her father could, this puzzling mess their
relationship had grown into over the last sixteen or seventeen years.

“You know what, sure. I’ll take a Coke if you have one,” she
said. An olive branch. Admitting at least the possibility of peace. The
possibility that she might finally be willing to accept the things he had to
offer.

He brought her the drink in a glass, with ice and a straw,
as if she were a guest in her own childhood home. It had felt that way for
years, now that she thought about it. She was fine with her father when the
whole family got together, fine with the occasional phone call or email, but
she avoided one-on-one time with him. Dreaded it, really.

When Lindy had started seeing Richard, making the weekend
jaunt to Cranston less and less often, Tess had blown up at her sister more
than once before she’d finally figured out what she was
really
upset
about. She didn’t want to make the trip by herself, couldn’t stand the time
alone with her father, much as she wanted to be home.

And she
did
want to be home. She could admit that to
herself, at least; that this claustrophobic little town was still the place she
wanted to come back to. For whatever reason, she loved it here, from the way
the trees grew together to shade the roads, to the neighborly gossip mill that had
brought her here today.

The town was so deeply ingrained in her, she’d even written
it into her first book. Not that anybody knew. The first book still sat in a
file on her hard drive, because she’d been a big-time journalist and didn’t
want to demote herself to a cozy small-town crime novelist. The second one—in
which her detective struck out and took on the big city—was the one she’d had
published to such great success. The book Jake could tell she’d phoned in.
Because even before yesterday, he’d known her.

“Your brother texted me,” her dad offered, breaking the
silence. “Said I should cut you some slack. He skip class to talk to you?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“I thought the Tarrants pulled that old house down a few
years back. What kinda shape’s it in? You warm enough out there? You need
anything?”

“I think they renovated it instead of tearing it down. It’s
good. Solid. The water heater works fine and everything.” She traced a line in
the condensation on her glass. “So much for surprising everybody with the
news.”

Her father frowned. “If I’d thought that’s why you didn’t
tell anyone, I wouldn’t have been all that put out, you know.”

“Dad, what happened to you after Mom died?” she blurted. No
preamble, because she couldn’t think of one. She’d already used up all her
thoughts for the day, it felt like. And because he seemed to expect it anyway.
She’d called him at his store, asked him to meet her at the house to talk. He
knew she was in town and hadn’t told anyone. She knew they’d all been worried,
talking about her behind her back. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure
out some things were coming to a head. “I really needed you. Lindy and Mikey
did too. And you weren’t there.”

He nodded again, rolling with the abrupt subject change.
“It’s true. I wasn’t there, Tess. And don’t think I haven’t regretted it. I
have, every day. Even at the time. You know, I tried to talk to you about it a
long time ago, before you left for college. You were so angry though. I didn’t
blame you. Still don’t. But I didn’t know how to get through.”

“I remember that.”

Her father had been waiting for her after school one day and
they’d stared one another down at the kitchen table, Tess greeting his attempts
to apologize and explain with the kind of vicious, silent contempt only a
teenage girl can muster. He’d tried again a few days later, and she’d walked
out of the house. She’d ignored the few letters he’d sent her in college and
ignored his questions about whether or not she’d gotten them when she came home
for holidays to see her siblings. “I was awful.”

“No. You were a kid, trying to protect yourself. Protect
your sister and brother. From me. You should never have had to feel that way,
no child should. Like losing both of us, not just your mother. I did that to
you. And if you’re finally ready to hear it now, I can never say I’m sorry
enough, Punkin.”

He hadn’t called her that in over a decade. It should have
sounded silly, but it didn’t. She agreed with him though. He could never say he
was sorry enough. He could never
be
sorry enough. Intellectually, she
knew the grief excused him, and that he had surely paid whatever penance he
owed the universe many times over since then. In her gut, though, she still
carried a hot lump of blame and betrayal that burned when she least expected.

She didn’t want it. She’d never wanted it to begin with, and
she’d long since passed the age at which she could excuse herself for feeling
that way. But the lump remained, nevertheless.

“So why then? What happened?” she asked again.

Her father’s gaze grew distant, troubled. It was a look
she’d seen on him so many times and dismissed as weakness. It still made her
angry, seeing him like that. She had to clamp down on the impulse to lash out
before he finally spoke.

“It was a bad spell. A real bad spell. Started when your
mother was in the hospital that last time, but I’d had them before. After she
died, something happened. Up here.” He pressed his fingertips to his temples.
“Switched off. I felt like there was this fog between me and everybody else.
Dark, bad fog, almost all the time. And when your mother wasn’t there to help
me find my way out of it, like she always had before, I got lost.

“I wanted to get through it, I tried, but it was all I could
do some days to make it to the store and back. Some days I didn’t even manage
that much. Business went to hell. If it weren’t for savings I’d have lost the
whole thing. Money I’d meant for you kids to go to college on. By the time I
woke up again, it was too late.”

He sounded like he’d thought about this for a long time, and
could express it now only because he’d managed to distill those three years to
their essence in his mind, making them into something manageable. He knew this
metaphor like an ancient, bitter rival.

Tess knew it like a new one. His dark fog, her deep well.

Her resentment hit a new low, digging into her as sharply as
the tears had the day before. She begrudged him the possibility of being the
person who might understand her best. It wasn’t fair. She didn’t want it to be
true, but she knew it was. It resonated. They had this awful thing in common.

Suddenly she missed Jake, missed the feeling of comfort
she’d found with him despite all the distinct
discomfort
he’d inflicted
on her. She wanted to find him, wrap herself around him, curl up in a ball at
his feet, just be near him. Nothing else seemed quite as easy or good as her
time with him had been.

But even that comfort, she acknowledged, hadn’t kept her
darkness completely at bay. And now she knew it would be harder the next time,
when she had to face it alone again, get through it alone. What would it be
like to depend on Jake then lose him? How well would she hold up if that
happened? Better to end it before she built up those expectations.

Better to be her own support system. Or she’d end up exactly
like her dad.

“You were exhausted just getting through the day,” she said
slowly. Every word felt like an absolution, when she wasn’t sure she was ready
to give him one. “You felt like nothing would ever make you happy again. And
when something did, even for a while, it was almost a curse because it made it
that much harder when it went away again. Sometimes things seemed to be rolling
along like normal and the next second you felt like you were about to up and
die.”

He studied her face a long time before answering. “That’s
right.”

“No light at the end of the tunnel.”

A nod, thoughtful and wary.

“It still doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t undo anything.
There’s no retroactive pardon.” She knew she sounded like a petulant child, but
she couldn’t help it. Once she’d started saying all this stuff out loud, she
couldn’t turn it off so easily. It all had to come out. The blame-lump, twisted
and hideous, outside her for all to see.

“I know that.” He scowled, the first flash of serious temper
she’d seen from him in years. “I’ve never asked you for one. You’re a grownup,
Tess, you know we can’t change the past. You had to grow up too fast, and I
blame myself for that. That’s mine to live with. But I didn’t even know there
was such a thing as help for it then. And staying so angry about it doesn’t
help anyone now.”

“That’s easy for you to say, Dad. I can’t change how I
feel.” Angry, sad, betrayed. Like she had a pocket of defiance where her trust
should be.

“No. And neither could I back then. You can change what you
do about it going forward though. Wait here a minute.”

He rummaged in his desk for a few seconds then brought her a
business card.

“A psychiatrist?”

“There’s no shame in it. Took me awhile to learn that. Your
brother made me go when he was about thirteen or so. A one-kid intervention.
I’d taken a downward turn for the first time in a long time. Little shit
diagnosed me with clinical depression from off the internet, made an
appointment under my name, and told me he was going to see this doctor with or
without me because if I didn’t get help,
he
was gonna need some himself.
Jesus,” he said, cracking a broad smile. “He sounded so much like your mother,
I started bawling. Thought I might lose him too, like I’d lost you, and for the
same reasons. That was a bad few days.”

“He’s a great kid,” she said, still looking from the card to
her father and trying to connect the two in her mind. They simply didn’t go
together. She couldn’t picture it, her father in a psychiatrist’s office,
talking about his problems. Because Mikey had made him go, strong-armed him
into it. She’d chided Mikey for being thoughtless and carefree at thirteen. Did
she really know him at all? She wondered if she knew
any
of them, gave
any of her family the credit they deserved.

“You’re all great kids. Not my doing, so much. Lindy and
Mikey take after your mother. You got the short end of the stick, favoring me,
but you’ve done pretty damn well anyway. This would help,” he said, leaning
over and tapping the card. “She’s good. Not a quack. You should give it a
whirl.”

“You actually see this person?”

Dr. Sharon Wallace
, the card read.
General
Psychiatry and Grief Counseling
.

“Every six months, whether I need it or not. She tells me I
need it even if I don’t think I do. Won’t keep prescribing me medication if I
don’t go flirt with her for an hour twice a year.”

“You take
medication
?” Now she was in the
Twilight
Zone
. There was no other possible explanation. “Is everybody in this town
on some kind of drug for mental illness?”

“Judging by the number of cars I have to pretend not to
recognize in Doctor Wallace’s parking lot, I’d say a fair percentage. Not all
of them the ones you’d expect either.”

“And you think I need to go too? That’s your answer to all
this?” Was she ready to let him off the hook?

“I don’t know if it’s
my
answer, and I don’t know if
it’ll be yours. But yes, I think you need to go too. There’s a long family
history of this, you know. They didn’t always have the same names for these
things that they do now, but the signs are there if you look for them. You
shouldn’t wait, because it’s not like it’ll get better on its own, and just
talking to somebody isn’t likely to help much either. I should’ve seen it in
you a long time ago too, Punkin. Another thing for me to be sorry about, I
guess.” He shook his head. “Too much of me in you for me to have any kind of
perspective. And we haven’t been what you’d call close these past few years.”

They snorted in unison at the understatement, and their eyes
met in amusement. Sympathy. They each knew what the other was thinking. And
everything wasn’t all right at the moment, but she saw how it
could
be
right if she wanted it to be. She did.

“It also explains a lot about your personality, Teresa, if
you don’t mind my saying so. Really. You should go.”

“Gee, don’t pull your punches, Dad.”

“I’ve been pulling them for way too long. I never should’ve
started.” He nodded firmly and squared his shoulders. “With that in mind,
there’s something else we need to discuss. About you and Jake Hogan…”