done she wiped it away with her palm. “I didn’t know him as well as you did. He wasn’t… He didn’t treat me like you did. He didn’t read to me. He wasn’t interested in me. He was out doing whatever he was doing. We had no real relationship.”
“Dale, I know he was a prick, but still, he-”
“If you say that he loved me, I’m going to yank the wheel and crash us.”
Maybe that was what I was going to say. Maybe Collie had loved her and simply hadn’t known how to show it. Maybe he hadn’t given a damn. He could’ve started slipping into the underneath years before he went mad dog. I seemed to remember him being around, taking her out for ice cream, buying her presents, hugging her and teasing her the way older brothers do. Maybe she just didn’t remember, or maybe I was making too much of it.
“I wasn’t going to say that,” I said.
“Ask me what you really want to know.”
“I’m not sure what I want to know.”
“Yes, you are. You want to know if he replaced you at all. If in the last five years I visited him, wrote to him, phoned him. If I cared about him more than I cared about you.” From second to second, emotions played havoc inside her, maybe the way they did inside all of us Rands. She moved from anger and insecurity to a need for proving herself self-reliant. “The answer is no, Terry. You were both gone. I felt the same way about you both. I didn’t think about either of you much. I couldn’t. You each deserted the family. I cared more about Gramp, right? At least he was there.”
It hurt hearing the truth. This was why Rands didn’t talk. Despite our stoniness, we were a sensitive, fickle bunch. I kept glancing at her. I kept wondering if there was any way to fix our relationship and if I even had the mettle to make the effort.
I said, “Dale, if you’re ever in trouble, you don’t have to face it alone.”
She frowned at me, cocked her head like she hadn’t heard right. “What?”
“You can talk to me. Really. I want you to.”
It was the same offer that Mal had made to me.
“Terry, since you’ve been back we’ve hardly had what you might call a deep conversation.”
“I’m trying to fix that right now. You can still talk to me. You’re not alone. I’ll help you. Whatever it is, I’ll help you, if you’re ever in trouble.”
Her expression shifted a few more times, from perplexity to annoyance to something else I couldn’t place. “Are you talking about… pregnancy?”
“Ah, no, not specifically, I mean-”
“Oh, God.” She threw up her hands. Her nails snapped against the dome light, and JFK perked up like he’d heard a gunshot. “Is this your way of saying that you’ll, what, help me get an abortion?”
“No, no, not exactly.”
“Not exactly?”
I couldn’t find the right words. I couldn’t hold on to any particular thread of discussion. A pulse beat painfully in my belly. “I just mean… well, anything. Any problems. Anything you need help with. Ever. Whether it’s with Butch or anyone else.”
“You’re fixated on Butch.”
“I’m not fixated on Butch.”
The rain came down harder now and splashed inside, but I liked the air and she must’ve too, because we left our windows open a crack.
“Do you want me to take you home or drop you off at your friend’s? Or somewhere else?”
My sister gave me a long hard look. I let her do it. It went on for a while. I knew she didn’t trust me. There was no way that she could after what I’d done. But she was trying to find common ground. She was at least willing to make an effort to forgive me.
She abruptly relaxed and asked, “Are you going back out west?”
I hadn’t thought about it much. Now I did. “No.”
“You’re not leaving again?”
“No.”
A scoffing sound eased up her throat. “Why?”
I thought of something we’d discussed at the lake. “This time I’m staying the course.”
She laughed as if I’d just done something cute, reached out, and pressed her hand to my cheek. “My big brother, trying to make up for lost time. Okay. Okay, thanks. It’s nice to know you’ll be around in case I ever need you.”
“I have a question,” I said.
“Of course you do.”
“Why was it you who phoned me at the ranch?”
“No one else wanted to do it. They were all afraid you’d be mad at them, or worse, that you wouldn’t come home.”
“Why didn’t you tell me it was you?”
“I wanted to see if you’d know.”
I tried to read her eyes. I sensed that she was a lot more worldly than she was letting on, but that didn’t have to mean a damn thing.
She said, “You weren’t just killing time. It wasn’t just Collie. It had something to do with Kimmy too, didn’t it? It had to. Why you left?”
“Yeah. She had a miscarriage.”
Dale turned on me, waited a three count, then got up close. She jabbed me in the chest with a finger. It hurt.
“You… you… are a serious asshole! That just means she needed you even more!”
“I know.”
“You abandoned her. You… you-”
“I know.”
“But
Her voice hit that same plaintive whine that mine had reached when I’d asked my brother the same question. I thought I might have an answer, but it wasn’t a good one. And it might not even be the whole truth, but there didn’t seem to be any great truth to it anyway. I missed a child that had never taken a breath. I saw her as clearly now as I had then, laid out and bleeding as if she’d been struck by a car because we hadn’t been watching closely enough. I blamed myself, and I suppose I somehow blamed Kimmy as well. The tragedy had seemed greater in her presence. Her sobs had served to remind me that I couldn’t protect my girls. My failures were forever on display. I was proven a liar. My love for her overwhelmed me until I thought I’d choke. I’d always believed I wanted to die in her arms, and holding her to me I was certain I would. But it wasn’t possible to explain that to anyone.
Dale said, “And now you’re telling me I can trust you?”
“You probably won’t, not for a while. But yes, Dale, you can trust me.”
She grunted like she didn’t believe a word I might ever say. I wouldn’t believe me either. I thought the ride might help to calm things down. I was wrong again. I took us out to Ocean Parkway. She didn’t argue and say she was busy. She put her feet up on the dash the way that Kimmy used to do, and she let me open up the throttle and kick it up to triple digits in the rain. I knew she was a speed demon like Butch was. I could imagine her urging him on faster as he tore past the sand-strewn beach roads. It was a rite of passage. JFK hung his head out the win19;dow, and the rain spattered his thick old face and he panted into the wind. Occasionally he let out a bark. I wanted to do the same. We crossed the causeway and watched the bay thrash below us. It was primal and calming. It spoke to something inside both of us. I could see her readying herself to say something more. I wondered if she was going to admit to working with Butch or being closer with Danny Thompson’s crew than I ever hoped she’d be. I spun through the traffic circle at the far end and drove back across the bridge much slower and more composed. Dale bummed another cigarette off me. She used a chamois cloth on the floor in back to wipe JFK’s fur down. I waited for her to spill. I headed toward home and she turned her head twice in quick succession like she wanted to get a good look at me, maybe check my eyes, before saying the next thing she had to say.
“Okay, so tell me,” I said.
She twisted a lock of her hair and drew it over her ear. “There is something, I think. I’m not sure.”
