“Come on. Out with it.”
“Word is, your boy Cole’s in a bind. A bad one. I heard all kinds of things he’s trying, but I don’t know what’s true, so I ain’t repeatin’ nothing. But you better look to your business. People get in money trouble, they do things they might not normally do. Like selling a pumping unit out from under a partner when they need cash.”
Waters nodded slowly, not believing his ears. “I appreciate you stopping, Will.”
“I hope I did the right thing.”
“You did. You take it easy, now.”
“Nope. I never do. I’ll die in the saddle. Only way to go.”
They shook hands again, and the older man got into his truck and backed out of the driveway. Waters climbed into his Land Cruiser and drove slowly up to the house. The unreality of his situation was growing by the minute. The Madam X well was currently down, and due for a workover in two weeks. Cole was in charge of that. If someone like Will Hinson had not stopped out of the blue, Waters might not have known the pumping unit was gone for three weeks or more. Maybe longer, if Cole planned to lie about production runs. A used 320 pumping unit would bring about thirty thousand dollars on the open market. Would Cole betray his trust for thirty thousand dollars? He didn’t want to think so. But…how much trouble was Cole really in?
When he opened the front door of the house, his exhausted mind and body told him to go straight to bed. That wasn’t an option tonight. He walked into the kitchen and hugged Lily, who looked like she would have broken into tears, were not Annelise sitting at the table doing her homework.
“Sit down,” she said. “Supper’s ready.”
He sat, and she brought him a plate of shrimp and pasta that Rose had cooked during the afternoon. He had no appetite, but he made a show of picking at his food. His mind was on Cole and the pumping unit. After serving Annelise, Lily laid her hands on his shoulders and massaged them as Ana told a story about a new music program at school. When Ana finished, Lily got a plate for herself and sat opposite Waters. As she ate, she watched her husband and daughter as though she had never really seen them before. Under the circumstances, it made him uncomfortable.
Waters had a feeling that something about her had changed. It wasn’t her hair, which was the same dark blond it had always been and still fell to her shoulders. She might have on a touch more makeup, but not enough to give him an odd feeling.
“You look different,” he said.
“I ran today. Maybe that’s it.”
“You ran?”
“Mom, that’s cool,” Ana said. “I want to go next time.”
Lily had been a long-distance runner in high school. As a tenth-grader she’d won the state championship in the two-mile run. She had kept up her running well into their marriage, staying almost obsessively in shape. But after the first miscarriage, she couldn’t seem to find the energy to get outside. She gained weight, and that intensified her depression. Today was probably the first time in four years that she had “hit the road,” as she used to call it.
“I’m tired of being fat,” Lily said.
“You’re not fat, Mom.”
“Definitely not,” Waters agreed, though he knew that by Lily’s once rigid standards, she was overweight. She probably weighed a hundred and thirty-five or forty now; in the old days that would have driven her crazy.
“Just three miles,” Lily said. “Seven-minute miles, at that. Embarrassing, but it’s a start. In a week I want to be down to six minutes.”
“Don’t overdo it, babe. You haven’t run in a long time.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “I haven’t done a lot of things for a long time.”
Waters smiled, but he was worried. Changes this sudden could signal deep discord. “Anything else happen at home today?”
Lily shook her head. “Oh, Tom Jackson called a little while ago. The detective. He wants you to call him.”
Waters’s throat constricted. “Did he say what it was about?”
“Rose talked to him. Just the same old thing, I’m sure.” She cut her eyes at Annelise, who was looking at her plate.
Jackson had called a couple of times over the past two weeks to keep Waters abreast of the Buckles prosecution, but that was pretty much on track. This might be something else. Like Eve Sumner’s murder. Tom Jackson worked all homicides for the Natchez Police Department.
“I’d better call Tom before it gets late.”
Lily gave him a soft look. “Why don’t you wait until tomorrow? I don’t want to think about that stuff right now, and I don’t want you to either.”
“What stuff?” asked Annelise, looking up.
“Taxes,” Lily replied, which was their catchall euphemism for anything Ana didn’t need to hear about.
“Oh. Do you know what Fletcher did today? You won’t
Waters tried to clear his mind to listen to the story of a playground standoff, but a hundred thoughts nibbled like fish at the edges of his consciousness. As he tried to hide his anxiety from his daughter, he felt Lily’s foot touch his ankle beneath the table. She had removed her shoe, and was now rubbing his calf with her toe. She never did this kind of thing. He didn’t know how to respond. When Ana finished her story, he got up and rinsed his plate.
“You want to watch some TV together?” he asked Annelise. “I got a new DVD from Amazon yesterday.”
“What is it?”
“
Annelise jumped up, grabbed his arm, and dragged him toward the den. While Waters started the movie, he heard Lily cleaning up the kitchen. Normally, she would now retire to her alcove or go to work on a project around the house: stripping paint, making curtains, whatever. But tonight she came into the den, sat beside him on the sofa, and halfway through the film intertwined her hand in his. Her obvious intention to make good on her promise of the afternoon surprised and worried him. His experience in the Eola was still fresh in his mind, and he didn’t want any flashbacks while he made love to his wife.
As the movie wore on, he felt himself zoning out, his mind on Tom Jackson’s phone call. Lily went upstairs and got Annelise’s pajamas, and Ana changed while they watched the conclusion. When the credits rolled, Waters snapped out of his trance and carried Annelise upstairs, Lily close behind him. They tucked her in beside her stuffed rabbit, Albert, then walked back down, Lily in front. Reversing their usual ritual, she waited at the foot of the stairs, and when he reached the bottom step, she reached out and pulled him to her. He tried not to stiffen, but given the stress he was under, it was all he could do to remain still.
“Hug me like you mean it, John.”
He tightened his arms around her.
“That’s better.”
She pulled him off the step and climbed up onto it herself, putting them eye to eye. Then she kissed him on the mouth. Her lips were closed, but just as he expected her to pull away, she brushed her tongue against his teeth. He froze in surprise. Her tongue pressed insistently until he opened his mouth. She slipped it inside, then took his hand and placed it over her breast.
Moments like these were painfully awkward for him. He still remembered the first time she had come to him after losing the baby. She was sleeping fifteen hours a day, eating nothing. He sensed a fearsome anger buried under her depression, but she held it in, the way a bed-wetting child threatened with a beating holds his urine. Clenching, repressing, paralyzed by fear. Waters had gently broached the subject of adoption and earned himself a white-knuckled dinner without a word. Four months had passed without any sex at all. Yet Lily was not blind to his suffering. One day, without telling him, she dropped Annelise off at her parents’ house for the night. Then she followed the old psychological map she had laid out years ago, the one that relaxed her enough to respond fully. She locked the doors, washed the dishes, paid the household bills, fed the cat, turned off the phones. He almost wept when he saw her standing by the bed removing her gown. The first few minutes went well enough, but at the moment of penetration, Lily snapped back to that ultrasound room, and her body went as rigid as that of a catatonic, her eyes draining tears. Waters got off her as fast as he could and gave her the sedative her doctor had prescribed.
