The Ninth Step (7 page)

Went to her open bedroom window, held back the billowing organdy drape and when she saw the shadow moving swiftly down the drive, her blood quickened, hammering a staccato tattoo through her veins. That was real, the shadow of a real person; if she had been dreaming before, she wasn’t now. She heard a surreptitious click as if someone latched a car door without actually shutting it; there was a sound of tires cutting through gravel, a bump as they came into contact with the smoother moon-washed asphalt surface of the county road.

She waited, holding the curtain, listening to the motor noise until it faded, until the night wind was burdened with nothing more alarming than the velvet-soft chirr of insects, the peep of tiny tree frogs. Livie turned from the window. She switched on her bedside lamp, padded barefoot into the front hall and checked the door. Closed and locked exactly as she’d left it. Of course she had dreamed it. Probably she’d dreamed the moving shadow, too, and the sounds. Everything. In the kitchen, she drank water from her cupped hands, patted her face with her damp palms. The window over the sink captured her ghostly reflection and that of the clock above the oven behind her that read two-forty-six. She pressed her fingertips to her eyes.

On her way back to bed, she checked her laptop, but there were no messages. She thought she should be relieved, but she wasn’t.

#

She told Charlie about Cotton’s email the next morning when he came for coffee and she was sorry to hear herself, the worry in her voice. There was work to do. They didn’t have time for her personal issues, but she couldn’t seem to keep herself contained. She watched Charlie as she spoke, repeating what Cotton had written to her, how she’d worded her reply, and when she was finished, she waited for Charlie to say she’d done the right thing. She needed his reassurance, but he only swallowed the last of his coffee and straightened from where he’d been leaning against the kitchen counter.

He went to the sink. “You get a chance to look at those blueprints for that lake house up at Sam Rayburn?” The water came on. He spoke over the sound. “I’m thinking if we don’t do something different with the grade, we’re going to run into big problems with the drainage.”

“I have some ideas.” She waited one perplexed heartbeat, then two, but couldn’t stop herself from asking: “Did you hear me? About Cotton?”

Charlie faced her, drying his hands. “Usually, if you want somebody to go away, the best thing to do is ignore them.”

“You think I shouldn’t have answered him?”

“I think if he was any kind of a man, he would have come to you and explained himself long ago.” Charlie draped the towel over the oven door handle. “But maybe he’s ready to do his talking now.”

“If he is, he needs to talk to his mother. She called me a liar when I showed her his letter. She said I wrote it, an apology to myself.”

“You can’t make up for what Cotton did, Livie. Can’t give him back to her and that’s what she wants.”

“I know.”

“Look, if you change your mind and decide to see him, do it in a public place, okay? Or do it here and tell me beforehand so I can keep an eye on you.” Charlie paused beside the screen door and waited for her to acquiesce.

Livie thought of saying she’d already seen Cotton, last night in a vision, but she’d gone far enough. Charlie would think she’d lost her mind. It almost made her laugh to imagine the look on his face.

He lowered his brow at her, ready to insist, but when the telephone rang, he was distracted. “It’s your brother-in-law,” he said reading the Caller ID.

Livie frowned. “Why is he calling?”

Charlie shrugged, handed over the receiver, mouthed he’d see her later and she waved, wishing she were going with him, that they’d already left.

Tim wasted no time on pleasantries. He wanted to set the record straight, he said. He didn’t want Livie thinking he was staying at La Colombe d’Or, spending wads of cash, living the high life. He sounded worn out, miserable.

“Why would Kat lie?” Livie wondered.

“I was there, but only for one night. I was pissed. I just thought I deserved-- I don’t know, luxury, peace and quiet. Something--”

“Oh--”

“I’m bunking in with one of my partners now, sharing a bathroom with thirteen-year-old twin girls. It’s no picnic, let me tell you.”

Livie didn’t say anything.

“Look, leaving my home wasn’t something I wanted to do, but I don’t know how else to get through to Kat. Goddamn Prada tennis shoes! For a seven-year-old. C’mon. You’re a business woman. How would you like working your ass off to foot that bill?”

“I don’t want to be in the middle of this, Tim.” Livie felt off-balance. She might agree with him; she might even sympathize, but to say so would feel disloyal to Kat.

“I know, I’m the bad guy, the tightwad.”

Livie winced.

“It’s not like they’re starving. They aren’t running around half naked. Does it look to you as if they’re suffering?”

“It’s not my place to judge.”

“But you do; you think I’m hard on Kat. She has everything, you know.”

Except her freedom, Livie thought. Her independence.

Seconds of silence fell, tiny ticks of time.

Tim said, “You don’t know her as well as you think.”

“What do you mean?” Livie asked in spite of herself, in spite of her sense that Tim was right, she didn’t know Kat. Not as well as she once had and it hurt to be reminded, the way a bruise hurts when you press it with your finger.

“She doesn’t want to get up at the crack of dawn and stand on her feet for chump change anymore.”

“She earned more than chump change, Tim.” Livie was stung into mounting a defense. “She was Mom’s partner, a co-owner at House of Hair. Neither of them has to work for tips anymore.”

“Yeah, okay, but she can’t earn the kind of money she needs to be happy.”

Livie bit her lip.

“That’s what I give her.”

He was proud that he did this for Kat, Livie heard it in his voice. And it bothered her that he knew Kat’s greatest vulnerability, that he would use her craving for security to manipulate her. But maybe not, maybe what Tim did for Kat was out of love. Maybe all he wanted was for Kat to feel safe.

Or maybe love was always riddled with need and dependence.

#

Livie stood at the window looking out. Tim had said she didn’t know Kat. So, fine. But he hadn’t been there when they were girls, when she and Kat had formed their club: the Saunders Sisters Secret Service Club, they’d called it. They’d made a rule book out of pink and green construction paper and lined sheets from a Big Chief tablet. And rule number one had been that boys weren’t allowed. Rule number two was that everything they did (What had they done exactly? It had been so long, Livie couldn’t remember.) was a secret between them.

They’d used to confide everything in each other, no matter how stupid or silly or seemingly inconsequential. And they’d told each other stories, Livie did remember that, how they’d made up elaborate stories for each other about what their lives would be like when they were grown up. They’d talked deep in the night or in the wee hours trying to drown with their own voices the lilt of their mother’s seductive laughter, the guttural sounds of her passion, the crescendo of orgasmic shouts. In the morning, when they couldn’t look at her, they had looked at each other.

But Livie didn’t tell Kat her secrets nowadays with the same blind, loose faith that had hallmarked their childhood. She was afraid to. Afraid it wouldn’t be of help to either of them for Kat to know about the red dress and shoes, those nights.
Joe.
All the Joes. Suppose Kat hated her?

#

“Razz is fine,” Nancy said when Livie called to ask. “I’ve been wracking my brain trying to think of a way to repay you.”

“Oh, please, no, that isn’t necessary.” Livie was embarrassed and ashamed when she thought how her initial impulse had been to drive by the scene as if nothing had been amiss. “I’m glad I could help.”

“But he’d be dead if it weren’t for you, if you hadn’t stopped. So many people wouldn’t have.”

“I guess we’ll never know who the driver was.”

“Perhaps that’s for the best.” Nancy said. “People like that ought to be shot.”

#

Livie found her keys and started out the back door, but for some reason she would never know, she stopped, retraced her steps through the house and went out the front door instead. That’s when she saw them: The dozen or so long-stemmed Japanese irises were wrapped in sepia-toned tissue and lying on the porch swing. They were beginning to wilt in the morning heat as if they might have been there a while . . . since sometime in the night.
Irises . . . harbingers of hope . . . the promise of love.

Livie set down her satchel and picked up the flowers. She brought them to her face, then fingering the stems, she hunted for a card, but there wasn’t one and her heart wallowed, even as her glance rose to follow the curve of the road.

Chapter 4

It wasn’t the sort of thing you could say on the phone, he could figure out that much, so he drove there, parked down the street from the Latimer’s house. It was near dusk. Dinnertime. Quitting time. Cotton imagined himself going up on the Latimer’s wide shady porch. He imagined the way he’d knock on their door. Then what? He’d deliver the knockout punch? Hah. More likely he’d be the one laid out.

Are they into vigilante justice. . . .?
Anita’s question played through his mind. He guessed he’d find out, if he went through with this, if he could make himself do it.

Within a half hour or so, he saw an Escalade pull into the driveway and loop around to the back. Where the garage was, Cotton assumed. A man was driving. Wes Latimer? Cotton waited a while longer. Pretty soon he heard a lot of racket coming from the back yard, sounded like lumber getting tossed around. There was the whine of a saw, the pounding of a hammer. He figured some project was getting built. He rested his head against the seat liking the noise.

In another life, he and Wes might be friends. Wes would know Cotton could build damn near anything and that he was always ready to help a buddy out. They’d have had something good going on between them instead of this screwed up mess that had Cotton skulking in a panic. Maybe Anita was right. Maybe turning himself in to the cops was best. He wished to God he knew what to do. He wished he was drunk, then he wouldn’t care.

After a while, he drove away.

But two evenings later, he was back, repeating the same routine. He came a third time and a fourth even though he risked being noticed, being taken for a pervert. It was warm and he kept the window down for the breeze that was laden with the sounds and smells of ordinary life, onions frying, an occasional shout or burst of laughter. And the sounds of construction that were ongoing from the Latimer house. On the fifth evening, as soon as Cotton saw the Escalade turn up the driveway, before he could stop himself, he bailed out of the Mercedes, crossed the street, and followed in the SUV’s wake. Panic fishtailed hard through his chest, tightened the muscles of his calves. What was he planning to do? his brain asked.

Tell them, he answered.

Tell them what?

Something. The truth.

I don’t know. . . .

He wasn’t prepared to see the dog that bounded joyfully toward him. He knew it belonged to the Latimers; he’d seen it before. It was brownish gold, a mixed breed, some variety of lazy foolish hound dog you couldn’t help but like, that just made you smile. He felt the grin, the bump of his humor, start somewhere inside him and it was so out of place and time, he was unnerved by it, he felt almost disabled, and then the girl appeared.

The Girl.

Her.

The vision from his nightmares. The one for whom he had been given a message.

Nicole Latimer. 

Older now, but still very much a child. Cotton got an impression of dark hair, blue t-shirt, shorts, sneakers.

His heart rammed his chest wall.

“Humphrey!” she shouted. “No, don’t jump on him.” She came up to Cotton. “I’m sorry. He never minds.”

“It’s okay,” Cotton said. “I like dogs. His name’s Humphrey?”

“Yeah, but he acts so silly all the time, we mostly call him Doofus.”

Cotton scratched behind Humphrey’s ears. His tail wagged in delirious circles. “I had a dog like him when I was a kid, part Black Lab, part hound. His name was Bogey.”

“Like the actor? Oh, my gosh! Are you kidding? That’s who Humphrey’s named for. He’s like my all-time fave. I bet I’ve seen
Casablanca
twenty times.”

Cotton couldn’t believe she knew who Humphrey Bogart was, and actually, in his dog’s case, Bogey had been for Bogus, but somehow, she seemed so pleased with the coincidence that he  didn’t want to set the story straight.

“Nikki. . . ?”

She turned and in the time it took for Wes Latimer to come down the length of the driveway, Cotton had an impression of height that was tending to thickness in the middle, tan chinos, blue Polo dress shirt, pulled loose and open at the throat, sleeves rolled to the elbow.

He had the impression of a man who was middle-aged and harried, loaded down with obligations, responsibilities, but maybe Cotton put the weight there himself out of guilt, because from his research, he happened to know that in addition to running his own business, Wes Latimer was a single dad, that he’d never remarried.

So, now Cotton was going to tell him, this regular guy and his little girl, what he’d done. He was going to rip the roof right off their lives, peel the loose open friendliness from their faces. Yeah. That’s what he’d come for. What he had to do. Great guy that he was. He wiped his hands down the sides of his jeans. He made himself stand still, made himself wait. It was the least he could do. But god, he was scared, so damned scared.

Nikki said, “The man’s here about the studio, Daddy. He’s already passed the Doofus test.”

Studio?
Cotton looked at her.

Wes introduced himself, giving his name, “Wes Latimer,” going on, “I see you’ve met my daughter, Nikki, and Doofus, the family flake.” He stuck out his hand, and Cotton shook it, feeling perplexed, more than a little dazed.