Useless Bay(37)

Henry’s logical explanation didn’t quite describe the gnashing sound that was getting louder with each wave. The growling of Stay and Good girl that I heard in my ears was like a cacophonous symphony. The troll was coming. Tonight.

“You think I don’t know that? All I know is that Liston’s body was never found. And that I hear the troll only when something bad is going to happen. I heard it the night before your stepmother was killed. I want to know why. What do you remember about Joyce this weekend?”

“Joyce didn’t kill Lyudmila, if that’s what you’re asking. She’s been helping Dad with all the details.”

“I know she gave you those scars.”

Henry, startled, covered his hands.

“Who told you?”

“Hannah.”

“How much did she tell you?”

“Everything . . . Look, Henry, we don’t have time for guilt. Indulge me. The tide is rising. If I’m right, something bad is going down tonight. Will you please pull up your laptop and search ‘Hal Liston murder’? I think Joyce’s role may have been more insidious than we think.”

Henry didn’t seem happy about it. He picked at the scar in the valley between his thumb and forefinger.

But the troll was a powerful incentive, and it sounded as though he were right outside, rattling the foundation. I was right on the water. I was spooked. So Henry played along. He pulled up his laptop and started to search. He made his way through story after salacious story of Hal Liston’s murder, each told from a different angle.

At first, he was interested in Liston himself, an Iraq vet who seemed to do better with animals than with people. At least, that was the way the press described him.

Then the first picture of Joyce appeared, and Henry leaned forward in his desk chair. It showed her in the courtroom. She was blond then, her hair pulled back but not too severely. She was quoted about her new boyfriend, another Iraq vet, Gerrald Blankenship, and how he had been agitated the morning she phoned the police. Gerrald and Hal had never gotten along, she said. They were both too volatile. She suspected each had PTSD.

As he read on, Henry picked at the scar until that callus flipped right off and a trickle of blood ran down his hand. “I’d forgotten she ever looked like that,” he said. Joyce was a brunette now, and in the newspaper picture she was wearing a gray suit with a white blouse. But I didn’t think he was looking at the suit. I think he was looking at the frowsy, shoulder-length, universal mom haircut.

He clicked on a link to the next article, which showed a picture of Gerrald Blankenship in the courtroom, in the middle of demonstrating how he had shot Hal Liston in the neck.

Henry stared at the picture for a long time. Gradually, I realized he wasn’t watching the maneuver itself but the onlookers in the courtroom. There, in the background, was Joyce Liston, with an oh-so-subtle smirk on her face.

In that instant, I no longer guessed, I knew. I knew she may have called the police on Blankenship, but she’d called them too late. She’d given Blankenship time to shoot her ex.

“Goddamn!” Henry said. “Do you think she trained dogs herself?”

“Probably,” I said.

“We know she trained preschoolers . . . I can’t believe I did that. To my own mom.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. He was tearing up, but he didn’t want me to see. “And I never even reached out later, when I was old enough to know what I’d done. I was so ashamed. And clearly she was ashamed of me, too.”

I rubbed his shoulders. “It’s okay,” I said. I thought about my conversation with Hannah, about Kwan Yin, the goddess of forgiveness and compassion, and the role it played in her and her wai po’s lives. Hannah didn’t exactly say that she talked to Henry’s mom every day, but I knew they were in touch. Henry thought his mom had deserted him. I wondered now if that were true. Hannah and Henry’s mother, Ellen, had been best friends since college. It seemed to me that if you fired one (Ellen), you fired the other (Hannah). Why else would Hannah be around, if not to keep an eye on the kids, since Ellen couldn’t?

I didn’t know anything about the divorce, but I did know that the money was all Mr. Shepherd’s, so the lawyers would have been his, too. If he had thought his wife was abusive, I could understand why he wouldn’t want to incarcerate her for appearance’s sake. He had a business to run after all. But I bet he got a mean restraining order.

“Henry, she knew. Your mom knew you’d been manipulated. I think it’s time to stop blaming yourself and tell the truth about Joyce.”

And then his arms were around me and they were grabbing my waist and they didn’t let go.

He stood up and reached a hand to my neck and pulled me down to him. At first, the kissing was tentative, but then it wasn’t. All I could feel was need. He smelled like misty mornings and calm days on easy waters—even though his life had been anything but, that’s what everyone assumed about the Shepherds. He had everything; all I had I shared with four brothers. The only thing I had ever called my own I had just buried at the edge of the bluff.

Even though I’d thought about this moment, waited for it, maybe even dreamed about it, I pulled away.

Maybe this kiss was displaced—because he was swamped with feelings he didn’t understand, and I was handy.

I didn’t want to be that girl.