The Spite House(69)

Eunice, using Lafonda’s shoulder to balance and prop herself, got to her feet.

“Eunice, you can’t be up,” Lafonda said.

“I’m fine.”

“You need to go to the hospital. You might have had a heart attack.”

“I would know if I was dying, you ought to know that.” She turned to Dess. “I do honestly feel that I can guarantee your sister’s secret would be safe. My man is loyal. But it’s not my place to force that decision on you. If you want me to call him, I’ll do it. If not, I won’t, and we’ll think of something else.”

Millie said, “I’ve got a gun under the seat if you’d rather we take this on ourselves. Just a six-shooter, not something built to take out an army, but it’s sufficient for this.”

Dess looked at her with surprise.

“It’s Texas, dear,” Millie said. “Even us old bleeding hearts keep reasonable protection.”

After wiping her eyes and face with her hands and then collecting herself, Dess said, “All right. Let’s go get her. You said you know where he took her?” she said to Eunice.

“The spite house,” Eunice said. “I’m sure of it.”

Dess thought, Is that why Dad isn’t answering? Did that man catch him there? Is he okay?

“We have to get over there,” Dess said.

“I got you,” Millie said. “Lafonda—”

Eunice said, “I’m coming too.” She looked to Lafonda before she could protest. “Maybe he’ll take me in exchange for Stacy. Even if not, this is my mess. I’ve no right to sit it out.”

Lafonda sighed. “We’ll go in my car. Better to have one extra in case someone needs to drive to get help.”

“Let’s go,” Dess said.

Less than a minute into the drive, Millie said, “You can talk about it if you need to.”

A weight slid off of Dess’s shoulders. She looked at her new friend, said, “Thank you,” and told her as much as she could before they arrived at the spite house.





CHAPTER 33



Dess



Dess didn’t have nearly enough time to tell the full story, and there were many details she wouldn’t have shared even if she had the time. Like how vicious the arguments between her mother and father got after Stacy died. How some of her family members seemed to choose sides in the wake of her parents’ separation. How she and her friends drifted apart while she was stuck in the crushing gravity of grief.

Where it started, though, was at the lake on a warm day in spring. For three weeks it had felt closer to mid-June than late April, so her parents decided to go to the water. Later, when their fights would descend into pointless pettiness, they would each blame the other for deciding to go to the lake that day. As if assigning blame could make sense of what happened. Dess was sure that neither of them believed their accusatory volleys. Her father confessed as much to her while they were on the road. As for her mother, she hadn’t spoken to her in a year now.

Their relationship had frayed months before Dess joined her father on the road. Dess struggled to forgive her mother for some of the things she said to her father in anger. She got nastier in their fights over Stacy. “You let her go in the water. You let her get sick. You let this happen.” She knew exactly what she was saying, knew how those words would tear through him. Still, Dess kept enough faith in her mother to believe that she’d only been lashing out. Mom couldn’t believe Dad was responsible for what happened.

Her parents taught Stacy to swim when she was a toddler. The waters in the lake were close to still, and relatively cool, despite the warmer weather. Not brisk enough to be uncomfortable, though. Especially not for Staze, who loved the water and was overjoyed to be swimming so early in the season, even if it would be a few months before their first trip to the coast, which she looked forward to the most. For that Saturday in April, the lake would suffice.

The lakeshore and waters weren’t crowded, to their added delight. Few other families took advantage of the weather that day. Three or four weeks later, there would have been far more competition for space on the beach and in the shallower ends of the water. As it was, there were enough people for all of the parents and older children to keep an eye out for everyone’s youngest without getting into anyone’s way.

The clouds that passed through threatened no rain and seemed to arrive just to provide a short respite from the heat. The humidity was low. The day could not have been more ideal.

It was not until Monday that it became clear something was wrong. Stacy first complained of her head hurting on Sunday night. By the morning she was running a fever and could not keep her breakfast down. Her mother wondered if she’d gotten too much sun on Saturday and hadn’t spent enough time under the canopy they had brought.

Her symptoms alone would have been alarm enough for her parents to get her to the hospital, but she also sounded disquietingly unbothered when she reported her pains. “My head hurts really bad,” she would say, wincing like a light was in her face, but not crying or even sounding urgent. She wasn’t a whiner by nature, but that didn’t explain her stoicism. She was still a kid, and kids couldn’t hide their misery when they were sick. Stacy, though, sounded like she was sleep-talking through a drug-induced dream. At times she seemed not to realize that her parents and sister were there at all.