Thick as Thieves(48)

“I don’t know that many anyway. Make it simple.”

She tugged her lower lip through her teeth. “It sounds so banal, but I came back to Penton to get closure. This house represents sorrow and heartache to me. If it comes down—”

“It won’t fix a damn thing. I don’t mean to interrupt, but, look, the house is a house. It’s made of destructible materials. All the shit that took place in it when you were a kid will be with you for the rest of your life. It’s not inside the house, it’s inside you. Curse it, accept it, and then turn your back on it.”

“I can do that with the shit I know,” she said. “It’s what I don’t know that plagues me.”

All of a sudden he was wary of where this might be going. He backed away from her and leaned against the newel post. “What you ‘don’t know’?”

“I moved back here needing answers. But not only have they eluded me, the longer I’m here, the more questions I have, the more gaps I see that need filling.”

She folded in on herself as she sat down on the second step of the staircase. She didn’t say anything for a time, but rubbed her thumb across her other palm, studying the faint network of lines as though trying to gain insight from their intersections.

“I still feel like that ten-year-old girl caught up in a crisis. The grown-ups are speaking in euphemisms to shield me from harsh realities. I’ve been given the outline, but not the whole story. I feel that the parts I’m missing are the ones I should know.” She looked up at him and shook her head. “Never mind. I don’t expect you to understand.”

On the contrary, he understood perfectly, and his conscience was killing him over it. He was missing elements of that night himself, but those he had intimate knowledge of, he had intentionally kept from her. How much longer could he sustain that secrecy? Every day she was here upped the odds that she would discover the active role young Ledge Burnet had played in the course her life had taken.

Better to drive her away now, when she disliked and distrusted him only a little, and before Rusty got wind of her interest in the events of that night.

Salving his conscience by telling himself that his lying was for her own good, he lied again. “You’re right. I don’t understand. You came here to get closure. Didn’t work. You’re miserable. Why not call it quits and leave?”

“You sound like Lisa.”

“God help me, but she has a point. Have you asked her about those gaps that bother you?”

“Of course, but Dad’s disappearance affected us differently. It changed her life profoundly, yes. But she was grown, mentally and emotionally, already independent of him. Anytime I bring up my ambiguity, she tells me I should do as she did. Put it all behind me and move on.”

“I agree with that advice. It can’t be healthy, hanging around a place that pains you. Just go.”

“With nothing resolved?” She shook her head. “Relocating wouldn’t achieve anything. You said so yourself. The uncertainties that devil me aren’t within the house, they’re—”

“Forget what I said. It was horseshit. What do I know? I’m no shrink. But maybe that’s what you need.”

“I’ve had therapy. Lisa couldn’t afford it until after she married Wallace. He was a godsend in so many ways. He and Lisa formed a happy twosome. I was a—”

“Fifth wheel?”

“They did nothing to make me feel that way. But their togetherness compounded my feelings of what the therapist called ‘displacement.’”

“Was the counseling helpful?”

“Some. But it’s obvious it didn’t rid me of all my issues. I won’t be rid of them until I get some answers.”

Fuck. Back to answers. Answers to questions that, if asked, would put her in danger from Rusty.

“Arden, listen, I’ll do whatever you want me to. I’ll either take this place apart or redo it. But I need to get going on it, because I’ve got other jobs waiting. Decide tonight what you want me to do, and then clear out tomorrow.”

“Clear out?”

“The earlier the better.”

“Where am I going?”

“Houston? Dallas? How the hell should I know? Choose a place.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

He squared his stance. “Whatever I do to the house, you can’t be here while I’m doing it. Especially if I tear it down.”

“I’ll wait until the last minute to move out.”

“It’ll be a mess.”

“It’s already a mess.”

“Yes, but nothing like it will be. You have to leave.”

“If I leave, people will start wondering—”

“They’re going to wonder no matter what. Besides, you won’t know what they’re wondering, because you’ll be gone.”

“You never indicated that I would have to vacate.”

“Yes, I did.”

“No you didn’t. Not once.” She came to her feet, bringing them almost eye level to each other. “This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

“Then that was an oversight on my part. Sorry. But I’m telling you now. You can’t stay. It’s my work site, I make the rules.”