Wrapped in Rain(88)

I cussed, shook my head, and pointed up. He untied the weights and we swam to the surface.

I was beginning to shiver, but Mutt looked warm as toast. I pulled up on the flat rock where we had played as kids, gasped for air, and looked disbelievingly at his twisted face. It looked like some sick doctor had sewn his lips on sideways. Beneath his clothes, he was wearing a wet suit. He took the hose out of his mouth and looked at me like I had just asked him to bring me a newspaper on his way back from the store.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" Mutt jumped, surprised at my screaming, and looked over his shoulders. I backhanded him firmly across the face. "I said, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"

Mutt licked his cracked and chapped lips and pointed down through the water. "Looking for a nickel."

"ARE YOU NUTS? ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?"

Mutt scratched the back of his neck, unzipped the top of his wet suit, and nodded. "Yes."

"You've got to be kidding me."

"No." Mutt shook his head. "Gibby said I'm clinically-"

I fell back against the rock. "That's not what I meant." Mutt sat motionless, but his eyes darted about the quarry. He was trying to make sense of me and waiting for the next blow. I dried my face and tried to ask a question he could answer. I knelt next to him and held his cheek firmly but softly in the palm of my hand. "Mutt, what were you doing before I dove in the water?"



His eyes darted from corner to corner while his head remained still. "I was swimming around the bottom, tied to a hundred and forty pounds of weights and breathing through that hose while sifting the sand with this flour sifter."

"Okay." I paused. "But what was going on in your head? Why had you gone to all this trouble?"

"I was trying to find a nickel I lost here."

"When did you lose it?"

Mutt scratched his head. "The day we sunk the jolly Roger."

"And you thought you could find it down there?"

Mutt looked around as if the answer was obvious and I was the crazy one. "Um ... yes. See, the day we sunk the Jolly Roger, I had a buffalo nickel in my pocket. And I think it must have come out down there because I've looked everyplace else." He pointed beneath the surface. "It was down there somewhere."

I reached in my pocket and pulled out a quarter. "If you need money, all you've got to do is say so."

Mutt shook his head. "No, I was looking for a particular one."

"Why is that particular nickel so all-fired important to you?"

"Because"-Mutt looked at me like it all made perfect sense-"if I found it, if I could put it back in my pocket, then maybe that day never ended. Maybe I could go back there and start again. Pick up where I left off. Maybe ..."

Katie stood on the ledge above us, her arm wrapped around Jase. Mutt looked at me with no inkling that he had just taken ten years off my life and brought me two seconds from coronary arrest. I climbed out of the quarry, squished back to the house, and stood under the hot shower until the water ran cool.



The time to call Gibby had come, and I knew it. I had found the root, but no amount of digging would ever uproot it, because the taproot had already split the rock.





Chapter 38


KATIE CREPT DOWN THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE INTO THE basement and shook my shoulder at 3:00 a.m., but she didn't need to wake me. I wasn't asleep. "Tucker," she whispered. "Tuck, I need to talk to you, to tell you something." Her lips were close; I felt her breath on my face, and the smell of lavender wrapped its arms around me. The basement was cold and dark, and she was barefoot. She held a single candle in her hand and was wearing silk pajamas that did little to conceal the fact that she was cold. "I haven't been entirely truthful. There's more to the story." She slipped her hand beneath mine, pressed it firmly to her stomach, and clenched it tightly as if she was afraid I'd escape. "When Ave went to Colorado .. . Trevor and I ... we tried to start over. I'm not sure"-tears welled in the corners of her eyes-"but I think ... I'm pregnant." She stood and turned to go. "I'm sorry." Katie walked out as silently as she had walked in, the sound of sliding silk climbing the stairs and silently fading away.

Tucker?

What could you possibly want right now?

To bring something to your attention.

I think I've had enough brought to my attention in the last twenty four hours. You ever heard of not piling on?

Child, I just want you to remember one thing.

Yes ma'am?

I spent half my life taking care of two bastard children.





Chapter 39


I CLIMBED THE STEPS TO THE GUN CLOSET, GRABBED THE same field-grade Greener, and broke open a box of shells. I slid two number fives in the chamber and brought the rest of the box with me just in case. I went to Rex's room first and took aim at his portrait above the mantel. I squeezed, blew his head off the canvas, and then turned on his bed where he slept. The steel shot landed in the center of the bed and sent feathers floating about the room. Next I aimed at the desk and blew the roll top completely off. Finally, I turned on his dresser, where he emptied his pockets and set down his glass.

Having killed Rex's room, I threw the Greener on the bed and climbed back down the stairs to the kitchen, where Katie ran in, white as a sheet. She saw me, stepped aside, and I climbed downstairs, studying the wine cellar. At the perfectly good, perfectly expensive, perfectly useless wine cellar. I picked my thirty-four-inch Louisville Slugger off the wall and cocked it in the slot above my shoulder. Placing Rex in my mind, I swung. Wine, dust, balsam wood, and glass exploded, painting the walls in six different decades of grape red. I reloaded, stepped to the side, and swung again. I swung until every inch of the walls dripped red. I had reduced the balsam frame to toothpicks, and wine trickled down the drain in the floor and echoed through the pipes. I sat down, sticky with wine and covered in glass shards, and felt the spasm climb down my leg.