Safe Keeping. Barbara Taylor Sissel

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СКАЧАТЬ Mom?” Lissa waited to ask until her dad was quiet.

      “Upstairs. She’s pissed because I won’t go to the lake and see about finishing the house.”

      “What’s going on with that, Dad? You always said after you retired, you were going to build that house and fish until you died.”

      “I’ve got no appetite for it anymore,” he said, and his voice was raw. “You get a crew out there, pull the frame down, use the material somewhere else. Tell Evan—”

      He stopped, but Lissa kept his gaze while a hundred thoughts crowded her mind. She could offer him comfort, but she didn’t know how he’d take it. He’d never needed her comfort before.

      He brushed his hand over his face, and the breath he took in was huge and ragged. “Go on, little girl, and check on your momma, will you? I’m worried about her.”

      “Daddy?” Lissa felt a fresh jolt of alarm. She could see his eyes were filmed with tears again. Her own throat constricted.

      He waved her off. “Just let me be now.”

      “Tucker will come home soon. It’ll be fine, you’ll see.”

      “Sure,” he said. “It always is, isn’t it?”

      She eyed him a moment longer, then left, pulling the door closed behind her. When she heard the click of the lock, she looked back, and the thought came that he shouldn’t be alone now, not with all those guns, and it chilled her momentarily. She thought of asking him to let her back in, but he’d only refuse, if he answered her at all.

      Her head throbbed with every step as she climbed to the second floor. She had wakened with another brutal headache this morning that had only gotten worse. She’d had a series of them recently. They had to be sinus related, she thought.

      “Mom?” she called, reaching the upstairs hallway.

      “Back here,” she answered.

      Lissa went toward the sound of her mother’s voice and found her sitting on a footstool in the linen closet. Her mother looked up. “Honey, what’s wrong? You’re so pale.”

      “Headache,” Lissa said. “I think it’s sinus. I took some Advil, but it’s not helping.”

      “Dr. White gave me something good for that last time I went to see him.” Her mother went into the bathroom next to the linen closet and returned with a glass of water and a tablet. “It works, and it won’t make you sleepy.”

      Lissa took the pill and a swallow of water.

      “He said to remind you that you’re overdue for a checkup.”

      “I know. I’ve been putting it off.” Lissa drank the rest of the water. As much as she loved Dr. White, she wished she could see someone different for her exam, a doctor who hadn’t known her since she was six. Someone who would only see her as a condition, not as a person. In case of bad news, she thought it might be easier if it were treated with clinical dispassion. Not that she felt as if she were seriously ill. It was only that she didn’t feel herself. In addition to the frequent headaches, she wasn’t sleeping, her appetite was low and, last week, she’d fainted. She kept telling herself it was stress. She wanted it to be.

      Lissa’s mother resumed her perch on the stool. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

      “I wanted to check on you, you know, because of—”

      “I’ve been rereading Dad’s old letters,” Lissa’s mother interrupted. She half lifted a cardboard box from her lap. “Did I ever show you this one?” She handed Lissa a sheet of onionskin paper, sepia tinged at the edges and covered in her dad’s cramped writing.

      “‘My Dearest Em,’” her mother read, “‘my dearest one, my love, how will I tell you this news, the awful thing that has happened. I’m not the same, not your sweetest—not your sweetest honey—’” She caught her lip, took a breath. “‘I’m not sure I’m even a man anymore.’”

      “Mom...” Lissa’s murmur was half in sorrow, half in protest.

      She hadn’t read her dad’s letters home from Vietnam, but she knew how he’d been injured there. Her mother had told her and Tucker the story, how in the aftermath of battle, he’d rescued a four-year-old North Vietnamese boy, an enemy’s son, and run with him from a burning house, but before he could make it back to the location where his company was bivouacked, sniper fire had caught him in the meaty part of his calf below his left knee. Still, he’d kept running with the child; he’d brought the boy to safety against all odds, and sixty-one days later, they’d amputated the gangrenous, blasted remains of his lower leg. He’d nearly died from the infection.

      Lissa was still in awe of the story. She couldn’t imagine the selfless act of courage it had taken. She remembered socking a kid once in third grade who called her dad a cripple. She’d been sent home that day for fighting, but she hadn’t been punished. Her mother only said the boy was probably frightened at the idea of her father having only one leg. It hadn’t made sense to Lissa. Her dad wasn’t different from any other dad with two legs. In fact, he was stronger than any man she knew. She never thought of him as handicapped. Most of her life, she’d scarcely been aware of it.

      She gave her father’s letter back to her mother. “Daddy doesn’t look good, Mom. I’m worried about him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him quite so shaky.”

      “That missing girl—she’s—”

      “But it doesn’t necessarily mean anything, you know?”

      Her mother hugged her elbows. “They don’t make linen closets with so much room in them anymore, do they? I played house in here when I was little, did I ever tell you?”

      “Sure, Momma.” Lissa went along. “We played house in here, too, remember? You and me and Tucker.”

      “It’s just the right size. Your grandma let me have a little table. And dishes. Such pretty dishes. I loved being in here—I still do. The way the old floor creaks and how the sunlight comes through the door, and the smell—it’s a comfort to me.” She drew in a breath, eyes closed. “Some people think it’s musty, but to me it smells safe. It smells the way love would smell, if love had a smell.”

      Lissa knelt beside her. “Tucker will be home soon, Momma, or he’ll call. He always does.” The assurance sounded no better now than when she’d offered it to her dad.

      Her mother touched Lissa’s cheek, lifted her fingers, trailing them across Lissa’s brow. “You and your brother are so different,” she said. “Tucker’s blond, like me, like the Winters, but you favor your father with all that wonderful dark hair. You’re strong, too, like he is.”

      They shared a silence.

      “I want to help him, you know? But when he hits these dark places, when he retreats and goes into himself, I— It’s hard to know what to do.”

      Lissa tucked a wayward strand of her mother’s hair behind her ear. It added to her worry, seeing her parents so undone, so not themselves. Abruptly, she held out a hand to her mother. “Come with me to Pecan Grove. It will do you good to get out of the house.”

      “Oh, СКАЧАТЬ