The Last Kind Words: A Novel Read online

  I needed a hot shower and a little more time to brace myself. I slipped off the porch and around the side of the house and in through the back door. I took the stairs three at a time, grabbed some fresh clothes, and hit the upstairs bathroom.

  My head was louder than the steaming water blasting down. I shut my eyes as the past broke against me—snippets of old conversations, whispers in the dark. Flashes of Kimmy’s face seen as dawn muscled through the curtains, sunlight catching the stray downy hair beneath her ear. I thought of Chub on top of her. Imagined her screaming in labor with Chub crouched next to the doctor, waiting for his baby to crown. Collie’s victims turned their eyes on me. I scrubbed until my stomach burned from tasting too much soap and my skin felt raw. I tried to remember anything about life on the ranch and came up empty.

  I got dressed and realized I didn’t want to see anyone except Collie. He’d known his story would get under my skin, that I wouldn’t be able to hide from it.

  I think I need you to save someone’s life.

  I stared in the mirror and wondered who the hell he might be talking about. My eyes were shot with red and I checked the cabinet for drops. There weren’t any.

  I stood at the top of the stairs and listened to my family talk. I wanted to run again but I didn’t know where. I sat on the top step and looked down through the railings, which gave me a view of the living room and the kitchen.

  My father was leaning against the screen-door jamb, having a smoke. He stood silhouetted in the sun, as dark and powerful as he had been last night in the rain.

  Mal and Grey were at the table, practicing their card grifts and cross chatter. I knew what to look for and I could still barely see when they pulled five-card lifts and bottom- or third-card deals. They’d played half a million hands of poker but never tired of the game.

  Grey still had his ladies’-man looks. He projected a boyish charm, smiling with fifty thousand dollars’ worth of first-rate dentistry, his head cocked and his perfectly combed silver hair falling just right. He always put on a show even when no one was watching. He’d had hundreds of women, owned them, cared for them even, but the one he truly loved had left him at the altar when he was seventeen and he’d never gotten over it. There was the faintest glint of regret in his eyes, which made him even more attractive to women who liked that sad puppy-dog look.

  Mal had the hard appearance of a stone killer. There was no softness in his face at all. It looked like it had been sandblasted out of rock and then pounded at by storms for centuries—craggy, coarse, and crudely fashioned. He had a generous laugh and a warm, beaming expression, but his teeth were yellowed by years of smoking Churchill stogies. It hadn’t only been JFK that made Wes and his boys too afraid to bust in and take him on. Mal looked vicious enough to ice a pregnant schoolteacher.

  But so far as I knew, he’d never even thrown a punch. When I was a kid he used to take me to the park and we’d feed the ducks in the lake. On the occasional weekend he’d lead me around town until we found some children’s party somewhere and crashed it. We’d load up on cake and ice cream and watch clowns, magicians, and puppet shows. He’d sometimes even work the grill and barbecue for the kids and their parents. No one ever dared ask him who he was or what he was doing there. They either knew he was a Rand or they took one look at his face and decided to shut the hell up and stick to the other side of the yard and hide behind the toolshed.

  Grey took little notice of me until I hit twelve or so. Then he was the one who showed me the correct way to shave, how to dress, how to tie a tie. I’d already been given the birds-and-the-bees speech by my father a few years earlier. It had mostly scared the hell out of me. Grey reinterpreted the information for me and made me realize it sounded sort of fun. He told me, “The next couple of years you’re really going to learn what it means to sting and burn, kid. I envy you getting to go through it for the first time, but I wouldn’t trade places with you for anything.”

  Mal and Grey’s banter at the kitchen table was quick and fun but with a slight angry undertone, the way the best long green chatter is played out. No one suspects that two people who sound as if they don’t like each other might be working together. It was already getting on my nerves. I wondered how my parents could live with that noise day in and out. I wondered how I’d lived with it for so long.

  My father turned from the front door and called to Grey, “Your girlfriend’s back.”

  “Taking a beautiful woman out for a night of dancing doesn’t make her my girlfriend,” Grey said.

  “Maybe not,” my father admitted. He drew deeply on his cigarette and exhaled smoke as he spoke. “But what about the three, four weeks of courtship that have followed?”

  “That’s not courtship, Pinscher, it’s infiltrating the enemy.”

  “That what they calling it nowadays?” Mal put in. “Infiltration? You write that on the notes you leave on her pillow? ‘Before you, my life was an unfinished poem. You complete me. I shall always remember our wondrous night of love and song, what with all that infiltration of your sexy bits.’ Now it makes sense why she keeps coming around. She can’t live without the romance.” Mal grinned. If anything, it made his features seem even more brutal.

  “And what did all your spy work lead to?” my father asked.

  “Exclusive rights to my life story,” Grey said.

  “So she wants her money’s worth.”

  “Or her money back,” Mal said.

  I realized they were talking about the pretty reporter my father had mentioned, the one who stuck a microphone in his face and asked him how he felt now that his son was about to be executed. He stood at the door watching her now, defending the house. Grey sat thinking of his time in bed with her even while he dipped into the cards and tried to give himself a straight flush. Mal slipped aces out of the deck and I thought behind his open expression he must still be jealous of his brother, staring into that handsome face every day knowing he had the power in his fists to crush all the beauty from it.

  A young woman I didn’t know was washing dishes with my mother. She moved with a kind of gentle swaying, as if dancing to music only she could hear. I tilted my head to get a better look.

  She said, “I can go give a statement. They’ll take a few photos and screw up my comments but at least it’ll move them along for a little while.” Her voice stopped me. She was the woman who had phoned me at the ranch and told me that Collie wanted me to visit him. I looked harder and saw it was my younger sister, Dale, who’d been only ten when I left. I had spoken to her and hadn’t even known it.

  “No, I don’t want you talking to them,” my mother said.

  “I don’t mind.”

  “I know you don’t, but I don’t like the way they descend.”

  “It’s their job.”

  “That’s not their job. This deathwatch isn’t their job.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Ma. It is.”

  “It shouldn’t be.” Dale shrugged.

  “Grey, can you get your girlfriend out of here?”

  Grey did a five-card lift and shuffle and dealt Mal two deuces and himself two aces. “Ellie, Vicky and I have spent many pleasant evenings in each other’s company over the past month or so, but she’s still a journalist and—”

  “That one is not a journalist.”

  “—and she mostly hangs around me hoping to get a story anyway.”

  “That one hangs around for more than that.”

  “I said ‘mostly.’ ”

  “The rest is about the roses, the chocolates, and the infiltration,” Mal said.

  “And you, Pinscher,” my mother said, directing her attention to my old man, “do you always have to stand in the door like that, watching them? It makes you look guilty.”

  “I am guilty,” he said.

  “I know you are, but they don’t need to know it.”

  “They already know it.”

  “They don’t have to know it so much.”

  “So for the las
t five years I should’ve smoked in the house?”

  “You should have given up cigarettes when you had your infarction.”

  “That was heartburn.”

  “Come inside, Dad,” Dale said. “She’s in a mood.”

  My sister had blossomed into a beautiful young woman. She held herself with an air of maturity and refinement. Her soft features were highlighted with a touch of makeup. She’d gotten her height from my mother and stood an inch or two over my father, which made her almost as tall as me. She had a casual grace, though, and seemed to prance around the room.

  I slipped out the back door and walked around the side of the house, feeling more like a thief in my own home than I had while robbing others.

  Two news vans were parked out front. My father was right. They liked to eat their donuts and have coffee before they hassled the family. There was no way I could get to my car without dealing with them. I thought of cutting through the woods and realized how stupid that was and how rattled I’d become. I was running from the warmth of my family so I could visit prison and listen to my brother talk of mad-dog murder.

  The pretty blond newscaster with startlingly bright azure eyes came rushing up at me, followed by her film crew. The soft scent of citrus wafted along with her. I pictured her dating Grey, saw him taking her out to the best places on the island as she prodded him for information and he prodded her for pleasure.

  She stuck the microphone in my face and licked her lips, her gaze full of false sympathy, exactly as my father had said. There was a lot I wanted to tell her. I had a few questions of my own that I felt like asking. I thought about this deathwatch, as my mother called it, and wondered if anyone really cared at all about the victims. When Collie got the needle there would be hundreds of folks out in front of the prison who would cheer. Maybe they had the right. Maybe I would be one of them. The idea of it made my guts twitch.

  “You there, hello!” she shouted, somehow still smiling. “Who are you?”

  It was a righteous question. I held my chin up. I stammered out the other name I’d been living under the last five years. It didn’t come easily to me. I think I might’ve botched it. I could barely hear my own voice. There was too much running wild inside me. If I started talking I might not ever stop.

  “I’m from Freddy’s Fix-It,” I said. “This house here, their hot-water tank burst, flooded the basement. A real mess.”

  “But you don’t have a truck.”

  “Emergency call, came here straight from home. Heading back to the shop now. I’ll be back in a little while with parts.”

  “It’s the other one,” the cameraman said. “The younger son. Terry. Terrier Rand. He looks just like his brother.”

  “Is it?” she asked. “Are you?”

  “Freddy’s Fix-It, lady.”

  The other news crew caught wise and started shouldering me. Their newscaster wasn’t nearly as pretty but she had a real gleam in her eye. She wanted to spike me to the ground, pin me there, and force me to fess up.

  I yanked open my car door and ducked behind the wheel, but they didn’t let up. The camera guy leaned over the front hood and pressed the lens into my windshield. Azure eyes tried to make some kind of contact with me. I knew she didn’t give a shit about the news. She had the expectant expression of all of Grey’s former lovers. I could practically hear her thoughts. Has he talked about me? Will he see me again?

  “Your brother is scheduled for execution in eleven days. What do you think about that? Do you have a message for the families of his victims?”

  “How about if you back the fuck off me?”

  That was going to look great on the six o’clock news, edited down to me saying “fuck off” to the victims’ grief-stricken families.

  The sharper reporter and her cameraman had already turned back to their van. Channel 14. They were going to pursue me. I shook my head in disbelief and cursed Collie under my breath. I’d sworn that I wouldn’t visit my brother again, but I had to find out what the hell he needed from me. I wanted to see Kimmy. I wanted to see her child. I wanted to protect her from men like Collie and men like me. But I’d lost my chance. I’d abandoned my girl. I’d failed her and myself. I’d sacrificed my own happiness to the underneath. I wasn’t ready to be a part of my own family yet. I knew the truth of it, I really had broken their hearts. I glanced at the front door and saw my sister standing there, watching me run away from home again.

  Kimmy had finally decided to embrace her beauty. She’d grown her hair long and allowed it to lap over her shoulders and drift in the breeze. It whirled to a rhythm I could hum along with. She was dressed comfortably but fashionably in summer clothing that accentuated her contours. I wasn’t close enough to look into her eyes, but I could tell from the way she moved, more carefree than I’d ever seen her move before, that the hard shell had been peeled away.

  I should’ve been happy for her but I was a miserable selfish prick. My fingers trembled against the steering wheel.

  She and Chub lived in a new development. Once this area had all been pumpkin fields. Kimmy and I had taken a hayride through the thick trails one Halloween while an old farmer told ghost stories that smacked of truth. He was so intently fixed on his own tale that his dentures worked themselves free every so often and he had to press them back in with his fingers. It gave us the giggles. Afterward he let us off to pick as many pumpkins as we wanted for free. We were late to the patch and the choosings were slim, but we found a few fairly sizable pumpkins that we brought home to her family and carved on her kitchen table. We tried to retell the ghost stories but we couldn’t finish without laughing. One jack-o’-lantern sat in the front window, while the others perched out on her front stoop. She kept them lit through most of November, even after the first snow fell and they began to rot and sink in on themselves.

  I shut my eyes and tried to place where the house stood in relation to that hayride. I thought I had the spot down and remembered the two of us snuggling beneath a blanket, my hand on her warm belly.

  She’d picked up a knack for gardening. Most of the morning she spent trimming azalea bushes and clipping roses while the baby staggered around the lawn, playing with various objects, none of which appeared to be a real toy. She pawed a plastic bowl, a flyswatter, and a chain of pink barrettes clipped together.

  I listened to Kimmy talking to the baby. Every time her daughter toddled away too far Kimmy would chase after her and say, “Here now, Scooter, don’t you motor off.” The sound of her voice made my chest hitch. She dug deep in rich soil, planting new roses, and I thought of all the desert dust I’d breathed in over the past five years. I’d been a coward. I deserved to be alone. The fact of it made me squirm behind the steering wheel.

  I could picture the inside of their home. I could feel myself moving through it the way any good thief could. I took one look at the place and immediately started plotting, deciding which tools I might need, what time I would go in. I’d enter through the quaint French doors that opened up to the patio deck, where Chub had actually staked tiki lamps ringing the yard. The outer edges of the doors didn’t match the house paint, meaning they’d been installed after Kimmy and Chub had moved in. Any alarm system probably wouldn’t be attached.

  I’d slip into the dining room where a large breakfront would have Kimmy’s mom’s china on display. It was the kind of thing her mother would do, handing the good stuff down. Family history had always meant something to Kimmy. We’d met because of it.

  No chimney, so no fireplace. So no mantel. But there’d be shelves for the photos. A huge wedding portrait hanging on the far wall. They would’ve been married out at Shalebrook Lake. A smallish gathering of only close friends and Kimmy’s family. Chub had been on his own since he was sixteen. I had no idea who his best man might’ve been. Kimmy’s father? That sounded right. Chub in a white-jacketed tux, Kimmy in a subdued but still breathtaking dress. The photographer telling them to gaze into each other’s eyes, hold up the champagne glasses as if in a t
oast, stand at the rim of the water. They would’ve had to be careful because of the duck shit.

  The opposite wall would be devoted to Scooter. A few large and fancy baby pictures. At least a couple of those family portraits with the child looking one way and Chub and Kimmy with faraway expressions and faintly perplexed smiles. One or two of the hanging frames would be slightly askew. I’d straighten them as I passed by.

  The living room would have formal but comfortable furniture, the kind that had no real personality but that you could lie on without fear of wrecking it. Scooter’s toys would be piled in their own corner. Dolls and stuffed animals and pull-string gadgets that would teach her a cow said moo, a cat went meow. All of them neatly stacked. Chub was a neat freak in his own way, carefully organized and meticulous. It’s what made him such a good mechanic and getaway planner. The carpeting would be gray, something to hide dirt. There would be doormats to wipe your feet on and a small tiled foyer where you were expected to leave your shoes.

  The banister leading upstairs would be polished and glossy, the corners of the stairs well vacuumed. Their bedroom would have a little more character, at least a couple of pieces of antique furniture. The headboard from some nineteenth-century captain’s home on the North Fork, with a carving of a three-mast square-rigged blowing-mainsail whaling ship dead center. When they made love, they’d have to prop the pillows just so, to keep from getting welts.

  At around three in the afternoon Chub pulled into the driveway. I slid farther down in my seat even though he didn’t glance in any direction except Kimmy’s as he crossed the lawn. She brushed her hair back with the side of her glove and left a dirt smear across her forehead. For some reason it made me groan.

  Chub had lost a little weight and grown a Vandyke that he kept well trimmed. It suited his face. He’d started losing his hair as a teenager and now kept his head shaved. He walked with a light step. He practically skipped after Scooter, who squealed with laughter and tried to run away. He scooped her up, set her on his shoulder, and spun around while she held her arms high, fingertips brushing blossoming buds on the ends of tree branches. She slid down into his arms, where he held her tightly against his chest and marched over to Kimmy. They kissed and then he pressed his forehead to hers for a moment.