The Truth We Bury: A Novel



Lily was frozen in place, watching her dad fall. It was like watching a tree coming down in sections, one that had stood for an eon until it didn’t. Shrugging off her tote, she went to her knees beside him, cupped his cheek with her hand, smoothed scraps of white hair from his brow. He was cool but not cold to the touch, and damp with sweat. She could see his pulse beating, a tiny piston, hammering inside his temple. His chest rose and fell, a series of shallow dips. “Dad?” she whispered, and his eyelids fluttered.

Behind her, she heard Erik talking; he had his phone out, trying to call 911. When he couldn’t get a signal, Dru and Shea said they’d try.

“In the house,” Lily said. “Upstairs. Use the landline.”

“No.”

Lily looked down at her dad.

“I don’t need an ambulance.” Rolling onto his back, he groaned softly, and the breath he took in was deep enough to make him shudder.

“Are you sure?” She touched his face again, his shoulder.

“I’m all right, Lily. Help me up.”

She braced his elbow while he levered himself into a sitting position, pushed his back against the porch railing.

Lily looked him over. He was as pale as skim milk, and his hands shook as he ran them over his face. They were long fingered, thick knuckled, and strong. She’d seen him wrestle a calf to the ground with those hands, wield an ax, bandage her knees. They were an old man’s hands now, the skin across the backs mottled and so thinned by time that the veins were as visible as lines on a road map. When had he aged so much?

“What happened?” she asked softly.

“Got light-headed.” He bent his head back against the railing, closing his eyes again as if to shut her—shut all of them―from his sight.

He was embarrassed, Lily thought, and it made her heart ache.

“Y’all go on now. I’m good. Lily, you call me when you get back to Dallas.”

“I’m not going,” she said.

He argued, but he knew that when she made up her mind she could be as stubborn as he was. She and Erik got him into the house. Dru held the door. Shea picked up a stray coffee mug and followed them into the kitchen.

“What can we do?” Dru asked.

“Nothing,” Lily said, easing her dad into a chair at the table. “Thanks,” she added, “but it’s fine. We’re fine.” She was looking at her dad.

He nodded.

“All right, then,” Dru said. “Well, you’ll call us if you need anything?”

Lily met her glance, but only briefly. “Yes, thanks,” she repeated.

Dru and Shea left, and while Erik stayed with her dad in the kitchen, Lily went out onto the front porch to call Paul, steeling herself, unsure how he’d react when she said she wasn’t coming back to Dallas after all. He would in all likelihood be angry with her, but beneath the icier currents of her panic and concern for AJ and her dad, she felt relieved. She wasn’t glad for her father’s collapse, but she didn’t regret that it kept her here.

Paul was leaving the police station when she caught him, via a back entrance, he said. “The press is out front. Not looking for me,” he added hastily when Lily voiced her dismay. “It’s that councilman, Hawkes. I don’t wish trouble on anyone, but whatever mess he’s in, it takes the spotlight off us. Hawkes is a bigger fish.”

Lily perched uneasily on the swing’s edge. “Why are you at the police station at all? I thought they were through questioning you.”

Paul’s laugh was truncated. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s like they suspect me.”

“Why?”

“They’re making a big deal out of the fact that there was no forced entry, that I found the body.”

“AJ kept a key outside.”

“What?”

“AJ kept a key to his apartment in the gaslight outside his front door. He told us about it, and you said it wasn’t a good idea. Becca, or anyone who knew, could have used it to get in. You need to see if it’s missing.”

“I’ll tell Bushnell, but since I already told him I have a key, I doubt it’ll make a difference. He’s pissed anyway because I had Jerry meet me here this morning. I’ve lawyered up, as they say, but damned if I’m going to deal with them and not have legal counsel—the way those bastards twist everything.”

“Jerry is your corporate attorney, Paul. We need Edward on this.” Saying his name out loud caused her heartbeat to slow and thicken, but it wasn’t as if she was inventing an excuse to mention it. This situation was real, not some dire-straits charade she’d invented in the hope that once Edward heard about it, he would feel compelled to meet with her again.

“I still think getting a criminal attorney involved is premature at this point, Lily. Trust me. I know what’s best.”

“All right.” Lily forced herself to agree, to seem amicable, even as mutiny hardened her jaw. It was wrong to delay; she could feel to her core that it was. She wanted to shout it at Paul, to say, This is not about you and what you want. This is about our son—his life— Paul was talking, something about surveillance cameras.

Lily apologized. “I’m sorry, can you say that again?”

“The cops have got the tapes, video off the cameras around AJ’s apartment. If the film’s any good, they’ll be able to see who, besides me, AJ, and the girl, went into his apartment. It’ll take time for them to review it, though.”

“More waiting,” Lily said, and she regretted it, because it set Paul off.

He was sick of waiting, he said. He’d told Bushnell to get off his ass. “While he’s wasting time looking at me, the real killer is out there, footloose, and he’s got our son.”

Lily stood up, abruptly enough to set the swing on a crooked path. “There’s something you should know, Paul.” Maybe he’d heard it by now.

“What?”

“Becca was pregnant.”

Silence. Shocked and disbelieving. Lily had lost her power of speech, too, when Dru told her. “Paul?”

“Who says?”

Lily went through it, repeating what she’d heard from Dru, who’d heard it from Becca’s mother, who’d heard it from the coroner. “They’ll do a DNA test to determine paternity, of course, but it might be weeks before they get a result.”

More silence.

Lily said his name again. “Paul?”

“I don’t know what to say, what the hell to think or believe anymore. What if he just wanted to get rid of the problem—”

“No!” Lily wasn’t having it, Paul’s doubt. She had no room for it, no antidote of faith held in reserve to counteract it. “We don’t know anything at this point,” she told him. “We have to wait for the DNA.”

“The cops are hoping they get something useful off his phone and computer.”

What they found could as easily damn AJ as clear him. It scared her. She wanted an advocate, someone to represent them, shield them. She wanted Edward. He was the logical choice. But even the memory of him, of his touch, burned her.

Paul said, “I’m not sure I’ll be home when you get back. I’ve got to get some work done.”

Barbara Taylor Sissel's books