Standing over her body, I could hardly put the chronology together, could hardly believe we’d start our cycle of cheating and clinging only five or six months after that morning on the beach. But that was long before any hint of erosion. When we finally returned to the sleeping house, we made a big breakfast for everyone, but no one woke, even with all our banging around the kitchen. I built up the fire and we ate alone, perfectly happy, then fell into bed, perfectly happy, and woke, perfectly happy. We stayed perfectly happy, too, for a while, and even rediscovered our happiness after we lost it. Then it got away from us again, and now we’d never get it back. I looked at the bruised and lacerated skin of her face. It seemed impossible that she wasn’t waiting for me back at her apartment or somewhere else. Anywhere else.
“You know I found those pants,” I finally whispered. “That doesn’t necessarily mean anything, I know.” I leaned my forehead against her casket. “I often leave my pants in women’s apartments.”
I lifted my head and touched her broken nose, her lips. They were unyielding. There seemed to be some frost on them, some freezer burn. I kept petting her and feeling how far away she was, feeling as alone as I’d ever felt.
I kissed her forehead and walked back to the room with gold wallpaper, where Diana stood and pulled me into another embrace. “I want to spend a minute with her,” she said, “before we go to the luncheon.”
I’d forgotten about the luncheon, forgotten that people would be there—friends, family, I didn’t know who. Cynthia wouldn’t be there, of course. She’d be here, surrounded by pictures of herself. I’d be at a luncheon, with everyone who’d lost her, with everyone but her.
8
Burke
I didn’t quit Denny’s right away, even though our mother left me almost twenty grand. I took some time off when she died, a few days here, a few days there, and all I could think about was Nikki. I knew she was probably dead, but if she wasn’t, she was sure to know what happened to Cash. I was spending so much time with her pictures, it seemed like I already half knew her anyway, and if she was still alive, I thought she might be worth getting to know a whole lot better. I wanted to devote myself full time to finding her, but Billy shook his head when I told him I needed a leave. “Can’t get by without you now, Burke,” he said. “Not with Marlene on maternity and Sully back in the can.”
Billy was a good man, had hired me not three weeks out of Huntsville as a dishwasher, and then promoted me to line cook. I could feel the heat build in his office back behind the walk-in. I never would’ve laid a hand on him in anger. I swallowed hard and walked away. That’s what ate at me the next couple days—how I was trapped by the man’s goodness. Most ex cons don’t get one decent shot, and here I was considering walking from mine. It started to eat at me how desperate I was to hold onto my shitty job, half convincing myself I was lucky to be working at that fucking Denny’s while my brother’s killers roamed free. And with Connie gone, with Cash gone, with our mother gone, what did I have to be so good for?
I fell off the wagon, studying Nikki’s pictures with a bottle out in the Goat, feeling her alive in the night, but knowing in the morning they killed her, too. I was tired of answering to Billy and my probation officer. No one had done a damn thing about my brother’s murder. I drove to Austin again, but there was nothing left to discover. I didn’t know where else to search, until I learned about the internet from a waitress at work. I tracked Nikki to a newspaper in New York, the guiding hand of fate delivering her to me just like that, delivering us to each other. I was so overcome with emotion, learning she was alive, I could hardly contain myself, like getting someone the best present you could imagine getting them and then having to wait to watch them open it.
She was all business when she picked up the phone, until I said my name, and then there was a heavy silence before I felt the air go out of her. “Burke Chandler?” she finally said, and it was like a damn breaking inside me at the sound of her voice, my blood rushing so hard and fast as I told her how I’d been looking for her and how happy I was she was alive, feeling it right there on the surface of my skin, in my throat.
“I was sure they killed you, too,” I told her. “Just sure of it.”
“No,” she said. “I’m—no.”
I listened to her breathing, so happy, and she said, “Burke?” and I said, “Yeah,” and she said, “Burke Chandler?” and I said, “Cash’s brother, Burke—I’m right here.”
“Cash’s brother,” she said, shocked, just like I’d been shocked at discovering her alive, and so grateful.
“I was thinking they done something to you like they done to him,” I told her. “I made up these awful stories in my mind about it—you and Cash and what they done to him. And what I thought they done to you. Making you turn on him.”
“I was gone then,” she said. “When he—when they.”
“I thought maybe you’d know something,” I said. “Who or why or whatnot.”
“I was in Chicago then,” she said. “My aunt’s place in Oak Bluff.”
“Oak Bluff, huh?” and she said, “I didn’t know what happened back in Texas.”
She sounded just like she looked, even though she wasn’t southern and I thought she would be. But she sounded just like she looked. Beautiful. I told her I could sit on the phone and listen to the sweet sound of her voice all day long.
She didn’t say anything for a long minute, but I could hear her breathing.
I wondered if she was about to cry, thinking about Cash, bringing up all her old feelings. She didn’t really know me yet, so it wouldn’t be me she’d cry over. Not yet. “You okay?” I asked her.
“Where are you?” she said.
“The house we grew up in,” I said. “He must have told you about me,” and she said, “Yes,” and I said, “I just want to hear the sound of your voice. Like honey.”
“I’m not—I don’t know what to say.”
“Tell me about you and him,” I said. “All y’alls time together. I’m just so glad you’re alive. I worked myself into a state nearly.”
“This is just such a surprise,” she said, her voice trembly and scratchy under all that honey.
“Did he bring you home to Waco?” I asked.
“Un-unh.”
“So you never met our mom? She passed, by the way. Last month.”
“I’m sorry,” Nikki said. “I never did get to meet her.”
“But he must’ve told you about me,” I said. “We was close as could be. My time at Huntsville was done for him. Did he tell you that?”
“Yes,” she said, and I said, “What’d he say, exactly?” and when she didn’t answer, I said, “You probably want to tell me face to face, is that it?”
That’s when she finally