Peggy Dulle - Liza Wilcox 05 - Till Death Do Us Part Page 2

  “You caught up quickly,” I reminded him.

  “Sure, by the time I was a sophomore, I was the same size as Stretch.”

  “And by your junior year you were taller.”

  “Yeah, but the nickname stuck.”

  “What happened to you, Kenny?” Jordan asked, sipping her own wine. “You were supposed to go to college with Liza but you never showed up.”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore, Jordan. That’s old history,” I said.

  “Yeah, but I’m curious, too,” my dad added.

  Kenny put his hand on my arm and squeezed. “It’s okay. I don’t mind talking about it.”

  “You don’t owe them any explanation,” I told him.

  Kenny shrugged and turned to Dad, “You knew there were problems at my house.”

  Dad nodded.

  “Well they escalated that summer.”

  “What problems?” Jordan asked.

  Dad looked at Kenny, who nodded. “His mom’s taste in men.”

  “What?” Jordan asked, clearly perplexed.

  Kenny sighed, “Let’s just say she chose the meanest sons-of-bitches. And when they would start drinking, she usually ended up being their punching bag. I visited her in the hospital so many times that I stopped counting. Usually if she ended up in the hospital, she’d kick them out but another one always took their place as soon as the bruises healed.”

  I put my hand on his arm and he covered it with his own and squeezed.

  “Well, that summer, Earl, the latest in a long line of monsters, beat her up so bad she ended up in the hospital three times and I finally, on the last trip, convinced her to press charges.”

  While Kenny talked, I thought about all the monsters in the world, the abusers and their victims. He and I used to talk about being superheroes and how we’d stop all the monsters. And maybe, in a small way, I became a type of superhero when I found Jessie, and the people who killed Danielle, and saved Jackson’s family.

  “That’s good,” Tom said, interrupting Kenny and my thoughts. “It’s the only way to stop it.”

  Kenny shrugged. “Yeah, but the next day I overheard her ask the nurse to get her the phone number of the police station so she could recant the story.”

  “Also not unusual,” Tom slid into cop mode.

  “Why would she do that? She’d always left the other guys when she ended up in the hospital?” Jordan asked.

  “Earl used to bring her these little gifts all the time. He would beat her up and then bring a trinket from the local drug store, mall, or grocery store. It was bigger bauble if she ended up in the hospital. He gave them to her and she thought it was because he was sorry, but it wasn’t. He wasn’t ever really sorry but she loved the stuff. I knew she would never leave this one and that someday she would end up dead, so I went out and drove my motorbike into a ditch, several times.”

  Tom looked over at me, probably remembering the two cars I drove into a ditch and wondering if that’s where I got the idea. I hadn’t known any of this until two weeks ago, but it’s funny that we both choose a ditch to get us out of a bad situation.

  Kenny continued. “I was a bloody mess. When they took me to the hospital, I told her that he did it. That was it. She didn’t mind him using her as a punching bag, but she wouldn’t let him hit me. I convinced her to leave, so we packed up our bags and left the state. We kept driving until we got to Arkansas where my mom’s third or fourth cousin lived. It took months to get us settled and by that time I’d missed the beginning of school.”

  “Was the paperwork ever really pulled? Did he ever find you?” Jordan asked, slipping into district attorney mode.

  “He never had that chance. A few years later we learned that when Earl found out we left, he went out and tied on a big one, got into a bar fight a couple days later, and was killed. We never needed to run half way across the country just to get away from him.”

  “What did you do?” Tom asked me.

  “I’d gone to Davis because Kenny wanted to go there, not because I did and when he didn’t show up, I called his house. The number was disconnected and when I called his neighbor, Sandra, she said they packed up and moved away.”

  “My mom changed our names back to her maiden name, so Earl couldn’t find us and I went to a local junior college. By the time I tried to find Stretch at Davis, she wasn’t enrolled there.” Kenny put his hand over mine and we linked fingers.

  “I didn’t like Davis, it was all geared for pre-med and pre-vet and pre-other things I had no intention of being so I went to a neighboring state college.”

  “When I couldn’t find her at Davis, I called her house and they were gone, too.”

  “Really?” Tom looked over at Dad.

  “I was spotted by a local cop and I knew the Feds were closing in. We moved to Sacramento where Liza went to school.”

  “That’s why I spent my last two years of high school at a different school,” Jordan huffed, clearly still holding a grudge.

  “So we just lost track of each other. I finished school, got my law degree and then became a partner in a firm’s Nashville office. They have an office in San Francisco that they want me to manage so I came back to see if I wanted to live here.”

  “So how’d you find Liza?” Jordan asked.

  “Facebook,” Kenny and I said together, then both laughed.

  “I was in my office in San Francisco, looking out my window. Being back in California made me think of Stretch, so I thought, I’d see if I could find her.” Kenny smiled, reached over and touched my face. “When I found her, I yelled in my office. My admin ran in and asked me if I was all right. I was laughing and telling her all about Stretch.”

  “He sent me a message and we started talking.”

  “More like burning up the chat line with so many years to catch up on. I was living at a hotel in the San Francisco since I hadn’t found anywhere to live yet.”

  “Then the Remington’s moved out,” I said.

  “Your neighbors?” Dad asked.

  “Yes, Carl got transferred to Austin and they wanted to lease out their townhouse in case they didn’t like Texas. I told Kenny about it and he moved in.”

  “You live next door to each other?” Tom asked, looking from me to Kenny.

  “Yeah,” I smiled. “It’s great!”

  “You two must burn up the take-out lines.” Dad said.

  “Of course,” Kenny said. “I order one night and she eats at my place.”

  “I order the next night and we dine at mine.”

  “So you two, were what, in high school?” Tom asked.

  “Best friends, of course.” I told him.

  “Yeah, we did everything together.”

  “Everything?” Tom leaned forward.

  “Of course. I played baseball,” Kenny said

  “I scored for the team.”

  “Liza played volleyball.”

  “Kenny led the cheering on the sidelines.”

  “They went to every game and prom together.” Jordan chimed in.

  I smiled. “Remember Senior Ball?”

  Kenny rolled his eyes.

  “What?” Tom asked.

  “She made me wear this light blue tuxedo because …,”

  “It matched my dress perfectly.”

  “You let her dress you in a light blue tux?” Tom asked.

  “Of course. Stretch wanted me to wear it.”

  “So he did. It’s my favorite memory from high school,” I told them all.

  “What’s your favorite memory?” Tom asked Kenny.

  “Oh, that’s easy. The white bikini.”

  I felt my face flush red.

  “What white bikini?” Jordan asked.

  Kenny leaned forward and said. “It was senior picnic. We all drove to a local lake for a picnic and swimming. Everyone laid out their towels. I spread out ours and Liza peeled off her blue cover-up. Underneath she was wearing this skimpy white bikini.”

  “Okay, that’s enough. Next s
tory,” I told them all.

  “No, the story is not done. Every male eye in the place snapped up, including one of the counselors.”

  “Really?” I asked. I hadn’t ever heard this part of the story.

  “Yeah. And do you know what I saw in all their eyes?”

  “No, what?” Jordan asked.

  “I say regret as they all realized that the nicest girl in the senior class, the one who helped them with their projects or went to their house and helped them study for a test or tutored them in math or science when they struggled, was also the sexiest and most gorgeous girl in the senior class. I beat them off with the stick the rest of the day.”

  “I beat them off you our entire senior year,” I told him.

  “Well, those bitches wouldn’t give me the time of day when I was a freshman, so I would be damned if I let them paw at me because I grew a few inches,” Kenny told me.

  “So you were inseparable at school?” Tom asked.

  “They were together all of the time,” Jordan said.

  “I think he lived at our house his senior year,” Dad added in.

  “And any crazy thing that Liza did, Kenny was always involved with.” Jordan chimed in again.

  “Really?” Tom asked. “What crazy things?”

  This was a side of me that Tom didn’t know. Did I actually want him to learn about all the foolish things I did with Kenny? No. “Let’s not drag up old history,” I told them all.

  “Oh no, Sis. Those were the only times Mom and Dad worried about you. It gave me a break from them. Let’s see,” Jordan ticked off on her fingers. “Sky diving, scuba diving, bungee jumping, and getting so drunk they both came home throwing up.”

  “Oh I remember that Halloween party, I was sick as a dog, but …,” I said.

  “I was sicker,” Kenny continued.

  “That’s because you ate an entire box of Twinkies after we finished off the pizza and chocolate chip cookies.”

  Tom, Dad, and Jordan all groaned together. Kenny and I laughed.

  “I never took another drink again,” I said, remembering the event and what happened later.

  Kenny touched my face and said, “Me, neither.”

  “And the fast talking,” Dad sighed.

  Jordan rolled her eyes. “That’s for sure; I never understood a word my sister said when she was around Kenny.”

  “What?” Tom asked.

  “Oh she probably hasn’t been around him long enough yet. It’s like they’re both going at warp speed. He can understand her but I am always left in the dust.”

  Kenny and I smiled at each other. It was like our own language and most people would just stare in utter fascination when we got started talking to each other.

  Dad chuckled. “Both of them were in every drama production at school but my favorite were the other scenes there were always playing.”

  Jordan chuckled and Kenny and I joined them. Kenny and I both loved to pretend we were someone else, especially in public.

  “What?” Tom asked.

  “They were always playacting. Remember the carnival?” Dad asked.

  Kenny and I looked at each other and laughed. “I was a great animal tamer.”

  “I was a better monkey,” Kenny said.

  “What?” Tom repeated the same question he’d asked twice before.

  “Liza put a leash on Kenny and they walked around the entire carnival like that. He pretended to be a monkey and she was his trainer.”

  Jordan bounced up and down in her seat and said, “Oh and the best part was Liza’s favorite saying during her senior year.”

  “I don’t say that anymore,” I said quickly, starting to pick up the plates from dinner.

  Kenny belly-laughed, pointed to his watch and said, “I heard it less than twelve hours ago.”

  “Really?” Jordan asked, glancing at me and breaking out into the biggest grin. The only time I ever got in trouble was when I cussed.

  “Oh, yeah,” Kenny looked over at Tom and said, “I’m pretty sure it was during one of our conversations about you.”

  Tom looked at me and said, “What did you say?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I told them.

  “Quack, quack, quack,” Kenny began.

  “Kenny stop,” I told him.

  “Quack, quack, quack,” he continued.

  I turned and glared at him.

  He held out his hand to me, palm up, as if to say – say it.

  “Oh, fuck a duck,” I muttered and walked to the kitchen depositing the dishes in the sink. When I returned to the table, I glared at Kenny.

  “Love me, Stretch?” he asked.

  I blew out along breath. “Of course, but I don’t like you right now!”

  “Sorry, Stretch, but you know your sister would tell him if you didn’t.”

  “I know,” I told him.

  “Forgive me?” Kenny asked.

  “Of course.” I sighed.

  Kenny turned to Tom and said. “And that’s Stretch. She loves deeply, gets angry quickly, but also forgives just as swiftly – if you apologize and have good reasoning for what you did.”

  I blew out a raspberry at him.

  “I’m going into my room and call Sam. I can’t wait to tell him all the crazy things my ‘perfect’ sister did in high school, now that the moratorium is over,” Jordan said as she got up from the table and left the room.

  Kenny stood, too, and said, “How many rooms does this condo have?”

  “Two upstairs, Jordan and I have those. Liza is on this floor and Tom has the bedroom downstairs.”

  “You can bunk with me,” I told him.

  “He’s going to sleep with you?” Tom’s voice elevated with each word.

  “Sure, he can,” I said sternly.

  “Nope, I’m taking Tom’s room. He can either sleep on the couch or with Liza. I am going to grab my duffle bag from my car. Good night all.” And he left.

  The sides of Tom’s mouth tilted up slightly in a tentative smile.

  “Like hell you are!” I left the room, went into my bedroom and closed the door.

  Chapter 3

  I paced for several minutes after closing the door, ready to give Tom a piece of my mind if he decided to come in but he didn’t, so I went outside on the balcony, sat in one of the lounge chairs and looked at the stars in the sky.

  A few minutes later, Tom stood at the open balcony door. “Can I join you?” he asked.

  I nodded toward the other lounge chair and said, “Sure, as long as you don’t talk.”

  The tension was palpable between us. The longer we sat, the more my stomach turned, knotted and threatened to give back my buttered noodles. I shivered as a cold gust of wind rushed through the balcony.

  Tom got up and left. Good, he’s going to go and sleep on the couch. A few seconds later, he came back with a blanket.

  “Would you like this?” he asked.

  “Yes, thank you,” I told him, reaching out for the blanket.

  “How about I sit behind you?” he asked, and before I could object, he continued, “That lounge chair must not be very warm on your back.”

  I shrugged. “Sure.”

  I moved forward, and he got in behind me and then wrapped the blanket around me. I stiffly sat forward, keeping my body away from his chest. But it was uncomfortable, like sitting with a board up my back. Eventually, I relaxed and slid back toward him. It felt like coming home. I sensed Tom relax, too, as if he had been holding his breath since he sat behind me.

  We lounged like that for a long time.

  Tom finally broke the silence. “Can I talk now?”

  I smiled. I did tell him not to talk. “Sure, Tom.”

  “Thanks. I wanted to say that I’m sorry about how it went down with your dad.”

  I stiffened, ready to start poking again.

  Tom held me tight. “Let me finish, Liza. I had this plan. I would take your dad into custody. I’m a cop, Liza. I had to do it. We’d go together, the three of u
s, and you would stay with him the entire way.”

  “It didn’t happen that way,” I told him.

  “No, you got mad. The Feds got protective. They wouldn’t let me go and talk to you. They made me stay with your dad. When I finally could come and talk to you, you were very upset.”

  “You think?” I said.

  “I knew you were. I wanted to crawl down on the ground with you and just hold you, but you were so mad, and then you threw the ring, and the Feds called me to help them. I thought we would talk at the boarding house, but the Feds sent an agent to collect my things, and I didn’t get to see you. After that, every time I called you, you hung up on me, and I got mad.”

  “I didn’t want to talk to you.”

  “Liza, I am sorry. I did everything I could to get your dad back to you.”

  “I know. Dad told me,” I replied, remembering what Dad told me about Tom working with the FBI and convincing him to be a witness for them.

  We sat in silence for a while, and I thought about what I wanted and how much I really did love Tom. It was better to just forget it and move on.

  Finally, I turned around to face him. “You want to put the ring back on again?”

  He shook his head.

  My eyes shot up with surprise.

  He unfastened the gold necklace from around my neck and slid the ring on to join the half unicorn locket my Dad gave me several months ago. It was my mom’s, and he had it broke in half, giving part to me and part to Jordan. Then Tom fastened the chain back around my neck.

  I lifted the ring up and asked, “Why is this around my neck and not on my finger?”

  “I realized something today.”

  “What?”

  “It took me a long time to understand and accept the contradiction in your personality.”

  I frowned at him. What the hell was he talking about? But before I could ask, he continued, “You’re a kindergarten teacher, very prim and proper and a woman who got gassed at the clown camp, drove her car into a ditch, twice, and stood toe to toe with some of the most despicable people without flinching. Now I find out that there is another side to you. I’m having trouble seeing you as a wild, daredevil youth. I want to know all of you, even the side that Kenny sees, too.”