The Road She Left Behind

by Nolfi, Christine

“Samson . . .”

  “I get it. You don’t want some kid dragging his sorry ass behind you on a new adventure—extra baggage, and you like to travel light. All I’m saying is we make a good team. Almost like we’re family. And I can pull my weight.” He slid his elbows off the railing. Crossing his arms, he watched the gulls swooping past as the boat rounded the tip of Charleston Peninsula.

  A pang of guilt struck her deep. Samson was still more boy than man. Yet he was man enough not to let her see him cry.

  Helplessly, she splayed her hands. “I want you to forgive me. Not today—but someday. I don’t want you feeling bad just because I don’t think it’s a great idea to bring you along.” The plea for understanding brought no reaction as he continued to study the splashing waves. “Samson, I know you’re feeling adrift now that you’re out of foster care. But you’ve spent your whole life in Charleston. This is your home. I don’t have roots. Not anymore. I never stay anywhere long. One year exactly, that’s all. Then I move on.”

  “I’d still like to go.”

  “My lifestyle isn’t a great choice for someone your age. You need a life that’ll give you a sense of direction.”

  He weighed the explanation with suspicion—or doubt. It was hard to tell. Over the last months he’d begun to idolize her, and she wondered if he feared missing out on what he imagined would be a grand adventure. Little did he know the lonely future awaiting Darcy.

  “One favor,” he said. “That’s all I’m asking.”

  “Anything.”

  “If you get on the road and change your mind, send a text. All I need is a time and place. I’ll find a way to catch up.”

  A childish request, heartbreaking in its simplicity.

  “You can’t follow me. Big Bud and Irma rely on you. No one responsible quits a job without giving notice.” She reached out to offer comfort, but she left her palm hovering above his shoulder for an uncomfortable moment. Lowering her hand to her side felt like the worst kind of retreat. “By then, I’ll be four states away. Too far for you to catch up.”

  “Bud and Miz Irma won’t mind if I quit right away. You know what they’re always telling me.”

  “If you’re patient, you’ll find your North Star.” The older couple went out of their way to encourage Samson’s belief that his life’s direction would reveal itself if he looked hard enough.

  His dreadlocks clacked as he gave a sharp nod. “Everyone’s got one,” he said with fierce conviction. “Even if it’s buried deep inside. Even someone like me.”

  “You’ll find your star,” she promised. “Just not with me.”

  Her frustration welled. What right did Samson have to assume she possessed the means to help him at all? She’d allowed a nearly maternal urge to bring him into her orbit. He was young and alone, and his sweetness reminded her of the sister she’d lost. But she never would have succumbed to the desire to protect him if she’d known he’d begin to view her as a guiding light.

  Anger layered onto her frustration. He was not to blame. Months ago, she’d begun buying him dinner after work and allowing him to hang out at her apartment. As if treating him like a cherished little brother could fill the hole in her heart.

  Or stopper the grief over all she had lost.

  Laughter rang out from the upper deck. The new manager was flirting with a man from the accounting department, the one with a goatee and heavy brows. He grabbed her by the waist and whirled her around. The champagne in her glass sloshed out in a glittery arc. The scene provided a stark contrast to the emotions colliding inside Darcy.

  Tears collected on her lashes. Brushing them away, she leaned into Samson. Even shoulder to shoulder, he kept his eyes locked on the waves.

  She glanced skyward. “Most of time I’m just lost,” she admitted. “I’ve been lost for a long time. Even if I believed in guiding stars—and I don’t—I wouldn’t recognize mine if it fell from the heavens and landed right at my feet.”

  Samson withdrew his arms from the railing. At last his dark, solemn gaze swung to hers.

  “Someday you’ll find your North Star,” he said. “You’ve just lost the will to look.”

  Late-morning sunlight poured through the window. Checking under the bed, Darcy was satisfied she’d left nothing behind.

  Only the wrought-iron bed and a simple pine dresser occupied the bedroom. The rest of the apartment had always felt equally severe, with angular Danish furniture in dull, uninviting gray. From the first day she’d moved in, the rental’s lack of warmth had appealed to Darcy. It was easier to leave an apartment she’d never considered a home.

  Still, she lingered. She dared the memory of Samson’s disappointment to seize her again. Now that he’d aged out of South Carolina’s foster care system, he needed to find somewhere to live. He’d been looking into group housing, but she knew he’d put off a decision in hopes of leaving Charleston with her instead. Aside from his job, there wasn’t much tying him to the city.

  Let it go.

  Better to leave Samson here, with his idealism rooted in fertile soil. If he became familiar with the real Darcy, he’d learn the worst lessons. Not that she allowed the heartache to cripple her or allowed herself to succumb to self-pity. She was too pragmatic to discount reality. Many people were knocked down by misfortune. Most people, in fact—if they loved deeply enough or lived long enough. A friendship became estranged, or a marriage led to divorce. Illness sent you into a tailspin, or financial hardship erased your self-confidence.

  Or death took the people you cherished.

  Tugging her long, wheat-colored hair into a ponytail, Darcy hesitated. She checked under the dresser for stray items and found only several dust bunnies. The box she’d packed this morning at the office—which Irma had not rifled through—was already stowed in the car.

  Moving day. Always on the dreaded anniversary, always to another city chosen at random. This year it would be Cape May, in New Jersey. Thanks to an executive headhunter website, her new job started next week. An inside sales position with a national company specializing in flood insurance. A big change from the casual atmosphere at Big Bud’s.

  After Darcy dropped off the apartment key with the landlord, she wheeled her luggage into the parking lot. She was just settling in behind the steering wheel of her Honda Accord when her smartphone rang.

  Reading the display, she frowned. It was Latrice calling.

  For a fraction of a second, Darcy hesitated.

  The middle-aged Latrice worked as the housekeeper for Darcy’s mother. By mutual agreement, they only chatted on Christmas. More contact was too painful for them both.

  Why is she breaking protocol?

  Whatever the reason, it didn’t bode well.

  On a steadying breath, Darcy picked up. “Latrice. Hello.”

  “Hi, sweetie. How are you?”

  “Fine, I suppose.”

  “You sound congested. Are you coming down with something?”

  A painful image leaped before her eyesight. Samson, waving goodbye as she’d marched off the Irma. His disappointment was added misery on the anniversary of the deaths of her beloved sister and distant father.

  “I’m all right.” A falsehood. She’d cried ugly-girl tears all the way back to the apartment.

  A silence rife with skepticism filled her ears. Latrice wasn’t easily fooled. She’d been sneaking around the emotional terrain of Darcy’s heart for years.

  “You sure about that?” she asked. The loving timbre of her voice threatened Darcy’s weak hold on her emotions. “From where I’m sitting, it sounds like you’re talking through a nose filled with snot.”

  “My allergies are just acting up. I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine, but I’ll give you points for bravery. You never were one for complaining. Remember when you ran the hundred-and-four temp?”

  “Listen, I have a busy day ahead. Can this wait until we talk at Christmas?”

  “That high temp got a hold of you in first grade,” the housekeepe
r continued. “You were cherry red and sweating like a sumo wrestler. Worst case of strep throat I’d ever seen.”

  “Oh. Right. I do remember.”

  Latrice gave a low murmur of approval. “You never made a fuss. My brave girl,” she said. “I’m still mad at myself for letting your little sister follow us into the examination room. Why didn’t I leave Elizabeth with the nurse? I suppose we’re all prone to making bad decisions, and I was young at the time . . .”

  A double meaning was hidden in the story, one flavored with forgiveness and advice. As the housekeeper rambled on about poor choices, Darcy glanced at the dashboard clock. One minute spun into the next.

  Curiosity snuck past her apprehension. “What did Elizabeth do?”

  “When Dr. Johnson reached for the syringe of penicillin, she let out a howl like nobody’s business. She thought he’d do you harm.”

  “Poor Elizabeth.”

  “What are you talking about? Poor me. Once she quit hollering, she threw up on my shoes.”

  “Elizabeth puked on your shoes? Yuck.”

  “Right next to the exam table. She’d had spaghetti for lunch. I thought I’d throw up. You were still comforting her when Dr. Johnson asked you to roll over for the shot.”

  Before her death, Elizabeth had been squeamish in the extreme. The sharp scent of antiseptic, blood oozing from a scraped knee, a glimpse of a snake slithering in high grass—it never took much to make her queasy. Darcy recalled a spring afternoon during their elementary school years when she found the half-eaten remains of a mouse on the mansion’s circular driveway. Curiosity drove her to snap off a branch from her mother’s expertly trimmed boxwood to examine the bloody remains. With fascination, she’d poked and prodded, unaware of her little sister standing close behind.

  For weeks afterward, Elizabeth slept in Darcy’s bedroom with her head burrowed beneath her big sister’s armpit.

  For sisters so close in age, they couldn’t have been more different. When they were teenagers, Elizabeth would dash from the living room whenever Darcy turned on a horror flick. The vampire romances Darcy read until her senior year of high school made Elizabeth shudder. No matter how hot the guy depicted in the pages, Elizabeth couldn’t square razor-sharp fangs with passionate love.

  “I don’t recall Elizabeth throwing up at the doctor’s office,” she admitted.

  “I had to throw those shoes away.”

  “I’m sure she felt bad about ruining them.”

  Another memory rushed over Darcy. The arduous labor her sister had endured to bring her son, Emerson, into the world. How Elizabeth clung to Darcy’s blood-starved fingers as each contraction gripped her. How Elizabeth, two days after Emerson’s birth, had elicited a solemn vow from her big sister.

  If anything happens to me, promise you’ll look after my baby.

  At the time, Elizabeth’s worries seemed far-fetched. She was twenty years old, a young woman with her whole life ahead of her. Or so Darcy thought. Never could she have imagined that her sister would die soon after Emerson’s birth.

  Self-loathing coursed through Darcy. The broken promise haunted her still.

  “Elizabeth made the cutest drawings to apologize,” Latrice was saying, her lighthearted tone at odds with Darcy’s sad thoughts. “The minute we got back to the house, she ran off to get her crayons. I still have the pictures she made—she drew a halo over my head.” Latrice paused, clearly relishing how much she’d enjoyed tending to her young charges. Getting back on track, she added, “There’s no shame in being out of sorts today, child. The anniversary is hard on all of us. Your mother most of all.”

  Darcy bit her lip. The falling-out with her mother was bad enough. Pondering the raw bitterness Rosalind endured every June was an agony not worth exploring.

  “Did you go with her to the cemetery?” she asked, astonished by her curiosity.

  “First thing this morning. The lilacs by the patio are blooming like crazy. I made two bouquets. Of course she complained the whole drive.”

  “About the lilacs?”

  “About the car smelling like a brothel. The way she went on, you’d think I’d dumped a bottle of perfume in her Mercedes. I can’t imagine why she prefers store-bought roses. All the scent is bred right out of them. She managed well enough at your daddy’s grave. She broke down at Elizabeth’s. She always does.”

  Bile rose in Darcy’s throat. After the accident, Crowne Funeral Home had performed a miracle on her father. Their careful work allowed for an open casket during the calling hours prior to the service.

  Not so for Elizabeth.

  Latrice said, “I am sorry about breaking our rule and calling you today. There wasn’t any choice.” She paused a beat. “You must come home.”

  Chapter 2

  You must come home.

  Her keys slipped from her fingers. They jangled to the floor of the Honda.

  “Baby girl, did you hear me?”

  Darcy scrabbled for the keys. “I heard you.”

  “And?”

  “Be realistic. I’m not welcome at my mother’s house.” Why Latrice thought otherwise was beyond comprehension. “It’s been almost a decade since I last stepped foot in Ohio. I’m never coming back, although I do hope you’ll take me up on my offer.” At the end of each once-yearly call, they routinely discussed meeting one day in a vacation spot, Miami or Hilton Head. Even though Darcy couldn’t recall Latrice ever taking a vacation, she kept extending the invitation. “I’ve moved on, Latrice. Built a new life on my own. I moved on because I didn’t have a choice.”

  “You’ve stuck your head in the sand is what you’ve done. Living like a vagrant, wandering from one city to the next. You need to get unstuck!”

  “I’m not a vagrant.” Distracted, she held up the key ring. The tiny silver key, the one for her carry-on, was missing. “You know why I left.”

  “Darcy Angela Goodridge, your stubborn streak is a mile wide.”

  She peered at the floor for the missing luggage key. “You’re not the first person today to mention my better qualities,” she said, recalling Samson’s nearly identical words. The key glinted, and she retrieved it from the toe of her canvas shoe. “What’s wrong with standing my ground? Contrary to what you believe, some relationships can’t be fixed. Like the one between me and my mother.”

  “I’m sick and tired of this foolishness. Don’t you think she regrets what she said?”

  Latrice was referring to their argument on the night of the double funeral. Darcy still wasn’t sure how much of the blame rested with her. Refusing to accompany her mother in the limousine to the gravesite wasn’t her most rational decision. Half-mad with grief and haunted by the events set in motion by her unforgivable behavior, she’d driven alone.

  A familiar misery twisted inside her. “You don’t want to believe my mother can be intentionally cruel. But she meant what she said that night. I’ve never doubted it.”

  In the days leading up to the funeral, whenever Darcy made the mistake of entering a room occupied by her mother, a formidable silence rained down on her. All those frigid glances and the tight anger thinning her mother’s lips. The tacit accusations were an impossible weight on Darcy’s heart.

  After the caskets were lowered into the ground and the mourners drifted away—all of them, including her rigidly composed mother—Darcy had stood at the gravesite with her eyes blurry from tears and her thoughts hollowed out. She stood alone in the unforgiving air until the daylight retreated. A dark chill carried into her bones as she walked back to her car. For hours, she drove aimlessly through Geauga County’s winding roads—sobbing as night stole the last sunlight from the hills, replaying the irretrievable mistakes that led to her father’s and Elizabeth’s deaths.

  It was well after midnight when she finally returned. The lights were still on in the mansion. In the library, her mother was pouring generously from a bottle of Macallan Scotch. Clearly grieving, and needing to blunt the tragic reality that she’d lost her husband and t
he daughter she’d loved more than anyone else.

  Her skittering, ravaged gaze caught Darcy. Setting down the bottle, she let loose a torrent of rage.

  Darcy left Ohio the same night.

  The memory sickened her. “Did my mother ask you to call?” Her voice nearly broke, but she reined in the emotion. “The truth, Latrice. Does she want me to come back?”

  The impassioned query floated unbound. On the other end, Latrice made a small cry of distress.

  Darcy jammed the key into the ignition. No, her mother didn’t want her back in Ohio.

  Not ever.

  “Rosalind didn’t ask me to reach out to you,” Latrice admitted. “How could she? She doesn’t know we stay in touch. At least I don’t think she does.”

  “She’d have a hissy fit if she did.”

  “Child, she’s upset you ran off. She’s upset about lots of things.”

  “I didn’t ‘run off.’” Darcy threw the car into drive and pulled out of the lot. “I was a legal adult. I chose to move away.”

  “Running from the hurt is no badge of maturity. I swear. Running off must be a genetic trait.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re not the only Goodridge to run from hard situations. Emerson does too. I don’t blame the child. He’s got a lot on his mind. We all do.”

  Emerson.

  Darcy eased into the traffic on King Street with pinpricks of guilt scattering across her heart. Once she left Ohio, she’d trained herself not to contemplate Elizabeth’s baby boy—or the promise she’d made to look after him. She’d left her nephew in the care of his prickly, career-driven grandmother and the same housekeeper who’d given more attention to Darcy and Elizabeth during childhood than their successful parents.

  Emerson was eight years old now—a child Darcy no longer knew.

  Latrice said, “For the record, one argument on the night of the funeral shouldn’t have made you leave home.”

  “Thanks for lending an opinion. I don’t agree, obviously. Just tread carefully, okay? I don’t want her needling you if you slip up and mention we’ve been in contact.”