Shadow in Serenity

by Terri Blackstock

  “His grandmother’s?” Jason asked, as if the idea were ludicrous. “What did he want to go there for?”

  David shot Logan an amused look. “He’s helping his grandpa bathe the dogs.”

  Jason wilted. “And the fish are biting. Papa caught —”

  “Six. I heard,” David said. “Jason, you know Mr. Brisco, don’t you?”

  As if he only noticed him now, Jason looked at him directly. “Yeah. Hi, Logan. You fish?”

  Logan laughed. “I’ve been known to.” The truth, however, was that the only pole he’d ever held as a boy was a pool cue. “Who’s Papa?”

  “My grandpa.”

  David handed him the check, and Logan pocketed it as he got to his feet. “Where do you fish?”

  “I have a secret place over at the lake,” Jason said. “Only Nathan and I know where it is.”

  “Well, you can go without him, can’t you?”

  “Nah, that’s no fun,” Jason said. “Hey, Logan, why don’t you go with me? Please? You’d like it, I promise. And I know you’ll catch some fish. This morning my papa caught —”

  “Six,” David and Logan said simultaneously, and they both laughed.

  “Well, I guess I could go with you for a little while,” Logan said. “Not that I’m dressed for it.”

  Jason regarded his khaki pants, short-sleeved shirt, and Italian shoes. “That’ll be fine,” he said. “Honest. There’s hardly any mud up there at all.”

  The boy’s exuberance was contagious. “I don’t have a pole,” Logan said.

  “He can use Nathan’s, can’t he, Mr. David? Please?”

  “Sure, Logan,” David said, feigning seriousness. “I’ll get it if you want. There really is practically no mud.”

  Logan chuckled. “Okay. I think we’ve got a deal.”

  He thanked Janice for the meal, underscoring it with the most flattery he could pack into a sincere-sounding statement, and followed David out to the garage. The pole David got for him was his own instead of Nathan’s, and Logan thanked him. He’d bring it back when he came to get his car, he said. Then, after tapping his pocket where he’d placed the check, he followed Jason through the woods behind the Trents’ house.

  “Shouldn’t you tell your mother you’re going?” Logan asked him.

  “She knows,” Jason said. “I told her I was going with Nathan.”

  “She might not like that you’re going with me.”

  Jason shrugged. “She doesn’t want me talking about the park with you, but she didn’t say I couldn’t go fishing with you.”

  Logan grinned at the boy’s rationale. It sounded much like his when he’d sneaked out the Millers’ window to go to the pool hall. There were, indeed, some things a boy had to keep to himself.

  Logan felt like Andy walking with Opie in the opening credits of the Andy Griffith Show. As they came to the edge of the woods behind the house and the lake came into view, he stopped for a moment. A summer breeze whispered through the leaves on the trees and swept across his face, and the water circled in gentle ripples where a fish jumped or a turtle swam.

  It wasn’t real life, he told himself as some distant, hollow memory rose inside him. It was only a script that he played out, just like all of his life. It was no more real than a television show.

  But the television show it reminded him of was the only semblance of true family life, or innocent childhood, he had known since the age of five. And something about that disturbed him now.

  Jason had gotten ahead of him. Now he turned back. “Come on. I’ll take you to my secret place. But you can’t tell anyone.”

  “A secret, huh? I won’t tell.”

  “You have to promise,” Jason said. “Because it’s real important.”

  “Okay, I promise,” Logan said, holding up his right hand. “Scout’s honor.”

  Jason regarded him a moment, considering whether he could trust him, then finally said, “Okay. It’s this way.”

  They wove through trees skirting the edge of the lake, and as they walked, Jason pointed out where he and Nathan liked to swing from the vines in the summer and drop into the lake, and where they had once found a dead bobcat, and where they’d caught a snapping turtle. The boy rambled on as if he’d known Logan all his life. Finally, they came to a small clearing with a stump where a tree had fallen adjacent to the lake, and Jason set his fishing gear down, stepped up onto the log, and held his arms out. “Well, whaddaya think?”

  Logan looked around, envying the boy for having a place like this. If he’d had one as a kid, rather than the smoky pool hall, things might have turned out differently. With someplace to go to find peace, someplace that could have been his own, maybe he would have felt less of the turmoil he’d known in his childhood. Maybe he would have grown into someone who obeyed the law, settled down into a hometown of his own, and became a respectable member of society. Maybe a decent husband … a father …

  Poisonous thoughts, came the voice from the back of his mind. Montague’s voice would have reminded him who he was, kept him in focus and out of trouble.

  “This is the best hangout any guy ever had,” Logan said. “Look. You’ve even got a place for me to sit.” He sat down on an evenly sawed stump near the water.

  “Yeah, me and Nathan worked for a long time sawing that down. Before if you sat on it, you got splinters in your rump. I like to sit here on the log. One time we found a rabbit in the log, and we took it home, but Mom made us bring it back and let it go. She said its mother was probably looking for it. Did you ever have a rabbit?”

  “Nope. I never had a pet of any kind. Not one of my own, anyway.”

  Jason dug through the dirt in the small bucket he carried. He pulled out a long worm and handed it to Logan. “No pets? How come?”

  “I moved around a lot.” Folding the worm in half, Logan hooked it.

  “Did you have a dad?”

  Logan swallowed. How did he tell the kid that he didn’t know his father’s name? “No, no dad.”

  “I had one, but he died. Mom said he was real nice. That he used to hold me all the time.”

  That wasn’t the way Logan had heard the story. The man sounded like a hard-drinking loser. Flinging the line out into the water, he glanced over at Jason, who was intent on getting his worm fastened. Finally the boy flung his line out as well. “I have three cats,” he announced when he got the line where he wanted it. “And two goldfish, and a turtle, and a dog that kind of runs away whenever he wants but comes back when he gets hungry. They all stay outside, except for the turtle.”

  “Your mom must like animals.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “She moved around a lot when she was a kid. She never got to have pets. So whenever I bring one home, she usually lets me keep it, except for a snapping turtle I found once. I wanted him to be friends with my other turtle, but she made me set him free. She doesn’t like locking up something wild.”

  He wondered if that had anything to do with Carny’s free spirit. Did she ever feel locked up, confined to this tiny town? If she did, he hadn’t yet seen any evidence of it.

  “Your mom is a very special lady, Jason.”

  “I know,” Jason said, matter-of-factly. “She’s fun. She’s not exactly like other moms.”

  “How do you mean?”

  Jason shrugged. “Well, a lot of the guys are jealous because their moms don’t ride motorcycles. They think she’s cool.”

  “Has she taught you to fly?”

  “We’re working on the ground school,” he said. “But I need to learn math a little better before I’ll get good enough to fly. Maybe when I get in third grade.” When Logan laughed, Jason said, “Really! It could happen. I saw a kid on TV who flew across the country when he was ten. If he can do it, I can! At least, if I get better at math.”

  “I’m pretty good at math. If you ever need any help …” Logan felt something tugging at his line, and he got to his feet quickly, reeled it in, and lifted it from the water. A big, floppy fish hung at the
end it, and he laughed aloud as he grabbed the line and pulled it in. “Are you kidding me? I caught something?”

  “All right! That’s a bass, Logan! Big enough to eat for supper. I’ll get Mom to cook it, and you can eat with us!”

  Logan was too distracted by the flopping fish to respond, but when he’d wrestled it off the hook, Jason took it, hooked it on the stringer, and hung it in the water.

  Some overwhelming feeling — pride, or maybe childish pleasure — came over Logan, and he sat back down. He couldn’t remember ever feeling such a burst of pure excitement. Jason, however, took it all in stride and handed him the bucket. “Here, get another worm. We’re gonna catch a million of those today.”

  Repeating that pleasure suddenly became Logan’s immediate goal, and he dug out another worm and baited his hook again. “You do this all the time?”

  “Every Saturday, almost,” Jason said. “Sometimes Mom comes with me, but I don’t bring her to this place because it’s a secret. It wouldn’t be a secret anymore if I brought my mom.”

  Logan threw his line back out and settled in to wait, watching an egret as it flew across the water. In the tree above him, birds chirped and sang, and the breeze whispered smoothly through the leaves, relaxing him more than a stiff drink ever had.

  He regarded the child who sat quietly on his log and realized that it had been years since he’d experienced a comfortable silence with another person. There was no sales pitch on the tip of his tongue, no scheme brewing in his mind, no new angle that he was trying out. There was no need for pretense, and the pretenses he’d started out with today — his Gucci loafers, Brooks Brothers sport shirt, and custom-tailored khakis — seemed awfully silly now.

  “You know, Jason, I really appreciate your bringing me out here. But you shouldn’t have.”

  Jason frowned at him. “Why? I thought you liked it.”

  “It’s just dangerous, inviting strangers to a private place like this.”

  “You’re not a stranger.”

  “Strangers like to pose as friends sometimes. The next guy you invite might not be as great a guy as me.”

  Jason grinned. “Okay, I won’t invite anybody else. But since you already know about it, you can come back anytime.”

  Logan stared out over the water, suddenly uneasy. His facetious comment about being a great guy had been meant to amuse Jason, but instead, it brought Logan down. Jason was so trusting — but in truth, what Logan would do to this town would help destroy that innocence. “You sure we’ve got enough bait?” he asked finally.

  “If we don’t, we’ll dig for more,” Jason said. “But it should be enough. Mom told me to be home at three.”

  “Yeah,” Logan said. “That’s probably because I have a class with her at three thirty.”

  “You will come back and eat with us, won’t you?”

  Logan squinted into the sunlight and gave it a moment’s thought. “Uh … no, I don’t think so, Jason. Your mom doesn’t like me much.”

  “I know,” the boy admitted. “Why do you think that is? I mean, you’re a nice guy. I wouldn’t just take any old jerk fishing with me. Not to my secret place.”

  Logan smiled. “Well, maybe your mom has a different standard of judging people. She’s just looking out for your best interests.”

  “I know, but she goes overboard sometimes. Everybody in town knows you’re a good guy. The park is gonna be so great — oops, I’m not supposed to talk about that with you, am I?”

  “I guess not.” He studied the surface of the water, watching for a ripple. “So does your mom see anyone special?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Does she have a boyfriend?”

  “Lots of them. She’s real pretty. That’s another reason so many of my friends are jealous. Their moms don’t look like mine.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “But I don’t think she wants just one boyfriend. She doesn’t go out on dates too much. Sometimes, when I spend the night at Nathan’s, she might go to a movie with one of them. Mostly Nathan spends the night at my house, and we make popcorn and watch movies and stuff. Have you seen Homeward Bound?”

  Logan’s mind wandered as the boy rambled on about the movie, but Logan couldn’t help dwelling on the fact that although Carny had lots of men after her, she preferred to stay home most of the time. And that, he was sure, was by choice. She wasn’t looking for a relationship. She really was happy with her life as it was. He’d been wrong about her loneliness.

  That he envied the way she lived surprised him, and he couldn’t put his finger on why. In a few days he would be moving on, richer and wiser, and the town of Serenity would be nothing more than a distant memory that he could never return to. But for the first time in his life, he wished he could stay.

  That was foolish. Montague would have said, You’re getting too involved, my boy. You’re letting the people con you, instead of the other way around. And worst of all, you’re thinking too much.

  But as the day went on and the fish kept biting, Logan realized that leaving wasn’t going to be as easy as he’d thought. Serenity lived up to its name. He wondered if it still would after he’d finished with it.

  fourteen

  Carny watched through the window of her office next to the hangar as Logan’s Navigator pulled up. She’d seen it parked at the Trents’ earlier in the day, and that riled her. Apparently, David and Janice were buying into the scam. She had stewed about it all day, trying to think of a way to make the people of Serenity listen to her. But those who were gullible enough to give Logan their money didn’t want to hear anything negative about him. Everyone’s patience with her wore thin as soon as she got on her soapbox.

  She turned to the plane parked in the hangar behind her. Jason sat in the cockpit, making flying noises and talking into the radio, a top gun who’d just seen the enemy. As long as she and Jason were safe from Logan’s clutches, maybe she should just let it go. Let the town learn its lesson. As for her in-laws, well, she had put the money Logan paid her for her class in a safe place, to return to them when he skipped town. She only hoped they hadn’t given him more than that.

  She watched Logan get out of the car and wave at her, grinning that grin. For a moment, she considered the possibility that she was wrong, that he wasn’t a con artist, just a businessman about to change the face and heart of Serenity.

  No, the image didn’t fit. He was a crook, pure and simple.

  Opening the door, Logan stuck his head into her office. “Are we still friends?”

  She feigned distraction and headed for the classroom at the other end of the building. “We’ve never been friends, Brisco.”

  “Well, okay. Then are we still just mild enemies, or is it worse since last night?”

  She frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  He looked a little too smug as he came in and dropped his notebook and car keys on the table. His nose was the slightest bit sunburned, and vaguely, she wondered when he’d had time to get any sunshine since last night.

  “You seemed a little disgusted at my attentions to the pretty Miss Miller. Isn’t that why you left?”

  She laughed then. “You thought I left because of you? Get real.”

  He leaned a hip against her desk as she straightened her papers, and crossed his arms. “I don’t know. I noticed a definite chill when you looked at me on the dance floor.”

  She knew he was baiting her, so she came around the table and faced him squarely. “All right, Brisco. It did disgust me. There’s not a woman in this town who deserves to be strung along by you, used, and then dumped when you disappear without a trace.”

  “And what if I stayed, Carny?” he asked, annoyed. “What if I actually did what I said I was going to do, and built the park, and made Serenity my home?”

  “And what if the sky turned green, and grass was pink, and the Loch Ness monster turned up in our lake?”

  He stared at her. “You think you’ve got everything all figu
red out, don’t you? The possibility that you’re wrong never even occurs to you, does it?”

  “When I’m wrong I can admit it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She looked him dead in the eye. “Tell you what. When you prove me wrong, I’ll prove I can admit it. Until then, we have nothing to talk about. Now, do you want to take your lesson or not?”

  Logan sat down. Pulling his pen out of his pocket, he said, “Teach me. I’m listening.”

  Her heart hammered with anger as she launched into her lesson about federal air-traffic regulations. She wondered how much longer she’d have to endure this.

  Logan didn’t know what had provoked him more — Carny’s dead-on attitude about him, or the tough questions the town’s citizens had begun asking about the park. Now that they’d had more time to think through his “proposal,” questions about infrastructure, permits, and the buy-in of county and state government kept popping up. By the middle of the week, those questions had driven him back to his motel room, where he reviewed the research he’d done to get a better working knowledge of theme parks. He memorized details about the inner workings of those parks, the people who had built them in the past, the impact on the towns around them, their potential revenue. As always when he researched a part he was playing, he found himself absorbed in the subject matter, meticulously planning out details and adding up figures. He had the facts worked out as clearly as he would have if he’d been legitimate.

  The problem was, he’d been here too long already. In another week or two, everyone from Peabody’s Printing to the Welcome Inn would realize his credit was no good, that he was a fraud.

  That left him a week or so to finish the job and skip town. The checks he’d collected from the citizens so far had already cleared, and all he had to do was push those undecided investors over the hump, take their money, and disappear. It was so simple.

  So why hadn’t he called it a day already? You’re getting soft, he imagined Montague saying, but Logan shook his head. He told himself that Carny Sullivan hadn’t gotten under his skin, that Jason’s fishing hole had made no difference. He was here to score, and score big.