Road and Beyond: The Expanded Book-Club Edition of The Road to You

by Brant, Marilyn

To Officer Barrett Rogers, who was quick to get a profile of Charlie loaded onto the police department’s website. Do you have information on this missing person? it read across the page in stark lettering. The cop was checking into all incoming police reports, as well as the latest hospital and morgue admissions. He, too, promised to call the second there was any news worth reporting.

  I spent the past hour pacing around the house, trying to quell the flood of emotions. My fear for my son’s life rose like the tide, but it never ebbed. It just kept rising and cresting at new levels. It was an internal tsunami, and I could do nothing about it.

  But then the phone rang.

  For a split second, as the sound pierced the silence and then died away, I didn’t allow myself to think or feel. The news could be anything. My entire life hung in that empty reverberation between rings.

  I reached for the receiver.

  “In thy face I see honor, truth and loyalty.”

  ~William Shakespeare

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  San Bernardino, California ~ Tuesday, July 4, 1978

  With Billy Neville’s help, we had a short but incredibly joyful family reunion in San Bernardino, California just two days later.

  It was the Fourth of July.

  We called my parents and asked them to fly down—not telling them the reason, just that it was important—and, of course, they came.

  Donovan, Billy and I met them at the airport, and Gideon, who’d been on the road somewhere in Southern California, drove his motorcycle to the secluded picnic site Billy had reserved just for us that day.

  The moment when Gideon took off his helmet and ran toward Mom and Dad, the world stopped spinning for a second. And then...everyone cried. Both of my parents. Me. Gideon himself. Donovan. And even Billy Neville.

  My brother looked different. There were some similarities, of course. His build hadn’t changed too much, although I could tell he was more muscular and a bit broader than he’d once been. His skin was tanned and starting to approach leathery. Like a California boy, rather than a Minnesota son.

  His hair color was noticeably lighter, and he sported a beard I’d never seen before. He no longer wore his ruby graduation ring. Honestly, at first glance, I might not have recognized him. (After all, I hadn’t when he’d been clad in biker gear in Amarillo or at the church cemetery in New Mexico.)

  But his voice—without that phony “Andy Reggio” accent—was the same as always. And when he smiled at me again and hugged me close, I knew I’d gotten my big brother back.

  There was nothing insignificant about the day. It was as if we all fully understood what a rare and precious gift this moment was and knew better than to waste a single second.

  We conversed as a whole group but, also, in smaller, intense configurations. Billy, my mom and Gideon. My dad and me. Gideon and Donovan. We grouped and regrouped all day long.

  My parents needed the most time with my brother, of course—both alone and, also, with Billy, who could so expertly provide explanations of the case. The police detective filled them in on what had happened over the past several years and, in particular, all of the events that took place involving their children.

  I was relieved not to have to hold that secret any more, and I could tell this was exponentially true for Gideon.

  Even so, Billy still insisted upon strict confidentiality as we moved forward. He invited my parents to discuss anything else with him at any time but, despite the fact that William James seemed to be operating alone in the Chameleon Lake Police Department and the other two fulltime officers there had been cleared of general suspicion, Billy and the FBI preferred to keep their circle of confidants extremely small.

  Donovan and I were told we were free to return home.

  Gideon’s safety was much less assured if he went back, but Billy told me privately that the final decision was really up to my brother.

  “There will always be a risk,” he said. “But I think the choice for Gideon is more complicated than that.”

  I didn’t really understand what the police detective meant, though, until later, when I finally got a half hour alone with my brother.

  I asked him a few of the questions I hadn’t been able to on the phone: What made you so certain I’d correctly follow the clues in the journal? Were you trailing us from city to city to make sure? Now that this is all over, will you come back home?

  He answered each of them, but in his own meandering and somewhat mysterious way.

  “You’re my sister, Aurora,” he said with one of his flash grins. “You think I wouldn’t remember how persistent you could be when you wanted to figure out something? I lived with you for sixteen years.”

  But then the deeper truth emerged. He confessed it had been his instincts that had saved his life in Amarillo, along with a little knowledge of explosives. He’d been only a few perceptive seconds ahead of Rick Brice and Sebastian James. “Still not quick enough to save Jeremy,” he lamented, but it was enough for Gideon to get away, even though he’d had to kill a man to do it. The experience changed him, and he was reminded of the intuitive gift he knew I possessed.

  “Once I’d sort of gotten my head together again, I tried to come up with a creative way to help Billy—and the special unit of the FBI—so we could get those bastards,” he said. “And I remembered the journal.”

  It was, as I suspected, an object he just happened to have with him in his backpack when he and Jeremy took Ben’s car to Bonner Mill. Slowly, months after the incident in Amarillo, the idea to use to journal took hold. He came up with the coded messages, wrote them down, brought the journal up to Chameleon Lake and planted it in the cedar box where he knew only I would find it.

  “My main concern was to keep you safe, even as you worked to solve the puzzle,” he said. “I knew, though, if anyone would be capable of skirting danger while piecing together the clues, it would be you.”

  And so, yes, he tracked our progress whenever he could. In Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri and Oklahoma for sure. “Not nearly well enough in Texas,” he said with an apology. “Sometimes you and Donovan were faster than I’d expected. In fact—” He paused. Studied my face silently for a few seconds and glanced at Jeremy’s big brother, who was having a private discussion with my dad. “I didn’t know for sure that you’d even involve Donovan until the two of you went to Crescent Cove together. I thought it was at least fifty-fifty that you’d go it alone.”

  “No, I needed his help,” I admitted. “I did from the very first day.” Then I pulled out Gideon’s leather journal, which had been my constant companion for the past month and my touchstone of hope, and I offered it to him. “Would you like to have it back?”

  He traced the butterfly on the cover with his fingertip and smiled at me. “No. See, the journal was always meant for you, Sis. That’s why I thought of you whenever I looked at it. Some of the pages at the beginning were my own notes, but I’d been writing down car maintenance procedures in it to give to you after you graduated and moved into the big wide world. I knew you were going to be a very independent young woman, and I figured you might wanna know stuff like how to change the oil in your car,” he said with a laugh.

  He told me a little more about what his life had been like since that Bicentennial weekend—the regrets he’d had, the challenges he’d confronted, the hours he’d spent alone on his motorcycle just thinking. He’d become “Andy” after Billy saved his life. My brother described how he’d actually begun training as an agent himself for the past year. Being taught the proper procedures. Learning how to shoot a gun. Strengthening his undercover guises. Putting his natural talents in science and mechanics to work, along with his social skills.

  And he explained, too, that he’d been given some unusual opportunities and privileges as part of Billy’s special undercover team. Like getting to be the one to take down Sebastian James in Albuquerque.

  “But wasn’t it hard for you to kill somebody, Gideon?” I asked him. “Even someone that bad?”<
br />
  “Not as hard as it probably should’ve been,” he replied. “Besides, I did it for Jeremy. And for you and Donovan, too.”

  However, he also told me he was at a personal crossroads. If he wanted to continue on the agency path, it would take more formal schooling. A degree to earn. A set of rules to follow. A lifestyle to accept.

  “There would be all of that settling down, grown-up stuff. Health insurance, income tax returns, being part of the system,” Gideon said with an involuntary grimace. “Billy’s been great and my FBI mentor has been real cool, too. They say I’m an asset to my team and my country, and I want to help them—I just don’t know if that’s the life for me. And I don’t think I can just go back to how things were before I left Chameleon Lake either. I’m no longer that same guy. I need to be…more free than even the old Gideon was. But I also wanted to make sure you and our folks were just as free first.”

  Until then, I’d never really seen the powerful struggle my brother would have to face within himself, probably for the rest of his life. The dichotomy tugging between his beliefs and desires. He possessed an inherent contradiction in his nature so strong, it created an unsolvable conundrum. Not only was I utterly unable to resolve it, but neither was he.

  It was interesting. I couldn’t be sure if Gideon was destined to be more of an antihero than a hero. More of a vigilante than a trained secret agent. I think he equally liked the idea of both.

  But the one thing that was crystal clear to all of us on this memorable Independence Day was that—however much he loved Mom, Dad and me, and however much he respected Donovan, Billy and his agency friends—Gideon would be making his own decisions about his future. And he’d take as long as he needed to do it.

  The day ended too fast, in darkness, as night ushered us out of the park and pointed us toward our different destinations.

  My parents, Donovan and I were all flying back to Minnesota together early the next morning. Donovan was going to leave his Trans Am at the airport in San Bernardino until he could make the return trip to Albuquerque to say his final goodbye to his little brother. Billy was headed back in his own car to New Mexico that night. And Gideon (aka “Andy” from that point onward) was riding west on his motorcycle.

  Before we all disbanded, Donovan lit the last firework we’d gotten in Crescent Cove. I heard him whisper, “This is for you, Jeremy,” and we all watched it light the sky with a hot, quick flash and a boom. We were grateful for our country but not blind to the fact that freedom came with sacrifice and, sometimes, with losses too painful to name.

  Donovan and I were no longer quite so young after our trip ended, and I, at least, didn’t feel nearly as inconspicuous in the eyes of those who loved me. Having had to fully face death, I think we both felt we could now truly live.

  Regardless, it was time for all of us to finally move on.

  11:15 a.m.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Pasadena, California ~ Sunday, August 17, 2014

  I answered the phone without checking the Caller ID. Without even uttering a word. But, nevertheless, a word came back to me.

  “Mom?”

  Charlie’s voice. It was Charlie. Oh, thank God.

  I got as far as “Are you okay—” before my tongue froze and my tears started falling.

  “Yeah, Mom. I’m fine. Is everything all right at home?”

  I wasn’t able to answer him because I was crying—weeping uncontrollably, really—from the exhaustion and the relief and the letting go of those endless nightmares, which had terrified me over the past forty-eight hours. They needed to be washed away but, still, I tried to stop the deluge, or at least control it a little. That didn’t work.

  My laidback younger son sounded uncharacteristically worried when he continued. “Look, I—I, um, just got your messages. And everybody’s. There were, like, fifty of them.”

  I blindly grabbed for a tissue from the Kleenex box on the counter, finally snagging one and swiping at my eyes. “Where—where have you been?”

  “In the Southern Sierras with Tim,” he informed me, as if this should’ve been the most obvious answer to anyone. “He’s doing a triathlon in three weeks and needed to get in a couple days of high-altitude training. He asked me on Thursday if I wanted to come along for some running and hiking in the mountains. I said I would if I could...and we did. We biked and camped a little, too. Nothing unusual but, you know, the cell reception out there is sucky.”

  Two solid days of hell because of sucky cell reception. Great.

  “But you didn’t show up for work on Friday,” I replied. “And there was some meeting with the ‘plastics people.’ Gloria called here and said—”

  “Gloria’s a fucking office snoop, Mom. I mean, I’m sorry for swearing but she sticks her nose into everybody’s business. God, that woman drives me nuts,” he ranted. “She acts like she’s the boss half the time. The only reason the managers let her get away with it is because they’d all be dead if she bitched about them to the VP. He’s her cousin.”

  He let out an exasperated sigh. “She shouldn’t have been pestering you, though. Martin knew I’d be gone all day Friday. He said he wanted to be the one to run the Benson presentation anyway. And, since he’s one of my supervisors and the team leader, it wasn’t like I was gonna argue with him. We talked about it on Thursday after work. Eddie, a new trainer from LifeFit, and I were having a beer at O’Shaughnessy’s, and Martin joined us for a while. He was supposed to tell Gloria and our boss, Christine, that I wouldn’t be there.”

  Charlie had written Drinks w/E @5:30 on his calendar for that night. “E” must have been Eddie. One of at least a dozen personal trainers my athletic son knew. Yeah, okay. Apparently not a killer then.

  I remembered something else. “Martin was sick on Friday. His wife called in for him. She had to take him to the ER early that morning. Some kind of severe bronchial thing that he had.”

  Gloria had briefly mentioned Martin’s illness in a couple of conversations that first day. She’d made it sound as though she’d all but interrogated every member of the staff about Charlie’s whereabouts, but she’d overlooked Martin. Or, more likely, Martin’s wife was trying to give her husband a much-needed break from the office busybody and had refused to let Gloria bother him.

  “Oh,” Charlie said. “That explains it. I didn’t think he’d flake out on me for no reason. And he was coughing at the bar. Didn’t think it was that bad, though.”

  Poor Martin would’ve had to have been hacking up at least a lung or two before my son would have considered his condition to be “bad.”

  I blew my nose and leaned against the counter. It was about the only thing holding me upright after a weekend of no sleep and a level of anxiety that should, by all rights, put me on high doses of prescription blood-pressure medication.

  There would be a list of people to call back that day, starting with my husband, whose flight may have already touched down, my oldest son and his wife and the very helpful Officer Rogers. I wasn’t in as much of a rush to call Gloria—but I would.

  My mind returned to the only important thing I needed to know. “So, you’re okay, then? You’re really fine?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I mean, I kinda twisted my ankle when I fell off my mountain bike. That’s why we’re home early. We were gonna stay out there until late this afternoon, but I got a little scraped up. Would’ve been nice to hang out for a while longer, but Tim thought maybe we should get back and—”

  “Tim was right,” I interrupted. “Good thinking on his part to drive home. I’m glad you guys were able to go out and have some fun in the mountains and that everything’s all right.”

  “Everything’s cool, Mom. Don’t worry.” He cleared his throat. “I’m twenty-eight, you know. You don’t need to worry about me so much.”

  I don’t need to worry about him... Seriously? Kids are so damn clueless.

  But I remembered my private bargain with God and recited it again to myself in the silence of
my relieved soul.

  I’d gotten Charlie back. He was safe. I didn’t need to solve any mysteries that day or even know all of the details. I was just immensely grateful for his return. Parenthood had a way of making us stronger than we could ever imagine and, yet, infinitely more vulnerable.

  Maybe, in the eyes of the world (and, most notably, in the eyes of my son), I was just another overprotective mom who, quote, “wouldn’t let her children grow up,” unquote. But I knew the truth about myself. That even though it had all turned out all right this time, I could never be one of those people who said, “Really bad things like that couldn’t ever happen in my family.”

  Because, once upon a time, it had happened in mine.

  Made me think of my mother again—and that special favor she’d asked me once.

  “Well, Charlie, I wasn’t the only one who was worried. I hope you know your father’s going to ground you for a year. Maybe two.” I was trying to make a joke. Anything to keep from completely breaking down again.

  “What? I’m almost thirty, and I have my own apartment,” he said. I could hear the mock horror, the feigned indignation in his voice. And the slight smile. Sweet boy. He was also trying to keep things light. To keep me from crying.

  I caught the sound of a taxi in the driveway. The slam of a car door. Then the welcoming click of the front lock. My husband was home. Thank heaven I could give him good news.

  “I don’t care how old you are,” I countered, as my husband rushed through the kitchen and raced to my side, grave worry etching deep lines onto his face. I leaned against him and squeezed—hard. “He’s okay,” I murmured.

  Then, to Charlie, “We’ll put you under house—or, I guess, apartment arrest. And if you ever leave town again without telling one of us, I will strangle you with my bare hands. You don’t have to call us here if you don’t want to. Email is fine. Or a Facebook message. Anything like that will work.”