The Roanoke Girls

by Amy Engel

  Charlie reached down and pulled something dark from the dog’s belly, flicked it away. “Pulling ticks,” he said. “Dogs get covered in ’em.” He grabbed another tick between thumb and forefinger. “Secret is to pinch ’em down low. Otherwise, they’re liable to explode on ya.” The words were barely past his lips when the tick, swollen to the size of a large raisin, burst between his fingers, splattering blood.

  “Oh…God…gross.” I groaned. “That’s so disgusting.” For a second I thought Sharon’s beef Stroganoff might make a second appearance on the porch steps.

  Charlie glanced over at me. “You got a weak stomach for a farm girl.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve only been a farm girl for a month,” I reminded him. “It’s gonna take a lot longer than that for me to get used to ticks. Especially the exploding ones.”

  Charlie grunted, twisted his head away from me, and spat just as my granddad rounded the corner of the house. “You coming?” he asked Charlie. “That horse’s shoe ain’t gonna fix itself.”

  Charlie gave my granddad a long look. “Be there when I’m done,” he said.

  I couldn’t get a good read on my granddad’s relationship with Charlie. They spent the better part of every day together, and clearly my granddad trusted Charlie with his farm and his family, but they didn’t appear to like each other much, a thread of tension underlying all their interactions.

  Once my granddad disappeared into the barn, Charlie got back to work on the ticks. I tried not to watch, but my eyes kept wandering in that direction. “Have you worked at Roanoke a long time?” I asked.

  “Yup,” Charlie said. “Came to work when your granddad was small, maybe four or five. I was sixteen, desperate for a job, and your great-granddad hired me on.”

  So Charlie had been at Roanoke for almost fifty years. I knew he had a little apartment above the garage, unlike Sharon, who lived in town. No family of his own. “You never thought about leaving?”

  Charlie cleared his throat. “Not much.” The tips of his ears flushed dark red, but his face stayed expressionless. “Been here so long now, can’t imagine anywhere else.”

  “You said you were there at the hospital the day my mom was born, right?” Somehow I couldn’t picture Charlie pacing the halls of a hospital, taking a celebratory cigar from my granddad’s outstretched hand.

  Charlie shook his head, tossed away another tick. “Roanokes aren’t born in hospitals. Not unless something goes wrong. They believe in home births.” He tilted his head toward the house behind us. “All of them born right here.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.” Plucked. Flicked. Spat. “Probably wouldn’t have made it to a hospital with your mama anyway, she came so fast. Like a greased pig flying out of a chute. Your gran barely had time to squawk.”

  I laughed a little at the image, and Charlie smiled, his teeth tobacco-stained.

  “I actually had to help catch your mama. Doctor didn’t make it in time.” He put a foot down gently on the dog’s belly. “Stay still, boy,” he said. “Ain’t done yet.” He turned his head to look at me. “She was a pretty little thing, barely even cried.”

  I snorted. “Well, she made up for that later.”

  Charlie gave me a sharp look. “That’s your mama you’re talking about. Got no idea what trials she went through before you came along. Could be she had good reason for tears. Show her some respect.”

  I ducked my head, cheeks burning. I thought about walking away, but Charlie kept talking, his voice softer. Maybe his version of an apology. Either way, I wanted to hear this story.

  “I remember holding her. She fit in the crook of one arm,” he said. “Your gran kept asking, ‘Is it a boy? Is it a boy?’ ” Another tick burst in his fingers, and I lifted my gaze.

  “She wanted a boy?”

  “Yup. Hoped Eleanor would be one. With your mama she prayed and prayed. By the time Emmeline came along, she was pretty much desperate. Even tried some of those tricks they talk about in books.” From the tone of his voice it was clear what he thought of that type of nonsense.

  “I guess Granddad was disappointed, too?” My chest ached a little at the idea that for all his love and pride Granddad secretly wished at least one of us had been a boy.

  A pause. “No, I wouldn’t say that. Your granddad was happy as a clam with all you girls. Didn’t care one bit he never had a boy.” Charlie shooed the dog away, stood up. “Truth is, don’t think he ever wanted one.” He walked down the porch steps, wiping his bloodstained fingers on his jeans as he went.

  —

  The hamburger stand on Main served two flavors of ice cream, vanilla and chocolate. Both soft-serve and always so close to melting that if you didn’t eat fast you’d be left with a bowl of ice cream soup within minutes. A better choice, relatively speaking, was the ice slush, four flavors: orange, cherry, grape, and lime. Allegra always picked cherry because she liked the way it stained her lips red, but I preferred the lime, even though it left me with a green tongue.

  “You want anything?” Tommy asked Cooper, pulling his wallet from his back pocket.

  “Nah, I’m good,” Cooper said. “Unless they’ve started selling a beer slush I don’t know about.”

  There were a couple of old plastic picnic tables in the parking lot behind the hamburger stand, but there was no shade and even at six o’clock it was too hot to sit.

  “Wanna walk over to the park?” Tommy asked, his arm slung around Allegra’s shoulders.

  Cooper shrugged. “Sure.”

  “Sounds good to me,” I said.

  The park was virtually deserted, those empty hours between the afternoon rush of kids and the evening’s restless teenagers. We rode the carousel a few times, more for the relief of wind through our sweaty hair than out of any desire to spin around in circles. After the carousel, Tommy and Allegra disappeared into the trees, the sound of her laughter drifting out from between the green branches.

  I stood there awkwardly, not sure what to do. I definitely didn’t want to hang around with Cooper and listen to Allegra and Tommy have sex. “You ever go down the slides?” I asked him.

  Cooper smiled. “Not for a long time. We used to bring wax paper when we were kids, really get up some speed.”

  “Come on,” I said, grabbed his hand before I could overthink it, and pulled him across the park.

  My granddad had told me the park slides were original, dating to the 1940s—jagged-edged metal behemoths towering more than twenty feet above the ground. They would never be allowed in a new park. Just looking at them made you think of broken limbs and nasty cuts, old rust flecks buried beneath the skin.

  “I’m not sliding down that,” Cooper said, pointing at the tallest slide with his cigarette.

  “Why not? You too cool?”

  “Definitely.”

  I laughed, handed him my slush. “Well, I’m going.”

  “Knock yourself out.”

  I scrambled up the ladder, not realizing how high I was until I got to the top, vertigo hitting as I looked down at the ground. I grasped the railing with both hands. “It’s high,” I yelled.

  “Yeah,” Cooper yelled back. “No shit.”

  I knelt down and touched the metal, warm from the heat of the day but not hot enough to burn me. I swung my legs onto the slide, took a deep breath, and shoved off, hands held above my head. The descent was swift and steep, so fast I didn’t have time to slow myself down before I shot off the end of the slide, the back of my head smacking into the metal.

  “Oh, fuck,” I heard Cooper say. He dropped down next to me on one knee, his hand curving behind my head. “Are you okay? Lane?”

  I struggled to breathe, the air knocked out of me, silver starbursts exploding in my peripheral vision. “I’m okay,” I wheezed, finally, pushing myself up on my elbows.

  Cooper didn’t move, still cradling my head. “When I said ‘knock yourself out,’ I didn’t mean literally.”

  I laughed and then winced. My head ached. My s
horts and legs were covered in a layer of dirt, and I was pretty sure I’d scraped the hell out of my back, too. “This is not my finest moment,” I told him.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Cooper rubbed his thumb gently over my neck, and even though it throbbed I didn’t want him to stop. “Gracefulness can be overrated.”

  I shoved at him halfheartedly. “Stop making me laugh. It hurts my head.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about this?” He leaned over and pressed his lips against my collarbone, moved to the tender juncture between neck and shoulder, ended right below my ear. “Does this hurt?” he whispered against my skin.

  “No,” I breathed out as he raised his head to look at me. My neck felt like it was made of Jell-O. If not for his hand cupping the back of my head, it might have fallen off and rolled away.

  His eyes shone gold, a sheaf of blond hair drifting across his forehead. I reached out and pushed it back, kept my hand there to pull him forward. He kissed me for real then, there in the dirt at the base of the slide, and my mind flew away, circled up into the summer sky and left only my greedy body behind. Later, when I tried to remember every second, it came to me in fragments. Cigarette and lime. Teeth and tongue. Pleasure and pain.

  Allegra finally learned to drive well enough to merit her own car, if the shiny black Range Rover in the garage is any indication. Even in the shade of the garage, the interior is steamy, and my bare legs stick to the leather almost immediately. Besides her room, this is the only other place Allegra has sole dominion. If she was going to leave a clue as to where she is, maybe this car is where she put it. I start with the dash, move on to the doors, the console between the seats, search for anything written on the visors. Nothing. I push the driver’s seat back as far as it will go and crouch down in the footwell before crawling over to the passenger side. I crane my neck to look under the seat and see only a few shriveled french fries.

  “What’re you doing, Lane?” my granddad asks from the open driver’s side, and I jolt upward so fast I smack my head on the dashboard. He hisses in a breath through his teeth. “Gotta be careful there, girl.”

  I’m frozen in place, as if watching from a great distance, as he reaches out, catches a lock of my hair between his fingers. At the very last second I come alive, jerking back just as he gives my hair a gentle pull. My scalp stings, and when I look up, a few long, dark strands dangle from my granddad’s grip. He spreads his fingers, and the strands waft away in the humid air.

  “What’re you up to?” he asks again as I lever myself up to sit on the passenger seat.

  “Nothing, really,” I hedge, but like when I was a teenager, he waits me out, leaning into the car, arms folded and braced above his head. “I’m checking if Allegra left any sort of message out here. You know how she always—”

  “Carves up things she doesn’t have any business ruining?” he finishes for me, a smile on his lips.

  “Yeah,” I say. Of course he wouldn’t need a reminder of Allegra’s quirk. He’s lived with her every single day of her life. He probably has her memorized by now.

  “Police already checked her car, Lane.”

  I shrug. “Can’t hurt to give it a second look.”

  “Find anything?”

  “Not yet.”

  Without asking if I want company, he swings into the driver’s seat, puts both hands on the wheel. He gives it an affectionate pat. “She loves this car. Can still barely drive worth a damn, though.”

  “How many’ve you had to buy her?” I ask, and my granddad shakes his head. “You don’t want to know,” he says. I turn my face to the side so he won’t be rewarded with my smile.

  Neither one of us speaks, and heat snakes under my hair, forces sweat from my pores. “I worried about you, missed you, every second,” he says as I’m reaching to open the passenger door and escape. “Every single second you were gone.”

  I know his warm gaze is a trap, designed to make me feel like the most special girl in the world, but it’s still almost impossible to tear my eyes away. “You didn’t need to worry,” I say, voice tight. “I did fine.” I’m having a hard time breathing in this enclosed space, my chest aching with the effort. I have to get out of this car, out of the garage, back into the open air.

  When I risk another glance at him, he nods, face somber. “I can see that. Do you want to tell me about it?”

  “No,” I say. In truth, I don’t have many clear memories of the time immediately after I left Roanoke. A Greyhound bus, miles of highway, the first view of Los Angeles—flat and sprawling and cloaked with a dirty blue sky. I spent the first two nights sleeping on the streets, clutching my suitcase like a shield against my body. At the forty-eight-hour mark, I thought about calling my granddad and begging to return to Roanoke. I was working up the courage to do it when a man who ran a shelter for homeless teenagers happened to stop into the McDonald’s where I sat hunched over a Diet Coke. He convinced me to give the shelter a shot, and I lived there for a while, then took off again. I had trouble with roots. Still do. Always trying to stay one step ahead of my past, my granddad, Roanoke.

  And look how well that turned out.

  —

  I haven’t talked to Charlie since I’ve been back, so I climb the rickety steps on the side of the garage and knock on his door. A window air-conditioning unit hums next to me, dripping cold water in a puddle at my feet on the narrow landing.

  “Lane,” Charlie says, when he opens the door. His smile is brief and shows only a hint of tobacco-stained teeth, but the slight gleam in his eyes tells me he’s glad to see me.

  “Hi, Charlie.”

  He steps back, opening the door wide, and I walk inside. I’ve only been in Charlie’s apartment once before. An early September day that burned like July. I don’t remember much about it, actually, other than my tears and Charlie giving me a handkerchief from his back pocket to dry them. I never made it past his living room.

  He gestures me toward the tiny table in his kitchen. The floor is cracked linoleum, the seams dark with years-old dirt no amount of scrubbing will ever get clean. The whole room is worn, run-down appliances and tired paint. “You should have my granddad fix this place up,” I tell him.

  Charlie spits into the cup clutched in his hand. “Suits me fine.” He pulls out the chair across from me, sits with a slight grunt. His overalls are stained with prairie dust, and he gives his face a quick swipe with his handkerchief. I wonder if it’s the same one he loaned me all those years ago.

  “I don’t have the money I owe you,” I tell him.

  “That wasn’t a loan. It was a gift.”

  “Blood money?” I ask and feel like shit when Charlie winces, the color draining from his face. As if I have any right to accuse Charlie of wrongdoing. As if I’m any better. I run my thumb along the aluminum edge of the table. “I hope you didn’t get in any trouble over giving me the money, back then.”

  “Nah,” Charlie says, leaning back in his chair. “I know how to keep a secret.”

  “Yeah.” My eyes find his. “Me too.”

  Charlie hooks his thumbs into the straps of his overalls. “Not gonna lie, Lane. Hoped I’d never see you again.”

  I cough out a laugh. “No offense, Charlie, but I kinda hoped that, too.”

  “You’re here for Allegra, I take it?”

  I nod. “Granddad called me.”

  Charlie unhooks one hand to lift his chaw cup for a spit. “He should’ve left you well enough alone.”

  “No,” I say, surprising myself. “I’m glad he called. I want to help Allegra if I can.”

  Charlie sighs. “I don’t think there’s any helping Allegra. All that’s gonna happen is you’re gonna end up hurting yourself. Allegra should’ve gone with you. Would’ve been better for everyone. Especially her.”

  “How was she?” I ask. “After I left? All these years? We didn’t talk much.”

  “She was Allegra,” Charlie says, the tone of his voice betraying all t
he complicated emotions between them. “Mouthy, willful, sad. Once that Tommy Kenning got married last year, she wilted a little bit. Like she might’ve been sorry he got away.”

  “She never would’ve married him, though.”

  “Nope,” Charlie agrees. “But maybe she liked knowing the option was there. Like a life raft. Once he tied the knot, it was over. I don’t know Tommy all that well, but he seems like the type takes marriage serious.”

  “He is,” I say, remembering Tommy spinning the gold ring on his finger. “So how was she lately, the last few weeks? According to Gran and Granddad, she was the same as always.”

  Charlie gives my words some thought, his gaze distant. “Nothing jumps out at me,” he says finally. “But I’m the last person on earth she’d talk to, so I don’t have any details.” He snorts out a laugh, ends with a hawk into his cup. “I know you want to do right by Allegra. But make sure you’re doing right by yourself, too. This place is no good for you. You shouldn’t stay. At least not for long.”

  I stare at him, so much a part of Roanoke it’s impossible to imagine it without him, even though he doesn’t carry the family name. “Why’d you stay?” I ask.

  “Penance.” He keeps his eyes on the cup as he speaks. “For a wrong I did someone a long time ago. I stayed and did what I could to help you girls.” His hand tightens around the cup. “I don’t expect you to forgive me, Lane. I know that’s too much to ask. But I did as much as I was able. It still wasn’t enough, but I tried.”

  “I know that, Charlie,” I say. “And for what it’s worth, I don’t expect to be forgiven either.”

  —

  I don’t know if dinners at Roanoke have become less formal in the years since I’ve been gone or if it’s Allegra’s disappearance that’s caused the lack of gathering around the dining table. Whatever the reason, I’ve been back at Roanoke for more than a week before Gran corners me in the upstairs hall and tells me dinner will be served at six o’clock. It’s clear she expects me to attend. It shocks me a little that she wants us all gathered in one spot. I can’t imagine anything good will come of it.