Dark Road Home

by Anna Carlisle

  Lily, meanwhile, was a magnet for people’s affections. A pretty, convivial baby, she had grown into an irresistibly sunny adolescent. It had been easy for Gin to understand why her mother preferred Lily. After all, they shared a natural charisma; each understood—innocently, innately—how to use their charm. Both had been beautiful and each seemed bewildered by those who were not—how did one manage, they seemed to wonder, when one was given only ordinary graces? Madeleine had received three marriage proposals before accepting Richard’s, and seemed to believe that Lily was destined for a similar fate. Maybe that was why she’d been so negative about Tom: at sixteen, Lily would have years to spend spurning suitors before settling down.

  Richard set his spade in the bucket and started walking toward her, wiping his hands on his pants. Gin stayed outside the garden, mindful of her shoes, letting the winds blow her hair around her face.

  “The garden looks great, Dad.”

  Richard smiled, embarrassed even by this small accomplishment. “I guess it’ll do. Mom send you out to fetch me?”

  “No, I just felt like talking. Just me and you, for once.”

  Richard’s expression showed he didn’t believe her, but he didn’t argue. “Want to pick some radishes? I’ve got some interesting heirloom varieties.”

  “Dad, you know I don’t have your green thumb.”

  “Oh, but you could. Get that investment banker boyfriend of yours to put some raised beds in his backyard. Clay, wasn’t it? How is he?”

  She swallowed her guilt. “Yes, Dad, his name is Clay, and he’s fine, and he’s not a banker, he’s an attorney.”

  “Close enough.”

  Surprised, Gin examined her father’s face more closely. Was it possible—was he teasing her? It seemed unlikely, especially now, with tragedy clinging to the family once again. She’d never found it easy to talk to her father; now it seemed nearly impossible.

  “Now look here, Virginia,” Richard went on, taking a rag from his tool caddy and wiping off his hands. Nearby was a basket of lettuce that he’d picked. “I made my peace with losing Lily a long time ago. I never expected her to come back, not like some folks did. I guess I knew . . . well, there was a moment, that day. I’ve never told this to anyone. I was at the clinic, between surgeries. I was down at the vending machine getting a cup of coffee. Two, actually; I was getting one for Spencer, because we’d got in a habit of taking a break together in the afternoon, checking over the construction. They were putting the new wing on that summer, remember?”

  “The regenerative medicine department. I’d forgotten.”

  “That’s right. I mean, here it is seventeen years later and everyone still calls it the new wing, but back then it was exciting to go down where the courtyard used to be and see all those fellows with hard hats hard at work. Spencer generally just fretted about the budget and the schedule, but me, well, I guess I never did outgrow my fascination with dump trucks and the like.” He laughed, looking at his hands. “An occupational hazard for guys like me, I guess, feeling like we missed out on something.

  “Anyway, they’d started framing it out that week, and I was looking forward to going to check out their progress with Spencer. My next case wasn’t for an hour. It was Mrs. Madigan with a knee replacement, which I remember because, what with everything that happened, she ended up going up to Pittsburgh to have it done, and it gave out on her five years later and we were the ones who went in and fixed it.

  “I was standing there waiting for the coffee to fill—there was a trick to that machine, you had to wait a little extra time after you thought you were done, or you’d end up getting your hand burned with that one last spurt. And suddenly I felt like—I don’t know how to describe it, but like I was kicked hard from the inside. Like—like my guts, all my organs, like someone just hit me with a roundhouse as hard as they could.”

  Gin kept her expression carefully neutral. He was right—she’d never heard this story, and she doubted her mother had either.

  “I grabbed the counter—knocked over a stack of those Styrofoam cups. It wasn’t pain exactly, what I was feeling, but more of an urgency, a sense that something terrible was about to happen. This pressure inside me, I knew it was a signal that I had to do something, something important, maybe even heroic, but I had no idea what. You know? I had never felt this way in my life, that something important depended on me. Not during my surgeries, not when you girls were learning to drive, or when your mother had that ski accident—in all of those times, I felt like I was in control, like I knew what to do next. Like autopilot took over and I trusted all my training, my judgment. But this wasn’t like those other times. This was . . . terrifying.”

  His face had gone ashen, and he was gripping the handle of the bucket tightly. Some of the weeds dangled over the side, about to fall out, but Richard didn’t seem to notice.

  “I called your mother, but she didn’t answer. I’d bought her a cell phone, but she didn’t want to use it back then. It was something of a tug of war between us. Maybe her way of asserting her independence a little, what with you girls getting older. Anyway, I decided that after my surgery, which was the last one of the day, I’d come straight home. I even thought I’d call my brother—Uncle Randy, you probably don’t remember him, he died the next winter—and see if everything was okay with that branch of the family. But you know what?”

  He was staring down over the vast stretch of plant operations, seemingly unmindful of the first spatters of rain that had begun to come down, stinging their faces.

  “I never once thought to worry about the two of you girls. Isn’t that crazy? But I knew you were with the twins, and—well, I guess I thought the four of you were so tight that you insulated each other against anything that could go wrong. I mean, I knew you were growing up, I had the usual parental concerns, and you know how I felt about Jake. That I didn’t trust him. I figured it was just a matter of time before I’d take him out for another talk. Hell, maybe I already should have. It’s just, I thought I had time. I thought . . .”

  He stopped speaking and compressed his lips into a thin line. A blast of cool wind delivered a smattering of raindrops as lighting broke, still miles away. Richard touched his face, his fingertip coming away wet.

  “Anyway. Like I said, I never told anyone that.”

  “Oh, Dad.” Gin’s heart was heavy with regret. Men like her father didn’t reach out for help, even when they most needed it. And women like her mother didn’t encourage them to seek counseling, to find an outlet for their feelings. What must it have been like for him to carry this secret? How could he possibly have held himself responsible?

  “But now.” Richard tossed the contents of his bucket onto the compost heap, shaking the dirt free. “Now I’m not going to ignore my instincts like I did back then.”

  “What does that mean, Dad?”

  “It means that Jake Crosby has been walking around this town free as a bird for seventeen years. Seventeen years when my daughter was left like trash under the damn ground. When all of us were suffering, wondering what happened to her.”

  “Dad. You can’t—”

  “It’s what I’ve thought all along,” Richard said grimly. “Only this time, maybe he won’t be able to weasel free. Don’t you see, Virginia? I might not have been able to stop him, but somehow—and I’m a man of science, so don’t ask me to explain it. But I was given a sign that day, and I didn’t do anything about it. Didn’t do one goddamn thing for my baby girl.”

  “They interviewed Jake,” Gin said. “There wasn’t enough evidence against him”

  “Hell yes there was,” Richard spat. Gin was shocked to hear him swear, to see his eyes flash with fury in his tanned, lined face. “He lied in an official inquiry. He never did bother to come up with an alibi that could be checked out. Why would he do that, if he didn’t have something to hide? He was the last person to see her. The last person, Virginia.” He seemed close to tears, clutching his bucket as though it were a buoy keeping him fr
om drowning. “And now it turns out he knew exactly where she was all along, because he stuffed her in that dirty old cooler. Didn’t even bother to bury it deep—it’s a wonder it stayed hidden as long as it did.”

  “But you don’t know he did it. Anyone could have gotten to that cooler—”

  “Virginia.” Richard fixed her with an anguished glare. “Please. You know what they taught us in medical school: when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.”

  “I don’t recall ever learning that in med school—”

  “Don’t be obstinate. Please. Just think about it: he was with her at the park entrance that day; he had been using that cooler all summer. Yes, it’s possible that someone else—with no discernable motive and no reason to know about the cooler—might have come along after Jake and your sister had their private little walk. But that’s zebra thinking.” Richard sighed, and suddenly all the anger drained out of his voice. “And no one’s going to convince me this isn’t a horse.”

  He’s angry at himself, Gin realized. He blames himself for allowing it to happen. “There’s nothing you could have done,” she protested. “None of us could.”

  Richard turned to her, and in the sunken hollows under his eyes, she caught a glimpse of his pain. “Other fathers do,” he said. “Other men protect their families. I was too busy building some kind of—of memorial to myself. The medical center. Ha.”

  “Let’s not rush to judgment, okay?” Gin tried, lamely. “They still haven’t finished processing the scene. It’ll be a couple weeks at the earliest before they get the results of the tests back. Dad, you know the media’s going to be all too keen to play this out in the press before they have all the facts. Let’s not make it worse, okay?”

  “How can it be a proper investigation when the murderer’s father is the one investigating?” he demanded. “It was bad enough Lawrence handled it the first time around. If they’d let the county boys run things then, maybe we wouldn’t have had to wait so long to bring her home.”

  The pain in her father’s voice was real, but Gin couldn’t believe that Lawrence Crosby would ever do anything to interfere with an investigation, no matter how close to home it hit. But Gin had never been a parent. The bond between a father and son was strong; could it be strong enough to make a man ignore his principles? His responsibilities?

  “Dad, the county police are handling it this time. Lawrence is assisting, but he isn’t in charge. Even if he wanted to interfere with the investigation—and I don’t see how you can suspect one of your oldest friends of something like this—he wouldn’t be able to.”

  “Virginia. You’ve been away a very long time. With all due respect, you don’t know how these things work here. Lawrence is friendly with a lot of them.”

  “Dad, I’ve worked with law enforcement agencies for the last decade. I’ve testified in dozens of murder and wrongful-death cases, some of them from very small towns, very insular corners of the county. Not to mention that I grew up in a small town.” Which was more than he could say; Richard had been born and raised in Boston, and had often complained about the pace and cultural deprivation of small-town life. “I think I know how things work.”

  “But you haven’t lived in this town in a very long time.” If Gin didn’t know her father so well, she might have missed the anger buried under his tightly controlled expression. “We’re a forty-five minute drive from Pittsburgh, but it might as well be the other side of the moon, when it comes to law and order. They leave Trumbull alone because for the last century, Trumbull has been determined to police itself. You know how it is in this county: they have a hundred little municipalities who don’t talk to each other. And now? Sure, they come in and haul off the latest idiots who shoot each other over drug deals gone wrong, and the townspeople don’t complain because deep down, none of us really consider the gangbangers to be part of our community. They’re a plague, no better than a swarm of cicadas.

  “But when it comes to one of our own, the county boys are on the outside looking in. And most of the time, it works out. Lawrence has kept the peace for almost forty years. Only, this time, we can’t count on justice being served. Because Lawrence is going to protect his son.”

  He looked at her intently. Flecks of icy blue brought fire and energy to eyes that were otherwise dulled with exhaustion and pain. “It’s what I’d do. You do know that, don’t you, Virginia?”

  A strange chill came over Gin, starting in her fingertips and radiating through her body. What was her father suggesting?

  “You—you and Mom will always be there for me,” she stammered. “I know that, Dad, and I’m grateful, and I’m sorry I don’t always—”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Richard said, narrowing his eyes. He reached for her hand and gripped it tightly. “Of course we love you. Of course we’ll always do everything we can to help you. But what I am saying is that if any child of mine were ever accused of a serious crime—if there was even a hint of suspicion—I’d do everything I could to squash those accusations. I’d defend my child to the death . . . no matter what. Do you understand?”

  Shocked, Gin tugged her hand back. Her father released it, but he didn’t drop his gaze.

  He had just told her that he’d protect her even if she’d been accused of doing something terrible. That he’d stand by her . . . whether she was guilty or not.

  Richard had always blamed Jake for the loss of his precious younger daughter. But Gin had never imagined that the day would come when he could blame her as well. Did he think she had been complicit somehow? That she knew, that she’d helped cover it up? That she’d been capable of carrying a secret like this for all these years?

  “I . . . I heard you.” She picked up his tool caddy and slung it over her shoulder. “I’ll walk you back to the truck, Dad. Mom’s making dinner and we should probably get back.”

  “Yes, those casseroles are her version of slaughtering the fatted calf,” Richard said, taking one last look at his garden as he retrieved the basket of lettuce. “You mustn’t hold it against her that her repertoire hasn’t expanded in the last decade. Tell you what, you make do with home cooking tonight, I’ll take you both out for prime rib tomorrow.”

  That was Richard’s way of navigating his domestic life, using humor and grace to accommodate his wife’s career once she made it clear that she intended to have one. And it was also his way of ending the conversation.

  They reached their vehicles, and Gin got into her car and eased back onto the road, glancing in the rearview mirror to see Richard’s truck keeping pace, their tires kicking up a cloud of dust in the late-afternoon sun as they left the small garden plot behind.

  Her radio was still set to the NPR affiliate out of Erie, and the evening news summary played through a layer of static. She snapped it off in the midst of a traffic report, knowing it was just a matter of time until they turned to the investigation here in Trumbull. Gin didn’t need to hear it just now.

  Her father had just admitted how far he was willing to go to protect her.

  But had he also just accused her of having something to do with her sister’s death?

  10

  Saturday dawned clear and bright after two days of cloudbursts and occasional heavy rain. The temperature was balmy and the air was crisp and lilac-scented, a perfect summer day.

  By unspoken agreement, Gin dressed early and headed for the hall with her mother to check on the arrangements. Richard promised to return before the memorial was due to start, after picking up his mother from the nursing home in Donora where she was living through the middle stages of dementia.

  Gin threw herself into helping out behind the scenes while her mother, elegant and even imperious, directed the caterers, the servers, and the boys they’d hired to park overflow cars. Gin was setting out napkins near the flower arrangements anchoring either end of the buffet tables when Madeleine approached, her tasteful midheeled pumps clicking on the hardwood floors.

  “I think we’d better get read
y up front,” she said. “People are beginning to arrive.”

  Gin looked through the tall windows overlooking the park. Cars were lined up in a slow, somber procession into the drive that circled around to the parking lot in back. Out on the street, traffic backed up halfway down the block, waiting to make the turn; Gin’s gaze landed on the drug store where she’d once shoplifted a Jolly Rancher on a dare from a fellow Brownie girl scout and where, much later, she bought tampons at lunch during high school. She blinked away the memories, fixing a smile on her face for her mother.

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  “All right, good. I think we should stand here, to the right of the doors, don’t you agree?”

  Gin could imagine how her mother envisioned it: the family lined up with her father at the front, then Madeleine, then Gin, then Grammy seated in a folding chair. Three generations of contained, modest grief, with a nice buffet luncheon to follow.

  Gin knew that her mother’s pain was real. But she also knew her mother would never reveal her private feelings here, in front of their neighbors and friends, in front of the town that she hoped would vote her into the mayor’s office.

  Gin made one last effort to escape: “Mom, do you want me to stay back here and keep an eye on things?”

  “That’s what the caterers are for, Virginia,” Madeleine said crisply. Then she adjusted the neckline on Gin’s simple navy dress with her manicured fingers. It was a conciliatory gesture, her version of the hug another mother might give. “I think they’ve got it all well in hand. It’ll be fine.”

  Gin followed her mother to the wide French doors at the front of the large room, open to the sultry breeze. The scent of the floral arrangements was layered faintly with the river’s smell, the fecund combination of tar and fishy rot and sun-baked mud, but her mother’s perfume masked it when she turned.