Dark Road Home

by Anna Carlisle

  Tom dug in his wallet and threw a handful of bills on the bar. “Looks like I’ve got another engagement,” he muttered. “Sorry, Gin. We’ll have to do this again soon.”

  “Sorry, Virginia,” Spencer echoed, placing a hand on her arm. “Let’s catch up more. I’ll talk to Richard about dinner.”

  He exchanged a nod with the bartender, giving Gin the impression this wasn’t the first time he’d come looking for Tom here.

  Tom clambered off his barstool and pulled Gin close in a drunken hug. “I’m just glad you’re here,” he whispered. “What a fucking shit show this is.”

  Then he trailed his father out of the bar, holding his head high with the stilted dignity that only the drunk can pull off.

  “Anything else for you, Miss?” the bartender asked, his hand hovering near her nearly empty first drink.

  “Actually, I think I’m finished,” Gin said, reaching for her purse. Then she decided she had nothing to lose. Someone had summoned Spencer to pick up his out-of-control son, and she doubted it was the elderly ladies by the window. Spencer had influence in this town, and to pull strings behind the scenes, she guessed he was making it worth someone’s while.

  “Do the Parkers come here often? I mean, Tom specifically—is he a regular?”

  “I wouldn’t know, Miss,” the bartender said coldly, reminding Gin of one of the rules of small-town life that she had forgotten: everyone’s business was everyone else’s—unless you had something on them. In the blighted ruins of the steel empire, the few who held onto wealth and power could do exactly what they wanted, whenever and wherever they wanted, while the ones whom fortune passed over looked the other way.

  ***

  By the time Gin exited the country-club grounds, the first raindrops were splattering the windshield. Her phone chimed an incoming text, and she pulled onto the shoulder of the road to check it.

  The text was from Madeleine.

  Stuck in meeting. Dad will fix dinner.

  Gin rested her head on her hands, leaning on the steering wheel. She wasn’t up for an evening with her father; his lugubrious moods were contagious, and it became an effort to talk to him. And she doubted that her mother’s meeting was all that urgent, despite the looming mayoral election.

  It struck her as impossibly sad, that the event that might have drawn another family closer in their grief seemed to have had the opposite effect on hers. Each of them seeking comfort in work, moving away from each other instead of together, helpless to find the threads that could connect them.

  She couldn’t go home yet. But if not home, then where?

  A memory came to her, of bringing Jake here to the very club she’d just left. The women’s group had hosted a party every spring for the graduating seniors; the graduates took turns approaching the podium set up in the dining room and announcing where they’d be attending college in the fall, to the enthusiastic applause of women who still remembered the glory days when steel production kept the river bustling with barges and the smokestacks going night and day. Gin supposed that tradition had died along with the expiring economy, now that half the graduating class would be lucky to go to community college and even luckier to find employment when they were finished, but that night, she’d invited Jake to come along and he’d dutifully put on a tie and too-big jacket he’d borrowed from his father. She’d always wondered if he’d noticed the way the ladies’ eyes narrowed when he announced he was going to study engineering in college. When they murmured to each other that he’d received a full scholarship, it wasn’t meant to be a compliment.

  Jake. So many memories of him in this town, and each one seemed to tear the scab a bit further from the emotions she’d struggled to bury.

  She had to admit that the long-ago attraction between them hadn’t disappeared. When she was with him, a part of her responded as though no time had passed, as though he was still the lover she couldn’t wait to return to.

  But surely that was just a chemical reaction, nostalgia sifted through the sieve of sexual yearning. It didn’t make him innocent. It didn’t even mean that she knew him well, after all this time. He could be thinking anything behind those familiar, beautiful eyes.

  She dug in her purse for the scrap of paper with Jake’s number on it and stared at the numerals, her emotions warring. She could use that attraction, along with their shared history, to try to learn more—to get him to reveal anything he’d kept secret. Maybe it was underhanded, maybe it was unethical, but she’d be doing it for Lily.

  She dialed before she could change her mind.

  “It’s me,” she said when he answered. And then she wished she’d planned what to say, because all that came to her was the pounding of her own heart.

  “Gin.” A pause. “I’m glad you called. I need—I would like a chance to explain some things.”

  “That would be . . . all right.” Could she sound any more stilted?

  “Tell you what. Come over for dinner. I’m cooking.”

  18

  Gin knew that Jake had built a home high above Trumbull, on the wooded ridge that looked out over the river valley. After he had given up his scholarship and gone to Edinboro University instead (only a hundred and fifty miles away, with low in-state tuition), he’d come home during his senior year when Lawrence had his heart attack. Jake had finished his degree by correspondence and skipped the graduation ceremony, and then he’d gone to work for an old friend of his father’s who owned a construction business, one of the few men in town still willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. By the following year, Jake had bought a piece of land with views of the river, the belching smokestacks, and the lush green summer foliage.

  Gin had heard that he’d eventually built on that land. He’d done all the work himself, over the course of years; whether that had been his choice or a means of economizing, she didn’t know. But as she pulled into the drive, she realized that she already recognized the home that Jake had built for himself: it was the one he’d once promised her he would build for the two of them someday, before Lily died, when they still had the luxury of naïve dreams of a shared future.

  Jake had planned to be a mechanical engineer because he was fascinated by the building of things, by creating something functional that was also beautiful. He’d sketched for her, one day while they lay under a canopy of leafy branches by the water tower, a vision for a house that was shaped like a sort of prow, widening to anchor itself into the slope behind it, like a rowboat that had gotten stuck in a reedy shore. The reality exceeded the promise of the sketch: the home’s clean lines and curved wood siding made it look both contemporary and evocative of another time and place, where men labored to build enormous seagoing vessels at the very edge of foreign continents, where vast blue seas invited adventure. The setting sun lit the wide panes of glass looking out over the river in pink and gold.

  As Gin walked up the path, the front door opened. Jake stood at the threshold, a glass of red wine held loosely in his hand, watching her. A dog poked its snout shyly around his legs, some sort of hound mix with a wildly wagging tail.

  “Your house . . .” Gin said when she reached the top step. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Thanks.” Jake touched her arm lightly, leading her inside. “It’s kept me busy. Don’t mind Jett—though I should warn you that if you give her any attention, you’ll never be rid of her.”

  Gin crouched and offered her hand to the dog, who sniffed enthusiastically and then laid her soft muzzle on Gin’s palm, her eyes rolling up in delight. The fur on her face was shot with silver and her eyes were cloudy, but despite her advanced years, she seemed healthy, her coat glossy and her gait steady. When Gin stood, Jett leaned against her legs.

  Inside, the same reddish-brown wood had been used for the trim, including curving window ledges, moldings, and baseboards. Gin had no idea what species of wood Jake had used, but its beautiful grain invited touch. The furnishings were simple but elegant; large leather chairs flanked a blue sofa, and found object
s—rocks with veins of crystal, curiously knotted driftwood, old metal gears with rusted teeth—sat atop the coffee table. An entire wall was weighted down with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves containing hundreds of books.

  Gin pointed to the trim around the doorframe. “Did you do all of this yourself?”

  “Yes.” No elaboration, just a faint note of pride in his voice. “Can I get you something to drink? I’ve got a Syrah open.”

  “Okay, but . . . look, Jake, I’m only hear to talk—”

  “It’s just a meal,” he said. “You’ve got to eat.”

  She didn’t press it further. Her first sip of the glass he handed her was an entirely different experience from the wine she’d had at the bar: cool, complex, almost peppery. “This is delicious.”

  “It’s from South Africa. I seem to have developed a taste for it. One of my few expensive habits, I’m afraid.” He said it in the same self-effacing tone he’d employed to deflect her compliments about the house.

  “You’ve always lived alone,” Gin said, what she hoped was a neutral entrée into a conversation that might reveal more.

  “For all you know, I’ve moved in a different woman every week,” Jake said with a smile. “That’s what the town gossips would have you believe, anyway.”

  “That must be hard.”

  Jake shrugged. “You get used to it. I guess in a way, I’m almost glad people have treated me like dirt all these years. Now that the worst has happened, and everyone’s pointing their fingers at me again, at least I’m used to it. No way it’s going to break me now.”

  He bent to open the oven and check on whatever was cooking, wonderful savory aromas wafting into the room. “The worst is what Dad has to go through,” he continued. “For me, I don’t mind—I’m really hoping this time they’ll find out who did it and exonerate me. But I feel like Dad has to go through the humiliation twice, once for me and once for himself.”

  Gin thought of her father’s drunken fury, the spittle flying from his lips, the muttered curses. “I never thought about how hard it would be for your dad to keep control of the police department, going through something like that.”

  “People called for his resignation. A few of them brought it up to the city council. Apparently it got pretty heated.” Jake shrugged. “It was a long time ago.”

  Gin wondered if her parents had gone to that meeting, if her father had been among those demanding that Lawrence step down. “How did he end up holding onto his job?”

  “Not sure,” Jake said tersely. “Wouldn’t be surprised if he just outlasted all his critics. Say what you will about Dad—he’s tough.”

  “Mmm,” Gin said noncommittally. She wasn’t sure how to steer the conversation back to the events of the night Lily had gone missing. “Whatever you’re making smells delicious,” she said, stalling.

  “It’s guy food. I hope you don’t mind,” Jake said. “Heavy on the meat and carbs. One of my bachelor tricks—I make a lot, freeze the leftovers, and pull them out when I’ve had a long day.”

  Gin couldn’t help but laugh. “That actually sounds amazing. Everyone at work is following a different trendy diet, and between all the things people say they can’t eat, we can’t go out as a group anymore—there’s either no gluten-free options or nothing vegetarian or raw or paleo on the menu. And as for me, I still haven’t learned to cook.”

  Jake grinned. “It’s really not that hard, Gin. Hell, half of what’s on TV is how to cook.”

  “Maybe I ought to have Mom teach me while I’m home. Put this time to good use.”

  “Are you going to be here for a while?”

  “I—I don’t know.” What was she supposed to say? That she was waiting for the lab to return the results that might put the lie to everything she had once believed about him? That ever since she’d come back to town, she lay awake in her childhood bed remembering the way he’d once kissed her—and then trying to imagine him strangling the life from her sister?

  That she was already wondering how she could ever go back to her life in Chicago, with her soulless apartment and distant colleagues, her Netflix evenings and dead houseplants, her pleasant-enough dates with Clay and the punishing trail runs that were the only time she felt completely alive?

  “How about you show me around?” she said, forcing those thoughts away. “Give me the grand tour?”

  Jake took her through the house, pointing out all the custom work he’d done, while Jett followed them. He had chosen each board for the cabinets to make the most of the hickory’s grain. He’d built the cupboards under the stairs himself, each drawer gliding perfectly along its rails. He’d come up with a gray-water system that recycled water directly downslope into his garden.

  He was pointing out the different varieties of vegetables in the raised beds he’d built when the skies opened, the misty drizzle turning instantly to fat, splattering drops. Jake seized her hand and they ran, laughing, back to the house, where Jett had plopped down to watch them from the porch. Along the way, Gin’s hair escaped its elastic, spilling over her shoulders in damp waves.

  “Oh, no,” she said, when they were safely under the eaves. She ran her fingers self-consciously through her hair. “It goes crazy in the humidity. You have no idea how much of my life I spend flat-ironing it into submission.”

  “A waste of time,” Jake murmured. He reached for a curl that spiraled down over her face, gently pushing it behind her ear. “I always loved it best like this.”

  “You’re lying,” Gin protested, caught up short by the electric sensation of his fingertips on her skin. He’d never said anything about her hair, not when she’d spent countless hours struggling to tame it with her blow-dryer while Lily read her quizzes from Seventeen, calling questions into the Jack-and-Jill bathroom to determine which Disney princess she most resembled.

  “Remember that time we hiked up in the Laurel Highlands?”

  “Oh my God, we almost killed each other,” Gin gasped. “I was drenched with sweat when we got to the top, after you promised it was an easy trail.”

  “It was an easy trail. Would have been, anyway, if it hadn’t hit a hundred that day.”

  “And if I’d worn something practical instead of those platform sandals.”

  “Why on earth did you do that, anyway?”

  “To impress you,” Gin admitted. She’d told him she misunderstood the plan, but the truth was that she’d held her hiking boots in her hands for several moments that morning, weighing comfort against style. For Jake, she’d always chosen style.

  “Gin. I was wearing an old T-shirt and shorts that probably hadn’t been washed in a week.” His smile was teasing now. “I feel like I ought to apologize. I just thought you were naturally beautiful all the time.”

  “Surely you’ve had a woman explain that to you by now.”

  “Oh, yeah.” He shook his head ruefully. “If I’ve learned nothing else in the last two decades, it’s that if you want a woman to be ready at seven, you get out of her way at six.”

  “Is there . . .” Gin tried to find the right words while keeping her tone light. “Are you seeing anyone special now?”

  “Special?” He raised an eyebrow quizzically. “That feels like a loaded question. A good way for me to get into trouble. How about this—every woman I’ve dated is special, especially those willing to put up with me. But no, other than a few friends I see from time to time, the only female I’m steady with is Jett.”

  Which meant he had friends with benefits, Gin translated. She wondered how many of the women were really happy with the arrangement. Was it evidence of callousness, of self-involvement? The hallmark of a man who didn’t care about the feelings of the women he was with?

  “What about you?”

  “Oh, I—yes. There’s someone in Chicago.” The admission felt hollow. “He’s an attorney. Our schedules don’t leave a whole lot of time to get together, so it’s . . . it’s fairly casual.”

  “Ah. Lucky guy.” Jake’s smile seemed genuine,
even if there was a tightness to his voice. He turned to go into the house, but at the door he hesitated. “Gin . . . do you think you’ll settle down? Get married, have kids, all of that?”

  She’d heard that question a thousand times, from everyone from her colleagues to her college friends to, on the rare occasions when they talked, Christine. Her parents were the only ones who never asked; she had always wondered if it was too painful for them to consider the possibility, knowing that Lily would never have those things, would never be a wife or mother.

  “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “There’s this part of me that’s always—I mean, this is going to sound crazy, I know. It’s not a conscious thing, but, emotionally, it’s like Lily’s always on my mind, how we’ll never do the things we talked about. We were going to be each other’s maid of honor.” She watched him carefully, remembering how they’d planned her entire wedding ceremony—Jake was going to wear a charcoal-gray tux; the bridesmaids, including Lily and Christine and two friends from school, would be in aquamarine. “She was going to have all girls, she always said. She even had their names picked out: Jessie, Callie, and Nellie. I mean, it all seemed so real then, and now it seems so naïve. None of that probably would have happened—but with her gone, it doesn’t seem possible that any of it can.”

  “That’s . . .” Jake shook his head. “I hate to admit this, but when it all happened, I was so caught up in trying to defend myself that I don’t think I ever fully processed that she was really gone. That happened slowly. I mean, when you and Christine and Tom all left that fall, I suddenly realized I’d lost all of you. Everything. Not just Lily and you, but . . . and it was like some switch got turned, the way I looked at everything. The future most of all. It’s true that I gave up my scholarship because I couldn’t bear the thought of running into you. But I also just quit caring. What did it matter where I went, when I couldn’t be near any of you? I got through school on autopilot, and then Dad’s heart attack . . . and I guess I just figured that was how it was going to be. Me and him, and if people came around in town, great, and if not, fuck them.”