Most Likely to Die

by Lisa Jackson

  As he reached out to adjust the knob, he glanced down to the street again.

  Hey, what do you know!

  A sleek black town car had just pulled up to the curb.

  Those were a rare sight in this neighborhood, especially on a Saturday.

  And the car was early. But there was no reason not to head right out now, since it was here.

  Leo had forgotten all about the air-conditioning and about his mother—his adopted one, anyway.

  He hurried to the door, scarcely able to believe it was time to meet his birth parents at last.

  He wondered, as he bolted down three flights of stairs, if they were going to live up to his expectations—and, more importantly, whether he would live up to theirs.

  Unlike him, they’d had twenty years to imagine what he was like.

  What if they don’t love me?

  Love you? an inner voice scoffed. They don’t even know you.

  And they don’t even love each other.

  If they did, they’d be together now.

  So much for that fantasy family you always dreamed of, he thought dismally as he hurried out onto the boulevard and the waiting car.

  To his surprise, the driver was a woman.

  He didn’t know why that caught him off guard; it shouldn’t have. But somehow, he had pictured an elegant male chauffeur, not a dumpy-looking lady in a black suit, cap, and almost ridiculously oversized sunglasses.

  “How are you today?” she asked pleasantly, opening the back door for him.

  “Good,” he said briefly, and slid into the backseat, trying to act as though he did this sort of thing every day.

  As they headed north toward the Triborough Bridge, Leo didn’t give the driver, or the route she was taking, another thought.

  He had no way of knowing that later, he would regret it.

  Wyatt heard the crunch of car tires on the driveway and looked up from the New York Times he had been reading—rather, trying to read—in his recliner.

  Through the tall window overlooking the manicured front lawn with its towering shade trees, he could see a shiny black town car pulling toward the house.

  Lindsay should be first to arrive. He’d told her driver to get to her house a bit early and had scheduled the other driver to get to Queens a little later than expected.

  He didn’t want to spend a lot of time alone with Lindsay before Leo arrived, but he did think it would only be right for them to face their son for the first time as a united front.

  And, perhaps, to discuss just what it was that they hoped to get out of this meeting today.

  He set the paper aside, rose from the door, and walked to the front entry hall. He caught sight of his reflection in a long mirror as he passed and was glad he had opted for casual clothing today.

  He was wearing loafers, jeans, and a polo shirt. He looked comfortable and unintimidating, like any other suburban dad.

  Funny, because that wasn’t what he was at all.

  It’s just what I wish I could be.

  But maybe…

  No. No expectations. Whatever is meant to be will be.

  Steeling himself, he opened the door and stepped out onto the covered porch. For a fleeting moment, he wondered what he would do if his son had somehow arrived first.

  But it was Lindsay who emerged from the backseat of the town car.

  Unaware that he was there watching her, she smoothed imaginary wrinkles from her pale green sleeveless dress and patted her dark hair, which was worn pulled back in a simple ponytail.

  She’s nervous, he realized.

  Somehow, that fact helped to put him more at ease.

  She thanked the driver, turned toward the house, and stopped short, spotting Wyatt.

  “Hi,” he said, wishing he had sunglasses on. He tried not to look her up and down, but there went those teenaged-boy hormones again.

  “Hi.” She walked hesitantly toward him as the town car pulled away, and he remembered that he was the host.

  “How was the drive up?” he asked cordially, as though he were greeting a new client.

  “Fine. Was that your, um, driver?”

  “No,” he said with a laugh. “That was a car service I hire sometimes, though. For clients, or when I have to go to the airport or something.”

  “Oh.” She glanced up at the three-story white Colonial, with its black shutters and majestic pillars. “I thought maybe you ride around in a limo all the time.”

  “Nope. I do my own driving.” He wasn’t about to tell her that his four-car garage held four luxury cars that, along with the others he kept in storage near his winter place near Daytona, were worth almost as much as he’d paid for this house.

  He could see that she was impressed as it was by his surroundings—not because she wasn’t accustomed to such things, but more likely because she was. This was her world, and now he was a part of it.

  But not in the ways that count, he thought as he held the door open and ushered her inside.

  She looked around the entryway, with its sweeping staircase, framed artwork, and hardwood floors. “This is nice.”

  “We can wait for him in the living room.”

  “So he’s not here yet, then?” She looked relieved.

  “No. But he should be soon.”

  He…him…

  So neither of them could bring themselves to say their son’s name.

  Or even just the word son.

  He felt an unexpected bond with Lindsay as they sat down, somewhat stiffly, on the couch.

  They both took care to keep a physical distance between them, but they were unmistakably in this together, whether they liked it or not.

  “Thanks—what happened to your hand?” he asked, breaking a near silence punctuated by the ticking grandfather clock in the hall.

  “Oh, this?” She lifted her bandaged finger. “I sliced into it with a dull knife this morning, trying to dice an onion.”

  He winced. “Ouch. Why were you using a dull knife?”

  “It was the only one I could find. I just started taking these cooking classes, and I thought I would give it a whirl at home, but I’m not exactly stocked up on the latest gourmet cutlery.”

  “What kind of cooking classes are you taking?”

  “Just the very basics. That’s right—you said you cook.”

  “I do. Do you want anything to eat?” he remembered to ask belatedly.

  “No, I’m good, thanks.”

  “How about something to drink? Iced tea? Coffee? A shot of tequila?”

  She looked up at him, startled, and he grinned. “Just kidding. Sorry. I couldn’t help it.”

  She smiled back, to his surprise. “Too bad. I was going to take you up on it.”

  “Really?”

  “No…but it was tempting for a second there. I guess I’m a nervous wreck. How about you?”

  “Me, too,” he admitted. “How are we going to handle this?”

  We.

  The forbidden pronoun had popped out of him with surprising ease.

  Which was interesting, because in all the time Allison had lived here—and in all the relationships that had preceded her—he’d had a hard time referring to himself as one half of a we.

  “I don’t know,” Lindsay said slowly, and he couldn’t tell whether she was fazed by the we or the question itself.

  “Have you talked to his mother? I mean, his adoptive mother.”

  “I knew what you meant,” she said wryly. “No. I didn’t think it was my place. He’s over eighteen. And anyway, he asked me not to.”

  “When?”

  “When I called him back to set up today’s meeting.”

  “Oh.” For a moment there, he had thought she might have already met Leo on her own, without him.

  But he knew instinctively that she wouldn’t do a thing like that.

  He trusted her.

  Which was ironic, considering what she had already gone and done behind his back, then kept from him all these years.


  Wyatt was surprised to realize that he held no deep well of resentment about that. What he had felt had faded considerably these last few days.

  That was because he not only trusted her, he ultimately understood her motives.

  She had believed she was making the right choice, the unselfish choice, for their baby. In doing so, she had shown more strength than he had known she had.

  More strength—more selflessness—than he would have had himself.

  Admiration was slipping in to replace his anger, and he didn’t know how he felt about that.

  Anger made it easier to keep her at arm’s length.

  Now that she was, quite literally, at arm’s length, it was all he could do not to turn to her and pull her closer, if only in a comforting hug.

  Instead, he said, “We should decide what we’re going to say when he gets here. You know…what each of us wants to come out of this.”

  The each of us was meant to defuse the we. To show her that he didn’t expect them to be a we after today; that they would meet their son, then go their separate ways as they forged their own relationships with him. Not with each other.

  “I don’t really know what I want,” Lindsay told him quietly. “Do you?”

  “I guess it isn’t about what we want or need,” he replied. “It’s more about what he wants and needs. Right?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “In that case, I guess all we can do is wait until he gets here.”

  She nodded and settled back stiffly, arms folded.

  So did Wyatt.

  In the backseat of the town car, Leo was increasingly apprehensive.

  According to the clock on the dash, it was almost three-thirty. They should have been there by now…shouldn’t they?

  Maybe not. He didn’t know, after all, exactly where his father lived. But he was pretty sure it was supposed to be in Connecticut, and he didn’t think Connecticut was supposed to be in the middle of nowhere.

  Which was pretty much where they were now.

  They had gone from the interstate to a series of two-lane highways to what seemed like rutted back roads to him. He had expected fancy suburbs, not dumpy little towns that were increasingly few and far between, with mostly rural countryside separating them.

  Now the driver made another turn and the rutted back road gave way to a wooded dirt road.

  “Is this it?” Leo asked her, leaning forward over the seat.

  “This is it,” she replied, and he found himself trying to catch a glimpse of her face in the rearview mirror.

  He couldn’t see her eyes behind those big dark glasses, but her jaw seemed to be set resolutely.

  He leaned back uneasily in the seat and glanced out the window.

  Nothing but trees.

  This couldn’t be right.

  Could it?

  He looked again at the driver, who appeared to be searching for something. Maybe she thought they were lost, too.

  He watched her turn her head again, and that was when he saw it.

  The wisp of hair at her temple.

  It was darker than the rest of her blond hair…

  Oddly so.

  Fixated on it, he realized, in the moment before she turned her head toward the windshield again, that the rest of her hair wasn’t hers at all.

  She was wearing a wig.

  Heart pounding, he stared at the blond waves beneath the back of her cap, noting that they were, indeed, synthetic. Now he recognized the unnatural uniformity of the strands; his aunt Rose had worn a wig when she was going through chemo a few months ago.

  But Aunt Rose had been bald beneath her wig. She had a good reason to wear it.

  This person wasn’t bald. Her own hair was right there, sticking out.

  What reason would a woman have to hide her own hair? It wasn’t as though she were all dressed up for a fancy party, or Halloween, or something.

  Leo realized the car was slowing.

  “Where are we?” he asked, and he heard the panic that was beginning to edge into his own voice.

  This time, she didn’t answer.

  That was ominous.

  So was the fact that the car had come to a stop in a desolate spot, with nothing in sight but deep forest on either side of the road.

  “Shouldn’t he have been here by now?” Lindsay asked—again.

  Wyatt looked at his watch. “Definitely.” He didn’t sound—or look—as reassuring as he had the last time she had asked.

  In between wondering about Leo’s arrival, they had been talking with almost surprising ease about where their lives had taken them since high school. They’d covered everything but their romantic relationships—assuming he must have had at least a few.

  But he had said he wasn’t married now and had never been divorced. She wondered why he was still single after all these years but didn’t dare ask.

  She was afraid of the answer.

  She wouldn’t be surprised if it was because he was still the ladies’ man he’d been back in the old days.

  “What time is it?” she asked him, her thoughts still on Leo.

  “About three-forty.”

  “He should have been here almost an hour ago, shouldn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t think…I mean, what if there was an accident or something?”

  “Right, maybe there was. That happens all the time on 95. Especially in bad weather.”

  They both looked toward the window. A steady rain was now falling, and the sky hung low and gray.

  “Maybe they just got stuck in some kind of rubbernecking traffic behind an accident,” Wyatt said.

  Or maybe, Lindsay thought uneasily, they were actually in the accident, if there was one.

  Was Leo okay?

  Had he been hurt?

  So this was what it felt like to be a mother.

  Now she knew what the expression worried sick meant.

  No, you don’t, she corrected herself. You’ve dealt with this for only an hour. His adoptive mother is the one who’s borne the brunt of the maternal worry.

  She felt a twinge of guilt. She shouldn’t have agreed to keep this a secret from Leo’s mother. She deserved to know what her son was doing, even if he was almost a grown man.

  That’s the first thing I’m going to tell him when he shows up, Lindsay decided. I’m going to insist that he let her know he’s made contact with us.

  “I’ll go call the car service and see what’s going on,” Wyatt said, grim faced, going to the next room.

  She nodded, walking to the window and staring bleakly at the falling rain, wishing the car would appear in the driveway.

  But it didn’t.

  And Wyatt was back, wearing a troubled expression.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “They said he was waiting right out front of the building when the driver got there a little after two. They got almost all the way here, and then he suddenly jumped out of the car at an intersection and took off.”

  “Took off?” she echoed incredulously. “What do you mean, took off?”

  “The driver said he just ran away. He waited for a while and he drove around looking for him, but he couldn’t find him.”

  “What?” Lindsay shook her head. “Why would he do that?”

  “I guess he just chickened out,” Wyatt told her with a shrug. “It was probably too much for him.”

  “I guess we can’t blame him.”

  “No. I guess we can’t. He’s just a kid, really.”

  They stared at each other.

  Lindsay wondered if he was thinking the same thing she was.

  What now?

  “Dammit! Where are you, you brat?”

  As if the kid was going to answer her.

  He was probably a mile from here already. It had been fifteen minutes, at least, since Leo had jumped out of the car just as she was about to get out and deal with him.

  It was almost as if he knew…

  She could tell he was ge
tting suspicious back there. She should have thought this through better, the way she had thought through the rest of the plan. She’d even had the foresight to hire that neighborhood kid to get into the other town car—the one Wyatt Goddard was sending—and pass himself off as Leo.

  That way, nobody would realize right away that he was missing.

  She’d told the kid to ride up to Connecticut, then get out of the car before he got to Goddard’s house. She’d given him two hundred bucks.

  “But how am I supposed to get back home again?” he’d whined.

  “I don’t know. Isn’t there a train you can take from there?”

  “How am I supposed to get to the train?”

  She’d given him another hundred, told him to take a cab, and crossed her fingers that he wouldn’t screw it up.

  No, but Leo Cellamino sure had.

  He had disappeared into the underbrush in a flash.

  He must have realized he was in trouble.

  Okay, so he was smart.

  But not smarter than I am.

  Chapter 22

  “Here you go.” Wyatt handed Lindsay a goblet of Pinot Grigio and settled on the couch beside her again with his Pepsi.

  “Thanks, Wyatt.”

  Had he ever heard her say his name before? He must have.

  But not like this. Not in casual conversation, as though they did this all the time.

  Intrigued, he snuck a peek at her and saw her take a cautious sip of her wine.

  “I have other bottles,” he offered, “if you don’t like that one.”

  “Oh, it’s fine. I’m not a wine connoisseur.” She motioned at the glass in his hand. “Why aren’t you having any?”

  “I don’t drink.”

  “Ever?”

  He shook his head. “My parents did,” he said, as if that explained everything.

  For him, in fact, it did.

  “Oh, right. I knew that,” Lindsay said sympathetically—then looked as though she wished she hadn’t.

  “It’s okay. I knew people talked about them back then. About me, my family…”

  “They talked about me and mine, too.” She shrugged. “It might as well have been a small town in some ways, you know?”

  “Yeah.” He paused, reflecting on the past. And on the present. “The funny thing is, this is a small town, and I know nothing at all about the people who live here.”