Fences: Smith Mountain Lake Series - Book Three

by Inglath Cooper

  And so, struggling for normalcy, I ask each of them about school, what they’d learned in their classes, and whether or not they ate the lunch I packed them that morning. The only sign that anything at all out of the ordinary has happened is my white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel.

  4

  Tate

  FINGERS STILL ON the keyboard, I stare at the screen of my laptop computer.

  Two hours so far, and not a word. What’s that old saying? Blood from a turnip? That pretty much describes it. Two hours in the chair, and the screen in front of me is still blank.

  At the insistence of my agent, Margaret Barnes, I’ve been holed up for three weeks in an apartment at the Sherry-Netherland, overlooking Central Park. The owner is a friend of Margaret’s and since she’s spending the spring in Europe, she offered up the place for me to write.

  Margaret’s proposition had not been a subtle one. “Roving the country in that poor excuse you call a house is no way to get a book written. I don’t know how you remember where you are every morning.”

  This was the part where I had started to interrupt, to tell her that it suited me better not to know. I had refrained though, knowing from past experience that any argument from me would launch her into a dissertation on the lack of reason to be found in the way I prefer to keep my options open. The way I never tie myself to one place for any length of time. Hence, my rolling Airstream home.

  “So we’ll put you on house arrest until you write the damn book,” Margaret had said, handing me the keys to the apartment. “Just write the book, Tate.”

  Write the book.

  The truth is I don’t know if I’ll ever write another word.

  From the Manhattan streets below, comes the sound of honking horns, screeching tires. People alive and living. I drop my head against the back of the chair and stare at the ceiling.

  Maybe it’s time to give it up. Admit that I’d been a one-book wonder. Exorcised my demons on the page. End of story.

  It would make sense.

  For a dozen years, I’d made a career out of traipsing the world to cover one horrific news story after the other. I saw things that are impossible to erase from my memory, things unimaginable to the average person living an average life. Children with arms and legs blown away by land mines triggered on the way to get daily water for their family. Women grieving the discovery of a son found among a pile of bodies pushed into a mass grave and barely covered with dirt.

  But at some point, the stress migraines that started when I was a kid became a daily occurrence. To the point that getting out of bed was an exercise in torture.

  And so, I walked away. Came home to the United States where broken children were not a daily visual, bought a Ford F-350 and an Airstream to pull behind it, and drove the country from one end to the other, trying to immerse myself in the normalcy of small-town diners, where the daily special could always be counted on, and people walked dogs down tree-lined streets. Just normal. And somewhere along the way, a story clamored inside me, insistent enough that I decided to write it just to get it out of my system.

  One morning, sitting outside the silver Airstream, staring at a mountain somewhere in Wyoming, I’d turned on my laptop for the first time since returning to the States, started writing, and basically didn’t quit until I finished the book six weeks later.

  I never intended to show it to anyone, sticking the printed manuscript in a manila folder and labeling that particular chapter from my past closed.

  But a few months later, Harley Austin, my former news editor, arranged to meet up with me in Bozeman, Montana. I picked him up at the Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport, immediately spotting him in the procession of people filing off the commuter airplane, his gray hair buzzed to nearly military specifications, his body lean and wiry from the marathons for which he regularly trained. Harley thought I had done the right thing in taking some time off, but the network wanted him to try to get me back.

  It took me nearly three days to convince Harley I was done. That I wasn’t ever going back. Once he had accepted the failure of his plea mission, he lengthened his stay by a few days, and we spent it fly-fishing in some of Montana’s most beautiful rivers.

  On the last morning of his visit, I had stepped outside the Airstream to find him holding the folder containing the manuscript I’d spent six weeks writing.

  Harley glanced up without a speck of guilt on his face. “Sorry,” he said. “I was looking for a notepad in your desk. I told myself I’d only read the first page. I couldn’t stop until the very last one. Your fault for writing such a damn compelling story. Any of this true?”

  I stared at him too unsettled to answer.

  “What are you planning to do with it?” he asked then.

  I lifted a shoulder, glanced out at the rolling Montana river, fifty or so yards away. “Decorate my drawer, I guess,” I said.

  Harley studied me for a moment. “This is good, Tate. Really good. Let me show it to someone. Just see what they say.”

  He ignored my refusal, and, a week later, I got a call from Margaret.

  Harley was a friend of hers, and he’d told her about this amazing book a friend of his had written. She would love to see it.

  On a whim, a weak moment, an attack of ego, desire for revenge, or something I’m still not sure of, I sent it to her. Which is exactly how I ended up here in this Manhattan hotel trying to write a second book I can’t write.

  A knock at the door pulls me from the chair. I open the door to a bellman holding a white envelope. “This just arrived for you at the front desk, sir,” he says.

  “Thanks.” I pull out my wallet and hand him a tip.

  The bellman thanks me and disappears down the hotel hallway.

  I lay the package on the desk, pour myself another cup of coffee from the silver pot next to the computer, take a sip, and sit back down. I reach for the envelope, tearing open one end and pulling out a tabloid-style newspaper. I unfold it, stare hard at the cover, then drop it on the desk, as if it is a snake in mid-strike.

  Numbness seeps up, spreads through my arms and legs like injected poison.

  A paper clip holds a note attached to the front page. I pull it loose, recognizing Margaret’s handwriting.

  Call me after you read this.

  A sick feeling knots my stomach.

  I don’t want to read it. I want to put it back in the envelope, toss it in the trashcan, and pretend I never saw it. But like Pandora’s box, impossible.

  I pick the paper up again, look at the picture on the cover, the two faces staring back at me failing to resonate, like people I’ve never met.

  A national tabloid known for its lack of standards and we-print-anything approach to publishing, The Revealer graces the grocery store racks with headlines like “President Fathers Child With Daughter’s Babysitter” and “Aliens Found Living Outside Topeka, Kansas!”

  Garbage.

  And my name is featured as the banner of this week’s edition. “Tate Callahan: Former War Correspondent Turned Bestselling Author Reveals Tarnished Past!”

  The photo accompanying it ties a knot in my gut. There is only one person that photo could have come from.

  Jillie.

  How could she?

  That photo was personal, private. From another time in my life. In her life.

  Seeing it on the cover of this rag makes a mockery out of every memory I foolishly held onto of her.

  I’ve never seen the picture before now, but I remember as if it were yesterday, the hot July afternoon at Cross Country Farm when it had been taken. The summer before my senior year in high school. The summer when everything changed between Jillie and me.

  She’d brought a camera with her that day and snapped pictures of me for her photo album. She’d then asked one of the guys at the barn to take a picture of us together. Laughing, she’d hopped on my back, her long legs wrapped around my waist, her arms looped around my shoulders, her chin tucked against my neck. The photo caug
ht us both with wide smiles on our faces. A strand of Jillie’s long, blonde hair stuck to my cheek.

  So long ago.

  And yet I remember with complete clarity the feel of her, the softness of her skin against my arms, the smell of her, a hot July breeze tinted with the sweet scent of newly mown hay.

  I remember too, going home that afternoon, taking an ice-cold shower and asking myself how much longer I could keep thinking of Jillie Andrews as my best friend. Somehow, when I hadn’t been looking, my feelings for her had set out on a course of their own.

  Regret, unsummoned, unwelcome, tilts inside me. Unable to stop myself, I pick up the paper and stare at the picture again. I never wanted to love her. Although, somehow, it had never presented itself as optional.

  My cell phone rings. I pick it up with an abrupt hello.

  “Did you get the paper?” Margaret Barnes has never been one to mince words.

  “Thanks for the day brightener.” I swing my chair back toward the desk, refusing to look at the tabloid.

  “To tell you the truth, it didn’t do much for mine, either,” she says, a reproachful note in her voice. “As your friend, I wanted to burn the thing. But as your agent, I thought you should see it, so we can talk about damage control.”

  “Damage control?” My laugh is disbelieving. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “You’re a public figure, Tate,” she reasons, as if I’m a child in need of a simple explanation. “People think they have a right to know about you. And I can assure you that your publisher is definitely interested in what you’re doing.”

  I look out the window at the crowded skyline and say, “They published my book, Margaret. They don’t own me.”

  “No. But if you remember correctly, that was a book that’s been on bestseller lists for six months running. A book that earned you a noteworthy advance on your current contract. You can’t blame them for being just a little nervous about this.”

  “I didn’t do it, Margaret,” I say, suddenly weary, hating to even have to say the words.

  A too-lengthy stretch of silence follows my assertion. “Do you have any idea who’s responsible for this story?”

  When I don’t answer, she says, “If they’ve got a personal vendetta against you, this needs to be taken care of quickly and quietly.”

  “Did you hear the part where I said I didn’t do it?”

  “I’m not sure that even matters in today’s world.”

  “The hell it doesn’t.”

  “All I’m saying,” she says, her voice suddenly soothing, “is that once something is in print, it’s difficult to erase.”

  An old anger stirs inside me. How many years have I tried to outrun the same, tired story only to end up staring it in the face again? “What are you suggesting?”

  “Whatever it takes. You have a new future ahead of you, Tate. I don’t want to see it ruined just when it’s getting started.”

  I let out a ragged sigh, the beginnings of a migraine throbbing in my temples. It’s been a year since I’ve had one, and I’d actually begun to think they might have gone away.

  How can I expect Margaret to understand what she’s asking of me? I went back to Smith Mountain Lake once, and I’d vowed never to do so again. Nothing is worth going back there. Not even the saving of a career I’m not sure I wanted.

  Going back means resurrecting a past I only want to forget. I’ve spent my entire adult life trying to put behind me a childhood that had been less than grand and a teenage dream that ended in a nightmare. And even if I haven’t forgiven or forgotten, I can sleep at night.

  “Tell me you’ll try to fix this, Tate,” Margaret says. “Find out who’s trying to screw up your life. Please.”

  I click off the phone without telling her I already know who. The question is why.

  5

  Jillie

  I STOP THE Mercedes in the circular drive of Stone Meadow. While the girls open their doors and scoot out, I pull the magazine from the grocery bag and stuff it in my purse.

  Inside the house, I leave the greens on the kitchen counter and then hustle the girls upstairs to change into their riding clothes.

  “Aren’t you going to watch, Mommy?” Corey asks a few minutes later, as she follows us into the hall and back down the stairs.

  “I have some things to do, honey,” I say, helping her with the chin strap on her helmet.

  “But you always watch us,” Kala says, suspicion in her voice.

  “I’ll come down before you finish.”

  “You’re not going anywhere, are you?” Corey asks, her dark eyes clouded with worry.

  “Of course not. I’ll even peek at you out of the window of my room.”

  “Okay,” Corey says.

  Kala heads for the barn without saying anything else, an I-don’t-care-anyway set to her shoulders.

  I watch them for a moment, feeling my oldest daughter’s distance. I go back upstairs then, close my bedroom door and lock it. Leaning against the frame, I stare at the enormous bedroom I long ago grew to dislike.

  It’s the same one I shared with Jeffrey, the furniture dark and heavy, the curtains a dense burgundy that makes me think of the bottle of port found next to his dead body. I wonder, as I have many times, if he’d needed the liquid courage to do what he’d done. And then I feel instantly guilty for the thought. When did I become so unkind?

  I pull my purse from the walnut dresser drawer and dump the contents onto the bed. Snatching the tabloid out of the rubble, I sink into the chair by the window. Turning it over, a profusion of emotions again assaults me.

  From the cover, Tate Callahan’s smiling face looks back at me. His young, good-looking face, exactly as I remember it. Exactly as it looked on the pages of the photo album where I’d kept this same picture since the day I took it so many years ago.

  For a moment, I let myself dwell on the memory of hair, dark as molasses, and thick-lashed eyes that had a way of reading my thoughts before I could ever voice them.

  Tate.

  He’d made something out of his life. Just as I had always known he would. I’ve kept up with him through the papers, saved the articles written about him in various magazines, tucking them away in a trunk inside my closet. It has been a long, long time since I let myself take them out and think about the years when he had been my best friend, when for a brief time, he had been so much more.

  Inside the walk-in closet sits a trunk, on top of which I keep my winter sweaters. I sweep them to the floor and open the lid. Here, I keep all my important documents and other personal things. The girls’ birth certificates. My mother’s wedding band. The album in which I had put away all visual reminders of Tate.

  I haven’t looked at it in years, and yet I know exactly where the picture should be. I flip to the page, only to find a blank spot in its place. My heart drops.

  I look down at the tabloid again, aware suddenly that the girl in the photo no longer exists. At the upper, right hand corner of the page is a current picture of Tate, a somber photo of a handsome man I had once planned on spending my life with.

  I can see that he has changed, matured, his features somehow leaner, his blue eyes registering disillusion and life lived. I skim the text beneath the article, my stomach dropping a little more with each line.

  Bestselling author Tate Callahan is pictured above with childhood sweetheart Jillie Andrews of Smith Mountain Lake, Virginia. Sources tell us the two broke up when then eighteen-year-old Callahan was charged with the attempted rape of a sixteen-year-old girl. Readers may be interested to learn the probable source of the angst that propelled his first novel to the top of bookstore bestseller lists after it was chosen as Book of the Month by national talk show . . .

  I drop the paper, as if it has suddenly burned me.

  Someone has been digging into Tate’s past, and I have no doubt that he will believe me responsible for this.

  But then in the past twenty years, nothing has brought Tate back to Smith Mountain Lake. A pictu
re on the cover of a cheap tabloid is hardly likely to do so.

  In the back of the trunk, the corner of a high school annual catches my eye. A faded envelope sticks out of the top. I start to reach for it, then quickly slam the trunk lid shut. I should have thrown it away long ago.

  That and every other sentimental reminder of him. How many times had Jeffrey asked what I kept hidden in this trunk, silently imploring me to get rid of the past once and for all?

  I’d never been able to do so. And maybe, in the big picture, that says it all.

  6

  Jillie

  I HAVE TO GET out. Go for a drive. Just long enough to clear my head.

  An evening with Judith and her guests has stretched me so tight that I feel like a rubber band about to snap. Even when Jeffrey had been alive, I never felt comfortable at those dinners, always aware of Judith’s subtle reminders that I didn’t belong in the Taylor household.

  I check on the girls, who are both asleep, and then grab my purse and keys, silently taking the steps to the front door. Leaving the lights off, I let the Mercedes roll down the driveway until I’m out of sight of the house. Near the bottom, I flick them on and pull onto the main road.

  Stars shine in the sky overhead, a quarter moon suspended in its own corner. I press the accelerator hard, the needle on the speedometer inching higher, higher. Sixty-five. Seventy.

  The speed feels good. In fact, it feels great.

  For a few moments, I let myself believe I can outrun all the things that are wrong in my life, in the same way I had once believed I could ride my horse to a life far different from the one I’d been born to.

  And just for a moment, I want to be truly selfish. It would be easy, really. A slip of the tire to the edge of the pavement. A tree on the side of the road. It would take no more than that. And all my regrets would be gone.

  Every single one of them.

  The speedometer inches forward, topping eighty-five. Did Jeffrey have these same thoughts? Did the same war wage inside him?