Forgotten Spirits

by Barbara Deese

The sky behind them was dark and heavy. Vinnie turned on the headlights. Snow skirled across the road, obliterating the lines. “Poor Sierra,” he said for the second time. “She was so spirited. Wherever she went, every man in the room stared at her. Frankly, I found her a little intimidating.”

  “I know. She was beautiful and charismatic, but none of it made her happy.”

  “No.”

  Foxy felt a deep sadness, thinking about her old friend. “The thing I never understood is that she could’ve been with anyone, so why do you think she kept coming back to Wylie? I’m not saying he was a terrible person, but those two always blew so hot and cold. She dated other guys who doted on her, but then she and Wylie would make up and she’d drop the other guy flat. She could have married someone kind and dependable.”

  “Maybe she didn’t want kind and dependable.”

  Foxy looked at him, surprised at his wisdom. “You may be right.”

  “She always struck me as someone who liked to keep things stirred up. If things were going too smoothly, she’d do something impulsive, keep people off balance.”

  She thought about that. “She didn’t always like to play by the rules, if that’s what you mean.”

  He shook his head. “That too, but I’m talking about how every time they talked about getting married, she’d flirt with someone in front of Wylie and provoke him into a fight.”

  “You heard Wylie’s side of it,” Foxy said, “but she told me as soon as they got serious, he’d get crazy with jealousy if she so much as looked at a guy.”

  “Well, that’s how codependency works, isn’t it? They both had to agree to stay in that pattern. They finally cut the cord, but it took a long time. Do you remember when she ran away right after Wylie proposed that time?”

  Foxy remembered the day Sierra had shown up at work, flaunting the carat-and-a-half diamond Wylie had given her. That same night after changing into her street clothes, Foxy had turned down the hall that led to the restrooms and had seen Sierra in what looked like a lover’s embrace with their assistant manager. Sierra denied it being anything but a friendly hug. But then, two days later she’d up and disappeared for almost a week. The assistant manager was still at the hotel every day, so obviously Sierra hadn’t run off with him.

  When she came back, all Sierra said in explanation was that she’d needed to get away and think. She went back to Wylie and the two of them had stayed sequestered in their place for days. Foxy and Vinnie had thought they worked out their problems together, but when they emerged, the engagement was off. For the time being, anyway. They’d gotten engaged again. For a short time, it looked like Sierra and Wylie and baby Beau would be a real family at last, and then everything fell apart.

  Foxy frowned. Again, there was that sense of something tickling at her mind.

  Chapter 25

  Facing a stand of birch trees, Wylie heard the car’s engine. It figured. He hadn’t seen a car in the last half hour, but the minute he got out to take a leak, someone turned down the same side road. He zipped up and walked back to his truck as a black SUV came into view.

  The driver must not have seen him stopped in the middle of the road until too late. He hit his brakes and skidded, barely missing Wylie’s truck and burying his left front wheel in a snowbank. Revving the engine, he backed up onto the road and stopped. The sound of tire scraping on metal was unmistakable. He eased himself out of the driver’s seat to assess the damage. Wearing a dress coat and aviator glasses, he looked out of place in the north woods. Wylie noticed he at least wore snow boots.

  Wylie walked over. “I think the fender’s bent,” he said.

  “Yes, it certainly is.” The man adjusted the tilt of his aviator glasses, ducked his head and looked away.

  Sketchy. It set Wylie’s nerves jangling. Suddenly he was aware how isolated they were. He looked back to the main road and to the expanse ahead of him on the side road. There was no one in sight. He felt the guy looking at him and turned to face him.

  Now the man had his muffler pulled up to cover part of his chin. “What the heck were you doing stopped in the middle of the road?” he said, his voice low.

  Wylie’s first thought was to wonder how many guys would be able to ask that question without a few choice expletives. His second thought was that it made his simple question more menacing.

  “Are you going to stand there or are you going to give me a hand?” His hand gestures, when he spoke, gave Wylie the impression he was used to speaking to an audience. An actor, maybe. In any case, he looked like he wasn’t used to getting his hands dirty.

  Wylie bent down to see where the front right fender and tire were binding. He buckled the wrists of his Gore-Tex gloves so he wouldn’t get snow up his sleeves, and went to work tugging on the fender. The metal barely budged. “I’m gonna get a crowbar from my truck,” he said.

  As soon as the crowbar was in his grip, he felt safer. Turning back to the other vehicle, he saw that the sketchy guy was removing his own crowbar from the back of his vehicle.

  Fighting the urge to jump into his car and drive off, he took a couple of deep breaths, told himself he was letting his imagination take him to a crazy place, and went back to the Acura SUV. “I’ll use both crowbars,” Wylie said, hoping to relieve the guy of a potential weapon.

  Reluctantly he handed it over and bent over to watch as Wylie got down on his knees and went to work. Soon he’d bent the fender back enough to keep it from ripping up the tire. “That’ll hold you ’til you can get it to a shop,” Wylie said, handing him his crowbar. And then as an afterthought, he said, “You gonna report this?”

  The man looked at him. His glasses were steamed up. They stood face to face, each holding a crowbar, and Wylie wondered again if the guy might be an actor. He even looked a little like a young Burt Lancaster. Ever the smartass, Wylie said, “Were you in the movie Gunfight at the O.K. Corral?”

  His cheek twitched and then he smiled.

  Wylie smiled back. “No, really, you look familiar. Are you an actor?”

  He laughed. It was a nice laugh. “Nope. Just up here for a ­meeting.”

  Wylie spread his arms to encompass the wide expanse of white. “Who’re you meeting with? Polar bears?”

  The pleasant face hardened. “Thanks for the help,” he said abruptly.

  “It was the least I could do.” Wylie looked at him closely before starting back to his truck. He’d gotten only a couple steps away when he realized why the man had looked so familiar. The smile, the little gap between his front teeth. He hadn’t seen Sierra’s son in months, but this guy—Shit! It was like looking at an older version of Beau. His feet stuttered.

  He realized he hadn’t heard the man’s door shut yet. Clenching the crowbar he glanced over his shoulder.

  The man nodded at him and waited for him to get into his truck.

  Wylie laid the crowbar across the seat and took off, glancing in his rear view mirror until he was well away from the man he now knew had to be Beau’s father. What a bizarre coincidence, he thought. It took only a couple of seconds to realize it was no coincidence at all.

  When the road came to a T, he took a left, realized it was a dead end and doubled back. The snow was coming down in earnest now, and blowing hard enough he had to concentrate to stay on the road and not drift off on the shoulder.

  His mind was following a maze of clues. Of course he’d known from the beginning that Beau was not his son. Sierra had had a lot of faults, but she’d been straight with him about that. She never had revealed who’d fathered her child, but said it was “not a sustainable relationship.” He assumed it’d been a one-night stand. At first he’d thought he could accept their arrangement and raise Beau as his own. He was nuts about the kid, but he and Sierra were drifting apart.

  They argued. They made up, only to argue again. She confessed to him that the re
al father had agreed to send child support on a regular basis, and in return she’d agreed to keep his identity a secret. He remembered how crazy he’d gotten then, snooping through every pocket of every item of clothing and every handbag, looking for some clue to the man’s identity. He invoked the help of a friend who worked in billing for Sun Country airlines to see if Sierra had flown somewhere when she’d gone AWOL. The friend had hesitated, then said, “It’s my job on the line if I tell you, man. Yeah, I remember about the time she went missing, I saw her name on the passenger list for a flight to Minneapolis.”

  He’d been able to piece this much together. Sierra’s lover was from Minnesota, and since she’d stayed in Foxy’s home town more than once, he figured it was someone she’d met in the little town of Pine Glen. But before he could enact his fantasy of going to Pine Glen and interviewing every male resident over thirteen, Sierra had packed up everything, including Beau, and moved to California.

  So here, finally, was the Minnesota connection he’d been seeking, this man who looked a little like Burt Lancaster and a lot like Beau Brady. In the next few minutes other things fell into place. Beau’s father had somehow figured out where Foxy and Vinnie were headed. He felt like he might throw up.

  He was concentrating on the road that meandered around small lakes. The sound of another car on the quiet road startled him. He gripped the wheel. In his rear view mirror, he saw the black Acura SUV bearing down on him, trying to pass him. He edged as far to the right as he dared. Up ahead, it looked like the road narrowed, but he couldn’t slow down without fishtailing on the ice. He was about to cross a bridge.

  Metal screeched against metal as the right side of his truck hit the guardrail. He struggled to keep his wheels on the road. It felt like an explosion when the SUV slammed into him from the left rear. The rail provided little resistance. He tore through it, and his car plummeted twenty-five feet to the ice below. He didn’t even have time to scream.

  * * *

  The car radio was tuned to WELY, and the announcer kept telling people to “hunker down.” In his lilting accent, he said, “I hope you all got stocked up on groceries and other provisions at Zup’s, because they’re closing at two-thirty.” Then he went through a long list of cancelled activities, including a meeting at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, which he pronounced Epis-COP-al. Vinnie and Foxy both burst into laughter.

  “I’ve missed this place,” Foxy said, and meant it.

  “Is this where I turn?” Vinnie asked.

  “Yes. No wait. I think it’s the next one.” They’d just turned off Highway 1, and would be at Twin Loons before long. “No worries,” Foxy assured him when he reminded her the grocery store would be closed. “Matt will have the place stocked.” Despite the earlier drama, the closer they got, the more she relaxed. The snow fell heavier now, and the car rocked with each wind gust, but it felt oddly comforting to her to have the snow wrap around her like a soft, fluffy cocoon.

  Vinnie said, “Bet you didn’t think you and I would ever get snowbound together.”

  “That doesn’t sound all bad, in fact, not bad at all. No one gets out, but no one gets in either. A glass of wine, another log on the fire, and I won’t care about anything.” She was about to take his hand when she heard the siren behind them. “Slow down, Vin.”

  The car began to fishtail. “I’m trying to,” he said, sounding irritated. “You think they’re going to nail me for speeding?”

  Vinnie moved to the side and had almost come to a stop when the police car passed them, followed by more lights and sirens. An ambulance passed them too. Vinnie was shaken, and they sat at the side of the road for a few minutes before he put the car in drive.

  The road was icier where it twisted and rose above a couple of small lakes. They saw where the emergency vehicles had stopped. There was a rupture in the guard rail, and when the policeman directed them to pass, Foxy looked below. “There’s a truck down there on its side. I can’t imagine anyone surviving that,” she said.

  “People who drive trucks get cocky and think they can drive faster than the rest of us.”

  The comment annoyed her. “If we hadn’t seen all the flashing lights, we could’ve wound up going off the bridge too.”

  A few miles later, they drove down the road to the resort. Ahead, they saw two cabins. Near the edge of the lake, Vinnie pointed out a large sign buried so deeply in a snowdrift that it simply read, “DON’T.” It made Foxy laugh out loud.

  Pulling up in the main parking lot, Matt, bundled up in a parka and pouring gasoline into the tank of a snowmobile, looked up. His face broke into a broad grin.

  Matt looked more like Foxy now than they had as kids. Both had prominent cheekbones and pointed chins. Looking into his big blue eyes, Foxy thought, not for the first time, was like looking in the mirror.

  Striding over to them, he pulled Foxy’s door open and practically lifted her out to hug her. “I’ve been listening to the weather reports,” he said. “With the phones out, I couldn’t even call you and tell you not to come. Christ, I’m glad you’re here.” Foxy thought he seemed more lonesome than she’d ever seen him.

  Molly Pat didn’t miss her chance to leap out, run a few circles, and then throw herself into a deep spot of snow, where she writhed around with a sappy, tongue-hanging-out expression.

  Vinnie came around the car, holding out his hand to his former brother-in-law. Instead of taking his hand, Matt clapped him on the shoulder, and then wrapped him in a bear hug, saying, “It’s good to see you, man. Really.” He looked back and forth between Vinnie and his sister, and his smile took on an impish look. “Together.”

  “We’re not—” Foxy began, but the words died before she uttered them. Maybe they were together again. Last week, she thought with a stab of guilt, Bill Harley was the man in her life. Just four days ago she couldn’t have imagined Vinnie coming back into her life, but her life, suddenly, felt utterly out of her control.

  Chapter 26

  Matt had closed the small cabins until after Christmas, but there were two guest rooms besides his quarters in the main building. Calling it a lodge made it sound grander than it was. The main floor had a two-story lounge with fireplace and cozy seating, plus a small but efficient kitchen and the owner suite. Above that were two bedrooms and a single bath. Simple and practical.

  Foxy put dog food in a dish and filled a water bowl for the dog while Matt and Vinnie brought in their things.

  “What’s with your phone not working?” Foxy wanted to know as soon as Matt had set their bags down.

  Matt made a face. “Yeah, sorry about that. I forgot to pay the bill. It got crazy busy here after . . . in the fall, and I let some of that business stuff slip through the cracks.”

  “Jeez, Matt,” Foxy said.

  “I know, I know.” He hung his head.

  Foxy had said her brother was depressed after Patrick left, and Vinnie could well remember the feeling. He thumped Matt on the shoulder. “C’mon, I’ll help you finish gassing the snowmobiles. Trotting after his former brother-in-law, Vinnie felt like a kid. “I’ve never even ridden one before. Are they hard to drive?”

  Matt gave him a questioning look. “I thought you went out with us once, the time you and Foxy came with Sierra and Wylie and that other couple, remember?”

  “Tina and Al.” Vinnie remembered that trip. “Yup, I was here, but I said I wasn’t feeling good and while you all were snowmobiling, I drove to some little casino south of here.”

  “In Tower?”

  “Sounds right. I spent a couple hours playing bingo, of all the idiotic ways for a guy from Las Vegas to spend his vacation.”

  He laughed. “I guess I don’t remember.” Matt handed him a gas can from the garage. “So, what’s going on with you two?”

  Vinnie threw his hands up. “Damned if I know.”

  “Ya, she’s a p
uzzle.” There were four machines in a row. After unscrewing all the caps and checking the oil, he told Vinnie he needed to start the engines to make sure they were running right. He sat down on one and turned the ignition, and then motioned for Vinnie to do the same.

  Vinnie straddled one and felt a rush of excitement when the engine growled. When they’d run all four for a minute or two, he was reluctant to get off.

  Matt watched him with a curious expression. “Wanna take it out for a spin?”

  Vinnie nodded, eager, despite the worsening weather. Or maybe because of it. Foxy used to tell him he was an excitement junkie, and in his recovery program, he realized she’d been right. Once a junkie, always a junkie, they said.

  “Just leave the keys in the ignition. I need to do a few things in the lodge, so I’ll ask my sister to give you a quick lesson. You up for that?”

  “Hell, yes. I feel like I’m sixteen years old and my dad just offered me the keys to his Camaro Z-28. “

  Matt laughed. “Hey, if you two are really back together, you’re gonna have to know these things. Let’s top off the car, too while we’re at it.” He picked up a full gas can and walked over to the Saturn.

  Vinnie popped the cover to the gas tank. “I wish I knew what’s up with her and me. We’ve always had our ups and downs, you know.”

  “The only question is, do you want to be with her?”

  Vinnie already knew the answer to that, but it wasn’t a simple one. “If we could be together without hurting each other and playing mind games, I’d be a happy man. I’m not sure that’s possible, though. If I met her now, y’know, without the messy history . . .”

  “Can’t you put it behind you?”

  Vinnie didn’t know what all Foxy had told him. “I’m trying, but it’s like she’s closed a part of herself, like she’s afraid to love or let herself be loved. I don’t know what it is, but even when things were good with us I used to think that.”