by Ania Ahlborn
“I guess it makes me uncomfortable,” he confessed, derailing her inner tirade. “Because I remember living on my own, being lonely myself.”
The way he said it downshifted her irritation into a lower gear. His arm tightened around hers, and the way he looked at her convinced Audra that, despite their not knowing each other well, he was letting her in on a real secret. He wanted her to know him. And if that were true, it meant that this charismatic man wanted to know her, too. But, in exchange, Audra had to make an effort, had to reciprocate, open up.
“When you were talking about California,” she said, “you seemed saddened by the memory, like you missed it.”
His face brightened a little, as though charmed by the fact that she had empathized with him on their very first meeting. His expression fell a moment later though, and he nodded to say she was right. But he contradicted his nod with a denial. “Nah, I don’t miss it. I didn’t have anyone back there, at least no one that really understood who I am. I’ve left that life behind. Now, I don’t have a physical home, which can be pretty rough. But you don’t need a physical home when you’ve got an emotional one. You know what they say about people who surround themselves with material possessions, right?”
Audra shrugged.
“The man with the most possessions is the poorest of all. It’s why I left L.A. If you set eyes on the house I grew up in, you’d fall over right where you stand.”
“What do you mean? What was wrong with the house?”
“Nothing, and everything. You know those houses you see on TV shows with the motorized front gates? The bars are a metaphor. You can go in and out, but every night you’re sleeping behind them like a prisoner in a cell.” He paused, readjusted his grip on her arm. “My old man is a movie producer. He works on films with guys like Jack Nicholson and Robert Redford.” Audra gawked at him, and Deacon grinned at her piqued interest before continuing on. “You know Faye Dunaway?”
“Sure, who doesn’t?”
“She came over for brunch a few times. She and my mother smoked cigarettes on the patio while discussing the pros and cons of wicker furniture. Thankfully, this was before she did Mommie Dearest. Because at ten or eleven years old, I would have shit my pants had I known Joan Crawford was milling around our pool.” He made crazy eyes at her, and Audra couldn’t help but laugh.
“I wouldn’t have guessed,” she said.
“Guessed what? That I come from money?”
She nodded. Deacon looked more like a Texas Ranger than the son of a bigwig Hollywood producer.
“Well, good,” he said. “If you can’t tell, that means I’ve successfully wiped that part of my life away. You know, in a way, Mommie Dearest is a pretty good analogy for the lives we were forced to lead.” His statement was unflinching, as though he knew Audra came from the same place as him—a big house, absent parents. It was another correct assumption, one that led her to believe that she wasn’t as closed off as she had thought. He was reading her like one of his father’s screenplays. “Not all of us were beaten with wire hangers, but psychologically . . . emotionally?”
She nodded again, understanding what he was getting at.
“But you let that go, Audra. What’s in the past is in the past. Those people, your parents, they don’t have to matter. They only matter if you give them that power. Take back your life, take back control. You put your foot down and tell them ‘I’m worth something, worth more than your fuckin’ money, Pops. I’m worth more than your most precious jewels, Mommy dear.’ ”
Her heart fluttered inside her chest. She couldn’t tell if it was love or nerves. She dared to shoot a glance at him, and their eyes met as they approached the clearing that would lead her back to her parents’ home. It was as though he knew everything about her, knew just what she needed to hear.
“You understand what I’m saying,” he said. “I can see it.”
She looked away, nervous. “See what?” That he had her all figured out? That the longer he talked, the more she wanted to drag him upstairs and into her bedroom, lay herself out for him, and let him swallow her whole? If she took the power away from her parents, she may as well let the mystery man beside her have it instead.
“You and I are really alike,” Deacon said. “Our parents come from the same tribe—the rich, the avoidant. And Jeff, he’s like us, too. His folks . . .” Deacon shook his head. He had no words for Jeff’s parents. “They grew him the way one would grow a tree, and then they chopped him down. Whoever made up that crap about blood being thicker than water didn’t have a clue, and that’s where we come in.” He motioned to the camp behind them. “You can’t pick your blood family, but you can pick your spiritual one. Spiritual, not religious. Spiritual on the plane of mutual understanding, shared hopes, communal faith. Once you find the people you’re meant to be with . . .” He shook his head as if to say that he couldn’t describe the ecstasy of such a discovery.
“Is that what they are?” Audra’s tone was quiet, her gaze still diverted. “Your spiritual family?”
“I love them as much as if they’d come from my own rib.” Sliding his arm out from around hers, his hands drifted to rest upon her shoulders. “You don’t have to be alone,” he told her. “Don’t you see? Us meeting like this, it’s fate.”
Fate.
“Our past lives are nothing but darkness,” he said. “That’s why we have to leave those people and those memories behind. It’s like being stuck in a coal mine for half of your life. If you live in the darkness of your past for long enough, it makes you blind. You won’t be able to recognize enlightenment when it’s right in front of you. But I know it when I see it . . . and I see it in you.”
“See what?” She pressed her lips together in an anxious line.
“You’re ready,” he told her. “It’s time to open your eyes.”
4
* * *
LUCAS ROLLED THE U-Haul truck along the JFK departures curb, eased it to a stop, and shifted into park. His entire life was in the back of this box truck, all his stuff haphazardly crammed into cardboard boxes he’d picked up at the local Home Depot. He’d always known there was a chance Caroline would leave him to pack it all on his own—her things left to float around half-empty rooms—but there was a difference between maybe and certainty. Here, certainty won out in the end.
Caroline had filled a couple of suitcases with Jeanie’s summer clothes, but making room in her daughter’s closet was the extent of her involvement. Lucas hadn’t had the heart to beg her to reconsider her decision. Amid seemingly endless boxes and a mad dash to stay on Jeffrey Halcomb’s seemingly arbitrary four-week schedule, Lucas hadn’t allowed the magnitude of the situation to sink in. At least not until now.
The full weight of it hit him after Caroline asked for a ride to the airport, so nonchalant, no big deal. He had wanted to seethe through his teeth at her nerve. Why couldn’t she call the illustrious (and loaded) Kurt Murphy rather than bumming a ride with her soon-to-be ex? But instead of going off at the mere suggestion of carpooling, he had simply nodded despite their past ten days of avoidant silence.
He wanted to be pissed that Caroline hadn’t spoken so much as a handful of sentences to him for the past week and a half; wanted to rage at the fact that, while he had spent that time scrambling to get himself together—the boxes, the packing, the moving truck, the rental house—she hadn’t done anything but sit on the phone with her sister, talking about Italy while their marriage gasped its final breath. He couldn’t tell if she was pretending to be strong, or if she genuinely didn’t care.
And yet, now, sitting in the truck—Jeanie beside him and Caroline next to the passenger window—his thoughts were too muddled to be angry. They were foggy with how he was going to keep himself from falling apart. Distracted by the idea of Jeanie hating his guts, he wondered how he was going to cope with his daughter’s loathing over the next eight weeks. That, and t
he looming terror of how long it would take to see Jeanie again after she went back home, leaving him behind in Pier Pointe. How much time would pass before he saw his little girl again? Months? A year? Where would she be living? In Briarwood? Or would Caroline pack up the remainder of their things and ditch Queens for whatever neighborhood Kurt Murphy inhabited? His worries were stifling, his anxiety increasing its grip with every passing day. Lucas forced his thoughts of Caroline and Kurt canoodling in Rome to the furthest corner of his mind. He convinced himself that the salvation of his marriage would come in due time. But right now he had to focus. He was on a deadline. Halcomb was waiting.
Caroline slid out of the moving van, smoothed her skirt, and checked her makeup in the side-view mirror. She then gave her brooding twelve-year-old an unsure smile. It was the false grin a stranger would give a child after making accidental eye contact in the checkout line. Lucas stared at Caroline’s face from across the truck’s interior, marveling at the way her expression failed to reach her eyes. Jeanie remained slumped against the bench seat with her arms across her chest. Waves of unruly blond splayed across the front of a black Thirty Seconds to Mars T-shirt, not at all matching the sunny halo of curls that circled her head.
Lucas looked away from his wife’s distant stare, shoved open the driver-side door, and fetched Caroline’s luggage from the back of the truck. He met her on the sidewalk beneath the United Airlines sign while Jeanie glared at them both. The black eyeliner she’d smeared around her eyes in angst-fueled defiance reminded him of when she’d played the part of a raccoon in her second-grade school play. Except back then, the raccoon had been friendly. Now, the little varmint was rabid.
“Really?” Caroline asked, frowning at her glowering daughter. “You aren’t going to see me for two months and this is the good-bye I get?”
“You want me to be happy?” Somehow, Jeanie managed to narrow her eyes more than they already were. A moment later, she glared at her phone, her fingers flying across the touch-screen keyboard, constructing a text message with the fury only a preteen girl could muster.
Lucas kept quiet, leaving a few feet between himself and the truck. He’d spent the last ten days listening to Virginia and Caroline scream at each other, amazed at how similar they were when they were angry. It was only after Caroline would retire to their bedroom to watch one of her shows—True Blood or Mad Men or Game of Thrones—that Lucas would quietly knock on Jeanie’s door. They didn’t talk during these postwar visits. Mostly, he sat at her desk and stared at posters of bands composed of angry-looking youth—Paramore and Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco and Gerard Way.
Jeanie had been a happy-go-lucky girl up until her tenth birthday. That was when he and Caroline really started having problems. Their fights had bloomed from heated whispers to full-volume barn burners, no doubt audible through the walls after bedtime. But Jeanie never asked about her parents’ problems and they never sat their daughter down to talk them over. They were unable to discuss their grievances between themselves, let alone with their kid.
And so, Jeanie’s favorite colors of pink and yellow were replaced by black and red. She tore Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift from the walls and pasted up in their place boys who looked more like girls. It was Caroline’s worst nightmare: her baby girl had gone dark. Lucas was left to speculate why Jeanie seemed to prefer his company over her mother’s. Was it because he didn’t ride her about her eclectic taste in clothes and music? Or was he deemed “okay” because he happened to write about the darkest types of humankind?
Over the past few days, there had been no drama between Lucas and Virginia. There were only quiet inquiries about whether her cell phone allowed her to call her friends long-distance, whether she’d like Washington, and if—since both he and Mom were ruining her life—he’d take her to the Imagine Dragons concert in Seattle or Portland or wherever they could get tickets. She had been planning on going with her friends, but since her father was dragging her to the end of the world, alternate plans would have to be made.
“Come on, Jeanie.” Lucas nodded, goading her to give her mother a proper farewell. Jeanie exhaled a dramatic sigh, slid out of the truck, and offered her mom a hug as genuine as Caroline’s distant smile.
“Have fun on your trip.” Her words dripped with sarcasm. Before Caroline could reprimand her for acting like a condescending brat, their daughter climbed back into the van, slammed the door, and rolled up the window to avoid any more talk.
Caroline blinked a few times, as if the swing of the door had blown something into her eye. “Well,” she said after a long pause, unable to disguise the slight tremble in her voice. “That was nice.”
Lucas wished he could hate Caroline as much as it seemed their kid already did. It would have made everything easier, black and white. But he reached out to touch her arm instead, his gut telling him to comfort his wife. “It isn’t personal; you know that.”
Caroline nodded faintly, then cleared her throat, as if doing so would somehow help her regain some composure. “That angst is going to be fun for you,” she said. Her smile was cold, challenging. “Hope you’re up for it.”
He twisted up his face at the thought of Jeanie throwing herself around the new house. Emotional. Blasting her whiney, screamy music at all hours. Music that made him feel suicidal, homicidal, and painfully old, five years before hitting forty. He remembered his own father griping about the music that came flooding out of his room. There were a couple of afternoons where he and his pop had waged war—Depeche Mode and New Order vibrated Lucas’s walls while his old man tried to drown out “that electro-synthesizer crap” with Johnny Cash and Creedence Clearwater Revival.
Lucas decided then and there that, if he only had Jeanie for eight weeks, he’d school her in how to be properly dark: Nine Inch Nails, the Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees. He had traded in the band shirts and Doc Martens for button-downs and casual oxfords long ago, but he’d never fully outgrown the sexy, sullen pull of despondent musing. He’d simply disguised it as a career.
“It’ll be okay,” Lucas said, trying to convince himself far more than he was attempting to lend Caroline assurance. “She’s a good kid.” And when he was done with her, she’d also be a good kid with a further-reaching penchant for the darkness that Caroline had rejected long ago. It was a cheap jab, one that used his and Jeanie’s common interest to his advantage. He’d break out those old boots and his vintage T-shirts all in the name of being “the cool dad.” If it meant keeping his kid close, he’d do whatever it took.
“Yeah, well, she’s also a hormonal tween.” Caroline fumbled with the pop-up handle on her rolling bag, avoiding eye contact by keeping herself distracted. “But what am I saying? You love angst.”
He stared at her hand, at the way her fingers held the luggage pull in a tense fist. Maybe she’d miss him. Now that it was time to part ways, she’d possibly realize that not being with him and Jeanie would be tough—much harder than she had expected. It could be that age-old adage was right: absence makes the heart grow fonder. This was, perhaps, the very therapy they needed to reconnect.
“Just don’t go all Salinger and lock yourself up,” she warned. “Take her into town, to the mall and the movies. Do normal things. I don’t need her any weirder than she already is.”
Lucas bit back a comment, on the verge of blaming their daughter’s strangeness on both Caroline and himself. They hadn’t been able to get their shit together with each other and now their kid was perpetually pissed off. Whatever weirdness Jeanie had wasn’t his fault, it was their fault. But his thoughts were derailed, his defensiveness thrown off-kilter. Kurt Murphy hovered just inside the terminal, watching them part ways through the sliding glass door.
Caroline noticed Lucas staring into the terminal. She looked over her shoulder, lifted a hand and gave Kurt a wave, then turned back to Lucas. “I need to go. I should have checked in twenty minutes ago.”
“Yeah,
” he said. “International.”
Her eyes dropped down to the space between them, as if inspecting the tips of her ballerina flats. He had watched her pack a pair of heels into her carry-on. She’d change out of those flats as soon as she stepped off the plane. Overwhelmed by the urge to grab her and kiss her as hard as he could, he wanted to beg her not to sleep with that pedantic prick.
Please, Carrie, don’t leave me. Don’t leave us. Don’t give up.
But before he could make his move, the muffled thud of bass slithered from inside the U-Haul’s cab. Both he and Caroline turned their heads to watch their daughter’s blond hair fly. She was dancing in her seat to a song that had come on the radio—music therapy. When Jeanie was sad, the music was loud. Lucas had a feeling it would only get louder in the coming weeks.
Watching Jeanie through the window, Caroline’s features went somber. Lucas took the opportunity to pull her into an embrace, pressed his lips to her temple, and whispered, “I love you,” against her skin. She relaxed for a modicum of a second, then pulled away from him with a backward step. After all, Kurt was watching. She’d have to talk him down if she expressed too much emotion.
I have to put on a good show for Virginia. You know how it is . . . keep the kid happy, keep everything normal.
“I’ll miss you,” Lucas told her, his throat suddenly dry, his fingers reaching for her hand as if to pull her back, to keep her from going.
Will you miss me, too?
“Keep her safe,” Caroline said, then turned away, focusing on her bag.
“Carrie.” He was desperate to hear it, he needed to know.
Just tell me you still care, even if it’s just a little bit. Tell me there’s still a chance.
Like an exotic animal displayed behind airport glass, Kurt shifted his weight from one shiny loafer to the other. His sport jacket hung off his well-built frame with a mannequin’s casual elegance. He looked too clean, too well-groomed, the type of guy who had a spa day every two weeks. Facials. Manicures. Waxes. Shiatsu massages penciled in as meetings. Martinis at two in the afternoon and sixty-dollar entrées written off as a business expense.
