Destiny's Pawn

by D. A. Keeley

  “Still thinks I want to replace his dad?”

  She nodded.

  “Let’s try something,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Why don’t you leave?”

  She looked at him. “Go home?”

  “Yup. Leave me alone with Tommy for lunch. I won’t mention moving in, just talk to him and about him for a while.”

  “And if he flips when he comes back and finds me gone?”

  “Peyton, he’s not going to walk home.”

  She smiled. “Oh, he just might. You don’t know my son.”

  “I know him well enough. Let’s try.”

  She stood. “Great, I’ll run some errands,” she said. “Text me if you need me.”

  “I won’t,” he said.

  “Confident?”

  He smiled. “Certainly.”

  “And foolish.” She gave him a quick peck on the cheek.

  Then she strolled briskly toward the door, just before Tommy reappeared and said, “Where’s Mom going?”

  “She wanted to do some shopping. I told her that was boring and you and I would meet her back at your house,” Stone said, trying not to emphasize the word your too much.

  12:10 p.m., near the Canadian border

  Michael Donovan, hauling gas for the generator, set the red container in the snow and approached the shack’s front door.

  He stopped suddenly.

  Tracks near the door startled him.

  He went inside and found everything just as he’d left it—nothing moved or taken. He went back outside and stood near the boot prints. Someone—a man, judging from the size of the prints—had walked to the shack and circled it. So Michael walked back to the trail and followed the tracks north.

  He’d never seen anyone on the trail. Michael had stumbled upon the shack one day while taking photos of a red-tailed hawk. Then Davey had fallen ill. And three months later, he’d asked for help. And you don’t say no when your best friend is in pain and has cancer. You figure out how to get him what he wants. Even if it means building something that could jeopardize your college acceptance.

  He looked at the tracks again. His father and mother would kill him if he got caught. (How ironic, if they were in on what Uncle Ted was hiding.) The fact that he’d never even smoked the stuff and had only learned how to grow it from watching YouTube videos wouldn’t matter to them. Nor would it matter to the University of Maine Admissions Office.

  He kept following the boot prints. Whoever had been to the shack had come from the north, parking near the Canadian border and heading south toward McCluskey’s. The boot prints veered off-trail into the powder at the crest of a rise, as if the hiker had seen the shack and, curious, had been drawn to it.

  Michael considered that. A shack in the middle of the woods was an odd sight; he himself had noticed it a year ago. Having seen it on a hike, he’d immediately gone to check it out. “I had to cut branches to get to it, but it’s like the bus in Into the Wild,” he later told Davey. So he wasn’t surprised someone noticed it. The question was, had the hiker entered the shack? No snow puddles had been left behind. No evidence that the hiker entered.

  His breaths formed tiny clouds in the crisp morning air. The sun was bright overhead. He took off his Oakleys and rubbed his eyes. Recent forecasts had predicted as much as eight inches of snow. Less than that had fallen, but the powder atop the crusty layer made tracking easy. It would’ve been a good day for hunting. But deer season had come and gone, and he hadn’t bothered to get a license this year. His father had suggested they spend a few mornings together in the woods, but Michael had declined. Part of him felt bad about avoiding his father and uncle. Yet it was hard to be around them without thinking of Uncle Ted’s apartment. And he couldn’t bring himself to mention it. After all, what would he say? Please explain why we have an international treasure in the attic apartment?

  The shack lay in the valley between two small bluffs. The footprints led him to a spot sheltered by thick balsam firs where the thin cover of snow was packed evenly. Michael’s hands were cold inside his gloves. He clenched his fists, then stretched his fingers wide, like an old man fighting off arthritis. A sudden breeze turned the blowing snow into needles peppering his cheeks. Snow careened down the back of his jacket, and he shivered at the icy spiders crawling down his spine.

  Someone had created a shelter here. The nylon underbelly of a tent had packed the snow; he knew that immediately. He took one hand out of his glove and blew warm air into his fist, thinking. Whoever had spent the night here had not entered the shack. Had they peeked inside? Had they slept here because the small bluff offered a clear view of the shack?

  If the answer to those questions was yes, it explained why the hiker had left the pot plants, the generator, the portable heater, and the heat lamps exactly as they were: because the hiker he was now tracking was actually tracking him, hoping to catch him entering and leaving the shack with pot.

  The snow on his spine no longer felt cold. He was sweating, his mind somersaulting.

  Davey had never before complained about the pain, but today he said it was bad. He needed the dope today.

  Someone—a cop?—had spent the night near the small wooden hut. To watch it? To see who was growing the pot? What if he was being watched now? Maybe he was over-reacting. The hiker, to his knowledge, hadn’t entered the shack. So did the hiker even know what was inside?

  His best friend since age five had cancer. And he was in pain.

  Michael went back down to the shack, got what he’d come for, and left.

  6:30 p.m., Donetsk, Ukraine

  Dariya Vann watched Liliya sleep. The bedroom was dark save for a shaft of light pouring into the room through the curtains from the street lamps. She lay peacefully beneath a white quilt in the metal-framed bed. Her dark eyelashes fluttered but never separated, and the corners of her mouth rose and fell with the emotions of whatever dream she was having.

  He wanted to do more but knew there was really little he could offer her, aside from providing basic care. He helped her into and out of the shower, cooked her soft bland foods, helped her down the stairs when she wanted to leave the tenement to get fresh air. But those things weren’t enough. He wanted to fix her, whatever that meant—wanted to make her leg finally heal, wanted desperately to take her abdominal pain away. But he wasn’t a doctor. And for at least a little while longer, he couldn’t afford to get her the medical attention she needed. So he settled for watching her sleep.

  He was smiling when she rolled onto her side.

  But then she screamed, her eyes opening wide as she sat up, gasping for air like one who breaks through the water’s surface after being under too long.

  Startled, he scrambled to his feet, his wooden kitchen chair toppling over backward.

  “Liliya,” he whispered, “you were dreaming. It was only a dream.”

  She leaned back against the wooden headboard, eyes opened wide, breathing heavily. Then she swung her legs over the bed’s edge and began struggling to her feet. He grabbed her by the arm.

  “Aleksei,” she said, “where is he?”

  “It was only a dream,” he said, rising and gently easing her back to the bed. “Just a dream, Liliya. There are no more bombs.”

  She sat on the edge of the bed, her feet on the floor.

  “Lay back,” he said. “Rest.”

  “Aleksei shouldn’t be there alone. Something’s going to happen to him. I can feel it.”

  “It was only a—”

  “No,” she interrupted, her eyes focused now. “Not the dream. I just know. I can feel it. Like the day he broke his leg.”

  “What are you saying?” he said. He was still standing and, although he wasn’t conscious of it, he wiped his palm on his pant leg.

  She sat ramrod straight. “You know what I’m saying.”

>   He did. When Aleksei had been young and was visiting cousins at Liliya’s sister’s, somehow (they’d never learned the details; they’d just been happy when he returned home with only a broken leg) he’d fallen nearly thirty meters from a window and was rushed to the hospital. Inexplicably, almost simultaneously with the accident, Liliya, at the counter chopping carrots, turned to Dariya and said, “Aleksei is hurt. We need to get to my sister’s.”

  Dariya sat down again. He’d never forget that day, never forget her gently laying the knife on the countertop, nor the expression on her face. She knew something had happened, and she was certain the feeling she had wasn’t coincidental. Somehow, someway, she knew it. And her knowledge, no matter how it was gained, had been accurate. A mother’s intuition?

  Dariya had no idea what to call Liliya’s instinctive knowledge of danger surrounding her son. But he trusted her.

  And that trust made him nervous now.

  He turned on the overhead light. It shook as small footsteps raced across the ceiling above them. He’d asked the children’s mother to take them outside to play, told her about Liliya’s condition. But he knew it was too cold to stay outside for extended periods of time.

  “Please turn on the light,” Liliya said.

  “It’s late,” he told her. “You should lay down, go back to sleep.”

  “No. Turn it on.”

  The overhead light wasn’t bright, but coupled with the street lamps through the curtains, he could see her clearly. She was wide awake. There was no going back to sleep now.

  “When are you going to see Aleksei?” she asked him.

  “That’s what I wanted to tell you,” he said. “Very soon. I’m flying there.”

  “Flying?” She tilted her head. Had she misheard him?

  “I know what you’re thinking. There’s an opportunity to fly.”

  “I don’t understand. We can’t afford—”

  “No, we can’t,” he said.

  “Bohana? Is she paying for you to fly?”

  It was an out. He took it. “Yes.” She didn’t need to know who was paying his way.

  “Why didn’t she pay for Aleksei? His trip took so long and was so hard.”

  “You’re forgetting he didn’t have documentation. He surrendered in order to get into the country. I’m being allowed two weeks only to check on him.”

  “They’re letting you visit?”

  “Temporarily. If you weren’t ill, I couldn’t go.”

  “That’s why you went to see my doctor.”

  “I needed a letter from him explaining your health. The United States wants to know I’ll come back here. That we aren’t using Aleksei to move to the US too.”

  “Use him? What kind of parents do they think we are?”

  Use him, he thought. If she only knew. He couldn’t meet her eyes then, had to look away. It was a good question: What kind of parent was he?

  She stood. He rose, too, reaching for her. “Be careful,” he said.

  “You’re returning without Aleksei?”

  He nodded. “You know that. We had agreed on that. His opportunities are there, not here.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Liliya, look at our lives, at the economy since Putin’s invasion. And Putin will only take more.”

  “Yes,” she said. “When will you leave?”

  He told her.

  1:30 p.m., 12 Higgins Drive

  Part of her had wanted to stay in the parking lot and follow them.

  But Peyton was talking about her boyfriend and her son, after all. And Stone had requested time alone with Tommy. So Saturday afternoon she was home, sitting on her sofa with her Lisa Scottoline novel, when her cell phone chirped.

  “Hi, sis,” Elise said. “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to concentrate on a book I’m reading.”

  “Trying?”

  “Yeah. A lot on my mind.”

  “Tell me.”

  Peyton was wrapped in a fleece-lined blanket. The woodstove across the room was roaring.

  “Tommy’s with Stone. I think we might be forcing the issue.”

  “Him moving in? That’s the issue?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tough to force it. It would be a big change for Tommy.”

  “I don’t want to be selfish.”

  “I don’t think you are,” Elise said.

  “But I really do think it would be good for Tommy. He’d have a male role model.”

  “Oh, I know it would be good for Tommy. But we’re talking about a huge change for him. It’s been just the two of you for almost five years.”

  Peyton stood and walked to the window. Mid-afternoon sun shone brightly on the small, snow-covered lawn that ran to the tree line.

  “I know a little about what you’re going through,” Elise said. “Max was only a year old when Jonathan left.”

  “It’s not easy being alone.”

  “No,” Elise said, “but I have Max and Autumn, and I’ve had drinks with a woman named Molly twice.”

  “Molly? She’s new.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Serious?”

  “Oh, Christ, who knows? I was married to an abusive asshole. He left me with one child to raise alone, and I adopted another. And I came out of the closet. Life’s too messy to take seriously, isn’t it?”

  Peyton thought about that. It was messy, and especially so for Elise, who’d left out the fact that her former husband, Jonathan, was dead, having been killed in a standoff with Border Patrol agents. The baby she’d adopted was Jonathan’s by another woman.

  “I don’t want Tommy’s life to be messy,” Peyton said.

  “It’s messy for everyone, sis. And I hate to say this, but you can’t protect him from the world.”

  “I know that, Elise.”

  “He’s a smart kid. He knows his father’s an ass.”

  “I think he’s in denial.”

  “He’s not that innocent, Peyton. He’s more mature than you’re giving him credit for.”

  Through the window, Peyton saw a doe tiptoe sheepishly from the tree line and smell the ground. The midday sun turned the snow-covered back lawn to a field of diamonds. She watched the deer cross the lawn cautiously, unable to remember the last time she’d seen a deer on the lawn before dusk. This winter had been a bad one. Close to one hundred inches of snow had fallen, and several days reached forty below zero. This doe had clearly borne the brunt of the Aroostook County winter; she was underweight and probably wouldn’t make it to spring. Her rib cage protruded when she stopped to scratch in the snow, desperate to find something that would provide sustenance.

  Peyton heard a car in the driveway. “Tommy’s home. Have to run.”

  “Love you, sis.”

  “You too,” Peyton said and retook her seat on the sofa, book in hand, casually, although the book might have been upside down for all the attention she gave it. Her eyes were on her phone. No messages. Stone hadn’t sent a heads-up text warning her that Tommy was entering the house upset.

  She heard the front door open and went back to her book, giving Tommy space, leaving his time with Stone as happenstance—all the while dying to know how the lunch conversation had gone.

  The closet near the door opened. She heard a zipper, then the clatter of boots hitting the closet wall, then the closet door closing. Tommy always kicked his boots off, but at least the mess was out of sight.

  “Mom, I’m home.”

  “Oh, I didn’t hear you come in.” She stood and went to the hallway. “Hey, nice job at the competition.”

  He put his hands on his hips. “Mom, I lost.”

  “So what?”

  “So it sucks.”

  “Tommy, language.”

  “It’s not fun to lose.”

&n
bsp; She was about to say something about listening to your coach but didn’t. Instead, she said, “There are a few cookies left from the batch I baked.”

  “Didn’t you bake them last week?”

  “Hey, I never claimed to be Betty Crocker.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “No one. What did you have for lunch?” she asked, nudging the conversation in the direction of Stone.

  “Cheeseburger.”

  “I knew it.”

  “Then why’d you ask?”

  “Just a conversation starter.”

  “I’m going up to start my homework.”

  She looked at him. “It’s Saturday.”

  “You don’t want me to do my homework?”

  His comment ended her line of questions. She’d learned nothing, defeated by her son. “Have you had experience being interrogated?”

  “What? No.”

  “I don’t believe it,” she said and kissed him before he dashed upstairs.

  “I think I just got outsmarted by an eleven-year-old,” she said, when Stone answered.

  “I heard that happens to Border Patrol agents all the time.”

  She was in the kitchen. The microwave beeped, and she retrieved her mug of hot water, took a tea bag from the counter rack, and sat at the kitchen table. She could hear Tommy walking around his bedroom overhead.

  “Well, he didn’t walk home,” she said.

  “No, I drove him.”

  “And he went with you willingly?”

  “You think I had to cuff him to get him in the car with me? What are you saying?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “Tell me how the lunch went.”

  “Fine. We talked about his match, about what he wants to work on, and about the Red Sox.”

  “Mention moving in?”

  “To Tommy? No. I was just spending time with him.”

  She knew that was the right thing to do. “I’m over-analyzing the situation, aren’t I?”

  “Funny, you’re so clear and rational at work.”