author was Jack O’Donnell. The book was a chronicle
of the rise of crack cocaine and the massive crime wave
it spawned that nearly tore New York apart in the ’70s
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47
and ’80s. The book was nominated for the Pulitzer
Prize, though it lost out to a book that, as far as I knew,
was no longer in print. Through the Darkness was the
very book that officially gave Jack O’Donnell the
moniker of my living hero.
Amanda noticed me staring. She smiled nervously.
“You talk about this book a lot,” she said. “I just want
to understand you better. And Jack, too.”
“It’s a great book,” I said. “Holds up like it was
written last year. I really appreciate this.”
“Hope you don’t mind that I took it from your shelf.”
“Are you kidding me? You don’t know how happy
this makes me.”
“Don’t be silly, I wouldn’t let you do this alone.”
“Not the trip,” I said. “The book. It means a lot that
you want to know more about what matters to me.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” she asked, confused. “I mean,
we’re together right? What kind of relationship would
it be if neither of us cared about what mattered most to
the other?”
I felt silly. I’d never read a book because I thought it
meant a lot to Amanda, and for the most part she didn’t
like to talk about her work at home. Working at the
Legal Aid Society, she had to deal with some of the most
horrific cases of child abuse. She saw things that would
stay with you. I didn’t blame her for not wanting to
bring that kind of work home with her.
“Is there anything I can do?” I asked, feeling
somewhat stupid. “You know, to know more about you?
What makes you tick? Does Darcy Lapore have a
memoir out or something?”
Amanda laughed. Darcy Lapore was her coworker,
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Jason Pinter
a professional socialite-in-training. And considering
how much value was inherent in that job title, especially
in New York where the title socialite was practically a
blank check, it was likely only a matter of time before
Darcy’s obsession with jewelry, makeup and shoes that
cost more than my rent were bound to find the printed
word, or more likely, a reality series. It was no doubt
that vacuousness and superficiality were the country’s
drug of choice, and self-promotion was the new black.
“Tell you what, Darcy’s husband has enough money
that they could pay you to ghostwrite it and you
wouldn’t have to work at the Gazette until your midthir
ties.”
“Hmm…that’s an intriguing possibility. Provided I
can get past the whole ‘crying myself to sleep every
night’ problem that would come with that.”
“Would leaving your job really do that to do?”
Amanda asked with a mixture of rhetoric and actual cu
riosity.
“I think so,” I said. “I mean I believe, really believe,
this is what I was meant to do.”
“Must be a great feeling to know what you’re meant
to do at your age,” Amanda said. She reached into her
purse, took out a stick of gum and popped it into her
mouth. The plane began to back up, then we turned and
approached the runway. Amanda began to chew her
gum with a fury rarely seen outside of nature videos
where a gang of lions rip a poor gazelle limb from limb.
She looked at me, saw I was staring. “My ears pop,”
she explained. I nodded, smiling. “Come on, we both
know you snore like a chain saw. We both have our little
things. ”
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49
“I wasn’t judging, but thanks for bringing up a sore
subject. You know I got tested for apnea a while back.
It came back negative.”
“Maybe you should get a second opinion before I
‘accidentally’ smother you one night,” she said, settling
back into her seat, closing her eyes. “Okay, I’m going
to sleep now. If you’re going to snore, it’d be sweet if
you wouldn’t mind sitting in the bathroom.”
“It’s reassuring to know you always have my safety
in mind.”
“Oh, come on,” Amanda said. She sat up, leaning
over and gave me a long kiss on the lips. I tasted her
ChapStick. Cherry. Delicious.
When she finished we were both smiling. And the
old woman across the aisle was grimacing. “If you two
are even thinking about joining that so-called MileHigh Club,” she said, “I’ll call the flight attendant and
have you ejected at 30,000 feet. Don’t think I won’t be
watching you.”
We both nodded, embarrassed. Actually, the thought
had crossed my mind, but with Mother Teresa sitting
there I wouldn’t want to be banned from the airline
before the trip back.
“Have a good nap, babe,” I said, squeezing Amanda’s
hand. “See you in Bend.”
“I hope we find out more about Stephen Gaines,” she
said through a yawn.
I nodded, watching Amanda drift off to sleep, not
knowing just how much there was to learn.
6
We landed in Portland at five o’clock, or eight o’clock
New York time. We’d both slept a good portion of the
flights. While Amanda was awake, she tore through
Jack O’Donnell’s book with incredible zeal. It thrilled
me to see that she was clearly enjoying the book. It
brought back memories of the first time I’d read it, in
junior high. I spent the next week plowing through
every O’Donnell book I could find at the Deschutes
County Library. My teachers were less than impressed,
since I’d read the books in lieu of completing my actual
schoolwork. Safe to say O’Donnell’s tomes taught me
more about myself and what I wanted to be than years
of school could ever do.
After landing, we rented a car, a nice little compact
that probably got twenty-eight miles to the gallon.
Given how you practically had to sell a kidney to fill up
a tank of gas these days, I would have seriously consid
ered a motorized skateboard if Hertz had one available.
The drive to Bend took just about three hours. Once
we merged onto US-20, I began to feel my stomach
rumbling and beginning to churn. I wasn’t quite sure
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51
what to expect. I hadn’t set foot in Bend in nearly ten
years. The same amount of time had passed since I’d
last seen my parents. And while some children might
find a hole in their heart, in their soul, due to this
absence, mine was finally able to fill up.
I wondered if coming back here was a good idea,
whether it was best to let dead dogs lie. Yet that image
of Stephen Gaines lying on an examining table, his
head nearly blown apart, made this trip a necessity.
Anger had driven me away from my home. Now the
same wa
s leading me back.
As we approached the city limits, I could immedi
ately tell that the last eight years had changed my
hometown a great deal. And all the changes looked to
be for the better.
To the west, the spectacular beauty of the Cascade
Mountain Range. The lush green foliage was tipped
with hints of snow from winter. I could make out the
magnificent peak of Mount Bachelor, rising to a snowcapped point. I rolled down the window to breathe in
the fresh air. It was warm, dry and clean. For a moment
I considered what I’d given up. Part of me missed the
air, the scenery. Being able to see for miles, the horizons
rising blue and bold above the skyline. For everything
I loved about New York—the hustle and bustle, the
thriving heart of media and business, the diversity of its
inhabitants—I missed the open world.
By seven-thirty, we were approaching Eastview
Drive, the street in the northeast section of Bend where
James and Eve Parker had lived for nearly thirty years.
I still didn’t have the timeline sketched out completely,
so I wondered if my father had had his affair with Helen
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Jason Pinter
Gaines in the very house I’d grown up in. Perhaps a
quickie in the room that later became my bedroom.
Every moment spent thinking about it made me more
angry. I’d have to restrain myself once I saw him in
person.
I turned the car onto Eastview Drive tentatively,
slowing the car down as my old house came into view.
The first eighteen years of my life forgotten and now
remembered. A bad dream interrupting a peaceful sleep.
The dark green paint hadn’t been refreshed in years.
The two-car garage was still surely filled with old
records, antiques my parents had grown weary of and
empty photo albums. A black 1994 Chevy C/K 1500
flatbed truck was parked outside the left garage. The
paint was scratched and faded, but I had no doubt the
old truck still purred like a kitten. The grass was fairly
short, so as least they cared about some sense of
decorum, and the cobblestone walkway leading up to
the front door was still there like the day I left. Much
had changed in Bend over the last decade, and it seemed
as if my parents had resisted that change as much as
possible.
I steered the car into the driveway, parking next to the
flatbed, then turned off the engine and sat there in
silence. Amanda did as well. Neither of us said a word
for a long time. Finally Amanda said, “Henry, do you
want to do this? We can go to a hotel, wait until you’re
ready.”
“I’m ready,” I said. “Or at least I need to be.”
I opened the car door, cautiously stepped out as
though expecting the driveway to swallow me whole.
Amanda climbed out, and we walked up the cobble
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53
stone path to the front door. A faded yellow button
popped out like a pimple to the right of the front door.
I could see a faint glow from inside one of the windows.
Somebody was definitely home.
I looked at Amanda, smiled weakly, tried to gather
my strength and rang the doorbell. The bell startled me
for some reason, like I wasn’t ready to accept that there
was actually a person who lived here.
I hadn’t phoned ahead because I didn’t want him to
know I was coming. Didn’t want to give him a chance
to think, to make up excuses. I wanted him face-to
face. To see how he reacted. If he did at all.
I heard footsteps, someone mumbling under his
breath. I shifted my weight from foot to foot, trying to
forget the resentment I had toward this man. Knowing
the pain he’d put us all through. Knowing there was a
young man lying in New York with two bullets in his
head, a man who my father could, like me, call his
blood.
The front door opened with a creak. A man stood in
front of me, rubbing his eyes. He looked older than I
remembered, lines creasing his face like small ditches,
a thin coat of gray stubble covering the worn skin.
When his eyes came into focus and he saw me, the
man’s mouth opened slightly, his reflexes working
faster than his mind was able to keep up with. He shook
his head slightly, unsure.
I took a step forward and said, “Hi, Dad. It’s been a
while. It’s Henry. Your son who’s still alive.”
7
We sat there in his living room. James in an easy
chair, me and Amanda on a faded, stained, uncomfort
able brown couch. It was probably uncomfortable
because nobody ever sat in it, nobody ever told James
the springs bit your legs. My father wasn’t exactly
someone who entertained. James Parker was wearing a
tattered light blue bathrobe, the same one he used to
wear years ago. It was worn. Threads hung out, waiting
to be yanked free. The robe looked as if it was now worn
out of convenience rather than comfort. A skin that
couldn’t be shed.
Though it had been eight years since I’d seen my
father, it felt like longer. He looked as though he’d aged
twenty. The brown hair—the same color hair I’d inher
ited—was streaked with gray. The skin around his neck
had begun to sag into full-on jowls, and whatever was left
of the muscle tone in his forearms had turned soft. His
eyes were lined, as though tired of keeping up the appear
ance of the rebel he’d long considered himself to be.
Maybe thirty years ago James Parker was a man to
be feared and possibly even desired. Now, though, he
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55
was just an angry old man with a distant wife and an es
tranged son. A man whose indifference to any life but
his own had driven away everyone who’d ever cared for
him, driven him to the point where his very voice
brought up anger inside of me.
When I was hidden in a dingy building and needed
to hear something, anything, to keep me going, I called
my father. I’d spent much of my adult life trying to
hard to distance myself from him and what he repre
sented. My anger had, in essence, become a fuel.
Recently, the fuel had begun to burn itself out. But
sitting there, watching this man in front of me, knowing
what he’d done in his past, knowing just how little of
the story I knew, it was all I could do not to leap up from
my chair and knock him head over heels, that ugly
bathrobe flailing like paper in a gust of wind.
Those striking green eyes kept flicking to me, then
to Amanda, then back to me. Anytime he had unex
pected visitors, James Parker figured it was either a
court summons or an IRS audit. Amanda sat leaning
forward, eyeing James, as though trying to understand
an entire family history through those eyes.
He held a beer in his hand. The bottle was halfempty, and the bottom half
was covered by his hand,
which was sweating. The air was hot, blowing from
some unseen fan that appeared to simply recirculate
the warm air over the whole house. He eyed me with a
look of confusion and contempt.
“Where’s Mom?” I asked.
“Bridge lesson,” he said. “Plays with her girlfriends
once a week. Whatever keeps her busy and out of my
hair.”
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Jason Pinter
I bristled at the comment. “When will she be home?”
I hated being here, hated that he’d even put us in a situa
tion where we needed to be. But my hatred for this man
couldn’t get in the way of finding out the truth about
Stephen Gaines. About myself.
“Listen, I don’t know what you want from us,” he
said, swigging from the bottle, grimacing because the
beer had likely grown warm. Not quite the “you never
call” line you’d expect from a parent you hadn’t seen in
years.
“I just want to know the truth about you and Helen
Gaines. And how much you know about Stephen.”
“What does it matter anyway?” James said, looking off
at the wall. “It was years ago. Before you were even
born.”
“I know that,” I said, anger rising inside me. “Did
you ever think to tell me I had a brother somewhere?
You never thought that I might be interested to know
that? Never occurred to you, huh?”
“He wasn’t your real brother,” James said slowly.
“Helen was not your mother. I never considered myself
that boy’s father.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“She wasn’t supposed to keep the baby,” my father
said. I heard Amanda gasp under her breath. So far my
father had barely looked at her, like Amanda was a
referee, a third wheel, something to be ignored. I hadn’t
bothered introducing her because I knew he wouldn’t
care.
For a brief moment I glimpsed a flicker of pain
behind those eyes. A memory he thought forgotten had
come back to him.
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57
“But she did,” I said. “And then she left. Tell me what
happened.”
“I don’t need to tell you anything,” he snapped
suddenly, the beer sloshing liquid onto his bathrobe.
“It’s thirty years ago. It’s over.”
“It’s not over,” I said, my voice quivering. “Your son
was found dead in a seedy apartment this week. It’s not
over. You were the boy’s father. I know it meant nothing
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