Desperate Paths

by E. C. Diskin

  Ginny straightened. “He said that?”

  Brooklyn waited for more.

  “I’m not,” Ginny said, facing her. “You don’t know him, Brooklyn.”

  That was true. She didn’t know either of them. The only thing she knew about Simon was that he was devout, a practitioner of “biblical family values”—code for families that shunned birth control and often ended up with eight or more kids—and Mom thought he was the best thing that had ever happened to Ginny.

  “Maybe we could get some lunch together today,” Brooklyn said, softening her tone. “I mean, you called me home because of all these issues with Dad. We need to talk. You could tell me more about where you think he should go if he can’t go home.” There were no nursing homes in town, so she planned to reject whatever Ginny had to say, but she would listen, anyway. Talking would be a start.

  Ginny nodded. “We do need to talk,” she said. She glanced around, as if what to say next could be found in the corners of the room, but then she shook her head and grabbed her purse. “I’ve got to get home to make the kids’ lunch. Let’s talk later.” She was practically out the door before Brooklyn could respond.

  “Wait,” Brooklyn begged. “It’s Tuesday. Aren’t the kids at school already?” Simon had said he was taking them hours ago.

  Ginny shifted uncomfortably in the doorway. “Yes. I just . . . Simon said I need to drop off their lunches.”

  Why was she lying?

  “What did you do?” Brooklyn blurted.

  Ginny froze. Slowly, her brows furrowed, but she said nothing.

  “Last night, Dad thought I was you,” Brooklyn said. “He said he forgave you. He said he’d always protect you. What was that about?”

  Ginny ignored the question and looked at their dad. It was slight, but she shook her head, rejecting the comment.

  “What is going on here?” Brooklyn demanded.

  Ginny wouldn’t look her in the eyes. “You can’t pay attention to what John’s saying these days. It’s mostly nonsense. Like I told you, he’s not himself.” She turned again and walked out.

  Brooklyn considered challenging her story about Dad’s fall but reconsidered. It seemed like Dad had been about to say what he remembered and stopped when Ginny arrived. Something didn’t add up, and blurting out accusations would do no good. She needed facts. She needed to talk to her dad without Ginny around, get his side if he could remember, and figure out if there was any reason her sister would lie.

  Ginny suddenly walked back inside the room and dropped her purse on the table against the wall. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re right. We do need to talk.” She blew out some air. “I’m not thinking straight. I need some coffee.” She attempted a smile.

  Finally. Brooklyn stood. “I’ll get it. Just stay with Dad, okay? Be right back.”

  Ginny took a breath and collapsed into the chair. “Thanks.” She began gnawing on a nail. As Brooklyn passed her to fetch the coffee, she noticed Ginny’s other fingertips, red and swollen, each nail bitten back to the nub.

  CHAPTER NINE

  BROOKLYN TOOK THE ELEVATOR DOWN to the family waiting room and spotted the man she’d met there last night. Martin. She thought of Darius Woods, wondering again if this was his dad. Martin’s eyes were set farther apart than Darius’s, and they were brown, unlike the actor’s green, but he was tall, too, and that voice—there was a similarity. Would it be rude to ask? With all those reporters hovering outside, maybe he wanted his privacy.

  He stood, joining her at the coffee vending machine. “I was just thinking of you,” he said. “You were just like an angel last night, bringing me coffee like that.”

  Brooklyn smiled. “It was nothing.”

  “I’m telling you, I often look for signs. My wife passed years ago. And you, those beautiful eyes of yours, I thought, that girl mighta been an angel. How’s your daddy doin’, sweetheart?” he asked.

  “He’s sleeping,” Brooklyn answered. “He broke his hip. He’s seventy.”

  Martin chuckled. “You say that like he’s old. Heck, I’m seventy-two. I bet he’ll be just fine.”

  The comment made the corner of her lips turn up, a hint of a smile, like he’d shown her the night before. “Thanks.” It was hard to believe Martin was that old. With just a little gray around his temples, he still moved and stood like a much younger man. Only his forehead, grooved with decades of stress, showed some age. But his tone had lightened since last night. His son had obviously pulled through the surgery okay.

  Brooklyn fed her bills into the machine. “Coffee?”

  “Oh no, you go ahead. I just finished some.”

  “So is your son doing okay?” She doctored her coffee and left Ginny’s black, throwing a few sweeteners in her purse.

  Martin leaned on the counter, seemingly content to stay and chat. “He is, thanks for asking. He’s now stable. It was a long night, but it looks like he’s gonna be okay.”

  Brooklyn nodded. It was nosy, maybe presumptuous, but she couldn’t stop herself. “I’m sorry if this is intrusive. I just saw something on TV last night . . .”

  Martin’s wide grin provided a quick answer. “That’s my boy.”

  “Darius Woods is your son?” Her voice rose as she spoke. There was no way she could play it cool.

  “So you’ve heard of him?” He chuckled again, his parental pride on full display.

  “Are you kidding? I went to Eden High. Everyone in the drama department knows who he is. I imagine everyone in town does. I’m a huge fan.”

  Martin gestured toward two nearby chairs, and they sat. Ginny was waiting for her coffee, but this was Darius Woods’s dad. She’d stay for just a second.

  “I’m an actress,” Brooklyn said, “well, aspiring actress is more accurate. I haven’t actually done much yet. But I live in New York now, auditioning, waiting tables, hoping for something.”

  “That’s how my boy started too. Everyone gotta start somewhere.”

  She’d thought about Darius several times last night and even pulled up his pre-Oscar interview on YouTube after she’d gone to bed. She’d been trying hard not to think about her dad anymore. Darius had seemed relaxed in the interview, kind of like Martin, she now realized, as if he was excited by the buzz but otherwise unfazed. He had this loud, almost goofy laugh, and his posture was so good. Her mom had always bugged Brooklyn about that. But he was comfortable in his own skin. She was still working on it.

  “I hope it’s not rude to ask this, but how did it happen? The shooting . . . was it an accident?”

  “I don’t think so. Two shots right through the kitchen window on Sunday night. We were just standing there, talking. I was looking in the fridge, and he’d just gotten up from the table. The bullets didn’t even really make a sound when they came through the glass. He just fell to the ground. I didn’t understand until I looked up and saw the holes. It’s . . .” Martin said nothing for a second, and Brooklyn couldn’t fill the silence. “It’s hard to think about it,” he finally added. “Thank God I was there.”

  She couldn’t imagine seeing your own child like that. “That’s terrifying. What do the police say?”

  “They’re not saying much. Just asking lots of questions right now. Not a lot of answers.”

  She thought about that officer who came to her dad’s doorway earlier, pulling the sheriff out of the room. He’d said a neighbor saw someone at the scene. Maybe it was a lead. “Do you think it could be a crazed fan? It’s so easy to find celebrities with social media . . .”

  Martin sat back, crossed his arms, and sighed. “I have no idea. He’d only been home twenty-four hours, and the sheriff just told me a neighbor saw a white woman in a car watching him being put in the ambulance. I guess that’s all they got so far. I just can’t imagine anyone, a man or a woman, shooting someone like prey.”

  Brooklyn didn’t know what to say. She’d automatically assumed that if someone had intentionally hurt Darius, it had been a man. Unconscious bias, she thought. Buzzwor
ds of the year. She couldn’t help but wonder if Darius’s fame was the cause—someone either loving him or hating him for it. She’d heard enough gossip in the store and church over the years to know that judgment of others’ successes was often as mean-spirited as that of failures. Maybe the shooter had been someone who used to know him, who’d struggled since their high school days and couldn’t stand to see him rise above. Dad had always said desperate people were the most dangerous. It was why he’d installed that security system at the store.

  “Damn guns,” Martin continued. “I left Chicago because of all the damn guns.”

  “Well, I’m so relieved he’s going to be okay. Does he visit often?”

  “Usually just at Christmas, but he came for work. Supposed to make a movie in Eden later this summer. Wrote it himself.”

  Brooklyn sat up taller and worked to keep her face interested without showing the level of excitement building at the thought of Darius Woods doing a movie in Eden. “That’s amazing. What’s it about?”

  “His life. He hasn’t let me read it yet, but he promised I’ll look good.”

  Brooklyn smiled. “Well, that’s good. That’s incredible, actually. You must be so proud.”

  “I am. Gotta admit, though, when he got interested in acting, I used to say, ‘Why you wanna spend your life pretending to be someone else?’”

  Brooklyn laughed. Her dad had said the same thing. He’d never understood that it was about more than pretending. It was a way to live a bigger life than what she saw around her. She wanted to understand the world and the reasons people did what they did. Even the mean kids in school—she always wondered what had happened that made them do or say things. Acting required getting inside other heads and trying to see the world with a new lens.

  “I pushed hard for him to play sports. I figured it was the best way to get a scholarship to college and a good job. Every Christmas I tried a new tactic—a basketball hoop one year, a bat and glove another, a football . . . I was sure he just needed to find his sport.”

  “My dad too. Wanted me to run track.” No one in town had more social standing than the high school star athletes.

  “I figured the acting dream was as pie-in-the-sky as saying he wanted to be an astronaut.” He smiled then. “But I learned my lesson. Only dreamers achieve greatness. Isn’t that right?”

  Brooklyn smiled. “I’d like some greatness.” She leaned back into the chair and put the coffees on the table beside her. “Was he always a writer too?”

  “Actually, I was pretty shocked by this whole writing thing. He’d never said a thing about it. But he’s more excited about this movie than anything that’s happened so far. I guess he wrote the story years ago when he was still in New York, hoping he could make his own big break, like that Good Will Hunting movie. No one ever gave a hoot about it until he got the Oscar nomination in January. Suddenly, the studio said it was gold.” Martin chuckled. “He’s even supposed to direct.”

  “That’s incredible.” Brooklyn’s mind raced. A huge star was planning to make a movie in her hometown. She opened her mouth to ask more but stopped herself. It was crass. His son had just been shot. “My dad lives on Portner Road,” she said instead. “What about you?”

  “Ninth Street.”

  The other side of the tracks, literally. It was that kind of town.

  “So I’m not assuming we’ll get much justice,” he added.

  Brooklyn quickly shook her head. “Sheriff Wilson’s a real good friend of my family. I don’t think he’s racist.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Martin said. “Never thought Deputy Delaney was, either, until he shot Jaden White on his way to my church.”

  “You knew that man?” she asked.

  “Yep. Good, law-abiding family man. Ain’t no way I’m gonna believe that deputy feared for his life.”

  Brooklyn didn’t know what to say.

  “Anyway, let’s not think of such ugliness. Darius is gonna be okay. That’s all that matters to me right now. Besides, I gotta watch the stress. Got a bad ticker. And I learned a long time ago that you can’t fret about things you can’t control. It’ll kill ya. Besides, all this national coverage can only help keep the police focused. Now, tell me about your daddy. How long they keeping him?”

  Brooklyn took a deep breath and let it spill. “I don’t know. My sister is sure he needs to be put in a nursing home. She says he has dementia, and it feels like I don’t get a say because she’s so much older, and it’s like I’m not really family, at least in her eyes, because I’m adopted. But she’s the one who’s barely family. She practically ignored our parents for twenty years. Our mom died a few months ago. And it seems like something hap—” She stopped herself, looked at Martin, embarrassed, and pursed her lips against the runaway train of chatter. “I’m sorry. Too much information?”

  “That’s okay. It sounds like it’s a good thing you’re home. Sorry to hear about your mama, by the way.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Any other family?”

  Brooklyn shook her head. “Nope.”

  “Maybe now’s the time to get to know your sister. Family’s important.”

  “That’s what my dad always said.”

  “Smart man. Can you stay in town for a while, help him out?”

  “Yeah, I can. Thanks, Martin.”

  Martin left to check on Darius, and Brooklyn grabbed the coffees to head back upstairs, suddenly nervous that she’d left her sister for too long. She needed Ginny to finally tell her what was going on. It didn’t seem possible to figure out how to help Dad until Brooklyn understood whether she could trust Ginny. She had to know what secret lingered between them.

  CHAPTER TEN

  WHEN BROOKLYN RETURNED TO HER dad’s room, he was still asleep. Ginny was sitting in the chair, scrolling through her phone and biting her fingernails—what was left of them. Brooklyn handed her the coffee and sat at the edge of the bed.

  “Guess who I just met?” Brooklyn asked, her tone intentionally friendly and light. Mom always said, “Kill ’em with kindness.”

  Ginny took a sip and waved her hand, as if to silently say, “Just tell me.”

  “Darius Woods’s father. Sounds just like him too. Deep baritone voice. You know who that is, right?”

  Ginny’s expression turned more serious. She must have heard about the shooting. “Darius Woods? Sure.”

  “He was in your grade, right?”

  Ginny nodded.

  “Did you know him?”

  She nodded again. “I was on stage crew my senior year.” She sipped her coffee, her focus fixed on Dad.

  “Isn’t it so cool that he’s like this huge movie star now? Did you ever talk? Would he remember you?”

  Ginny opened her mouth to answer, but Brooklyn continued. “He’s going to do a movie here.” It was impossible not to get excited. Almost a year in New York, trying to break into the business, having made it into just a few callbacks and one day-player part on that indie movie in Queens, and she’d still never even seen anyone famous, and now, back in Eden, Illinois, one of her idols was here.

  Ginny finally stopped sipping her coffee and looked at Brooklyn, her face pinched. “What are you talking about?”

  “His dad told me—he’s going to be okay and he’s here because he wrote a movie about his life in Eden.”

  Ginny seemed to consider this. “Did his dad say what happened?”

  “Just that he was shot through the window at home. Police are looking for some woman who was spotted on the street.”

  “What else?”

  “I don’t know. It didn’t seem right to pry.”

  Ginny looked at their dad again, and Brooklyn followed her gaze. His mouth was open, and he was breathing heavily, a throaty grumble escaping with each breath. “We’re not doing any good here,” Ginny said. “I gotta get home and make those lunches.”

  “I thought we were going to talk about Dad,” Brooklyn said.

  “We will. Later. But you’ll be here a f
ew days, right?”

  “I’m not just going to leave,” Brooklyn said. “You still haven’t even told me what happened.”

  “What do you mean?” Ginny sounded irritated again. “There’s nothing to tell. He fell. I got him here.”

  “But you told Simon that you went there because you were worried about him being alone and that you made him dinner. You told me he called you and when you arrived, he was already unconscious on the floor.”

  Ginny stood immediately and went to her purse. “You sound like you’re trying to create some big deception. He asked me to come over, okay? I agreed because it was Mother’s Day. So I didn’t lie to either of you. I made him dinner. I guess I forgot to mention that. But he was in the other room when he fell. I didn’t see it happen.” Before Brooklyn could press her about where in the house he fell or what Dad had meant when he said he forgave her and that he’d protect her, Ginny said, “I gotta go.” She left without another word.

  Ginny walked outside to a herd of reporters and camera crew loitering by the hospital entrance. Slivers of light cracked through the gray sky, then thunder boomed in the distance. She ran to the car and jumped in just as the rain began. Driving on Route 13 toward Harrisburg, the windshield wipers battled the downpour, and she tried not to panic. Every new day was a continuation of Sunday’s nightmare. She never should have called Brooklyn home. She’d still been drunk when she’d sent that text. She’d been sure Darius would die. But he was alive. His story would be told. She had no idea how she would ever unravel the mess she’d made so long ago.

  And Brooklyn, oblivious, had asked if Ginny knew Darius, if he’d remember her. There was no chance either of them would ever forget the other. It was the spring of junior year. Her church youth group showed up at the high school’s drama rehearsal to recruit volunteers to act in their social justice play. He was impossible to miss, the only black kid rehearsing on the stage, at least six feet tall, hair cropped close to his head, and built like an athlete but dressed more like one of those grunge kids with ripped jeans and an open flannel. She was sure he hadn’t even seen her, but days later, he walked into Pastor Gary’s office at the church without knocking. He definitely saw her then. He saw them both.