My throat dry from reading out loud, I took a swig from one of the water bottles I’d tucked into my backpack and turned the page. I can find him, it said. I know his new address must be somewhere in the office… maybe on the bill of sale for the club. I’ll go downstairs and look. I’ve been so cut off from my past, but now I can set everything straight, and by the time I return, Hence will be here waiting for me. Maybe by tomorrow night we’ll be together, in this very bed where I’m lying right now, under these rumpled sheets, warm and whole.
Little book, I’m putting you back in your hiding place for now. Wait there for me, and I hope I’ll be filling you with happy news soon.
I turned the page and gasped.
“What’s wrong?” Coop asked. “There’s more, right?”
But the few remaining pages were blank. I had reached the end.
“This isn’t good,” I said.
“I know.”
“I’m scared.” I meant I was scared of what I hadn’t wanted to believe but had feared all along—that my mother was dead. But Coop heard something else in my words.
“We can turn around,” he said.
I thought for a moment, running through everything I knew about my uncle Quentin. He’d run off to live by himself in the woods, with an expensive gun collection and a vendetta against Hence. My mother had gone to see him and had never been heard from again. I should be scared—and not just for my mother.
But we weren’t even fifteen minutes from his house. We’d come all this way. And I had to know the truth about my mom.
“Keep driving,” I told Coop.
For the rest of the ride, neither of us said a word. The robotic GPS voice directed us off the highway and onto a twisting two-lane road. Before long the pavement ran out and the Jaguar was climbing a steep dirt road, sending up a cloud of dust.
“You have reached your destination,” the robot voice said, and a second later the dirt path stopped dead. There was nothing in sight—just trees and more trees.
“Over there.” Coop pointed to the left. I strained to see what he was looking at and caught sight of a log cabin about a hundred yards off, almost hidden by tall pines. I unclasped my seat belt.
“We don’t have to do this,” Coop said.
“I have to. You can wait in the car. You should. If I don’t come back in an hour or so…”
Coop reached for his own seat belt. “No,” he said. “I’m going with you.”
“Wait.” I hugged him in the awkward space of the front seat, pressing my face hard into the clean-smelling cotton of his T-shirt, as if I could draw courage from his body into my own. But there wasn’t time to linger. We had to let go of each other and knock on Uncle Quentin’s door before he noticed our car and came out to catch us off guard. “Let me go first,” I told Coop.
He nodded and followed me up the steep path into a clearing. I’d been expecting a broken-down shack, but my uncle’s log cabin was big and new-looking, not at all like the hideout of a crazed survivalist mountain man. We paused on the porch for a moment. I took a deep breath and pressed the doorbell. No answer. I tried again.
“He’d need a car way out here,” Coop observed. “But there isn’t one near where we left ours, and there’s nowhere else to park.”
“That’s fantastic.” Relief washed over me. “This way we won’t have to deal with him at all.” I gestured toward the windows on either side of the front door. “I bet at least one of these is unlocked. Or even the door.” Not that I’d break and enter under normal circumstances, but the chance to poke through my uncle’s house without having to confront him was too good to resist.
“You’re kidding, right?” Cooper lowered his voice to a whisper. “There could be someone in there. A wife or a girlfriend. Or a pit bull.”
I pressed my forehead to a nearby window, trying to see into the darkened room on the other side—a living room, by the looks of it. “Nobody’s home.” I was so sure of it I didn’t bother to whisper.
“How can you know that?” Coop sounded exasperated.
“I just do.” I turned the doorknob. Amazingly, the door was unlocked. I stepped inside. “Are you in?”
Cooper sighed. “This is a really bad idea,” he said. But he followed me.
The living room was straight out of an L.L.Bean catalog, with a rough-hewn coffee table strewn with that day’s Wall Street Journal. The air smelled faintly of woodsmoke. A stuffed deer head glared down at us from the fireplace’s stone chimney. Apart from the newspaper, the only evidence of anyone having recently been there was a blue stoneware mug on the coffee table. I picked it up and swirled the bit of coffee left in the bottom. It still looked and smelled fresh.
Beyond the living room stood the kitchen, its gleaming aluminum appliances and glass cabinets like something from an architectural magazine. “Either he’s a neat freak or he has a housekeeper.” I opened the fridge and stood there for a moment, analyzing its contents: five bottles of beer, a large block of cheddar, a Tupperware container full of what might have been chili, and many jars of mustard.
“What do you expect to find in there?” Cooper was starting to sound exasperated. “Shouldn’t we be moving a little faster?”
I shut the fridge door. He was right, of course, but my nerves tingled with electricity, as though some important discovery waited nearby. Off the kitchen, a hallway led to a room with an enormous flat-screen TV, a pool table, and a bearskin rug, but not much of anything else. A narrow door looked like it might lead outside. I pressed my ear to it a moment, listening for a dog, and pushed it open. It creaked as I reached inside to flick the light switch.
In contrast with what we’d seen of the rest of the house, this room was stacked floor to ceiling with a maze of cardboard boxes that probably hadn’t been touched—much less dusted—for years. One end of the room was a graveyard for old sports equipment—a mountain bike, snowshoes, skis, and what appeared to be lacrosse gear.
“Look.” Coop pointed to a large photo on the wall, one of those formal family portraits with everyone dressed in their matchy-matchy best. I recognized my mother right away, looking amused, as though she were thinking about crossing her eyes and sticking out her tongue. She must have been about twelve, though if she’d been in an awkward adolescent phase, it sure wasn’t visible. Her glossy hair was pulled back in a French braid. At her side posed a good-looking, slightly older boy in a button-down shirt, his blond hair feathered back. Quentin. The wicked little smile on his face made it seem like he’d cracked a joke the moment before the picture was taken. Behind the pair of them stood a beaming man—the grandfather I’d never seen before. I wanted to study their faces, but Coop had already moved on to a glass-fronted cabinet against a wall. I took a step back from the portrait just as he let out a low whistle. Seven guns—hunting rifles, I supposed—stood neatly inside the cabinet.
“You still think it’s a good idea to be sneaking around your uncle’s house?”
“We knew about the guns.” Something else caught my eye: To my right, in the darkest corner of the room, was a bookshelf built of planks and cinderblocks. These were the first books I’d seen in the house, and the sight of them triggered an alarm in my brain. They were old and dusty, probably remnants of Quentin’s boyhood—a collection of Jack London stories, a cluster of Hardy Boys mysteries, and some Hemingway novels. I scanned the titles, looking hard for I’m not sure what, until suddenly I knew. I fell to my knees and started opening the volumes one by one, putting each one back as soon as I’d made sure it was an ordinary book.
“Help me,” I told Cooper, and he dropped beside me and started searching the ones I hadn’t reached yet.
“What are we looking for?” he asked.
But there wasn’t time to answer. Right smack in the middle of the makeshift bookcase, I found it—a thick textbook, the letters on the weathered spine all but worn away. The minute I laid my hand on it, I knew it was different. Heart pounding in my ears, I pulled it out and revealed its hollow core. “
My mother,” I whispered, barely able to get the words out. “She was here.”
Inside was a tightly folded sheet of paper, yellowed with age. A shopping list in familiar handwriting: cherry tomatoes, romaine lettuce, bananas, oatmeal, pancake mix. I turned the page over and found more of her handwriting, but smaller, as if she was trying to cram a lot of information into a small space.
Maybe nobody will ever see this, but I’m writing it down anyway, hoping someone who isn’t my brother will find this book someday, maybe at a flea market or a garage sale, and open it up. If you’re reading this, you are that person. Please keep reading. This is important.
My brother, Quentin Eversole, of Coxsackie, New York, is holding me in his house against my will. He pulled a gun on me and forced me into a storage room and locked the door from the other side. So far, I’ve been here one night and most of a day. For a long time I could hear him sitting on the other side of the door, keeping watch, but I haven’t heard him in a while. I think he’s left the house. I’m going to listen and wait a bit to be sure, and then I’m going to break the window and climb out. I’ll try to find a house to make a phone call from. Quentin has guns—rifles and handguns. And he’s not himself anymore. I can’t reason with him. Believe me, I’ve tried.
So if you find this, please do me a favor. However many years have passed, could you make sure this note gets to a man named Hence? That’s his whole name. He lives in New York City, at a nightclub called The Underground; the address is 247 Bowery. He doesn’t know where I am or that I’m trying to get to him, and I don’t want him to think I got impatient and gave up. He has to know I love him… that I never stopped. If I don’t get back to him, he needs to know I died trying. And please tell him to find Chelsea no matter how grown-up she is and explain what happened and that I love her with my whole being. He’ll know what that means.
Whoever you are, please bring Hence this letter. Maybe you’ll ring the buzzer to The Underground and I’ll open the door. Maybe I’ll be an old woman by then and I’ll tell you, whoever you are, that it all turned out okay, that Chelsea, Hence, and I have been together for decades and we had our happy ending. I’ll give you a big hug and a monetary reward and cook you dinner and be in your debt forever. But in case you ring the door and I’m not there, in case I never got there, could you please tell Hence I wanted to be with him so much it hurt? And please contact the authorities and tell them about my brother, Quentin. He’s dangerous, so please don’t confront him yourself.
In desperation,
Catherine Marie
Eversole Price
Hands trembling, I stuffed the piece of paper into my pocket. My legs felt limp, barely able to hold me up. I wanted to sink to the ground and absorb what I’d read, but Coop, who’d been reading over my shoulder, grabbed my hand. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said.
We hurried toward the main part of the house and were almost to the front door when—just my luck—we heard the sound of a car rumbling up the dirt road and pulling to a stop. Cooper and I looked at each other in panic. Should we retreat and try to find a back door to slip out of? Or would we wind up trapped, as my mother had been? Better to get out of the house, even if it meant facing the enemy head-on. We didn’t have to exchange words; we both dove for the front door just as it opened. There in the doorway loomed an older, taller version of the boy in the photograph—still blond, broad-shouldered, and clean-shaven, a couple of grocery bags clutched to his chest. Though he must have seen our car in the driveway, he looked as shocked to see us in his living room as we were to see him.
Coop threw his hands in the air to show they were empty, and I followed suit.
“Who the hell are you?” the man exclaimed. He sounded almost as scared as we were. “What are you doing in my house?”
Coop tried to speak. “Um,” he began. “We… uh.”
But this was my uncle, and my problem to solve. I took a step closer. “Uncle Quentin?” I asked.
He looked from Coop to me, and his blue eyes got even wider.
“I’m your niece. Chelsea Price. Catherine’s daughter. We came for a visit. It was such a long drive, and I had to pee.” I gave him a bashful smile. “And you weren’t here, but the door was open, so I told Coop you probably wouldn’t mind if I used your bathroom.” The lies kept popping into my head, one after another. “I hope that’s okay.”
Quentin’s Adam’s apple worked. He set his grocery bags on the floor, not taking his eyes off my face.
“I found your picture in some of my mother’s stuff, in a box in the closet back home. I asked my father who you were and he told me. So I came here to meet you. Because we’re family, right?” And I made myself stand on tiptoe and throw my arms around his shoulders. This man had killed my mother—I was absolutely sure of it—but I pushed that knowledge from my mind. The most important thing at that moment was that I convince him we meant him no harm.
After a heartbeat or two, his arms tightened around me. “You look so much like her,” he said in a small voice.
I pulled away. “Everyone says that.” The smile I gave him was genuine, because after all, my ploy seemed to be working. I didn’t dare glance at Coop, for fear his expression would give us both away. Instead, I took a better look at Quentin and saw that he wasn’t quite as young-looking as I’d first thought. His tanned skin was leathery, his blond hair shot through with white.
He seemed at a loss for words. “Chelsea,” he said finally, his big hands dangling at his sides. He reached for me again. Another hug. Now that the immediate danger had passed, I noticed his smell—a mix of laundry detergent, coffee, and sweat that made me queasy. I wanted to shake myself free, but instead I counted to eight until he let me go and bent to retrieve his grocery bags.
“You want help with those?” I asked hopefully.
“You shouldn’t ever let yourself into someone else’s house,” he said as he disappeared into the house. “You could get mistaken for an intruder.” His voice floated from the kitchen. “You could get yourself shot.”
Coop and I exchanged a look. Should we make a run for it? But a moment later, Quentin was back in the living room. He gestured toward Coop. “Who’s this?” he asked me. “Your boyfriend?” His voice got a lot less friendly. “Is that his car in the driveway? How does a kid like him get a car like that?”
Instinct told me the answer he wanted to hear. “This is Cooper. He’s a friend. He drove me here. It’s his dad’s car.” I stole another glance at Coop. His hands were working themselves in and out of fists, unsure how ready they should be for confrontation.
Quentin cocked his head toward Coop. “You shouldn’t go for a drive alone with some random boy. I don’t care if he’s your friend. You never know what a guy is thinking.”
Seriously? I fought not to show the annoyance I felt. “He’s not some random boy. He’s a good friend. He’s perfectly trustworthy.”
“He’d better be.” Quentin looked from me to Coop, who raised his palms in a Who, me? gesture.
“He is.” I cast around for the next right thing to say, wondering how soon I could plausibly excuse myself and Coop, especially since we’d supposedly driven all this way for a family reunion. Would we have to make nice all afternoon and stay for dinner? I wasn’t sure I could do it.
Quentin relented. “Come into the kitchen.” It was more of an order than an invitation.
We complied, watching as he started putting his groceries away. Peanut butter. White bread. Dill pickles. Shredded wheat. “Can I help?” I asked, like a dutiful niece.
No answer. I pulled up a seat at the kitchen table, and Coop followed my lead.
“You need something to eat?” Quentin’s tone was friendlier now. “I could heat you up some of my venison stew. You know what venison is, don’t you? Deer meat. I’ve got rabbit in my freezer downstairs, too, and squirrel.”
“No, thanks. We’re good.” Squirrel? Really? Coop was struggling to look casual, but his face was a shade paler than usual.
>
Groceries stowed, Quentin sat down beside me, pulling his chair closer than was comfortable. “You didn’t know I was a hunter, did you? I hardly have to go to the grocery store. I even know how to field-dress my kill. There’s nothing like being self-sufficient. It’s the best feeling in the world.”
“That’s great,” I said, thinking of Bambi and Thumper. “You must be really proud.” Luckily, the words didn’t come out sounding sarcastic.
“You hunt?” Quentin asked Coop. “You should. Every man should know how to fend for himself.”
Coop didn’t answer.
“I’m not just talking about food, either,” Quentin continued in my general direction. “Any man worth his salt knows how to protect his home against intruders.” Eyes narrowed, he shot a glance over at Coop, who was looking down at his folded hands.
“Just a man?” I made my voice playful. “What about me?”
Quentin shrugged. “I could teach you. That father of yours probably hasn’t ever held a gun in his life.”
Not that he’d met my dad. He was right, though; Dad wasn’t a big fan of guns. When I was younger, he gave me all sorts of speeches about how if I was ever visiting a friend and I found out there were guns in the house, I should come straight home and tell him. The memory made me swallow hard. What would he think if he knew where I was right now?
“A father should teach his kids to shoot,” Quentin added. “Daughters and sons.”
“Did my grandfather teach you?”
But my question turned out to be a misstep. Quentin’s face clouded over. “He should have.”
“I guess he wasn’t much of a hunter,” I said. “He lived in New York City, right?” I figured I’d better play dumb; as far as my uncle knew, I’d come straight from Marblehead to his house in Coxsackie, and he didn’t need to know otherwise.
“That cesspool.” His voice was sullen now, too. “A law-abiding person really needs a gun there. Backstabbing rats, just looking for a chance to steal what’s yours.” He turned to Coop. “I could teach you to hunt.” It sounded more like a threat than an offer.