He had a cut over his right eye and a livid bruise across his cheekbone. The eyelid was swollen, the eye almost closed. “Before you ask, I told the cops I don’t plan to press charges.”
“Good.” I nodded.
“This was a family dispute. They promise to release Brandon just as soon as they finalize the paperwork.”
I nodded again and followed him into the living room. I call it “living” room, but it was more an empty space for Michael to dump his property, which consisted of a zipper bag stuffed with clothes and basic toiletries.
Otherwise, there was one brown velour chair, a coffee table with car keys and an opened can of beer on it, and in one corner a lamp without a shade. “What did you two fight about?” I asked.
“Let’s just say unfinished business.”
“And you’re certain the cops will let him go? Because I need to talk to him.”
“About Zak?”
“Kind of. Actually yes. I want to warn him that Zak’s hanging out with the wrong guys.” Which was true, but not the whole truth.
Wearily Michael ran a hand over his face. “You’re too late,” he mumbled. “Brandon already has all the facts. I picked up rumors from Russell that Zak was keeping bad company. When I relayed the news to Brandon, he turned it all on me, said I was to blame for being a lousy father, and why the hell didn’t I disappear from their lives?”
“So then the fight?” I guessed. “Did Nathan Thorne’s name come up?”
“Top of the list,” Michael confirmed. “At that point Brandon totally lost control.”
“And what about Zak’s mom? Does she know that her youngest son is hanging out with Thorne?”
Massaging his temples and hiding his eyes from view, he shrugged. “I can’t be sure. But there’s something else—another reason for Brandon to lose control.”
“Which is?”
“Sharon chose last night to yell at Zak big-time—about his suspension from school, his lack of respect, all the usual stuff. According to Brandon, Zak couldn’t take it. He yelled back, threw stuff around the room, then ran out of the house.”
“Ran where?” I asked.
“Nobody knows. He just ran. And he hasn’t shown up since.”
• • •
Good, Darina. I’m glad you’re focusing on this.
It was Phoenix again, hovering over my left shoulder as I drove. This time though, I had Michael in the car with me, so I couldn’t enter into a full dialogue.
Find Zak, he went on. Persuade him to go home, talk things through with Mom.
“I have a hunch,” I’d told Michael back in his crappy apartment. “I think I know where Zak might be.” And I’d described the empty trailer in the park out on the road to Forest Lake.
Michael had sprung into action, ignoring the elevator and running downstairs two at a time, telling me to drive him straight there.
“I hope I’m right,” I said now, to both Michael and Phoenix.
Trust your instinct, Phoenix murmured.
“Is there anything else I need to know?” Michael asked, leaning forward in his seat, one arm braced against the control panel.
“It’s possible Zak’s not alone. He might be there with Miller and Stafford, maybe even Nathan Thorne,” I warned.
“They all know about this place. I get the idea it’s where they regularly hang out.”
“I’ll deal with that,” Michael promised. He was a father on a mission to redeem himself for ten years of absence.
He’s like you, Phoenix, I thought. He acts on impulse. He’s a passionate guy.
He’s nothing like me, Phoenix protested.
“Drive faster,” Michael pleaded as we passed the KFC and read the sign that said Forest Lake, 8 miles.
Yeah, he is, I thought.
And I remembered the times I’d been driving with Phoenix in my old car, me observing the speed limit and him saying, “Drive, Darina. Let’s see how fast this heap of rust can go!”
See! I told my Beautiful Dead boyfriend.
“We’re almost there,” I promised Michael as I turned off the highway onto a side road that narrowed and wound through pine trees. “You see the water up ahead? That’s Forest Lake. The park is coming right up.”
The words were hardly out of my mouth when we spotted the first trailer, set thirty feet back from the road in among the trees. There it was, complete with fancy mailbox and neatly fenced yard. I kept my foot on the gas, past more trailer homes, then one or two wooden shacks, and pretty soon we came to the deserted trailer where the kids hung out.
“Is this it?” Michael asked as I slowed down.
I nodded, took in the fact that there was no black Chevy parked outside, nor any other vehicle as far as I could see. Relieved, I decided to sit in the car and wait as Michael leaped out and ran toward the door.
I watched him knock first then try the handle. Nothing happened so he hammered on the door with his fist and finally bent down to pick up a rock lying at the foot of the metal steps. He used the rock to smash the glass panel in the door then he reached in and turned the handle from the inside.
It was at that exact moment that Zak charged the door.
He must have heard the knocking and stayed silent inside the trailer, waiting until the glass broke and Michael’s hand had reached through. Then he knew it was time to act. So he ran at the door and sent his dad sprawling backward down the steps.
I saw it from a distance—Michael laid flat in the dirt and Zak stumbling, tripping over his father, sliding down the hill toward me. I got out of the car and was there to catch him when he finally came to a stop.
Angrily, Zak tried to wrench himself free.
I hung on to the hem of his sweatshirt, felt him twist, raise his arms, and slip out of it, saw him start running again until this time Michael cut him off. He tackled his son around the waist and brought him crashing down.
There we were, the three of us—me holding an empty sweatshirt, Michael grasping Zak in a bear hug, Zak lying motionless beneath him.
“No more running.” Michael broke the silence. Slowly he relaxed his grip and knelt back to let his son recover.
I heard a breeze drift between the pines, saw the branches sway. Good job, Darina! Phoenix breathed.
“It’s OK, Zak,” I said. “Stick around and listen to what your dad has to say.”
Breathing heavily, Zak rolled free of Michael and stood up. He was shorter than his dad, much skinnier. “What are you doing here?” he turned to me and demanded. “Who asked you to stick your nose in—again?”
“Don’t talk to Darina that way,” Michael cut in.
“And you don’t get to tell me what to do!” Zak rounded on his dad. “Nobody does, not anymore.”
“So that’s it?” Warily Michael stood back. “You cut your family out of your life?”
“Since when were you my family?” Zak jeered. Now it didn’t look like he would run, but neither was he ready to listen to what Michael had to say. “Do you even know what the word means?”
“OK, I hear you. And I don’t blame you for being angry with me, Zak. But it’s your mom I’m talking about. She deserves better.”
“Oh yeah—Supermom.”
“Zak! Your mother is there for you, always was.”
“Not like you, huh?”
“Not like me,” Michael agreed, forcing himself to meet Zak’s stare. “What do you want—excuses? Because I don’t have any.”
“And now I should suck it up? Hey, no problem, Dad. Glad you’re back. Why don’t you stick around a little longer? We could share some quality time!”
Michael’s head jerked back like a boxer dodging punches. Then he steeled himself for more.
Zak delivered. “Well, guess what? I did OK without you in the picture all these years.”
“OK enoug
h to end up here?” his dad muttered, glancing back at the trailer. “Take a look at yourself, Zak. This is not good.”
“What do you know? What do you care?”
“I care. I always cared.”
“Yeah, words. What do they mean exactly?”
Michael pursed his mouth up tight and frowned. When he spoke again, the phrases came out in painful jerks. “It means not a day goes by when I don’t think about what I threw away when I walked out on your mom. Maybe not even an hour. For ten whole years I was this guy living alone thousands of miles away from the people he loved—floating, drifting, trying to find a reason to go on putting one foot in front of another. Not finding it.”
Zak had turned his head away, but now he was definitely listening.
“You know how many times I moved on, working in one lousy job then another? After twenty new towns in Germany and Switzerland, France, Spain, I stopped counting.”
“So? You’re still the one who walked out. That doesn’t change.”
Michael nodded. “I’m not asking you to forgive me. I’m saying I still care. No, that’s not the word.”
Say it, I thought. Tell him the right word. I knew how I’d be feeling if it was my dad standing here trying to explain why he left. I would need to hear that word.
Michael dug deep. His voice wasn’t much more than a whisper. “I love you, Zak. I love you, Brandon, and Phoenix more than my own life.”
• • •
Michael’s apartment at Center Point wasn’t much of a step up from the empty trailer on the Forest Lake road, but no way was Zak ready to go back to his mom’s house.
“I’m through with being treated like a little kid,” he told his dad and me as I drove them back to town. “Being there—in that house—it messes with my head.”
“So you can stay with me,” Michael agreed. “I don’t care, Zak, so long as you stay away from Nathan Thorne.”
“I told your dad all about him,” I confessed. “And his big brother, Oscar—he’s the one to watch.” Arriving at Michael’s block, I parked and let them out of the car. I watched them enter the building with a feeling of relief.
Am I doing OK? I asked.
Silence. Phoenix didn’t answer me.
From which I assumed that Hunter had called him back to Foxton again. Hunter! Suddenly my mind tuned into my daily mantra—Hunter can’t stop me now!
Right now, in the current silence of the parking lot, I wasn’t so sure. I stared at the row of overfilled trash cans, the graffiti walls, realizing I was a world away from the magic of Foxton, which is when the real panic set in.
“Hunter, don’t listen to Phoenix,” I said out loud. “I can deal with this.”
Still silence.
“If you’re thinking of giving up and pulling out of Foxton altogether, don’t do it!” I begged. “I’m telling you—things are coming together. I’ve got a list of names I need to check out. There are people I have to see.”
I was staring at the same old white plastic bag as before, eddying around the yard, whirling against my tires, flapping and drifting. And then I remembered, tomorrow was a big day for Hunter—the anniversary of his death.
I know what to do! I thought, turning the car and heading for home, straight to my laptop.
It didn’t take me long to find a genealogy website called who-r-u.com, pay the subscription, and type in the name, Hester Lee, with an approximate birth date of 1905, place of birth, Foxton, mother’s name, Marie, father’s name, Hunter. Once and for all, with the recorded registration of Hester’s birth I would settle Hunter’s doubts and set his mind at rest.
Millions of people check their family history online, so the site was easy to use. I quickly followed the trail, found that Hester Lee married John Turner on June 28, 1925. The marriage certificate was signed on the bride’s side by her aunt, Alice Harper. Her mother was listed as Marie Lee (deceased), her father as Hunter Lee, rancher, also deceased.
This should have been enough. It was official and beyond doubt—Hester was Hunter’s daughter. And it made me wonder, had the overlord done this already? Surely, with his superpowers, he would have been able to check the certificate himself.
But then I thought, why not find out more? Staring at the names on the screen, it was an itch that had to be scratched. I tapped more keys and found that Hester and John had a daughter, Alice Marie, born January 5, 1927. Alice Marie Turner, an only child, married Wesley Ashton in August 1949. They had two children—Tom, born June 15, 1950, and Jane, born March 2, 1952. Jane Ashton, age eighteen and unmarried, gave birth in September 1970 to a baby girl named Laura. Jane died in childbirth.
I sat for an age, staring at the screen.
I wasn’t focusing on a poor, lonely, cast-out kid named Jane who died giving life. No—Ashton is my mother’s birth family name. Work it out carefully with me, go back through the generations. I am Marie and Hunter Lee’s great-great-great granddaughter.
I sat at my computer and let day turn to night. I don’t know how many times I checked the information and still came out with the same result.
How could I not? I always knew my mother’s mother died giving birth to her. She was reared by her adoptive parents, Tom and Lucille Bunton. No one talked to her about her teenaged mother’s pregnancy and death.
Obviously the Buntons found it too hard to discuss. And Laura herself had conspired in this, carrying the burden of their secrecy all her life. As far as I knew, she never tried to discover more about her background than Tom and Lucille had been willing to tell.
I am descended from Marie and Hunter Lee. His blood runs in my veins.
• • •
I set off before dawn on Tuesday to tell him.
He already knows! I told myself. The way he looks at you. The photo of Marie. The fact that he ever let you through the barrier to meet the Beautiful Dead in the first place. Now it all comes together.
Still I had no choice—I had to talk to Hunter.
My driving was crazy, my head in a spin. I’m related to a walking dead man!
The mountains loomed ahead. The road snaked around Turkey Shoot Ridge. A fire-red sun crept over the horizon.
At Foxton I turned left onto the dirt road, toward a bank of black cloud. It sat to the west over Amos Peak, threatening a big storm. Thirty feet below me, green water raced along the bed of the creek, swirling past boulders and kicking up white foam.
By the time I reached the aspen ridge, the first fat drops of rain hit my windshield. I abandoned my car under the trees and ran toward the water tower, fighting a strong wind, pushing on with my news, pulled along by the fierce new bond I’d forged with Phoenix’s overlord.
I didn’t for a second stop to wonder what Hunter’s reaction would be.
The rain came fast now, battering the metal water tank, bouncing off the rocks. I staggered on, soaked to the skin and half blind, toward the house and barn, stepping back in my mind through decades to the day more than a hundred years earlier that Peter Mentone pulled a gun on Hunter and shot him through the head.
I ran through the meadow and across the yard. Rainwater cascaded from the roof of the barn; the cold wind drove into my face. Any moment now, Phoenix would step across my path, take my hand, and lead me to Hunter.
Or Iceman or Dean—one of the Beautiful Dead must surely appear. Yes, there was rain lashing across the valley and wind howling through the trees, but there was as of yet no thunder, no lightning. They were here on the far side, quietly sitting out the storm.
Was it raining like this all those years ago when Mentone arrived on horseback and found Marie alone in the house? Did he check the barn first, as I did now, to find out if Hunter was there?
I pictured the killer tethering his horse to the post and stepping through the wide door into a space stacked high in those days with hay and straw. The split log barn was new then
, the smell of sawn pine filled the air. Hunter’s ax, spades, forks, and scythe were stacked neatly against the wall. His horses’ harnesses gleamed on their hooks.
Marie’s horse grazed out in the meadow, but of Hunter’s there was no sign.
Mentone knew he was in luck. He wasn’t welcome here when his hardworking neighbor was home. With Marie, it was different—she usually had a smile on her lips and a few kind words for him. He heard the rain on the barn roof, dodged the waterfall spilling over the edge of the roof as he stepped back out across the yard.
Would he knock at the house door, as I did now, or would he turn the handle and walk right in? Marie would be standing at the stove with her back turned, or maybe upstairs working in the small bedroom. But then again—no. Even in the rain, with the door closed, she would have heard Mentone’s horse approach. She would be facing him with a smile when he opened the door, ready to be polite.
“Peter, come in out of the wet. How are you doing today?”
“I’m good, Mrs. Lee. How about you?”
“Good too. Hunter isn’t home, but I’ve got coffee on the stove if you’d like some.”
He closes the door behind him. Somehow the rain cuts them off and narrows the whole wide world to one small room with a rug on the floor, a lit stove, and a coffeepot boiling.
Mentone sees only Marie’s face—her dark brown eyes fringed with thick lashes, her wide, smiling mouth. “Is there something I can do for you?” she offers.
He takes the coffee. In that split second, as her fingertips accidentally brush his, something clicks in his brain, and he decides to act on what he’s been fantasizing about doing for a long, long time, which is to find Marie alone in the house and take much more than coffee. He drops the cup and grabs her around the waist. The cup smashes on the floor. Hot liquid spills.
Marie gasps and pulls back.
His arm is tight around her waist, her struggling excites him. He likes it when her coiled braid of almost black hair gets caught in the hook they use to hang the lantern from, her comb comes loose, and her hair tumbles down her back. He presses her against the window, she clutches at the curtain, brings the pole tumbling down.