Will had just hit the self-destruct button, and the old man was behaving as if they were embarking on a fishing trip.
“Yup, we’re both moving on to greener pastures, Jacob. Can I borrow your cute son for a sec?” Poppy beamed at his dad, who beamed back.
“Sure thing, Poppy. I’ll wait right here.”
His dad used the cardboard tube to point at the red carpet that appeared to be the evil twin of the hall carpet in The Shining. Will looked up at the empty bulletin board with the smiling employee-of-the-month photo, and along the silent hallway of closed doors with the handrail that ran only on one side. Somewhere a door slammed. This was a place inhabited by nothing but echoes. Why had he never noticed before?
“Come with?” Poppy stroked Will’s arm, and the edge of a jagged scar poked out from under her cuff.
Will jolted back. He was so done with crazy. “Nasty scar.”
“No, I didn’t try and off myself,” Poppy said in a bored tone that suggested she was used to this comment. “I rescued an abused horse, a Thoroughbred chestnut mare. In other words, the triple whammy of high-strung. Miss Prissy’s as spirited at they come. Bucked me off into some barbed wire during the breakout. Love that mare, hate her former owner—my turd of an ex. Asshole wanted to make her another tame possession, like his trophy wife, who wasn’t me in case you’re wondering. Best guess? He abused them both.”
A story Will would normally consider harvesting for his writing notebook—despite the undercurrent of betrayal. As a kid, he’d collected stories the way most boys collected live critters or plastic dinosaurs. Right now, weighed down with a full set of Agent Dodds hardbacks, he lacked the energy to care.
Poppy opened the second door on the right, and they entered a small bedroom with a walnut dresser and a rocking chair. The bed was too neatly made, the colors in the framed print of Jesus too sunny.
“I’m sorry about your job,” Will said.
“Bah. I’ve been fired before. Being dumped from a volunteer job might be a first, though.” She bounced onto the bed, grabbed a needlepoint cushion that had been placed in middle of the pillows and hugged it to her chest. “Where’re you taking Jacob? Any thoughts?”
“I have a motel room in town. Guess we’ll stay there while I search for a new place.”
“You make crap decisions.”
“This wasn’t exactly something I planned.” He scowled at her.
“Yeah, whatever. I have this friend, a holistic vet, with a secluded place in the country. Ten acres of pasture in front, one hundred acres of forest behind. And a guest cottage with beautiful views. She’s looking for a tenant.” Poppy grabbed a copy of Triangle Gardener magazine from the nightstand. She ripped off a piece, then tugged a pencil from behind her ear and scrawled a phone number. “Hannah. Give her a call.”
“Thanks, but I’m not looking to rent. I have to be back in the city by—” When? He’d thrown his deadline away. For the first time in his adult life, he didn’t have to be anywhere.
“Wait lists around here are a nightmare. Could take a while.” She wrote an address under the phone number. “Drive by, have a look. You’ll love Hannah. She projects calming vibes.”
Right, the last thing he needed—some new-age hippy-dippy chick projecting anything at him.
“She’ll adore Jacob. Her own father—” Poppy waved the rest of the sentence away. “Jacob can catch his breath, detox from this place. You really think he’d cope with the bustle of a motel?”
I don’t think I can cope with the bustle of a motel.
“Want directions?”
“No,” Will said, but she kept writing.
A decade younger and she’d be just his type: great curves, shiny chestnut curls fighting to escape from a barrette. He had only one dating rule—no woman old enough to hear her biological clock, and this art teacher with the great butt was definitely over twenty-five. Closer to forty, if he had to guess.
By sixteen, he’d known he never wanted kids, which was a no-brainer for anyone with his family background. Birth control was something he established at the get-go of a sexual relationship, and Cass had told him she was on the pill. A lie, of course, since she’d hand-selected him to be a sperm donor. But the instant he drew his son close and smelled that powdery baby scent, Will had known their relationship was forever. And yet forever had turned out to be less than five years.
The fist of grief grabbed his throat, cutting off his air supply.
“Hey,” Poppy said. “You okay?”
“Fine.” Will forced himself to breathe. “I’m fine.”
“Here. Directions. Take them.”
She placed the scrap of paper on the quilt, hopped off the bed and disappeared before Will could say, “I have a GPS.”
The odor of bleach in the room was thick, thick enough to mask the lingering fumes of death. It transported him back to a summer evening fishing on the oxbow behind the ghost field, the year after the excavation of the Occaneechi village started. He and his dad had just caught a bucket of bream when Will snared himself on a hook. Bled all over his new shorts—thrift-store new, but his mom had bought them for his first day of kindergarten. “Your mama’s gonna be real upset,” his dad said, and young Will was terrified. Mama being upset could mean anything from her dragging Will by his hair to screaming that he was worthless. But his dad told him not to fret, told him bleach was the magic cure. Possibly, but not in the quantity the old man had used. Will never wore the shorts again, and his mom never noticed.
“Willie?”
Will jumped. In the five minutes he’d been responsible for his dad, he’d forgotten him. The old man was standing in the doorjamb, trailing empty boxes with one hand and clasping the roll of cardboard to his chest as if it were the family Bible.
“Had me a real bad thought while you were talking to Poppy. Heck of a bad thought, son.”
“Hey, it’s okay. Come here, sit.” Will guided his dad onto the rocking chair. “Want to tell me what happened?”
“Nope.”
“The gist of it?” Will crouched down.
“Somethin’ real bad happened to Freddie. He were in a car with his mama....”
Strange, how moments of heartbreak didn’t announce themselves, they just ambushed you. Shouldn’t there be an earthquake measuring nine point five on the Richter scale when the plates of your life shifted? But outside this room with the cheap print of Jesus and the bed with hospital corners, traffic continued to speed through the forty-five-miles-per-hour zone. And in the time it took to inhale, the cycle of grief regenerated. The wound tore open.
Will would never know what happened in the minutes after the crash, sometime around sunset. The sudden loss of light had added to the confusion. One witness had heard screams but couldn’t determine if they’d come from a child or a woman. True or false, Will’s brain had latched on to that snippet of information and created a scenario he could never escape: his son dying in pain and terror.
The chair clicked as his dad rocked back and forth, back and forth. “But I ain’t listenin’ to my no-good brain, son. My brain, it’s a trickster from one of your mama’s fairy tales. And I choose not to listen. Freddie’s the only good thing we got in our lives, ain’t that true? You didn’t tell me where he and his mama were headin’ this week.”
Will fell to his knees. Relief swamped him—ridiculous, selfish relief. He could still hide behind his story, one that wasn’t finished.
“They’re leaving for Florence,” Will said, “so Freddie can see Michelangelo’s David.”
“Woo-wee. Who would have thought? My grandson, seein’ a real