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As he tugged his T-shirt over his neck, he glimpsed the tiny scar Ally’s teeth had left on his bicep. Thanks to his mother’s stories, he’d grown up believing that true love was a narrow path with room for only one. What a masochistic legacy to hand a commitment-phobe.
They were five years old with his-’n’-hers scraped knees when Ally bit him. It was the first time he’d tried to kiss her. He tried again at seventeen, adding a declaration of love, and she slapped him. There hadn’t been a third time. When her husband lost his Wall Street job five years ago and Will hired her, even he hadn’t been sure of his motivation. But the moment Freddie entered his life, that whimsical decision to put Ally on his payroll proved to be the wisest move he’d ever made. After all, Ally had been guarding his secrets since grade school. She’d always had his back.
He hit speed dial one and pictured five feet two inches of brown-eyed female indignation.
“You went soloing?” she yelled.
“How did you know?”
“I wouldn’t be a very effective P.A. if I couldn’t weasel information out of your publicist, would I?”
Damn. That was a silly mistake. Why had he felt the need to explain his absence from the weekly spin session?
“So, what’s up?” he said.
“A journalist from the National Enquirer. She was prowling around outside the apartment when I stopped in to check messages. She wanted to know if you were the father of Cass’s little boy.”
Will ground his teeth. “What did you tell her?”
“To move or I’d call the cops, you dolt.”
“She’s just fishing, eliminating former lovers by the math of dates. No one’s buying the story that the poor loser who died in the crash with them was Freddie’s father.” Will and Cass had only agreed on one thing outside of the bedroom: keeping Freddie’s life private and his paternity secret. Will had expected everything to change once Freddie entered the school system, but Cass, who loved to travel on a whim, kept insisting on private tutoring. No preschool, no kindergarten, but Will had been gearing up to fight for first grade. A kid needed friends. How else could he survive his parents?
“No one knows the truth except you and Seth.”
“Not strictly true. Your entire P.R. office knows. And so does Cass’s publicity machine—”
“Ally, I just worked hard to clean Cass out of my mind. Can we not talk about her?”
Ally sighed heavily. “You scared me. I thought you’d do something stupid.”
Will fiddled with the beads wound around his wrist. A one-of-a-kind gift of mini skulls strung together like shrunken heads, the friendship bracelet had been Ally’s idea of a joke the first time he hit the New York Times bestseller list: In case you get bigheaded. The one person who knew him better than anyone, and even she didn’t understand. He hadn’t driven to the Gunks that morning to end his life. He’d been trying to save it.
“Come on, darling. You know me better than that.”
“Will, you’ve barely left the apartment in three months, and suddenly you want to shimmy up a rock face alone and unroped?”
“I picked a climb I’ve done many times before.”
“When you had good reasons to live.”
“I still do.”
“Not that I don’t agree with you, but since you refuse to talk with a therapist about any of this, it’s my job to make sure you’re thinking straight. What, exactly, do you have to live for? And if you answer the Agent Dodds movie deal, I’ll bite your other bicep.”
“You. Your poor, long-suffering husband. The chocolate mimosa you guys gave me for my thirtieth birthday. My dad. All good reasons to live. Happy?”
“If you’d told me you were going, I would have come along. Kept my eye on you.”
There was a time when the thought of Ally watching him climb would have floated his boat for all eternity. Loving her had saved him many times, but like the healed scar, it was no longer a mark of anything more than his past.
“I wanted to be alone. I came here to work the piss out of a route and get my head together.”
“Be one with the rock?”
“If you want to put it that simplistically, yeah. Look, I didn’t mean to cause worry. Why don’t you take Seth out for dinner on the corporate credit card? A pre-Halloween bonus.”
“What the hell is a pre-Halloween bonus?”
“A gift from a grateful boss. Listen, I’m going to find somewhere to stay overnight. I’ll be back in the city tomorrow.”
“You want us to come join you?”
“No. It’s ninety miles—a colossal waste of time and money.”
“Promise me you’re okay, Will. No bull. Just you and me and the truth.”
Will looked back at the mountains. “I’m good.”
“Okay, but do me a favor. Please take an hour to check your email, answer some messages. Act like a guy who cares about his business.”
“I don’t need to care about my business. That’s why I have you.”
“Will—”
He knew that tone.
“Let it go, Ally. I’m doing all I can right now.”
“I know. Love you.”
“Ditto.”
“And, Will? Don’t forget you have a hair appointment tomorrow at four. Please don’t make me reschedule again. You look like a surfer dude with a really bad dye job.”
Will ducked down and glanced in his wing mirror. She had a point. He inspected a clump of dirty-blond hair. The tip was platinum—discolored by the sun during his last climb. He stood and tried to run his hand through what used to be his bangs, but his fingers snagged on a huge knot.
“Go henpeck your husband.”
She gave a laugh. “Bye, you.”
Will stared at his phone. Might as well take ten minutes to dump emails. Trashing unread messages was strangely liberating. Grief had either desensitized him or revealed that ninety percent of his life was disposable. He clicked on the email icon and began deleting. He stopped, finding one he should read—one from Hawk’s Ridge. What was his dad’s latest infraction? Will huffed out a sigh. Had the old man demanded pancakes? Circulated another petition for a fall dance?
Dear Mr. Shepard, the director had written, I trust this email will solicit prompt action on your part.
Pinching his thumb and forefinger together, Will touched the scene and then spread his fingers apart to zoom in on the type.
His dad had been right all along. Fucking bastards.
Four
Blinding October sunlight burst through the trees, jolting Will’s attention to his speedometer. Eighty-five, he was clocking eighty-five. Flying, rather than driving. He slammed his foot on the brake pedal, and the tailgating idiot behind blasted his horn.
Will pulled into the inside lane and waved. Dickhead.
One state away and already he was thinking like his dad. Will hit Pause on his iPod. Bad enough to be heading back to Orange County, North Carolina. He didn’t need to mess with his head by listening to the drumbeat of a Boxer Rebellion song that summoned up the ghost of powwows past.
Why hadn’t he waited for sunup and dealt with this latest crisis by phone? Why had he driven back to New York, packed an overnight bag and jumped into the Prius at two in the morning like Batman on an ecofriendly mission? Will Shepard planned and orchestrated, didn’t do spontaneity, never released anger, but here he was, acting like a caped avenger. Rushing to defend what remained of his dad’s honor. Trying to save someone who likely as not could no longer be saved.
The state border zipped past; the forest, a sleeping ogre with the strength to tear him to pieces, stretched toward the Carolina blue sky.
A bloated deer lay on the grassy verge, its flesh ripped open to expose bone, and unidentifiable chunks of roadkill littered the painted lines dividing the lanes. To his right, a barn—roofless and caving in on itself—struggled to rise out of the undergrowth only to be tugged back by wild vines. To his left, a regiment of transmission towers flattened everything in their path as they marched over the horizon like metal warriors.
Will clutched the steering wheel. Two days max and he could do this trip in reverse. But first, figure out how to take down the director of Hawk’s Ridge.
Precision and balance, Will.
A climber who rushed, who didn’t strategize, was a dead climber.
He would book into a motel, crash for a few hours, meet with the director, placate him, spend an afternoon with his dad, get knee-walking drunk, sleep it off, drive home. But how to placate the director? Be nice, but firm: You can’t kick my dad out. Where else will he go? Will shook his head. Lame, totally lame. Begging might be involved. Or maybe he could offer to do a book signing. Yeah, right. Like that would make a difference.
* * *
“How about I organize a book signing with local authors?” Will said five hours later in a face-off across a cherry desk. Beautifully crafted, it was too big for the room, too grand for the doofus opposite.
“I don’t think so.” The director of Hawk’s Ridge craned his neck—not that he really had one, just a gelatinous mound of fat—and peered into the mirror on the far wall. He adjusted his tie slowly.
Will flipped over his hand and rubbed the calluses. If he could tackle cliffs of rock, he could handle this groundhog of a man who lumbered through the leftovers of people’s lives.
Thud. Will jumped as a bird crashed into the sparkling windowpane. “A bluebird just—”
“Mr. Shepard, please.”
Will stared beyond the splatter of feathers to Occoneechee Mountain. My blood’s all over that mountain, the old man used to say. Unfortunately, so was Will’s.
“Your father is loud, abusive and, half the time, drunk.”
I would be, too, if I had to live here.
“Last week he hounded poor Mrs. Wilson into signing his petition for a Friday-night social. Chased her down the hall.”
Mrs. Wilson’s in a wheelchair. How much chasing could be involved?
“She was terrified.”
Why could Will think of nothing to say other than fucking bastard?
“Alcohol was involved.”
“I appreciate everything you’re saying. But I want to assure you that my father is not an alcoholic. My moth— I grew up with someone who abused alcohol. I know the signs. As I’m sure you do. I don’t mean to question your judgment.” Will’s left eye began to twitch. “My father’s always been a heavy drinker, but he’s not a drunk. And right now, seems he has little to enjoy but his Wild Turkey. Where’s the harm in that?”
Stupid, Will. Never ask a question if you’re not prepared to hear the answer.
“With all due respect, Mr. Shepard, I don’t think you realize how the situation has deteriorated since your last visit. Many of our residents are heavily medicated. They cannot drink. And, to be honest, I think your father has emotional issues. We’ve had great success with Risperdal in some of our more aggressive residents.”
“Seriously? You want to give my dad an antipsychotic used to treat schizophrenia?”
“And, finally—there’s this business with your son.”
Will sat up, senses alert.
“When he told one of the staff his grandson was on some big trip, we let it go. We thought it might be his way of dealing with grief. But then he started bragging to other residents, and...well. This incident last night. Brawling, Mr. Shepard.” As the director shook his head, his entire upper body waddled.
“We’ve never had a violent episode in our community before. Not one. I don’t need to tell you how upset the female staff was to see two grown men rolling around on the floor like boys. The security guard who separated them has a black eye. A. Black. Eye.”
Will heard it just fine the first time.
“According to witnesses, your father entered into some silly game of my-grandson’s-better-than-yours with one of our new residents.”
“Bernie down the hall?”
“Mr. Fields, yes. I have already spoken with his family. They have generously agreed not to press charges.”
“Oh, come on. They wanted to prosecute an eighty-year-old granddad for bragging?”
“Mr. Shepard. I cannot allow your father to stay here if he’s going to incite violence. Your father is an alcoholic. He has psychotic breaks with reality. He has problems with anger management.”
Really, the guy didn’t have to speak at half-speed. Will got it, totally got it.
“These are serious issues,” the director said. “I need you to treat them as such.”
“I do, honestly. And I’m not questioning your experience.” Will picked up a glass paperweight and put it back in the same place. “But have you considered that he’s still mourning my mother? Could we bring in a grief counselor?”
The door that Will had deliberately left ajar crashed open, and a woman carrying a Kit Kat and wearing jeans that clung in all the right places marched into the room. Oranges, she smelled of oranges. And chocolate chip cookies.
The director’s face turned puce. “Poppy, I’m in a meeting with—”
“You cannot be serious about kicking Jacob Shepard to the curb,” she said. “Where will he go?”
My point exactly. Then Will couldn’t help himself, he looked at her butt, which was hard to miss, since it was rather large and she was now bending over the cherry desk. How many hours had he wasted staring at women’s asses and where had it led? Back to the one thing he’d spent his life running from: craziness. Will cleared his throat and focused on the bookshelf, empty except for a set of Agent Dodds novels in hardback—signed and donated on moving-in day.
“Mr. Shepard.” The director’s voice was tight like a slingshot. “I don’t believe you’ve met our temporary art teacher, Poppy Breen. She’s filling in for a few weeks.”
“Jacob’s a sweet, lonely guy.” Poppy spoke to the director and ignored Will.
Sweet might be taking it a bit too far. Stubborn, ornery...
“Short-term memory in the shitter,” she continued. “But he just needs a buddy. When I took him to Walmart to buy his map, he chatted away like a kid. Told me about his days in a bluegrass band with his baby brother.”
Really? His dad had talked about Uncle Darren? The old man hadn’t mentioned another family member in decades. There’d been some falling-out when Will was little. He didn’t remember the details but the cause was the same as always: his mom.
“What about music therapy?” Poppy said.
“I’m in a private meeting, Poppy. With Jacob’s son.”
“Excellent.” She hurled herself into the chair next to Will. “Then I arrived just in time.”
“Poppy, I’d like you to—”
“Stay.” Will turned to his new ally. “I’d like you to stay.”
She looked at him for the first time and her eyes—not quite amber, not quite green, not quite brown—slowly appraised his face. Will waited for her to finish. It wasn’t that he was some egomaniacal dick, but women often looked at him and liked what they saw, which proved you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Fantastic, exhaustion was dragging him down the primrose path to overused clichés.
Will sighed. “We were talking about grief counseling for my dad. I think he’s still grieving for my mom.”
“Yup. Agreed.”
“If you’re going to stay, Poppy—” the director’s eyes, which were too small for his face, flicked sideways in an oddly reptilian gesture “—at least close the door.”
Will tugged on the neck of his T-shirt. Closed doors, trapped in a confrontation with two other people. Not good. So much of his life wasted hoping his mom would be incarcerated, and yet shove him in a room and shut the door, and he could blow. Claustrophobia—yet another legacy of his childhood, and the one thing he could blame on his dad. He used to beg—please, Daddy, don’t lock me in my room—but his dad always had the same response, “It’s for your own good, son. I need to deal with your mama.” What was that supposed to mean? That Will could look after himself even as a tyke?
Will stood and grabbed the back of the chair. He had an appalling desire to shove the director and make a run for it.
The director’s index finger tapped the open folder on his desk. “It says here your mother died four years ago.”
“You think there’s an expiration on grief?” Will glanced at the now-shut door. His mouth was dry; the words tasted stale. Palpitations, definitely had heart palpitations. “You want my dad to be complacent, easier to handle, right?” Firing dumb questions again. Stupid. Might as well be tumbling off a rock face in an uncontrolled fall.
The art teacher with the cute butt gave a smug laugh.
“Mr. Shepard, this meeting is over.” The director closed the folder. “You have two options: you take your father to a geriatric psychiatrist and get medication, or you find alternative accommodation for him.”
Reason snapped. Will would not be cornered like a dog. He was done listening; he was done following other people’s ultimatums. Cass’s voice seemed to trill in his head—He’s my son, William, and you will see him when I say. This small-minded stranger had no understanding of a private family matter and no right, none, to make decisions about the old man’s mental health.
“You know what? Forget it. He’s leaving today.”
Relief—the relief in the room was palpable. But was it his or the director’s? Didn’t know, didn’t care. Needed out.
Will tugged his books free from the bookshelf—a self-destructive act that deleted a fan from his Facebook page. Team Shepard would not be happy.
“I donated these to the library,” Will said, “not to you personally.”
“We don’t have a library, Mr. Shepard.”
“Exactly. Which makes this place hell.”
* * *
Will tossed open the door and slammed into his father’s chest.
“Aren’t you a little beyond listening at keyholes, Dad?”
The old man’s shirt was untucked on one side, and he was carrying an armload of empty cardboard boxes. He was smiling, too—his grin as fat as Freddie’s had been after he’d unwrapped the two huge Playmobil sets on his fifth birthday. Will had been unable to decide which castle to buy, so he’d settled on both. Plus the catapult. And the battering ram. And the dragon.
“Where you been, son? Got some boxes off Poppy.”
“Boxes?” Will bit his lip.
“For packin’, son. For packin’. Ol’ possum face kick me out, did he? And look!” His dad held up a cardboard mailing tube. “Look what Poppy found me. I said I reckon it’s the perfect thing to protect our Freddie’s map.”
Behind him, Poppy shouted, “You can’t fire me, asshole, I’m a volunteer.”
“Hi, Poppy,” his dad said. “Have you met my son? Poppy’s a firecracker. Only spark of life around here. You leavin’, too, Poppy? You leavin’, too?”
His dad repeated himself when he was excited, which, admittedly, wasn’t often these days.
Great. 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.