Lance was astounded at the girl’s unselfishness. He’d not known it was possible to grow to love somebody so quickly in such a short, tragic span of time.
He hated himself for being cursed with such an unfair burden, doomed to walk the earth forever knowing he would never fit in, would never be able to live the normal life he desperately wanted to embrace. He wanted to stay in Westhaven, wanted to go eat breakfast at Annabelle’s Apron and have hot dogs at Sonic and see if the Westhaven basketball team would be any good this winter and decorate a Christmas tree with Leah and read books with her by the fire and watch her unwrap her gifts and spend all the time in the world together.
He wanted to live, not just be alive.
“You could come with me,” he said, already knowing the answer.
She wiped tears from her face and shook her head. “I can’t. Daddy will need me. Now, more than ever. With the motel damaged and all. And … what would I do? I’ve done nothing my entire life except live in this dump of a town and work at a fleabag motel.”
Lance pushed a stray strand of hair out of her eyes. “I didn’t see any fleas.”
She didn’t laugh. Just said, “I can’t.”
Lance understood. He got up from the bench and walked to the counter. He rang an old-fashioned bell by the window, and a minute later, an elderly man wearing bib overalls and bifocals appeared. “Help you?” the man said.
“I’d like a ticket, please. The first thing out that’s going anywhere but south.”
The man didn’t question the request, just looked down at a chart on the desk in front of him and then punched a few keys on a relic of a computer. Lance handed over money, and the man handed Lance a printed ticket. Then he disappeared back to wherever he’d come.
Leah was standing now, her crutches under her arms. Lance looked at his ticket. “Leaves in fifteen minutes. I bet there’s room for one more.”
She looked up at him with eyes brimming with tears, ready to spill at the slightest provocation. “Your phone’s in your backpack. My number’s still in it, I hope.” Then she took one step toward him, the crutches loud on the linoleum, echoing in the empty lobby. She rose up on her good foot, and Lance leaned down and they kissed one last time. When their lips parted, she said, “I’m going now. I can’t … I can’t watch you leave. I can’t watch that bus carry you away.”
Lance said nothing.
“Thank you for everything you’ve done for us,” she said. “Thank you for being you.”
She grabbed his hand and squeezed it, her fingers soft and angelic. Then she let him go and turned and headed out the door. The sound of her cries pierced Lance’s soul.
44
Lance sat alone on the bench in the bus station lobby. The bus would be leaving in five minutes, but he couldn’t bring himself to step outside just yet. He didn’t want any extra time between the moment he took a seat and the moment the driver drove him away from Westhaven, from Leah.
He unzipped his backpack and found his phone, sitting right there on top of his clothes. He flipped it open and pressed the buttons and saw his missed call and messages from Leah, warning him about Melissa McGuire.
His life had been saved by two women tonight. One dead, one alive.
Then he saw a third message, the voicemail left by Marcus Johnston yesterday. The sight of his old friend’s name caused a sickness in Lance’s gut as he remembered the last time he’d seen the man, his last night in his hometown. Lance sighed, pressed the button and put the phone to his ear. Listened.
The message ended and Lance played it again, listening more carefully this time, hardly believing what he was hearing.
Marcus Johnston was calling to tell him that eventually, Lance would need to settle his mother’s estate, and that there was a sizeable amount of money to be dealt with. Lance wasn’t sure what to make of this. His entire life, his mother had seemingly been about as uninterested in physical possessions and money as one could be. Frugal was her middle name—one of many. She’d never so much as even mentioned a savings account to Lance, even when he was clearly old enough to be included in such conversations. She’d worked, of course, changing jobs frequently but always committed to whatever she’d taken on at the time. This revelation was a mystery.
Lance saw the time on his phone’s screen and got up quickly, shoving the phone into his pocket and slinging his backpack over his shoulder. He crossed the dirty linoleum and stepped outside, the sun halfway up on the horizon, the air chilly and clean and mixed with exhaust fumes from the rattling bus waiting by the curb.
Lance looked out to the parking lot, not wanting to, but finding himself unable to stop, some part of him desperately hoping to see Leah’s mother’s car sitting in one of the spaces, a head of blond hair visible behind the windshield. The best smile on the prettiest face.
The lot was empty except for a red Ford van, covered in dirt.
Lance mentally said goodbye to Westhaven and turned and walked the few paces up the sidewalk to the waiting bus. The driver looked tired and impatient through the large windshield as Lance approached.
The door to the bus was open, and Lance reached in and grabbed the railing to pull himself up the steps. And as he took the first step up, he stopped, halfway in, halfway out of the open door.
He turned and looked around and sniffed the air.
He caught a whiff of lavender. A hint of honey.
His mother’s favorite tea.
The sidewalk was empty.
Lance stared at the deserted walkway another ten seconds before the driver cleared his throat behind him.
Lance climbed the rest of the steps and found a seat on the mostly empty bus. The two other passengers—a couple, from the way they were huddled together in seats near the back—didn’t bother to even look up as Lance boarded.
He tossed his bag onto the seat and had barely sat down before the bus jerked forward and drove away, gears grinding.
The scent of lavender and honey faded from his senses.
As the bus pulled out into the street, Lance closed his eyes and leaned his head back. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he felt the warm caress of tears spill down his face.
Dark Son
(Lance Brody Series, Book 2)
Prologue
“Margie, how ’bout another slice of your pie?”
Hank Peterson was perched on his usual stool at the far end of the diner’s counter, an empty pie plate and an opened newspaper set out in front of him. He’d been there for hours. “It’s Friday afternoon and I’m celebrating the end of another grueling week.”
Margie, rolling her eyes to a customer at the opposite end of the counter as she refilled his coffee, called over her shoulder, “You’ve been retired for eleven years, Hank. You’re not celebrating, you’re just a fat old man who can’t resist a lady’s pastries.”
Margie had been working at Annabelle’s Apron for a long time, since before Annabelle herself had passed on, and after so long working in a diner in a small town like Westhaven—or any diner, for that matter—you develop a certain rhythm, come to expect a certain pattern of events, causes and effects. You learn types of people and how to play off them, much the same way a bartender might as he pours libations and hopes large tips will pour out of wallets afterward. There’s a routine—not just for Margie, but for the customers as well. Everyone knows how to play along; everyone learns the rules of the game eventually.
Which was why it struck a bit of a chord with Margie when her jest at Hank Peterson caused zero reaction from the man for whom she’d poured fresh coffee. The two other waitresses—both currently huddled in a back booth together, counting their day shift tips as they waited for the dinner crowd to start its trickle through the door—had laughed loudly and giggled at Hank’s expense, and from through the food window, Margie had heard the cook give a grunt of approval at the joke. The only other customer in the diner, a young teacher from the elementary school whose name Margie was kicking herself for not
being able to remember, looked up from the paperback she was reading as she sipped her hot tea and picked at a salad and offered a polite smile in Margie’s direction.
Everyone reacted, because that’s what you did. Whether you found the joke to be truly amusing or simply adequate, you either laughed or offered a small chuckle or—like the young teacher reading the book—you smiled politely and then went back to your business.
That was the rhythm. That was the routine. Everyone knew it.
The man at the end of the counter had acted as though he’d never even heard Margie’s words. Come to think of it, aside from his order of coffee and a cheeseburger, the man had said nothing at all.
Hank Peterson, using one liver-spotted hand to pat his bulging belly, winked at her and said, “Never could resist nothing of yours, Margie.”
Margie groaned.
The waitresses laughed again.
Rhythm. Routine.
Nothing from the man at the other end of the counter.
Margie put the coffeepot back on the burner and made a show of turning her back to Hank Peterson to examine a stack of receipts on the counter near the cook’s window. But while her head was bent toward the papers, her eyes were shifted upward, taking a nice hard look at the man who hadn’t so much as grinned at her and Hank’s exchange.
Sizing him up, Margie realized the man looked extremely tired. Not just tired … beaten down, maybe even demoralized. He could have been fifty, but the deep creases and lines of worry embedded in his forehead and around his eyes made him look even older. His hair was thick, but fully gray, hanging sloppily down around his ears and into his eyes. Margie had noticed him brushing it back out of the way as he’d taken the first bite of his burger. He wore faded blue jeans with a black sweater, along with a threadbare blue sport coat that was either a cheap hand-me-down that had never fit right, or the man had lost a great deal of weight recently. He looked skeletal inside the fabric. As he sat hunched over his half-eaten burger, eyes down, hair splayed across his forehead, Margie suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of sorrow for the man, and she scolded herself for initially considering him rude.
It hadn’t even been that good of a joke. She and Hank Peterson went after each other every day and this most recent exchange wouldn’t even crack the list of their top fifty all-time hits. She was better than this. The man deserved better than this.
“Margie, my pie?” Hank Peterson said from his stool, his voice sensing something off in his longtime diner pal.
Rhythm. Routine.
“Just a sec, Hank,” Margie said, barely finding her voice. She walked over to the man in the too-big sport coat and rested her hands gently on the counter. “Something the matter with the burger, sweetie? Want me to cook you up a fresh one?”
The man lifted his head slowly, an act that seemed to take great effort, and when his eyes met Margie’s, she wasn’t shocked to see they were glistening with tears. He offered her the sorriest of smiles she’d ever seen.
“No, ma’am. The burger was just fine. Just not much of an appetite is all. I thank you for asking, though. Really, I do.” He used both hands to wipe his eyes, no hint of embarrassment. As if the tears were something he’d long since grown used to.
Unable to think of anything else to do, unsure how to respond to the scene before her, Margie asked, “How about a slice of pie? On the house. I bake them myself.” She smiled at the man and hoped he found some warmth in it.
“That’s very kind of you,” he said, “but I think I’ll just have the check, please.”
Margie wasn’t having it, whether because of her own guilt still pushing its way in or because something about the man in front of her with the mop of gray hair and the too-big jacket seemed to be crying out for help regardless of what he said. She had to make one last attempt.
“This is on me, sweetie. You hardly touched your food.”
She held up her hand to stop his attempt at a protest. “Now either the food wasn’t to your liking, or—and forgive me if I’m getting too personal, but I’ve been working around people my whole life and I just have to call it like I see it—there’s something troubling you. Something troubling you bad. And, well, I’d just like to do what I can to maybe brighten your day up a bit.”
The man looked at her. He didn’t say a word, but Margie thought she could see some form of concession in his eyes, his whole demeanor. Like whatever weight he’d been carrying had suddenly vanished and he could take a deep breath and relax, if only temporarily.
“So, I’m going to ask you one last time,” she said with a little bit of playful sass, “is there anything else I can get you?”
The man still did not speak, only turned and looked past the tables and booths and out the row of windows at the front of the diner. Margie looked too, seeing only the darkening sky full of gray clouds and Hank Peterson’s ancient pickup truck parked in the same spot it sat in every day. She glanced back at the man and saw he was looking back at her apprehensively, as if he were mulling over what he was about to do. Then he reached a hand into the inside breast pocket of his sport coat.
“I wasn’t going to bother any of you fine people with my own agenda,” he said. “You all have your own troubles to deal with. No sense in burdening you with mine.” He pulled a folded piece of newspaper from the pocket. “I was going to make my way to the sheriff’s office, but … I’ve just been through this so many times …” He trailed off and slowly unfolded the piece of newspaper, flattening it out carefully on the counter, next to his half-eaten cheeseburger.
Margie looked down and saw the clipping was a picture from the sports section of a paper she did not recognize. It was worn with age and constant refolding, the crease lines nearly transparent. The photo was an action shot of a boys’ basketball game. On the left side of the picture, a defender was in midair and had his hands raised high in an attempt to block his opponent’s shot. On the right side of the picture, also in midair, the boy taking the shot was tall and lean and appeared to be unchallenged by the outstretched arms of the defender. He had blond hair and a look of determination on his face that hardened his features.
Margie has seen this boy before. Though he’d been a few years older than he looked in the newspaper photo.
He’d come to Annabelle’s Apron twice, a month or so ago. Had sat at this very counter and eaten her food.
And then she’d never seen him again.
Margie looked up from the photo and met the man’s eyes, which seemed suddenly on the verge of tears again.
“His name is Lance,” the man said. “He’s my son.” Then, through a stifled sob and an attempt to hold back fresh tears, he asked, “Have you seen him?”
The orange-and-white Volkswagen bus was parked a block away from Annabelle’s Apron, on the side of a shopping center parking lot that was mostly hidden from the road and wedged next to a row of dumpsters. The Reverend sat up straight in the passenger seat, his head bowed and his eyes closed. But he wasn’t praying, and he certainly wasn’t sleeping. He was focusing, reaching out with his mind and otherworldly senses and absorbing what there was to be learned from Westhaven.
Something bad had happened here. But … it was better now. He tuned himself into the town and tasted the cool sweetness of … relief? Calmness? He probed deeper, through the layers of newfound happiness and closure and understanding—through the elation that had followed some great victory against … what?
Beneath those layers, like loose change and sandwich crumbs beneath sofa cushions, there still lurked fragments of some evil, some great sorrow, that had plagued Westhaven. Something that had taken root and sunk its teeth into the town and caused unbearable pain and suffering.
The fact that it was gone now, suddenly vanished with only these small traces of its existence left, only further solidified the Reverend’s hunch. They were on the right track.
Movement in the Volkswagen’s side mirror caught his eye, and when he looked into the glass, he saw a gray-haired man who appeared
to be in his fifties, maybe older, wearing a jacket that was at least two sizes too big and walking across the parking lot toward the bus. His shoulders were slumped and his slow and shuffling gait spoke volumes as to his mood. This was a man with little to live for.
The Reverend smiled.
The gray-haired man passed by the Volkswagen without a word and slid behind one of the dumpsters. Less than ten seconds later, the Surfer emerged from the other side of the dumpster wearing his customary board shorts, flip-flops, and a bright orange tank top that reminded the Reverend of a traffic cone. The Surfer pulled his blond hair back into a loose ponytail, stretched his back, arching his body and looking up toward the sky, and then turned and walked back to the bus, opening the driver’s door and sliding inside.
“What happens to your clothes when you do that?” the Reverend asked. “I’ve always wondered.”
The Surfer only leaned his head back against the headrest and stared back at the man with bored apathy. The Reverend could still smell the lingering aroma of grease and strong coffee from the diner on his companion.
The Reverend sighed, rolled his eyes, and then said, “Well?”
The Surfer reached for the key in the ignition and cranked the engine, which choked and whined and then hummed to life.
“You were right.” He put the Volkswagen into reverse. “He was here.”
The Reverend smiled. They were getting closer.
1
The brakes gave off a low squeal and the transmission chugged and shook the bus hard as it downshifted, jerking Lance awake. He sat up at once, snapped out of a surprisingly dreamless sleep. His vision cleared and his heart settled in his chest, and he looked out the window, which was in desperate need of some soap, water, and a squeegee.
The water wasn’t currently the problem. Through the grimy glass, Lance watched the downpour of rain curtain the exterior of the bus station, giving it an out-of-focus, shivering effect. It pummeled the bus’s rooftop with staccato pings that sounded like a load of gravel being dumped. The bus’s wipers worked furiously to keep up, and only when the bus came first to a slow crawl, then a complete stop in front of the station’s doors did the visibility become somewhat passable. The driver, a tall, rail-thin man who unfolded himself from behind the wheel, opened the bus’s doors and stood to face his few passengers. He smiled big and raised his hand in a wave. “Thanks for traveling with me today, folks. I hope you enjoyed the ride, and”—he glanced out the bus’s doors, then back to the group—“I hope you all can make the most of the beautiful weather we’re having.” He offered a small chuckle after this, and when he got nothing in return from the group, he nodded once. “Right,” he said, and he sat back down in his seat and busied himself with a sheet of paper on a clipboard.
Lance Brody Omnibus Page 35