Ransom River

by Meg Gardiner

  She shut off the engine and sat gripping the wheel. Why did she let them get to her? And what had Riss done?

  She got out of the car. Pacing, she pulled her phone from her pocket and went online.

  Seth ended his call and climbed out of the pickup, his face full of concern. “Rory?”

  “I made a mistake,” she said.

  She searched for Aurora Mackenzie and juror. It took her ten seconds to find it: a post on a gossip zine.

  MIRKOVIC TRIAL JUROR HAS TROUBLED PAST.

  Seth approached. She shoved the phone into his hands to keep from hurling it through the windshield of her car. Immediately she grabbed it back and read.

  Rumors are swirling about Aurora Mackenzie, one of the jurors taken hostage in the attack on the Ransom River courthouse. The former star athlete has drawn praise for signaling the authorities during the attack, about conditions inside the besieged courtroom. But when she was sixteen, Mackenzie was besieged by rumors serious enough to cause high school officials to withdraw an award she was slated to receive.

  “Jesus, this?” she said.

  Seth leaned in to read over her shoulder. “The sports awards ceremony? What the hell.”

  It happened her junior year. That season she won every dual meet, won the conference, won CIF. She went to State for the first time, broke 18:30 and finished in the top twenty. Afterward she fell to her knees, arm around the girl she outkicked to the chute, and puked on the grass. It was the best moment she’d ever lived.

  She was going to be named Ransom River’s Athlete of the Year. At the ceremony, the cafeteria was packed. Rory had on her girly dress, coral chiffon with spaghetti straps and sequins. The cheerleaders were up front, dancing. Then the vice principal approached with the cross-country coach and said, “Miss Mackenzie, we have a problem.”

  When she followed them outside, Coach took out a cell phone. “I was forwarded this text message half an hour ago. The teacher who sent it to me got it from two girls in her history class. They said it came from you.”

  On the display a message read, OMG. EPT pos. Can’t deal. R.

  Rory said, “I don’t understand.”

  The vice principal said, “You shouldn’t have sent that message. It’s been forwarded to half the girls in your class.”

  “But I didn’t send it. What…”

  EPT pos.

  The warm hum in her chest turned to a sharp ping, like the flat line on a cardiac monitor. They thought she was pregnant.

  “It’s not true,” she said.

  Coach said, “Do your parents know?”

  Things deteriorated from there. Rory insisted she didn’t send the text. She wasn’t pregnant. Somebody had faked the message to start a rumor about her. Coach looked disappointed. The vice principal finally shut down the argument, saying, “When you joined the cross-country team you signed the honor code. You swore not to bring the school into disrepute. Given this situation, we feel it would be inappropriate for you to receive Athlete of the Year.”

  All the heat leached from Rory’s body. She clamped things down and walked back into the cafeteria, into a blur of stares and whispers. She took her seat and clenched her coral chiffon skirt in her pale fists. She sat like clay while Athlete of the Year was awarded to Ransom River’s star tight end, Boone Mackenzie.

  Afterward, Riss ran squealing across the cafeteria, pom-poms raised, and threw her arms around Boone’s neck. As Boone spun her around, she spied Rory. Her gaze was eager: searching for pain, for lash marks. She looked triumphant.

  Now Seth covered Rory’s phone with his hand. “This is bullshit.”

  “Riss warned me something would happen if I didn’t play ball with her.”

  “It’s crap-ass gossip.”

  Mackenzie was stripped of the Athlete of the Year Award, Ransom River High School’s highest accolade, because of an honor-code violation. Sources familiar with the incident say rumors of sexual misconduct were rife, and that Mackenzie’s affair and pregnancy were common knowledge on campus at the time. However, Mackenzie continued to train and compete, and four months after the incident she won the state cross-country title. The cross-country coach left the high school soon after.

  “Well, isn’t that peachy.” Rory leaned back against the car. “They’re implying I had an affair with Coach and then had an abortion. Ain’t that just a pie full of turds with whipped cream on top.”

  “Especially considering Coach DiMezza was a woman.”

  She tried and failed to laugh. She rubbed her forehead. “The cops will eat this up. Honor-code violation. Scandal. It’s fuel for their theory that I’m a rotten apple.”

  “It’s a hit piece, but the truth’s in there. You won State the next season. You had your vengeance.”

  And Boone got kicked off the football team for punching a coach.

  Seth looked at her warily. “You okay?”

  “You can stop asking me that every ten seconds.”

  He raised his hands in surrender. “Tell me what happened at Amber’s.”

  She exhaled. “Riss and Boone are creepier than ever.” She glanced around the side of the neighbor’s Winnebago. From this angle she could see down the hill to Amber’s kitchen window.

  “You texted me,” she said.

  “Got a lead on the people in prison for the heist.”

  “You didn’t see Riss and Boone drive up?”

  “I did. They didn’t see me.”

  “Good. They know I’m on to something.”

  She saw movement inside the kitchen window. And she stopped, dead.

  Her cousins stood by the counter, talking, close together. Too close.

  Seth turned to follow her gaze. He went still.

  Riss and Boone weren’t touching, but they looked hungry. They stood inches apart, conspiratorial, intimate, like a single organism. Symbiotic. They were talking in low, staccato bursts.

  Boone put a hand on Riss’s waist. Riss, lips moving, pressed against him. Her left hand slid around his back. Her right pressed flat to his chest. She spoke. He watched her face, as though being hypnotized, or receiving a dark blessing.

  Riss tossed her hair. He nodded. Then he grabbed her around the haunches and lifted her onto the kitchen counter. He clutched her with both arms and pushed her hair back from her cheek and buried his face against her neck.

  “Oh my God,” Rory said.

  39

  Rory found her parents at their acreage. Her dad had converted the shed into a man cave, a workshop and second garage built around the sacred, tarp-covered red El Camino. The big door was half-open.

  “Mom? Dad?”

  The late afternoon sun was heavy orange and losing heat. Her mom was digging in the garden beside the shed. She stood up and took off her gardening gloves. Her smile evaporated.

  “What is it?” she said.

  “Everything.”

  Sam’s face drew in on itself. As at all moments of tension, her drawl lengthened. “Is it the courthouse attack?”

  “And everything else. Please. Both of you.” She called: “Dad, come here.”

  Will Mackenzie came out of the workshop with his phone in his hand. “Honey, you’re pale.”

  “We have to talk.”

  “I know.” He held up the phone. “That was your aunt Amber.”

  Rory dug her nails into her palms. “What did she say? I don’t know how she’s spinning this, but it’s bound to be full of lies.”

  “Really? You haven’t spent the entire day joined at the hip to Seth Colder?”

  He looked hurt and betrayed. She said, “Dad—”

  “Aurora. Don’t deflect.” His face had reddened. “Why?”

  “I’m not here to talk about Seth, and if you—”

  “Rory, no.” Her mom put a hand over her mouth. “I thought you were over him. This…oh, Rory.”

  Will Mackenzie slowly drew himself up. “Why is he here?”

  “Stop. Please.” Rory put up her hands. “This is not about Seth. It’s s
omething much worse.”

  Samantha shook her head. She looked on the verge of panic. “Honey, if your head was clear, you’d see that not much is worse than hanging out with Seth.”

  Rory felt heartsick. Their resentment and anger at Seth had seemed reasonable at the time of the accident, in the heat of the moment—no parent wanted to see a child lying injured in a hospital bed. Seth had provided an easy target for their fear and frustration. But this was off the scale.

  She walked inside the shed, went to the workbench, and turned off the small television her dad kept tuned to ESPN. Her parents followed her in, looking baffled and wary. She paced.

  “Riss and Boone,” she said. “There’s something wrong with them.”

  Will drew a breath. Sam went perfectly still.

  Rory stopped and looked back and forth between her parents. “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

  “No,” her dad said.

  “They’re sick. And they’re involved in something very bad.” She clenched her hands close to her sides. “I don’t even know where to start.”

  Sam’s face was tight and pained. “You look like you’re going to cry, honey. Just start wherever.”

  “This is going to sound awful,” Rory said. “But it’s important. Please, just listen. Don’t say anything until I finish.”

  Will stood in the doorway of the shed, the evening light catching him from behind. He looked like a soldier about to throw himself on a grenade to muffle an explosion.

  “Boone and Riss are involved with each other. Romantically.”

  That was the wrong word, but one that might lessen the blow. Her parents didn’t react. They looked like abandoned puppets.

  “I think they’re in love with each other,” Rory said. “Or as much as they can be. They have a relationship that passes for love, in any case.”

  “Stop,” Will said.

  “No, Dad. You have to listen to me.”

  “Where is this coming from?”

  “From what I saw today.”

  “What you saw? What were they doing?”

  “They were embracing. And not like brother and sister.”

  “They aren’t brother and sister,” Sam said.

  Rory looked sharply at her. “You’re not surprised. Are you? You don’t doubt me.”

  Will turned and looked out the door at the countryside, as though he could disconnect from the conversation.

  “Dad, don’t,” Rory said. “This is real.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “You have to.”

  “Why are you bringing this up now? Don’t you have enough to worry about?”

  “Because it’s all connected.”

  That brought his head around.

  “They’re not brother and sister. I know we all treat them that way, but they aren’t related. They grew up under the same roof, but they’re from completely separate families. Riss doesn’t even call Amber ‘Mom’ anymore,” Rory said.

  That got her dad to relax, maybe a millimeter.

  “Riss’s connection is with Boone. And it’s far closer than friends or cousins or siblings.” When her parents didn’t look at her, Rory added, “You’d recognize it. They see themselves as two against the world. They always have.”

  Sadly, slowly, Will nodded.

  Sam said, “There’s nothing we can do about them. And”—she rubbed a hand across her eyes—“there’s nothing we should do.”

  “Sam,” Will said.

  “It’s not illegal. It’s sick. It’s sick because they’re sick. I’m not talking sexually. I mean they are difficult and troubled people. You know it, Will. You’ve always known it.”

  Rory said, “This has been building up for a long time.”

  Her nerves tightened. And then, as if bursting from deep water into the air, she realized: Don’t be afraid. She had done nothing wrong. How many times had she coaxed refugees to speak up, to tell the truth at an asylum hearing? She had told them it would be empowering.

  Believe your own truth, she told herself.

  “When I was twelve, Boone tried to undress me and fool around.”

  Sam went rigid. “What?”

  “At our barbecue, over Memorial Day.”

  Sam’s mouth opened. Will turned toward Rory at last. His face closed with anger.

  Rory spoke slowly, forcing herself to tell the story in clear and dispassionate detail. She didn’t spare anything. She told them how she and Seth had hopped the fence near the storm drain. Sam didn’t roll her eyes and Will didn’t reprimand her. And what had she expected, disappointment over a minor bit of mischief when she was in seventh grade?

  Yes. The perfect daughter had never thought it possible to show scrapes and scuffs or admit anything less than one hundred percent sunshine all the time.

  “You haven’t heard the worst of it,” she said.

  Will sat down on an old secondhand sofa. He said nothing.

  “When I found Boone in my room, I thought he was alone. But Riss was hiding in the closet. Watching.”

  “Dear God,” Sam said.

  “She just stood there, absolutely silent, until I backed up and saw her.”

  “Boone didn’t…”

  “No. He didn’t touch me.” The memory still made her skin shrink. The closeness of his face, his smell of sweat. “One of your friends knocked on the door. That ended it.”

  She saw the relief on Will’s face. She said, “Except for what Riss did next.”

  She told them about Riss threatening Pepper. The little dog had been like the fourth Mackenzie, for years—a stalwart and kooky presence. The idea of Riss wanting to hurt him seemed to cut her mother deeply. Will’s face went the color of cornmeal.

  “They’re dangerous,” Sam said.

  “Riss has been threatening me again. And Boone’s been following me,” Rory said.

  “Christ,” Will said.

  “Why?” Sam said.

  For a second Rory held back. Her suspicion was inchoate, almost ghostly. But it was growing: that her cousins knew about the heist. They knew their dad may have been involved. They’d grown up hearing the lore of the missing millions. They must have.

  “Because they’ve realized I think they’re involved in what happened at the courthouse yesterday,” Rory said.

  Instead of profanity, her parents reacted with silence.

  “I told you that I thought the gunmen had an ulterior motive. That they were working with somebody or some group on the outside.”

  Sam said, “Boone and Riss? That’s…”

  “Preposterous,” Will said.

  Rory said, “I don’t think so.”

  She waited a beat. When her parents stopped squirming, she said, “It’s about Uncle Lee. And the armored car heist.”

  If the silence in the shed had felt heavy before, now it seemed electric.

  “That’s why I went with Seth today to talk to his dad. That’s what I’ve been checking into,” Rory said.

  Shock and alarm crackled from her parents. Will looked stunned. Sam looked faint. She joined Will on the sofa. Rory took her hand. It was cold.

  “I’m convinced the gunmen were after me,” Rory said. “But on its own it makes no sense. The heist is the only thing that does. The only damned thing.”

  Her parents said nothing.

  “So tell me. Tell me the truth, straight up. Is it possible that Uncle Lee stole the money?”

  The words hung in the air.

  “The night of the meteor shower when I was nine. That van, and the drunk in the street—was it Lee?”

  Her dad stood and walked to the shrouded El Camino. He put his hands on the hood and leaned on his arms and stared blankly out the shed door at the oaks shuddering in the evening breeze.

  After a long silence, Sam said, “Tell her.”

  For a painful few seconds, Will didn’t move. Then he walked to the workbench and sat down on a stool.

  Rory held still. “Dad.�
�

  Finally he looked at her. “Lee had lots of trouble with the law. But he never did anything violent or dangerous. Not that I ever knew of. He was always just falling for get-rich-quick schemes, and believing the wrong people, and…”

  Sam sat up straighter. For a moment Rory thought this was news to her mom, that she didn’t know what Will was revealing. Then Rory realized that was impossible. Her parents were too close. And they’d lived the last thirty years together. Sam knew.

  Rory felt a weight in her chest. How had her parents found out? Had they figured it out after Lee disappeared? Had the difficult truth slowly sunk in over the years? When Lee had been writing Rory postcards, had he been letting her parents in on the secret?

  Will paused. As if summoning an effort to overcome decades of pain and inertia and shame, he said, “That night. It was late. Dark.”

  Rory’s breathing caught.

  “Lee showed up here. After the robbery. He wanted help.” He paused and looked at her with despair. “And I gave it to him.”

  40

  “Lee turned up at the kitchen door. Middle of the night. He pounded on the kitchen window. He woke me up. And when I let him in, I saw him…”

  The pain on her dad’s face was seemingly fresh, as though Lee were in the kitchen, not twenty years’ gone.

  “He was injured and desperate,” Will said.

  “Injured?” Rory said.

  “He’d been wounded in the getaway.”

  Rory could hardly inhale. “He was the getaway driver?”

  Will looked at her with kindness and gentle regret, as though he hated to prick the bubble she lived in. “I don’t know. I wasn’t privy to their plans.”

  She flushed.

  “I just know that once the armored car guards started shooting, it all went to hell. And when it ended, Lee was the only one still standing. He managed to get back in their vehicle and drive away.”

  “And he came here? To the house—to you?” Rory said.

  Will nodded. Sam shifted.