The Road Home

by Susan Crandall

  The pops sounded farther away. The searing pain in Lily’s leg occupied most of her attention, but she heard Luke yell, “Wait! She’s my sister. I’ll take her.”

  “Put out the fire, then catch up,” Clay called back. Then he yelled, “Peter! Help him!”

  They reached the path, where Peter stood staring at Lily’s bloody leg for a moment before he took off in the opposite direction. The terror she saw in his eyes told her she was in serious trouble. She started to shake.

  Clay kept moving. He murmured softly in her ear, “Take it easy. I’ll get you to a doctor. It’ll stop hurting soon.”

  Lily let her head fall against Clay’s shoulder and pressed her lips together to keep from crying out. Her leg felt like it was on fire. She hadn’t looked at it after he had pulled the rocket out. She was too afraid of what she might see. He had said she was bleeding. She couldn’t tell. It just hurt.

  The trek through the rough woods seemed to take forever. Normally, it took Lily and Luke fifteen minutes to get to The Place. But Clay was moving slowly, his footing sometimes faltering. His breathing sounded like he’d been running a mile. At one point she heard Luke say he’d carry her for a while, but Clay kept moving.

  Then she heard another voice. This one sounded as scared as Lily felt. And that really got her worried—this was a grown-up voice. Lily landed in the back seat of a car. Doors slammed closed. Then they were moving again. A woman with blond hair was driving. She kept asking Clay where Peter was.

  After the fifth time, he nearly shouted, “I don’t know!” Then he added, more quietly, “He’s okay.”

  Clay kept turning around in the front seat and looking at Lily. Luke was in the back next to her, holding a towel against her leg.

  Once they pulled up at the emergency room of Henderson County Hospital, other people crowded around her. She lost track of Luke and Clay and the woman who drove the car.

  Lily felt all floaty, like she was a kite bobbing on the breeze. She heard her dad’s voice, felt his hand on the top of her head.

  “How are you feeling, sweetie?”

  The pain in her leg was still there, but much more dull. She hesitated opening her eyes. Dad was going to be really mad. Right now he was talking to her like he did when she was sick. Once he knew she was better, it was going to hit the fan.

  She opened her eyes. She was in a hospital room.

  Dad smiled.

  That made her more worried. Was she going to be crippled?

  Then he said, “There’s someone here to see you.”

  He stepped away. Lily was surprised when the face that appeared next wasn’t her brother’s, but Clay’s. His eyes moved restlessly back and forth from her leg and her face. Finally, he looked her in the eye.

  He had the most incredible golden brown eyes with a darker brown ring around the irises. Lily almost forgot how much her leg hurt when he looked at her like that. It was as if she were the only person in the world that mattered.

  “I—I’m sorry. We didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt.”

  She shook her head and the room swam for a moment. “You carried me all the way home. You could have run.”

  The startled look in his eyes told her he was shocked she’d even think such a thing.

  She said, “Besides, it was an accident.” She looked around his shoulder to see if her dad was listening. He’d left the room. She said, more quietly, in case Dad was just outside the door, “We shouldn’t have had those rockets in the first place.” She paused. “I suppose Luke’s grounded.” For a moment she almost wished she would be crippled—that way Dad couldn’t be too mad at her.

  Clay smiled. “Let’s just say none of us are going to that spot by the creek anytime soon.”

  It was then that Lily noticed the bandage on his right hand. “You’re hurt?”

  He quickly tucked the hand behind his back. “Just a little burn.”

  The events of that horrible moment began to take on definition in her mind. “The fuse on the rocket burned your hand when you pulled it out of my leg.”

  He looked away. “It’s not bad.”

  “But if you hadn’t pulled it out…” Lily realized that what felt like a vast burning crater in her leg would have been exactly that. With a sense of sickness in her stomach, her close call became crystal clear. “Oh, my gosh, it could have blown my leg completely off!”

  Clay laughed, but it was a nervous laugh that said he was just trying to make her feel better. “Oh, it wasn’t that dramatic. You’re gonna be okay. Don’t think about it anymore.”

  At that moment, looking into his eyes, she decided she could trust Clay Winters with all of her eleven-year-old heart. And Lily Boudreau didn’t give her trust easily.

  Twenty-one years later

  Chapter 1

  For the past twelve years of her marriage, Lily had fought against the cyclone working to tear her world apart. She’d frantically snatched and grabbed the pieces, as the winds whipped and whorled, ripping them away more quickly than she could reassemble them.

  Maybe she shouldn’t have tried so hard. Maybe at sight of the first black thunderhead on the horizon she should have simply thrown her body over her son, covered her head and waited to see where things settled after the storm. Maybe then her ex-husband, Peter, wouldn’t be in alcohol rehab right now. Then the divorce would have been over before Riley was old enough to react with so much antagonistic belligerence and bad behavior. Even if he had, he would have been young enough to control—and it would all be just a distant memory by now.

  Exhausted from the past days’ emotional events and the five-hour drive from Chicago, Lily pulled up in front of the southern Indiana lake cottage and shut off the engine, telling herself she was not running away. She was putting necessary space between Riley and his grandparents, herself and her ex-husband. She was taking the first step toward a new life.

  After a long and bumpy struggle, she and Peter had surrendered the fight for their marriage. And for some inexplicable reason, with the ending of her present, Lily had a sudden, irrepressible urge to review her past. That past was deeply rooted in Glens Crossing, the catalysts for its changing course embedded in this cottage on Forrester Lake.

  She rested her chin on the steering wheel and studied the house. It was still the same forest green with white trim it had been since it was built by Peter’s grandparents. Two tall stories, it had deep, open eaves, multipaned windows and a foundation made of river rock. The lower half of the front porch pillars were river rock, too, topped with square wooden supports that were wider at the base than at the top. A symbol of tradition, of familial stability.

  She hadn’t been back here since she and Peter eloped fourteen years ago. The lake house was Peter’s now, deeded to him by his grandparents on his twenty-fifth birthday. That was one of the few things his parents couldn’t circumvent. Lily had no doubt that Peter’s father would have given his right eye to have prevented that transfer of control.

  Although the ownership was Peter’s, they had never returned here as a family, she, Peter and Riley. It seemed best to let the specters that dwelt on this quiet lake rest undisturbed. The past had caused enough unrest in their lives from three hundred miles away.

  The mere mention of Forrester Lake always brought doubt to Peter’s eyes, a pain born of wondering if Lily would have been his had things unfolded differently. In his most unhappy moments, he always posed the same question: “If Clay walked through the door today, would you leave with him?”

  The question, no matter how often she heard it, no matter how she steeled herself against it, made her heart trip a little faster. Clay had abandoned her, discarded her love with no more thought than he’d give yesterday’s paper. And she hated him for it. But it was an odd sort of hatred, one that fueled angry fires in her soul and flirted with the edges of her heart at the same time. When she thought of him, she wanted to strangle him with her bare hands; she wanted to throw herself into his arms for one more embrace. Both feelings brought sel
f-loathing. She was so weak. Weak enough to have damaged Peter’s life while trying to save her own.

  She had loved Peter, she supposed for nearly as long as she’d been in love with Clay. But it had been a different kind of love, a safer love, than what she’d felt for Clay. Clay set off volcanic upheavals deep in her soul. Peter calmed her spirit, warmed her with security. Clay was passion. Peter was family.

  Throughout their marriage, her reassurances had done nothing to erase Peter’s doubt. It had grown and expanded, becoming the strongest link and, at the same time, the thickest wall between Lily and her husband.

  Now, as she looked at the house, a sense of déjà vu settled over her, draped itself weightlessly about her shoulders, wrapped tightly around her chest and sent far-reaching roots directly to her soul. So easily did the years of adulthood slip away, leaving the heart of a girl exposed and bleeding. A girl who had trusted completely, without reservation—and paid the price.

  What would she have done, if Peter hadn’t been there to pick up the pieces when Clay left?

  And now she was alone, really and truly, alone. There was no one to pick up the pieces except Lily. And she would do it. She had to, for her son.

  The press of tears was strong. But she would no more let them fall now than she did fourteen years ago. Forge ahead. Take care of business. Deal. That’s what had sustained her for most of her life. No sense in ignoring the tried and true at this point.

  She glanced at Riley leaning against the passenger door, asleep. He didn’t stir. His head remained propped on his hand, his dark hair tousled over his closed eyes. The tinny beat from his headphones was the only sound in the car.

  Every time she saw him sleeping, her heart broke. He looked the same as he had when he was three, sweet and open and loving. When he was sleeping, there was no trace of the wary tension and defensive attitude that dominated his waking features.

  He’d been “excused” from the last week of seventh grade for “conduct unbecoming.” That’s what went in the official record. What really happened was Riley’s friend had come to Carrigan Park Prep School with some pills he bought at a party. The exact type of drug had yet to be determined. That’s what frightened Lily the most—he took something without any idea what it was.

  After swallowing the pills, Riley and two friends flushed cherry bombs down three of the toilets in the boys’ bathroom. They’d been too stoned to even have the sense to run. They just sat there in an inch of water, watching the plumbing spew.

  Riley had insisted this was his first experience with drugs. Lily wanted to believe him. She wanted that with all of her heart. There had certainly been no indication of his using prior to this.

  Anyone else might have been expelled from school, but Peter’s parents stepped in and softened the blow—again. Being on the board did have its perks. But this had to stop, before Riley got into something with permanent consequences. When she’d called Peter at the Sheldon Center to tell him about Riley’s latest, they’d agreed the boy needed to be away from his current environment, at least for a little while. He’d urged her to use the cottage. As her options were currently limited by expediency and a tight budget, she’d agreed. Although Peter came from a wealthy family, their own financial situation ranged in the comfortable middle class—and with the dissolution of the marriage, the money had been spread thin.

  Reluctantly, she shook Riley awake, got out of the car and climbed onto the front porch. As she put the key in the front door lock, Lily thought she heard a shout from the lake. She jerked her gaze in that direction and saw the empty water glinting in the late afternoon sun. It had been Clay’s voice, calling from a distant memory. The four of them, Peter, Clay, Luke and Lily, had raced from the shore to the diving island nearly every day. Clay always reached the dock first, pulled himself out of the water and urged Lily on. The day she actually beat the other two boys Clay had grabbed her against his wet chest and twirled them in a circle.

  The old sadness and anger mingled in her heart as she thought of it. Maybe reviewing the past was going to be more difficult than she’d anticipated.

  “Mom?” Riley’s voice made her jump. He was right behind her, weighted down with his duffel and backpack. “We going in, or what?”

  She didn’t look at him, afraid he’d see how shaken she was. Throwing open the door, she tried to sound cheerful. “Here we are.” She didn’t want him to view this trip as punishment, exactly, but as an opportunity, a chance to start over. She’d lectured for the first hour of their trip south, trying to drive home the fact that he was being given a chance that few in his situation were allowed. He seemed to listen, nodding his head in agreement, but Lily thought it was entirely for her benefit. Riley didn’t have a clue.

  In her hastily thrown together plan, she had decided not to see anyone until tomorrow. She needed a few hours to mentally adjust. Once word of her return was out, she would be bombarded with a thousand questions, most from people who felt they had a right to details of her life just because she’d been born in this town.

  So she stuck to her plan, stowing away the feeling that she was sneaking into town like a thief. Once the car was emptied, she went about settling into the cottage. She turned on the water, uncovered furniture, washed linens, chased cobwebs and nagged Riley to unpack his duffel.

  The sun set and the night turned chilly. She was tempted to have Riley bring in some firewood from the rack beside the boathouse. Even though the cottage was seldom used, there had always been a handyman to keep the grass cut, the windows clean and the firewood stocked—Peter wouldn’t think of breaking such a tradition. For years she’d worried over the unnecessary expense. Now she was grateful. But who knew how long it had been since the huge rock fireplace had been used? It wouldn’t do at all to call Peter and tell him she’d burned down the family cottage. She passed on the fire.

  Before they’d left Chicago, she’d packed a cooler and enough groceries to get them through the first night. After a makeshift meal of summer sausage, cheese, crackers, fruit and almost a full bag of Oreos—which Riley still twisted apart and ate the center of first—they sat on the leather club sofa in the living room. Through his earphones, Riley immersed himself in a hard-core CD, all driving metal and screaming voices. Lily stared into space, wondering exactly where she was going to go from here.

  The decision to leave Chicago had been easy. Riley couldn’t go on thinking his grandparents could undo his missteps. Talking to Peter’s parents rarely availed anything beyond empty promises to be less meddling. Something had to be done before Riley took a step that couldn’t be undone. She hoped a full summer with the stability of her own father’s loving discipline would set a good paternal example. But after that? Her future was a blank slate. The only thing she knew for certain was that she had no intention of settling here permanently—not in a town that knew each and every bone of the skeleton in a person’s closet.

  She sighed and told herself to take one day at a time, she had three whole months to figure out what was to come next. If she was careful, she had enough money to make it through until fall. Then she would have to land somewhere permanently and find a job. She had no idea what job that would be. She had no marketable skills. During her marriage to Peter, she’d spent her spare hours on her hobby, pottery. She’d taught several ceramics classes at the community center in the inner city, but that hardly counted as work experience.

  She glanced at Riley. Where they ended up depended a great deal upon how he managed himself over the summer. She didn’t really think that returning to the same private school in Chicago would be the answer. He needed to live in a world where everyone was accountable for their actions. A lesson that had taken Peter thirty-four years to begin to learn. Not that Peter was a bad person. He just couldn’t face the things he perceived as failures. And those failures had piled up until they tumbled him like an avalanche. The final snowflake that set his most recent decline into motion came from errors in judgment that cost his company—his father’s
company—a fortune. Of course, his father’s reaction hadn’t been much help. Publicly he’d defended Peter and the company position. Privately he’d made sure his son knew exactly where the finger of blame was pointing.

  Lily finally lifted Riley’s earphones and slid them off his head. The angry, powerful beat of the music became louder in the silent room. “Why don’t you go upstairs and pick out a bedroom?” She raised her voice over the music.

  His hazel eyes narrowed and he gave her a sidelong look. “Doesn’t matter.” He started to put the headphones back on.

  She interrupted the action by putting her hand on his head and brushing back his hair. He pulled away, as she knew he would. Sometimes it was hard for her to realize the distance that had grown between them over the past year. “You might want your dad’s old room.” She waited for some reaction. She didn’t get one. “Or the guest room—it gets lots of morning sun.”

  “I don’t care,” he said through tight lips, nipping the words into a staccato beat. Then he seemed to back off just a bit and said more softly, “You pick.”

  It was moments like this, when he showed her that he knew he was being a prick and actually tried to make amends for it, that let her know he wasn’t yet lost.

  “Okay,” she said, “I’ll put the sheets on in Dad’s old room. It’s the one to the left at the top of the stairs.” It seemed odd that a place that had been so familiar to both her and Peter was totally alien to their son.

  Riley actually managed a half-smile. “All right.”

  Lily picked up the sheets from the dining room table and started for the stairs, uneasy with the knowledge that she was sharing the house with a child who was quickly becoming a stranger. Where had her happy little boy gone? The one who picked wild violets and dandelions and delivered them with the eagerness and pride befitting two dozen white roses. The apple-cheeked child who’d broken her heart when he made her cinnamon toast and brought it to her in bed when she had the flu.