The Long Way Home

by McQuestion, Karen

  Memories came flooding back to Marnie. Brian in the kitchen, lifting lids from pans on the stovetop in anticipation of a good meal. Brian writing checks for charities at Christmastime. Brian reorganizing the garage. None of it benefitted her, but she saw now that even with all his faults, Brian had good qualities. He was a decent man, a reliable guy, and apparently a good-enough dad to Troy. She’d been too busy feeling shortchanged to acknowledge the loss. “I know you miss your dad,” she said. “I’m sorry that you’re having such a hard time, Troy.”

  “I missed you and all my friends too. My mom said I shouldn’t bother you. She said you probably had another job with another family.” His voice quavered. “She thought you were a housekeeper.”

  “I know. There was a misunderstanding.”

  “When you called I was really mad at you.”

  “I could tell.”

  “You didn’t even try to stop my mom from taking me to Las Vegas,” he said. “I kept waiting for you to say something, but you never did. And you could have, if you wanted to.”

  “It wasn’t really up to me,” Marnie said. “But you’re right. I should have tried harder.”

  He drew in a big breath. “I’m not mad at you anymore.”

  “That’s good,” Marnie said. “When we get back, you’ll have to give Matt a call so you guys can get together. What do you think?”

  “Okay.” He shifted and stretched so that his legs pushed against her, but she didn’t object.

  “Get some sleep, Troy. It’s going to be a long drive.”

  On the expressway a few states away, the Crown Vic headed eastward with Glenn at the wheel and Rita next to him, enjoying the view. “It’s so nice to have someone else do the driving,” she said.

  “Does that mean you’re not going to take a turn?” he asked.

  “Oh no, I’ll definitely do my part. It’s just nice not to have to do all of it.”

  “So, are you sorry you went?” Glenn faced forward. The road ahead had his full visual attention, but his hearing, Rita knew, was tuned in for her response.

  “No, I’m not sorry I went, but I’m not sure it accomplished anything.”

  “Was it supposed to? Accomplish something, I mean?”

  “I thought it might.” Rita fiddled with the sun visor, putting it up, then thinking better of it and lowering it again. “At first it was an adventure. I thought I’d help Marnie out in visiting with her stepson. And then it was exciting when the deer surrounded Jazzy at the rest stop. I was so happy to know she got a message from Melinda.” She stole a look in his direction to get his reaction, but his face was still. “I know you’re skeptical, but I could feel her. I was so hopeful that something miraculous would happen. But then the car broke down and it was stressful. And then seeing Davis dredged up all kinds of terrible feelings.” She thought of herself as a peaceful person, but the sight of Davis caused something deep and dark to come to the surface. If she’d had a gun in her hands, she’d have pulled the trigger and killed him right in the parking lot. “All kinds of terrible feelings. I almost think it would have been better if I’d never seen him at all. To know for certain that he’s out there…” She shuddered. “Officer Dietz said she’d have him questioned, but that if he denied knowing anything, there wasn’t much else they could do. Since I haven’t heard anything, I’m assuming that’s what happened.” Just talking about it brought back feelings of sadness. She turned on the radio, looking for a good song, but after a minute of trying and not finding one, she lost interest and shut it off.

  In the silence that followed, Glenn spoke up. “I know you wanted more out of this trip than you got, but from my perspective, I think it’s good you went,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “You do?”

  “Sure,” he said. “It took you out of your comfort zone. You made some new friends and had some new experiences.”

  “Did I ever,” she said, a bit glumly.

  “And it gave you the opportunity to miss me.”

  Rita gave him a smile.

  “And just look how it ended up,” he said, drumming his fingertips against the steering wheel. “Here I am on a weekday afternoon driving with my sweetheart instead of sitting at a desk. Tonight we’ll stop somewhere for a nice dinner, and then we’ll stay at a nice hotel.” He smirked. “And you know I always get lucky at hotels.”

  She laughed. “Well, we’ll see about that.” But there really wasn’t any question about it. He always did get lucky at hotels.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Jazzy decided to take charge of the last leg of the trip. She knew Marnie and Laverne would be rolling into Colorado in the wee hours of the morning, way too late to show up at Mike and Beth’s house. She came up with an alternate plan, but since she knew Marnie would never go for it, all the scheming had to be done through Laverne.

  While the trio was at a rest stop in Utah—Marnie busy in the bathroom, and Troy getting Doritos from a vending machine, Laverne and Jazzy plotted over the phone.

  “Here’s the deal,” Jazzy said. “Rita’s husband flew in earlier today, and the two of them took the car and drove back to Wisconsin. She didn’t abandon us. I told her she should go,” she added, just to clarify. “She really wanted to go home, so I said we’d manage on our own.”

  “So how’re we going to do that?”

  Jazzy could picture the way Laverne’s face scrunched up when she was puzzled. The thought made her smile. “I’m making an executive decision,” Jazzy said. “This is what we’ll do. You meet me at the Marriott hotel near the Denver airport. You can find it using the GPS. We’ll all stay there tonight and fly out tomorrow. I checked and there are flights available. Hopefully they’ll still be available when we’re ready to book them.”

  “So we’re not driving back?”

  Her voice was so incredulous that Jazzy almost laughed out loud. “Nope, we’re flying home. My brother said he can pick us up from the airport.”

  Laverne said, “Well, isn’t that something! I’ve never been on a plane before, you know.”

  “I figured as much.”

  “I don’t know if Marnie is going to go for it though. You know she’s got that thing—that fear of flying.”

  “I know,” Jazzy said. “But it’s going to be fine. Trust me.”

  Several hours later, Jazzy and Carson sat on a couch in the lobby of the Marriott, waiting for the other three to arrive. Jazzy had already booked two rooms and left her suitcase in one of them. Beth and Mike had dropped them off at the hotel; the plan was that Carson would pick up his car from the ladies and say his good-bye from there, but he didn’t seem too eager for that to happen.

  “I can’t believe you’re going back tomorrow,” he said forlornly, resting his arm on the back of the couch behind her shoulders. He was respectful, almost shy, surprising since they’d had a pretty intense make-out session at his parents’ house. But this was the lobby of a Marriott hotel, within earshot and eyesight of the two employees at the front desk and anyone who walked through the front door. So he held back. “I just found you and now you’re leaving.”

  Jazzy felt it too, a kind of magnetic pull that would make it hard for them to be apart. Strange that they’d known each other for such a short period of time and she’d already memorized the angles of his face, the shape of his beautiful ears, the way he could speak volumes with his hands, his lopsided grin. They’d talked for hours, and he’d shared so much about himself, but she wanted to know more. There were stories from childhood right up through college left unsaid. Maybe she’d never know it all, but she’d know more as time went by. She was looking forward to that. “I am going back tomorrow,” she said. “So believe it. I have to get back to work, and I have a few other details to arrange. But don’t worry, we’ll be in touch.”

  Truthfully, Jazzy wanted nothing more than to stay in Colorado for the rest of the summer, but she sensed that she needed to pull back. There would be time for this relationship to unfold. Plenty of time.

&n
bsp; “What kind of details are we talking about?” Carson asked, moving in his lips close to her ear. “Anything involving me?”

  “It might involve you eventually,” Jazzy said, suppressing a smile. “But for now I have to talk to a woman about a job.”

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  At the rest stop, Marnie decided to let Troy stretch and sleep in the backseat, so she moved to the front passenger seat for the duration of the trip. She was dozing when the car finally stopped; the sound of the GPS saying “Arriving at destination” jarred her awake. She’d been under the impression that they were going to return to Beth and Mike’s, so she was startled to see they were in the parking lot of a hotel.

  “Are we there?” Troy asked from his nest in the back.

  “We’re here,” Laverne said brightly, reaching over Marnie’s lap to put the GPS unit in the glove compartment.

  “Where are we?” Marnie said, looking around. “Why are you stopping here?” She twisted her head from side to side while rubbing at a spot on the back of her neck.

  “Change of plan,” Laverne said. “We’re staying in a hotel. Jazzy is meeting us here.”

  Despite Marnie’s questions, Laverne wouldn’t say any more on the subject, instead telling her Jazzy would explain it all. “She’s in the lobby waiting for us,” she said.

  Even though Laverne had done most of the driving, Marnie was exhausted. Walking felt like moving through a whirlpool, and she was sure she looked like hell. A hot shower and a hotel bed might be just the thing.

  Troy perked up considerably, especially since less than twenty-four hours before he’d been languishing on a camp cot. He ran to the hotel entryway to get a luggage cart and helped Laverne empty the trunk. Marnie, meanwhile, stood idly by, wanting to help but feeling like the walking dead.

  The feeling stayed with her even when they met Jazzy and Carson in the lobby and as they made their way up to their adjoining rooms. Jazzy said, “I thought Laverne and I would share one room, and you and Troy would have the other one.”

  When the elevator stopped on their floor, Marnie came out of her mental fog long enough to realize someone was missing. “Where’s Rita?” she asked Jazzy as they pulled their suitcases down the hall with Troy following happily behind. With his large backpack slung over one shoulder and a duffel bag dangling off one arm, he looked like an escapee from a Boy Scout overnight.

  “Yeah, about Rita,” Jazzy said, hedging for just a moment. “She went home.”

  “She went home!” Marnie said. “What do you mean, she went home? With her car?”

  “No need to panic,” Jazzy said, handing her a key card. They’d arrived at their rooms. “Her husband flew here and they did drive the Crown Vic home, but I told them to. I said that we’d figure out another way home.”

  Marnie held the card but made no effort to open the door. “Well, isn’t that wonderful. I can’t believe she left us without a way to get home.”

  “Oh, we’ll get home all right,” Laverne piped up. “Jazzy has a plan, and it’s a doozy.” She spoke to Troy. “I know this isn’t a big deal for you kids today, but this old lady has never been on a plane before and I’m pretty excited about it.”

  “Oh no.” Marnie’s heart was racing just thinking about it. “I don’t fly. I hate flying. I did it one time and it was terrible.”

  Down the hall, a doorway opened and a man stuck his head out. “Could you people keep it down? Some of us are trying to sleep.”

  “Sorry.” Jazzy gave an apologetic wave, then said to Marnie, “Let’s continue this conversation inside.”

  Marnie knew she wasn’t going to feel any less panicky inside the room, but once she was on the other side of the door, she realized there was something comforting about being in a hotel room. After so many hours in the car, the beds and bathroom looked inviting. Laverne made a beeline for the bathroom on her side, while Troy grabbed the remote, claimed a bed, and immediately began flipping through channels. Jazzy took this opportunity to give Marnie the lowdown. Rita was gone, she said, and so was her car. They now had two options: they could rent a car or fly home. “I know you’re afraid,” she said, “but it’s a very short flight and we’re all tired of driving.”

  “I’m tired of driving too. I say we fly,” Troy chimed in, although no one had asked him.

  Jazzy said, “I just checked and there are still openings on flights tomorrow morning. We can be home in no time.”

  “It’s not that I’m afraid,” Marnie said, trying to think of how to explain the enormity of the problem. “If it was just that, I could do it, no problem. It’s that my body goes crazy. Even thinking about it makes me nuts. I know if I get on a flight, I won’t be able to breathe, my heart will start beating out of control, and I’ll get sick to my stomach.” She remembered the one and only time she’d flown. She was a teenager, excited to go on a class trip to Orlando. On the flight there she was fine, but on the way back they’d encountered horrible turbulence, the plane lurching so severely that several of the girls screamed. The pilot came on the speaker to reassure them that everything was fine, and the class chaperone, Mrs. Garneau, had shouted out that this was just like a bus ride going over bumps. The difference being, Marnie had thought at the time, that buses don’t fall out of the sky. The turbulence had gone on for at least half an hour. Despite her best efforts, she’d thrown up into the little bag the airplane provided for that purpose. She was glad to have made it into the bag (and actually proud of herself for having remembered it was in the pocket in the seat in front of her), but it was still horrifying. Worst of all, she had to sit with her bag of vomit until the flight attendant came by fifteen minutes later and took it from her, holding it away from her body like it was a dead rodent. Her classmates talked about the incident for years. As recently as six months ago, a former friend had mentioned it when they bumped into each other at the mall. (Hey, remember when you got sick on the plane ride home from Orlando? That turbulence was killer!) She had vowed she’d never fly again.

  “None of those things will happen this time around,” Jazzy said. “I promise you with complete certainty that you’ll be fine.”

  Marnie said, “I know you’re psychic and you know things, but I also know myself. There’s no way I’m going to be fine.” She cast a longing glance at the empty bed. All she wanted to do was sleep. “Look, I don’t want to debate this with you, Jazzy. If you and Laverne want to fly home, feel free. I’ll figure something out.”

  But Jazzy wasn’t about to let it drop. “Just hear me out, Marnie, just for one more minute, and then I’ll leave you be. We don’t have to decide anything until tomorrow, but would you at least consider it?” Before Marnie could answer she plowed ahead. “You’re making a decision based on how you used to be, but that’s not you anymore!” She was becoming impassioned. “Two weeks ago your index card was blank. You didn’t want to share a day brightener with a bunch of women at the rec center. And now, you’ve driven across the country with three complete strangers, confronted Kimberly, and taken charge of Troy. You’re not the woman I met not that long ago.”

  Marnie sighed. “Your point being?”

  “Look,” Jazzy said. “No one can force you to do something you don’t want to do, but would you at least think about the possibility of flying home?”

  She’d promise anything to finish this conversation so she could wash up, brush her teeth, and crawl between the sheets. “Okay, I’ll think about it,” she said. Jazzy looked triumphant, but Marnie knew they were only words.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  The next morning after a stay in a hotel and a nice breakfast, Glenn and Rita were driving through Iowa when her purse blasted with the sound of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. She pulled the phone out and put it up to her ear. “Hello?”

  It was Judy Dietz on the line. She said, “Rita, I’m afraid I’ve got bad news.”

  Rita listened intently, then answered, “Oh my.” Glenn glanced over as he changed lanes, and she held up one finger to in
dicate he’d know soon enough.

  When Judy was done giving her the news, Rita thanked her for calling and added, “Please let us know if you hear anything else.” After saying good-bye, she rested the phone on her lap for a moment and stared out the window, processing the news. The sight of the Iowa cornfields was soothing in their predictability and sameness.

  “What was that all about?” Glenn finally asked.

  Rita sighed and put the phone back in her purse before answering. “That was Judy Dietz. You remember me telling you about Officer Dietz, the one who’s daughter, Sophie, was living with Davis?”

  “What happened?”

  Rita couldn’t get the words out to tell him the whole story—how Davis had been smooth and confident in his denial of having anything to do with Melinda’s death. How Sophie Dietz had confronted Davis with a copy of the poster once he’d returned to their apartment, and how things had escalated into a big screaming match. And the aftermath—how he had fled, like the coward he was, leaving Sophie heartbroken. Rita would tell Glenn the details later, but for now she simply said, “Davis never admitted to anything, but he took off and they’re not sure where he is right now. He’s just gone.”

  “Really.” Glenn’s voice was even.

  “I guess it’s good that Judy’s daughter is out of danger,” she said, trying to look on the bright side.

  “That’s something, anyway.” But they both knew it wasn’t enough.

  “I’m glad I’m with you,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “Because no one else could understand what I’m feeling right now.”

  “I love you, Rita. We’ll get through this,” he said, which was exactly what she wanted to hear.

  Chapter Fifty

  Marnie was at the airport, her boarding pass in hand, still not entirely sure how it happened that she’d been talked into going on this flight. The night before she’d slept soundly enough, waking in the morning to see Troy in front of the window, one hand holding the curtain aside, the other pressed against the glass. She fumbled for her glasses on the nightstand and put them on, blinking from the light. When her eyes adjusted, she saw he was staring at something down below. “What are you looking at?” she asked, half wondering if he was admiring the mountains.