Down the Darkest Road

by Tami Hoag

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “It’s a long story,” Wendy said, “but Tommy’s dad went to prison.”

  “That has to be tough on your friend.”

  “I suppose so. But his mother took him and left town, and no one ever heard from them again. Nobody knows where they went,” she said. “I always thought I would hear from him, you know, like a postcard or a phone call or something, but I never have.”

  She looked over at Leah. Her eyes were bright blue like cornflowers. “You must wonder about your sister all the time.”

  “Yeah,” Leah said, though that wasn’t exactly true.

  Most of the time she tried hard not to think about Leslie. It was too painful. It was too upsetting to imagine what might have happened to her sister or what was happening to her even now. Those thoughts came to her often enough in dreams and nightmares.

  Sometimes she imagined the worst, that the man who had taken Leslie had done terrible things to her, then killed her and dumped her body someplace to rot. Sometimes she imagined her sister was living an exciting life in some exciting place, and that she had amnesia, and that was why they hadn’t heard from her in all these years.

  People got amnesia all the time on the soap operas.

  It probably didn’t happen in real life, though. In fact, her mother had told her in no uncertain terms that it didn’t happen, and that it hadn’t happened to Leslie.

  A horse whinnied in the distance and the horses the girls were riding picked their heads up higher and pricked their ears. The ranch was just below them, a quarter of a mile or so by the trail. Their ride was almost done.

  “Do you think a lot about finding the dead woman?” Leah asked. “Like, do you have nightmares and stuff?”

  “Sometimes. Do you?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “You should meet Anne,” Wendy said.

  “Who’s Anne?”

  “Anne Leone. She was my fifth-grade teacher, but now she does counseling and stuff. Anne’s cool. Tommy’s dad tried to kill her, but she got away. She knows what it’s like to go through sick stuff like that. And she really listens.

  “She’s picking me up today,” Wendy said. “I’ll introduce you.”

  “Why is she picking you up?”

  “I babysit for her. It’s date night for Anne and Vince. They’re the coolest couple.”

  They rode into the stable yard, greeted by half a dozen dogs of different sizes, shapes, and colors, a mixed family of Jack Russell terriers, Welsh corgis, and Australian cattle dogs, all happily wagging their tails and announcing the arrival of the riders.

  The Gracida ranch wasn’t fancy by any means. The stables were simple, clean, and open, two different U-shaped stucco buildings set around a courtyard with a fountain in the center. The horses’ stalls looked out on the courtyard. One of the barns housed Maria’s horses and the clients’ horses. The other housed Felix’s polo ponies.

  Wendy hopped down off Professor and handed his reins to one of the grooms, flashing him a sunny smile. Leah dismounted and led Jump Up to a grooming stall to see to the mare’s care herself.

  Leslie would have been the Lawton sister tossing the reins with a smile. She had always been in the spotlight. She was a dancer. She was a singer. She was an actress. Leslie had been the star of everything. She couldn’t just sing in the choir; she had to be the soloist. She couldn’t just try out for the school play; she had to be the leading lady. It wasn’t enough for Leslie to ride; she had to play polo like Daddy.

  Leah was happier caring for the horses and quietly studying dressage for the satisfaction of doing it well, not to ride in the show ring. She was content to sing in the chorus, to have a nonspeaking role in the class play. Life was calmer that way.

  She removed the mare’s tack and arranged it on the saddle rack to clean, then removed the protective boots from the horse’s legs and put them in the laundry basket to be washed. She took the mare back to her stall to have a pee and get a drink before going to the wash rack for a rinse off.

  The barn was getting busy as clients arrived, having just gotten off work. Maria had a lesson going in the dressage ring. Another client was warming up her horse on the wide track that bordered the polo field. Felix and a couple other players rode casually up and down the field, working their ponies with a little stick-and-ball practice.

  Leah loved this time of day at the ranch, the late afternoon, when the sun was beginning to slip over the purple hills and take its baking heat with it. In another hour or two the cooler ocean air would find its way to the valleys. Then the clients would be gone and the horses would settle in for their dinner and a quiet evening munching hay.

  That was really Leah’s most favorite time of day in the barn, when the horses far outnumbered the people, though her mother rarely let her stay that late. One of the reasons she was allowed to work at the Gracidas’ at all was the fact that there were people around all day to keep an eye on her.

  Not that her mother worried about her getting into trouble. She worried about trouble finding Leah. As trouble had found Leslie.

  That was one of the many things that sucked about what had happened to Leslie. Leah had become a prisoner because of it. She could go nowhere alone. She wasn’t allowed to ride her bike by herself into town—or even up and down Old Mission Road, where they lived. In fact, she especially couldn’t do that because the road was kind of isolated and the houses were hidden. If someone tried to grab her off her bike, there might be no witnesses to see it happen.

  Nor was she allowed to stay home alone, which, at fifteen—almost sixteen—was nothing short of embarrassing. Most girls her age were babysitting to earn spending money, not being looked after by their own babysitters. But most girls her age didn’t have a sister who had been kidnapped.

  “Hey, Leah!” Wendy called.

  While Leah had seen to Jump Up, Wendy had gone into the lounge and changed out of her riding clothes to a pair of khaki shorts and a purple polo shirt with the collar turned up. She walked hand in hand with a dark-haired little girl maybe eight years old, and side by side with a pretty, dark-haired woman carrying a toddler.

  Leah latched the stall door and dusted her hands off on her britches.

  “This is my friend Anne,” Wendy said. “And Haley and Antony.”

  At the mention of his name, the toddler grinned and waved. His hair was a thick, tousled mass of black ringlets.

  Leah managed a shy hello.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Leah,” Anne said. “Wendy tells me you’re new to the area.”

  “My mom and I just moved here about a month ago.”

  “From where?”

  “Santa Barbara.”

  “Have you had a chance to meet many people?”

  “Not really.”

  “Not at all,” Wendy said. “All you do is work here and go home.”

  “Would you like to join us for pizza tonight?” Anne asked. “My date is standing me up. He got called to a case. He’s on his way to Phoenix.”

  “Vince used to work for the FBI,” Wendy explained. “Now he’s like this rock star profiler. He goes all over the world.”

  “Wow,” Leah said as her mother’s black BMW rolled into the yard.

  “You should come with us,” Wendy said.

  “It’s just us girls,” Anne started to say.

  “Me too, Mommy!” the little boy piped in.

  “And Antony,” his mother added.

  “I’m all boy!” he announced.

  His mother smiled at him and kissed his curly head. “You certainly are.”

  The boy grinned. “Pizza! Pizza!”

  Haley, the dark-eyed little girl, looked up at Leah. “Do you ride horses too?”

  “Yes.”

  “I got to ride a pony for my birthday.”

  “Come with us,” Wendy insisted.

  Leah gave a little shrug. “My mom’s here to pick me up.”

  “She should come too.”

  Leah sa
id nothing. Wendy didn’t know her mother.

  Lauren Lawton slowed her step as she neared, looking suspicious to find her daughter with a group of strangers, like maybe she was walking into an ambush or something.

  She hadn’t always been that way. Leah could remember when her mother had been happy and social. Her parents had entertained all the time, had gone out with friends. She remembered the two of them laughing all the time, always happy. But those memories were so old, sometimes she wondered if she hadn’t made them up.

  “Hi, Mom,” Leah said as her mother reluctantly joined the group. “This is my friend Wendy. She rides with Maria Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

  Wendy gave a little wave. “Hi, Mrs. Lawton.”

  Anne offered a warm smile and reached a hand out. “I’m Anne Leone. Welcome to Oak Knoll. Leah says you just moved here.”

  “Yes,” she said, meeting Anne Leone’s hand with hers for the briefest handshake. “Lauren Lawton.”

  She turned to Leah. “Are you about ready to go?”

  “I have to put this tack away,” Leah said, turning to tend to the task.

  “I just invited Leah to join us for pizza tonight,” Anne said. “My husband is out of town. Wendy is joining us. Would you like to join us?”

  Leah watched her mother out of the corner of her eye. She expected her to say no, thank you, but Lauren seemed a little taken aback at the offer.

  “If you don’t have plans,” Anne Leone said to fill the silence. She set her squirming son down and he immediately dashed after a barn cat.

  “Can we, Mom?” Leah asked, slipping Jump Up’s bridle over her shoulder. “We need to find a good pizza place.”

  “Marco’s is the best,” Wendy said. “They have every kind of topping, like sun-dried tomatoes and artichokes and broccoli—”

  “Broccoli is gross,” Haley Leone declared, making a face.

  “Can we, Mom?” Leah asked again.

  It wasn’t like her to press an issue knowing her mother was against it—and certainly she was. Leah couldn’t remember the last time they’d done anything fun with other people. It was like they weren’t supposed to be allowed to have fun or to have friends because of what had happened to Leslie. It wasn’t fair.

  Her mother frowned a little. “But you would have to clean up and change clothes and—”

  “I can clean up in the lounge,” Leah said, pulling the saddle off the rack.

  “I have an extra top with me,” Wendy piped in.

  Everyone looked expectantly at Leah’s mother.

  “Well . . . I didn’t manage to get to the market today anyway,” she said, caving in without a fight. Leah didn’t take time to question her good fortune. She headed to the tack room with the saddle and bridle, Wendy hot on her heels.

  5

  “I can’t believe I said yes to this,” Lauren muttered.

  “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” Leah said, sulky. “I could just go with them.”

  Lauren glanced over at her daughter in the passenger’s seat. “I’m supposed to send you off with people I have never met before just now, people I know nothing about?” she said with an unmistakable edge of anger in her voice.

  “Anne’s husband used to work for the FBI.”

  “Forgive me if that doesn’t impress me,” Lauren said, staring at the back of Anne Leone’s minivan as they made their way back to town. She paid no attention to the scenery—the horse farms, the lavender farm, the roadside vegetable stand that also sold miniature bonsai trees.

  “Do you know how many FBI agents I’ve dealt with in the last four years?” she asked. “Did any of them bring your sister home? Did they do one thing to put Roland Ballencoa behind bars?”

  Leah didn’t answer. She looked down at her hands in her lap. Finally she said, “You should have just said no.”

  “You don’t want to go now?”

  “I want to go.”

  “You don’t want me to go.”

  “Not if you’re just going to be pissed off the whole time.”

  Lauren sighed. What was she supposed to say? Was she supposed to tell her daughter that she was on edge because she had imagined she’d seen Roland Ballencoa in Pavilions today? Or that she’d lost her mind and rammed her shopping cart into a total stranger? That she’d chased Ballencoa through the streets of Oak Knoll, or that she’d been pulled over by a cop who probably should have taken her driver’s license away from her?

  None of those seemed like good choices or information she should share with her fifteen-year-old. As a single parent she thought she should try to present some semblance of sanity to her child, to give her some sense of stability. She wanted those same things for herself. Maybe pretending to be normal would help toward that end, even if the idea of dinner with other people was the last thing she really wanted.

  Think of your daughter, Lauren. She deserves a normal life.

  “I promise not to embarrass you,” she said at last.

  From the corner of her eye she could see that Leah was neither convinced nor happy, and it made her feel guilty on top of all the other shitty emotions she was drowning in.

  “I’m glad you’re making a friend in Wendy,” she said. “She seems like a nice girl.”

  What she actually wanted to say was, Who the hell is Wendy Morgan, who are her parents, what’s their story? And on the heels of that, she hoped to God they served alcohol at this pizza parlor.

  “She is,” Leah said.

  “Will she be in your classes at school?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “She’s younger than me.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  Still looking at her lap, Leah barely lifted one slender shoulder to shrug. She was tall, like her father, and willowy, with legs that went on forever. The boys of Oak Knoll were going to follow her around like puppies—not that Leah would enjoy that. She was almost painfully shy—so unlike her older sister. By fifteen, Leslie had already mastered the art of tying boys around her little finger and dancing them around like puppets.

  “Are you going to pout all through dinner?” Lauren asked. “Because that will be almost as pleasant as me being pissed off. Maybe we could do both and really make a good impression on people we’ve never met before.”

  No bite from the sullen teenager.

  If only I hadn’t lost my mind in the supermarket, Lauren thought. She would have purchased the poached salmon and the orzo salad, and she would have had a valid excuse to say no to dinner out. They could be on their way home right now, and she would be free to spend the evening fretting and obsessing.

  She followed Anne Leone’s minivan into the parking lot of the same shopping center as the Pavilions store that had been the scene of her first crime of the day.

  Great. If she was really lucky, the people who worked the afternoon shift at the supermarket moonlighted at the pizza place. She could only hope she had run into the ladies’ room so quickly they hadn’t gotten a good look at her earlier in the day.

  And then she could cap off the evening by seeing Ballencoa eating a calzone across the room.

  She took a slightly shaky deep breath as she got out of the car and followed her daughter to the restaurant.

  Leah and Wendy went in with the Leone children and headed straight for the kids’ playroom on the far side of Marco’s, where half a dozen other children were enjoying the jungle gym and the coin-operated rides. Lauren watched them go, wishing she could follow, dreading that she was now left alone with someone she would have to explain herself to.

  The restaurant smelled like an Italian heaven. Tomato sauce and oregano. The décor was exposed brick, red leatherette booths, and long family-style tables set across a field of dark green tile. A Dodgers game was playing on several big-screen televisions stationed around the main room.

  The place was busy and noisy. Lauren scanned the faces. No Ballencoa. This was the first place in town she hadn’t imagined seeing him today. Maybe her spell of
crazy was wearing off.

  “So what do you do for a living, Lauren?” Anne Leone asked as they claimed a large corner booth.

  “I’m an interior decorator.”

  “That’s great. Will you be opening a shop here in town?”

  “No,” she said, then realized the rules of conversation dictated that she offer a little more than a monosyllable. “I’m taking some time off.”

  “Giving yourself some time to settle in. That’s nice. This is such a great place to enjoy the summer. We’ve got the music festival coming up, and the art fair in the fall. Although I guess it’s hard to beat Santa Barbara.”

  Lauren tried a smile, knowing it probably looked like she had a lip full of Novocain. “We needed a change of scenery.”

  The waitress interrupted with menus and to take drink orders. Anne Leone ordered ginger ale for herself and her kids, and a Coke for Wendy. Lauren ordered a Coke for Leah, then hesitated.

  “They feature wines from the local vineyards here,” Anne said. “If you’re a wine lover, I recommend them. I’d have a glass of the Merlot myself, but I’m not allowed. I found out a few weeks ago baby number two is on the way.”

  “Number two?” Lauren asked, confused.

  “Haley is adopted. Have the Merlot.”

  “I’ll have the Merlot,” Lauren told the waitress. She felt an almost embarrassing sense of relief. She glanced at Anne. “Do I look like I need it?”

  “Not at all,” Anne said with a smile that was maybe just a little too kind, too understanding.

  Lauren figured she had ten years on Anne Leone, but there was something in Anne’s dark eyes that spoke of wisdom won at the cost of hard experience. She had a story too.

  Lauren found a certain comfort in the reminder that she wasn’t the only person to ever go through hell. That road was well traveled.

  Anne ordered a big salad for the table and requested extra garlic bread.

  “I’ll give up wine for now, but no one is going to stop me from eating garlic bread,” she joked. “I don’t care if I’m as big as a house by the time this baby comes.”