Dark Road Home

by Anna Carlisle

  He didn’t take his hand away. Instead, he traced along the line of her jaw until his fingers brushed against her earlobe, then stroked her hair.

  Gin’s heart raced with anticipation, the memory of his kisses—so long ago, tender and unartful—mixing with the raw desire of a grown woman. Jake. The name she tried to banish from her mind so often, late at night, when she couldn’t sleep. The man who was a harder, damaged version of the boy he’d been.

  It would be so easy, to close the gap between them, to lift her face to his. To give in to the roaring need that drove their encounters now—at least, for her. But what if he didn’t feel the same way? What if, for Jake, this was merely a crossed synapse—a memory mixed with the confusion of the last few days? Would kissing him purge the worst of what had passed between them—or further muddy the terrible truths that Gin was more determined than ever to find?

  Reluctantly, awkwardly, she broke away, taking a step back so that his hand fell from her hair. “So what do we do now? I still think we should go straight to the police—”

  “We go straight to Spencer.” If Jake had been as discomfited as she by the close call with intimacy, he hid it well. “He’s probably in the office now.”

  “Why not let the police handle that? They can get there as fast as we can . . .” She shuddered, trying to banish the lingering memory of his touch and focus instead on changing his mind.

  “Because if the police confront him, and he has something to hide, he’s sure to shut down. You yourself told me he’s worked with lawyers a lot—what’s to stop him from clamming up and calling one the minute they walk through his door? At least if we go ourselves, we’ve got a chance to get him to open up. Especially if this is . . . if he’s got some good reason for being there that night. That’s all we need to find out, and if we’re satisfied he had nothing to do with the prescription or with Dad’s death, then we walk away and don’t mention it again.”

  Gin was silent for a moment, turning over his words, realizing that he was right. “Okay. But not just us.” She pulled her phone out and tapped a number near the top of the list. “There’s one person he never could say no to, and that’s my mom. If she’s there, I feel like he’ll be more likely to tell the truth.”

  29

  While they were waiting for Madeleine, Gin excused herself and walked into the parking lot, out of earshot from both Jake and the knot of people huddled together smoking on their breaks.

  She dialed with a heavy heart, knowing she should have done this long ago. Clay picked up on the first ring.

  “Is everything all right?” he asked without even saying hello.

  “Yes, everything’s—it’s fine,” she said. “I’m sorry I haven’t been keeping in touch better. There’s been so much going on—but that’s not really an excuse.”

  “Are you . . . is your family . . . are you holding up okay?” he asked awkwardly, tripping over his words.

  This was the problem, Gin thought. And it wasn’t his fault. They simply had never become close, the way lovers should be. She had held parts of herself back, substituting what she thought he wanted to hear while keeping things light.

  And now it was too late.

  Not just because she was facing down the hardest days of her life without him, and she suspected that had cemented the distance between them permanently. But because these few days with Jake had reminded her of what real love felt like, with all its attendant passion and frustration and yearning—even if that love was in the past. Or perhaps because it was in the past—yet still, almost two decades later, it burned hotter inside her than anything she’d ever felt with Clay.

  “I’m all right,” she said carefully. “But, I thought we should talk. Coming here has—well, it’s brought up all kinds of things for me.”

  “Gin, you don’t have to—”

  “No. Please. Let me finish. I’ve realized that Chicago, for me, has been a form of escape. A way of turning my back on my whole past. But the thing is, you can never really put something like what happened to us behind you. I don’t—I can’t quite figure out what it means for me, for my future, but I do know that there are a lot of . . . loose ends that I need to tie up here. One way or another.”

  “Does that mean you’re staying?” Clay’s voice was kind, and—from the sound of it—neither surprised nor devastated.

  “I—I’m not sure. At least for now.”

  She heard him sigh on the other end. “Gin. I care about you. You know that.”

  “I do . . .”

  “And I hope we always remain friends. I’m here for you—if you need me to come, I’ll be there in hours. Anything at all. But it seems to me . . .”

  “I’ll say it,” Gin said gently, reflecting that if she hadn’t fallen in love with Clay, at least she had chosen a kind and decent man to spend her otherwise lonely evenings with. “You shouldn’t have to. You’ve been nothing but good to me. You deserve . . . you deserve the best, a woman who will give you all of herself. I’m not, I can’t be, that woman. I’ll always—” she cleared her throat and swiped at her eyes.

  “You’re a good woman, Gin,” Clay said. “I’ve always wished I could make you see that in yourself.”

  ***

  Madeleine pulled up a few moments after Gin had hung up. She and Jake watched her circle until she found a parking space.

  “Tell me again why you didn’t just come out and tell her?” Jake said.

  “Mom’s . . . protective,” Gin finally said, though it wasn’t quite the right word. It was more that, since returning home, Gin had come to understand that her mother couldn’t stand to lose much more. The steely resolve that had gotten her so far in local politics was, Gin had realized, actually just a cover for the unresolved grief buried deeply inside her mother.

  “You think she’ll try to protect Spencer?” Jake asked.

  “I don’t know. I just was afraid that if I told her flat out what we learned from Red, she’d refuse to even consider the possibility.”

  “So you want to tell her in front of him instead?”

  “At least then she’ll see for herself how he reacts. And so will we.”

  “I don’t know,” Jake said uneasily.

  But Madeleine was walking briskly toward them. “Jake!” she said, forcing a smile. “Gin didn’t tell me you were here, too.”

  “Actually, Mom, I wasn’t entirely honest when I said I was visiting Tom,” Gin said. “He’s been released into a rehab clinic already.”

  “Then—” Madeleine glanced from her to Jake and back. “What were you doing here?”

  “Just . . . there’s something I wanted to discuss with you and Spencer,” Gin said, guiding her mother toward the entrance, knowing she wouldn’t question her further in front of Jake. “It shouldn’t take long.”

  “Well, I must say this is all very mysterious,” Madeleine said tightly, but she allowed herself to be led to the warren of offices at the back of the wing.

  Spencer’s door was open, and he was turned away, talking on the phone. When Gin knocked lightly at the door frame, he turned, and—maybe she imagined it—for a fraction of a second, his expression registered dismay before mouthing “come in.” While he concluded his call, Gin and Madeleine took the chairs across the desk from him, while Jake remained standing.

  “This is an unexpected pleasure,” Spencer said. “Especially since I’ve been negotiating our light-bulb contract all morning. You’d be shocked to know what it costs up front to refit the entire place with CFLs.”

  “I’m sure I would,” Gin said evenly. “Listen, Spencer, I’ll get right to the point. You were here late on Wednesday night. That was the night that a prescription was written for Doxorubicin on Dad’s prescription pad. We know that Dad wasn’t here that night, and you were the only other person who could have gotten into his office, and so . . .”

  She let the implication hang in the air. Spencer’s face went dark with anger, while her mother looked from Gin to Spencer and back in alarm.
/>
  “What are you accusing me of?”

  “Nothing. I’m not accusing you of anything, just—”

  “What is going on, Virginia?” Madeleine demanded. “Where on earth did you get such a notion?”

  “I can’t say, not right now, but Mom, it’s true, okay? Spencer was here that night, and somehow, a prescription for Doxorubicin got written. I’m not saying it’s the same drug that ended up killing Lawrence, but you’ve got to admit that this raises all kinds of red flags.”

  “But if this is true, why haven’t you told the police?” Madeleine asked. “They could clear this up in no time.”

  “Do I need to call a lawyer, too?” Spencer asked, his voice hollow—but that question seemed to upset Madeleine even more.

  “Is this what we’re doing now?” she demanded, her voice going high and shrill. “Just accusing everyone in sight of hurting Lawrence because we haven’t been able to find who did it? Accusing Spencer?” She turned on Jake. “I know Lawrence was your father—and believe me, I know what it feels like to lose someone you love. But that does not give you license to appoint yourself his avenger. Not you or my daughter.”

  “Gin, Madeleine . . . Jake,” Spencer said, recovering his composure. “You’re right. I was here that night. But it’s not what you think. I was in Tom’s office. There may be an internal investigation, now that he’s in rehab. I . . . I’m not proud of this, but I went to his office because I wanted to make sure that there wasn’t anything incriminating there. The drugs he was into . . . well, it’s somewhat ironic, under the circumstances, but I’m fairly sure that someone in this center was supplying him. I just don’t know who it is. But I would never have any reason to suspect your father. Christ, Virginia, he’s the last person in the world I’d ever accuse of anything even slightly unethical.”

  “Did you find anything in Tom’s office?” Jake asked, and Gin could tell he didn’t buy Spencer’s story. It was subtle—a weight to his voice, nothing anyone else would notice.

  “No, just a couple bottles of Aleve and a bag of those cinnamon red-hots he likes.” He sighed. “Look, I know my son has a tough road ahead of him, getting a handle on his addiction. I just didn’t want to make it more complicated than it already is. For what it’s worth, if the investigation leads to a recommendation to fire him, I won’t stand in the way. I should have been tougher with Tom a long time ago.”

  The pain in his voice, the regrets of a father who was impotent to help his child, made Gin question her suspicion of her parents’ oldest friend.

  But Jake was undeterred. “My dad knew something,” he insisted. “Something big enough to get him killed. So you’ll forgive me if I don’t quite buy your story. I’ll need more to go on to convince me that you were only looking out for Tom.”

  “Jake.” Madeleine turned to face Jake head-on. “For all these years, I’ve believed in you. I’ve never let myself get so caught up in the desperation for answers that I forgot who you were to all of us.”

  Unlike Dad, Gin thought.

  “But now you have to do the same thing. You have to remember who we are, all of us, before you start making accusations that could hurt us even more.”

  “Listen, Madeleine, it’s all right—” Spencer tried to interject, but Madeleine ignored him.

  “Virginia, I don’t know if this is partly your way of trying to protect your father, and I know I’ve encouraged you to get involved in the investigation. But with everything that’s happened, I think it’s time to stop trying to interfere and let the police handle this. All of it. You’ll forgive my cynicism, but after seventeen years of wondering if I’ll ever see my daughter again, I’ve gotten a little jaded where their skills are concerned. Yes, I pray that we find out who killed Lawrence, if indeed it was a murder—and I’m not convinced of that. If it wasn’t a suicide, then I hope the killer is prosecuted. But I’m not willing to risk the reputations of one more person I care about to make that happen. We have to live here. You get to go back to Chicago and pretend none of this ever happened, but the rest of us don’t.”

  The speech seemed to have exhausted her, but Gin was stung by her final words. Was that what her parents thought? That she’d run away—from not just her grief, not just Jake, but from them, too?

  And worse—was it possible that her mother was right?

  “I . . . I need to go,” Gin mumbled, getting up and staggering toward the door. Jake was out of his chair in seconds, coming after her.

  She’d been pursuing the truth—or so she thought. Instead she’d stirred up a nest of resentments that seemed to have no end.

  And the one man who seemed determined not to let her face it alone was the one man who should have hated her most of all.

  She raced down the hall, but not so fast that he couldn’t catch up.

  ***

  “Jesus, Gin, if I concede that you can kick my ass, will you slow down?”

  She was halfway to Jake’s truck and still deciding if she was going to walk home or let him drive her. But hearing his voice made up her mind. She’d been inconsistent, needy, bristling, and he was still jogging along to keep up with her.

  It wasn’t the fact that Jake was willing to overlook her flaws, to have faith in her while he searched for the truth. No, it was something much more important, something Gin had lost sight of between the last day the five of them had all been together—five friends bound by blood and friendship—and the day last week when a hollowed shell of herself had pulled into town.

  It was the fact that with Jake, she was always herself. She didn’t edit, hide, or camouflage any part of her, even the parts that shamed her, the ones that hurt so much. Jake knew her habits, her passions, her rages, and her secret regrets, and right now the comfort of having him near was too hard to resist.

  She slowed to a walk. “I could never kick your ass,” she said softly. “Every time I came close, you were just letting me.”

  “Naw. Don’t sell yourself short. Those arm-wrestling matches? Totally cleaned the floor with me.”

  If he was trying to lighten the mood, to lift her spirits, it wasn’t working—well, maybe it was working a little. After all, it wasn’t a crime to remember those lazy afternoons when wrestling matches turned to make-out sessions, and then—that last summer—when make-out sessions turned to something more, something that seared her in a way she’d never come close to feeling again.

  It wasn’t a crime to miss him. To wonder what might have been. Was it?

  “Listen, what do you say we go see Lloyd?” Jake asked. “If Dad confided in anyone . . .”

  “Right.” Pushing her emotions away for the moment, she shared the feeling she hadn’t been able to shake, that Lloyd had known something that night, something he hadn’t told anyone.

  “But that doesn’t make any sense.” Jake opened the passenger door of his truck for her, an unconscious habit, and a gesture that Gin found far more pleasing than she would have cared to admit. When he offered his hand, she allowed him to help her up into the seat, the imprint of his touch staying with her even after he’d closed the door.

  “If he’d known something,” Jake continued as he started up the truck, “why not just tell us? Instead of taking the risk of helping us break in?”

  “Maybe he only suspected,” Gin said. “I’m not sure. I’m just hoping that he’ll be more willing to open up to us, since nothing else has worked so far.”

  They drove in silence most of the way. When they reached the rustic cabin, Jake glanced her way. “Am I the good cop or the bad cop?” he asked, an edge to his voice.

  Gin felt a rush of dangerous electricity travel through her body. Something had changed between them, and she knew Jake had been feeling it, too. But was now the time to let her guard down—with her father’s guilt in question, her mother’s brittle composure threatening to crack, the truth about her sister’s fate hanging in the balance?

  “I don’t know,” she answered helplessly. “I was just planning to go with the truth.
”

  Jake parked and cut the engine, then turned to look at her, resting his arm along the bench seat so he could brush a strand of her hair behind her ear.

  “We’ll have to work on that,” he said, before turning away.

  No one answered the knock on the door, but an old radio sitting on a sawhorse on the side of the house was playing a baseball game. Jake led the way around the house, where they found Lloyd kneeling next to a patio chair with a drill.

  “Well, now, look who’s here,” he said, getting slowly to his feet, holding onto the chair for support.

  “What are you working on?” Gin asked.

  “Ah, I just made a couple of new armrests for this chair,” Lloyd said. Sure enough, the battered old aluminum frame sported beautiful new lacquered hardwood arms. “I don’t know why folks can’t build anything to last these days. Here, take a load off for a spell.”

  He insisted that Gin take the newly upgraded chair and dragged its mate close. Jake sat on the stump that served as a chopping block. Gin couldn’t help wondering if the old man still split his own firewood, and reflected that there would be a lot fewer heart-attack victims on her table if everyone stayed as active as Lloyd in advanced age.

  “You can probably guess that we’re here with more questions,” she said.

  “Yep, I figured it was just a matter of time.”

  She and Jake filled him in about the exchange with Spencer.

  “Lloyd . . .” Jake asked. “Is there anything at all that you can think of, anything Dad might have learned that someone would have been willing to kill him for? Anything he said recently that struck you as unusual, or noteworthy, or . . . ?”

  “Well, now,” Lloyd said carefully. “Thing is, your dad was just fit to be tied when they connected that cooler to you. He came to me first thing to see if I knew anything about how it got there. I told him everything I knew, which wasn’t much.” He grimaced. “That didn’t sit well with him at all. I guess you know how your dad was. Like a hound that caught a scent, I couldn’t say nothing to convince him that they weren’t going to be able to pin this on you, Jake.”