Dark Road Home

by Anna Carlisle

  Gin stole a look at Jake, who was glaring at the ground, his jaw like stone. She knew how much he missed his father.

  “Thing I didn’t tell you, the other day, he asked me to go up to the records office with him and hunt down the old case records.”

  “But the county police already had them.”

  “Not all of them.” He took a deep breath. “And that’s my fault. See, when Lily didn’t turn up all those years ago, it didn’t sit right with me, especially when the name everyone was whispering around town was yours, Jake. I didn’t tell your dad, because you remember he went through a hard time there, and talking to him was like talking to a post. But I kept her file out, and whenever I had a little time, I’d check unidentified victims all over the surrounding states to make sure there weren’t any new cases that might match. Lawrence . . . well, he had to know I was doing it, because I didn’t exactly hide it, but we never talked about it.”

  “Not until last week,” Jake said.

  “Wait,” Gin interrupted. “You had the file out all this time?”

  “No, not all of it, and tell the truth, I’d forgotten myself. You remember I retired kind of suddenly after my embolism. Well, Lois just took everything in my office and boxed it up and sent it up to records. I guess she figured there wasn’t anything in my desk worth following up on. And it was true, I’d put most of the file back long before then. But I’d kept a copy of Lily’s medical records out. I’m sorry to say it, Gin, but I figured this way if there was a need . . . if some Jane Doe turned up in New Jersey or Ohio who seemed like she could be a match, I wanted to be able to confirm quick. I just, I figured your family had been through enough, and if there was ever bad news to deliver, well, I figured it ought to come from me.” His mouth went slack. “I’m sorry I couldn’t keep that promise to you.”

  “Oh, Lloyd,” Gin said. “I don’t even know how to thank you.”

  “Anyway, Lawrence remembered I’d kept that copy, and since he couldn’t ask to see the file without the detectives wondering why, he asked me to help. Took us all morning, but sure enough, we found my boxes.” He chuckled unexpectedly. “Lois had even packed up a bottle of Wild Turkey I used to keep in my desk drawer, and I had half a mind to take a nip. But your dad saw something in that file that shut him right up. I asked him every way I could think of to let me in on it, but he just kept saying he needed to check on something. That was his way when he was onto something—wouldn’t come out with anything until he was sure. Part of what made him a good cop, a good chief. Anyway, I figured I’d know soon enough. And then . . .”

  “Do you still have the records?”

  “No, son, and I’ve been beating myself up for that. Your dad took them and I don’t have any idea what he did with them.”

  Jake leaned forward. “I think I might.”

  30

  “I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before,” Jake said as he led Gin in through the back door of his father’s house. The front door was still crisscrossed with yellow tape, and—just to be on the safe side—they had parked around the corner and cut through the woods behind the houses. Despite the fact that the house now belonged to Jake, it wouldn’t help their cause for the neighbors to see them snooping through it now.

  “That looks like a gun safe,” Gin said, tracing a finger along the polished ebony side of the tall cabinet in Lawrence’s den.

  “That’s because it is,” Jake said. He stood on the desk chair and felt along the top of the pine shelves built into the opposite wall, coming up with an old tobacco can that rattled when he shook it. “Or was, anyway. Dad was big into repurposing things. Wouldn’t keep guns in the house after I was born, other than his service piece, and he locked that in his bedroom safe every night. That left this one free. Used to belong to my grandfather, and”—the door opened on oiled hinges—“I guess Dad couldn’t bear to get rid of it.”

  Inside the cabinet, the support that used to hold the rifle barrels in place had been removed, and shelves installed in its place. Simple file boxes were stacked on the lowest shelves along with bundled receipts and rubber-banded check registers. Jake picked up items and set them down until he came to a small cardboard box with the name “Marnie” written on the side in marker.

  He lifted the box flaps and peered inside, then went still.

  “What is that?” Gin asked.

  “My mom’s stuff, I think. I’ve never seen this in my life.”

  “Do you want me to open it?” Gin asked hesitantly. As a teen, she’d been clumsy about the subject of Jake’s mother, steering clear of it because she couldn’t imagine what it would be like lose her own mother so young.

  “No. I’m okay.” Jake took two smaller white boxes from the carton. Lifting the lid on the first long, rectangular box revealed a strand of pearls. They were luminous even in the dim light of the room, sliding sinuously through his fingers.

  “She had those on in her wedding picture,” Gin said.

  “You remember that?” Jake said, surprised.

  “Well, yes.” Gin was embarrassed; the picture—the only one of Marnie Crosby in the house—sat on the mantel above the fireplace in the living room, but she had only examined it when Jake was out of the room. Looking for clues to the boy she’d loved. “I am a woman, after all. We notice certain things.”

  “I’m well aware you’re a woman.” Jake opened the other small, square box. Inside was a dainty platinum ring set with a row of sparkling tiny diamonds.

  “Her engagement ring?”

  Jake said nothing for a moment, then snapped the box shut and set it back inside the cabinet and resumed searching. Gin wondered what he was feeling, what seeing his mother’s things had stirred up for him.

  He named the items he found as he went through the documents: titles to home and car, passports, bank statements. Finally he landed on a sheaf of papers in an old file box. He riffled through the papers, which appeared hastily stuffed in.

  “This is it. There’s a ton of stuff here . . . mostly medical records, it looks like, and a few other things. Birth certificate. Oh look, first communion . . . report cards.”

  They sat on the floor, cross-legged, going through the papers. After a few minutes, Jake held up an office visit form and said, “I can’t make any sense of this. You people have your own language, not to mention the worst handwriting I’ve ever seen.”

  “It’s a cliché because it’s true,” Gin said. “They teach it in medical school and then we hone our illegibility skills during our internship.”

  Her attempt at humor got only a thin smile from him. Jake’s mood had darkened, whether because of seeing his mother’s belongings, or sadness over Lawrence, she couldn’t tell. “Look,” she said, “do you want me to take these and put them in order for you? I can summarize what’s here in layman’s terms for you.”

  “That would be great,” Jake said. “I need to make a run up to the city. I was supposed to be there this morning, we’re pouring a new foundation in East Hills, and the guys are on overtime until I get this resolved. I’ll drop you off on the way.”

  He closed the doors to the cabinet and locked it, dropping the key in the tobacco can and replacing it on the shelf.

  At the door to the room, they both took a last look around.

  “This is so different from my father’s office,” Gin said, taking in the dusty trophies from Jake’s football days lining the shelf that ran along the wall near the ceiling, the bookshelves full of tattered paperbacks and old encyclopedias, the prize catches mounted and hung in pride of place. Photos of Lawrence and Jake camping, fishing, building a tree house. An ancient television, crocheted afghans folded over the plaid sofa.

  This was the domain of a man who was comfortable in his skin, a man whose pleasures were as simple as the code he lived by. A room that invited you in, encouraged you to share what was on your mind. A place where you could be who you really were.

  Growing up outside the orbit of Richard’s exquisitely cultivated priv
acy had been hard enough for Gin, with her desire to please, her knowledge that she was the second-favorite.

  She’d envied Lily then, bright beauty, shiny treasure, able to command Madeleine’s attention so easily. But now she realized how hard it must have been for her sister, who had no tools in her arsenal to attract her father’s attention.

  Gin touched the fringed edges of an afghan sadly: how might things have been different if Richard had been able to come out of his private domain and interact with the rest of his family? Would Lily have had to act so wild to get his attention? Would she have been so defiant?

  Would she still be alive?

  “Gin.” Jake’s voice, so familiar, so dear. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m sorry,” Gin said, shaking her head. “I just . . . kind of got lost there for a minute. Memories. Too many of them.”

  She attempted a rueful laugh, but it came out choked. Jake brushed at her cheek where a tear had somehow trailed. He didn’t take his hand away.

  Standing in the late afternoon sun, dust motes sparkling on the golden beams that entered through the picture window, it could have been twenty years before—the day Jake Crosby first kissed her in a spot not far from where Lily’s body had been found. He’d walked there with Gin, her hand in his as natural as breathing, while Tom and Christine argued about some long-forgotten disagreement and Lily flipped through a magazine while lying in the sun. That kiss had been both a surprise and not, because it felt as ordained as if everything in her life had led up to that moment.

  This kiss was different. His hand against her face was a question, his steady gaze unflinching. Her lips met his and all the years that had passed, the experiences and disappointments and achievements and near misses and regrets that adulthood brings, steadied what had once been exuberant inexperience. This was different: this was raw, wanting—and dangerous. She wanted more, and she could tell he did, too. She had to have him—or run away from him.

  She chose the latter. For a thousand reasons. For the only reason.

  “It’s just . . .” she whispered.

  Jake stepped back, letting his hands fall to his sides. “I know.”

  They both knew better. But now they also both knew what they had been missing.

  ***

  When Gin arrived home, she was afraid the close call with Jake was written on her face—that her mother would read both the fervid urgency of their rekindled attraction and Gin’s guilt over how close she’d come to giving in to it.

  But Madeleine came flying out of the house, keys in hand, and barely slowed.

  “Paulson came through. He got your dad out on bail,” she called over her shoulder. “I’m going to pick him up!”

  She didn’t invite Gin to join her, and after only a few seconds of considering getting right back in her car and following, Gin decided to wait. Let her parents have this moment—maybe it would make up for some of the tension between them.

  Besides, she wanted time to compose herself before greeting her father, time to wipe all traces of doubt from her manner.

  She was wiping down the kitchen counter when they returned, having discovered that her mother had been halfway through assembling dinner when she got Paulson’s call, and finished the job while she waited. The aroma of baked chicken and scalloped potatoes filled the house when Madeleine led Richard into the house like a docile goat.

  “Virginia,” her father said, brushing her cheek with papery lips. He smelled of chemicals and body odor, and his clothes were soiled and wrinkled.

  Gin couldn’t help it—she threw her arms around her father and held on. Even though she felt him stiffen in her embrace, she couldn’t bear to let go for a few moments. Funny how it wasn’t when he’d been taken away that it sunk in that they could lose him—but when he returned.

  At last she released him, and he shuffled toward the stairs. “You girls eat without me,” he mumbled. “I need a shower.”

  ***

  Her father never came back to the table; Madeleine checked on him after they had eaten and reported back that he was “out like a light.” She retired upstairs soon after, and Gin finished cleaning up by herself, relishing the quiet of the kitchen, the citrusy scent of her mother’s spray cleaner.

  At eleven thirty, she was sitting cross-legged in her bedroom, a tumbler of her father’s bourbon on her old painted nightstand, the box of papers spread out on the bedspread.

  The knock on her door wasn’t entirely unexpected. Gin had been playing music on the portable speaker she’d borrowed from the living room, and she knew Madeleine was a light sleeper.

  “Sorry, Mom, I’ll turn it down,” she said.

  “Actually, honey . . . may I come in?”

  Her voice was so plaintive that Gin felt guilty for not trying to engage her in conversation after dinner.

  She got up and opened the door to the room—it still stuck, just as it had all those years ago—and her mother perched on the desk chair while Gin resumed her spot on the bed.

  “It’s been a long day,” Madeleine began. Then she seemed to register what Gin was doing, and a deep crease formed between her brows. “What on earth . . .”

  “Mom, why would your medical records have been in the case file from back when Lily went missing?” Gin asked, hoping to avoid having to explain why she had the file.

  But she wasn’t prepared for her mother’s reaction. Madeleine picked up a page from the top of the stack, scanned it, then flipped through several more in increasing agitation. “What on earth . . .”

  “It’s okay, Mom, these are only copies. I haven’t done anything illegal, if that’s what you’re worried about.” That was true, wasn’t it? After all, Jake was Lawrence’s son; the house would be his soon enough, and everything inside it. Even if Lawrence’s possession of the files was questionable, Jake hadn’t done anything more than stumble on them.

  “But why . . . oh, God . . .” Madeleine gathered all the papers into her lap and went through them, as though she was searching for something. When she reached the bottom of the stack, she looked up at Gin over her reading glasses. “That’s it? All of it?”

  “Yes—”

  Madeleine visibly relaxed, her shoulders slumping and her breath leaking out in a slow exhale. “Well, would you like to tell me how you happened to have them in your possession?”

  “What were you looking for, just now?”

  “Nothing. Just, as I’m sure you’re aware, it wouldn’t look good if the media knew you had these. What with your father under suspicion.”

  A stab of guilt shot through Gin. Her mother was right, of course; it would look like she was trying to defend—or cover up—her father’s actions. “I’m being careful,” she said defensively. “No one knows I have them.” Except for Jake. Who didn’t count.

  “Virginia.” Madeleine pushed her reading glasses up on top of her head and sighed. “You are an expert at a lot of things, and I defer to you in all of them. But you are not experienced in the psychology of a small town. Not anymore. You’ve forgotten how a rumor can grow into an accusation around here—how it can turn into accepted fact no matter how ludicrous, just because it went up and down the gossip chain. Word of mouth means a lot more here than it does in the big city.”

  “Of course,” Gin said tightly, though she seethed at being chastised like a child. “But you’re the one who was acting like you thought the box was on fire. Mind telling me what you were looking for?”

  “Nothing,” Madeleine said, rising from the chair with a dismissive wave, which belied the deep lines on her face. For the first time since Gin arrived, Madeleine’s appearance was showing her exhaustion. “Just trying to protect what’s left of the family reputation.”

  “Mom,” Gin said, stopping her at the door, filled with remorse at having judged her so harshly. Madeleine was a creature of her upbringing, and emotions didn’t come out easily, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. Gin had seen other women like her, who remained stoic throughout the ident
ification of their loved one’s body, only to fall apart in the parking lot or, as one mother of a cocaine overdose had done, hours after returning home, when she hanged herself in her daughter’s bedroom.

  What if Madeleine’s increasingly erratic behavior was the sign of a breakdown? What if the pressure of maintaining her cool exterior, even in the face of accusations against her husband, had finally broken her?

  “This has to be hard on you,” Gin said gently. “Have you thought about taking a little time off from work? You know that you need time to grieve, too, right?”

  “I’ve done my grieving,” Madeleine said grimly, “and I’m afraid I gave up my right to self-pity a long time ago.”

  She shut the door behind her.

  Gin sat without moving for a while, turning off the music and listening to the sounds of the old house. The foundation creaking, branches tapping against glass, old pipes sighing and popping.

  Something was off, and it wasn’t just Madeleine’s cryptic comment. Gin picked up the stack of papers that her mother had left on the chair and went through them, slowly, one more time, sorting them into three stacks: Lily’s medical and dental records, Madeleine’s medical records, and a “miscellaneous” pile that included anything unrelated to health.

  Then she put her mother’s records in order. They went back as far as the eighties, when Lily and Gin would have been babies. Mostly they were routine: pap smears, flu shots, treatment for a variety of routine illnesses. Records from when Madeleine broke her ankle hiking along the creek, and from a lump in her breast that turned out to be benign. Physicals and blood tests every few years with notes about borderline anemia and a mild vitamin D deficiency. A consultation about hormone therapy at the onset of menopause.

  Nothing from before the girls were born.

  On impulse, Gin dialed Jake’s number. He picked up on the first ring.

  “Missing me?” he asked, and it was hard to detect irony in his voice. But the electric tension between them earlier in the evening had given way to the pervasive sense that something was off.