Dark Road Home

by Anna Carlisle

  “Jake . . . I hate to ask you to do this,” she said, and then explained about finding her mother’s records. “Do you think you could go back and look through the safe again? See if there’s anything we missed?”

  “Gin, is there something you’re not telling me? Something specific you think I’ll find?”

  “No. But . . .” She blew out a breath, not sure if she was being irrational. “It’s just that Mom’s been acting a little strangely. I can’t help feeling that she’s hiding something.”

  “You don’t think she suspects your father, do you?”

  “Oh, no, that’s not what I meant. And I don’t think she knows who killed Lily, or even suspects—she’d say something, I’m sure of it.”

  “Then . . .” She could sense Jake choosing his words with care. “If she’s hiding something, but it doesn’t have anything to do with Lily, are you sure that you really want to know?”

  “Yes,” Gin said without hesitation. She wanted the truth—no matter what it turned out to be.

  31

  It was nearly two o’clock in the morning when Jake texted her:

  You up?

  She’d been dozing, the papers pushed to the floor, the bourbon tumbler empty. But she’d forgotten to disconnect her phone from the speaker, and the chime of the incoming text woke her.

  She sat up in the dark and fumbled for her phone, then typed back.

  Yes. Find something?

  Jake replied,

  Can I come over?

  Gin hesitated, her hand poised over the screen. Whatever it was, he wanted to tell her in person. Or . . . was it possible he just wanted to see her?

  She shook her head, chastising herself.

  OK. I’ll meet you out front.

  ***

  Jake cut the lights as he coasted toward the end of the street, where Gin was sitting on the guard rail the town put up after some joy riders had gone flying into the field and nearly killed themselves. She knew he was just trying to avoid waking the neighbors, but the moon was so bright, hanging low in the sky, that he could have easily driven the whole way to her house navigating only by its light.

  He leaned over and opened her door, and she jumped into the cab.

  “This better be good,” Gin said, but then she caught his expression.

  “Gin.” He unbuckled his seat belt, and a sense of foreboding turned into full-on dread as he dug in his shirt pocket for a folded piece of paper. “This is . . . I don’t know what it means, but I figured you would.”

  She stared at the paper but didn’t take it. Somehow she knew that once she’d seen it, she could never go back.

  “I found it in the gun case, in the ammunition drawer. Dad made a little wooden false back. He never could resist tinkering . . .” He unfolded it carefully. She could make out the neatly labeled columns at the top of the page, the grid of ghostly white blurs against a dark background.

  The names on the y-axis.

  “Do you know what it is?” Jake asked.

  “It’s a RFLP,” Gin said woodenly in a voice did not sound like her own.

  “A . . . ‘riflip’? Translate for the idiot, please?”

  “Sorry, it stands for Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism. It’s used to follow a DNA sequence as it’s passed on to other cells.” She paused, the implications of what she was seeing slamming home. “It was the gold standard for paternity testing in the eighties, before they had DNA swab tests.”

  “And this means . . .”

  Gin reached a shaking hand and traced the column of white blurs that were stacked on top of each other. “This is a positive test. Donor A is the parent of Donor B. The margin of error is negligible.”

  “And Donor A . . .”

  Gin closed her eyes, her mind spinning with the implications. “. . . was Spencer Parker, according to this. Spencer was Lily’s biological father.”

  For a moment, the stillness took on the quality of a movie, something Gin was watching from a distance, something that was happening to someone else. The results were incontrovertible, but her mind wouldn’t accept them. Of course Richard was her sister’s father. Lily was her sister. Madeleine was their mother. Dad was their dad.

  Spencer Parker had come to the door a hundred, a thousand times when they were small, exhausted from his long day at the surgery center, about to embark on another equally exhausting evening as a single father of twin toddlers . . .

  Spencer Parker at her parents’ annual Christmas party, ducking out before he’d even finished his first drink, because he needed to “help Santa.”

  Spencer and Richard in a million boring discussions about the surgery center, always the surgery center, while the kids all rolled their eyes at the dads’ shared obsession, mindful that if they dared say anything out loud they’d get a lecture about putting bread on the table and soccer shin guards not growing on trees.

  And finally, Spencer and her mother. How many times had Gin seen the two of them together and thought nothing of it? Spencer handing her a platter of burgers at a barbecue. Thanking her for watching the kids. Offering to help with the dishes. Spencer, always polite—to the point of being formal. Stiff, even.

  But he wasn’t always like that. Only with Madeleine.

  “God. How could I be so stupid?”

  She let herself fall into Jake’s arms, her face against the soft cotton fragrant with the scent of fabric softener and cut grass.

  “You weren’t stupid,” he said, patting her back gently. “There was no reason for you to notice. No reason anyone would have.”

  “But thinking about it now . . .”

  “Gin. Don’t go back. Don’t beat yourself up. Whatever was between Spencer and your mom, they were the ones who made those decisions. They’re the ones who’ve had to live with the consequences all these years.”

  “I just can’t believe . . . I mean, my mother . . . oh my God. That means Tom and Christine are Lily’s half-siblings. And her and Tom . . .”

  She opened the door to the truck and half-stepped, half-stumbled onto the ground. She felt nauseous and dizzy, the concentric circles of implications spinning in her mind. Lily had dated her half-brother. Lily had been pregnant. Tom could very well be the father of the baby she’d been carrying.

  She staggered through the weeds, over the rise to an overlook with a view of the town beyond. She knelt on the ground, pebbles and stalks poking into her skin. She thought she might be sick, but she hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and her body had nothing to give up. Instead she wrapped her arms around herself and rocked, moaning, trying to make sense of the horror that her sister had unknowingly been a part of.

  Then Jake was at her side, with his hand on her back, pulling her against him. “Gin. You couldn’t have known. No one could have known.” He continued murmuring, kissing her hair gently, chastely, holding her close.

  When her moans turned to tears, she wrapped her arms around him and held on for dear life.

  ***

  When Madeleine came into the kitchen the next morning, Gin was waiting. The coffee was made, and she had managed a shower after a couple of hours of tortured sleep.

  “Well, you’re up early,” Madeleine said crisply, reaching into the cupboard for her commuter mug. “Sleep well?”

  Gin ignored the question. “How’s Dad?”

  Something in her tone must have caught her mother’s attention. She turned and stared at Gin, then set the mug down on the counter. “Still asleep. I don’t think he managed a wink in that jail. Is something wrong?”

  Gin had spent the last hour rehearsing the words she intended to say. But what came out was little more than a strangled gasp. “How could you?”

  Later, Gin realized that her tone had given her away, that her mother had guessed. The expression on Madeleine face morphed from mild curiosity to shock to horror to tormented acceptance, and she sank into the chair across from Gin. Her hands trembled on the table.

  Gin slid the RFLP across the table. Her mother barely g
lanced at it.

  “Did Spencer know you had the test done?”

  “No,” Madeleine replied quietly, her voice a dried husk. “No one knew.”

  “You took a real chance, having it done at the hospital. Weren’t you worried Dad would find out?”

  Madeleine laughed bitterly. “Your father was the one who explained confidentiality laws to me,” she said. “So no, that wasn’t one of my concerns at the time.”

  “But how did you get Spencer’s blood?”

  Madeleine gave her a ghostly flash of a smile. “That was how I got the idea, actually. It was only a few days after Lily was born. I was sitting with her in the backyard, nursing. Your father was pushing you in the swing, and Spencer let himself in the back gate like always. He’d brought a bottle of champagne.” The bitter smile again. “We were both trying too hard to be adult about it. It had been over for a long time by then, and we’d agreed never to speak about it again, even to each other.”

  “It hadn’t been over for that long,” Gin snapped, surprised by her own anger.

  “Actually, it had. Well over a year. But there was just one time. One crazy, irresponsible night when your father had to go to a conference in Las Vegas, and Spencer got stuck late at the office, and by the time he came to pick up the twins . . .” She shrugged, and her thin shoulders sagged. “I’m deeply ashamed, in case you’re wondering.”

  “Mom, I . . .” Gin had to think of the words. She tried again. “I’m not here to judge you. I’m sorry about the way I started this conversation. I just—there are so many things I don’t understand. And I could accept that it’s none of my business, but this—”

  “Do you think I don’t know that?” Madeleine’s hand shot out and seized the paper. She looked at it quickly and then crumpled it in her fist and pressed it against her face, letting out one huge, keening wail. Then she threw the paper to the floor and savagely rubbed her eyes with her knuckles, smearing her makeup, gulping for air. “I’ve thought of little else for the last two decades. Your sister would be thirty-four this summer. That tally is always in my head. I know it like I know my own name. I’ll know it on my deathbed.”

  She opened her eyes and stared bleakly at Gin. “I might as well have killed her myself.”

  “Mom, God no, why on earth would you say that? Do you know who did it?”

  She was already shaking her head. “I have ideas, of course. For a while I was so sure that Spencer did something to her. I couldn’t even stand to look at him. And then—God forgive me, but there was a time . . . a very brief time when I was convinced your father found out somehow, that—but he loved Lily more than anything on this earth. We both did.”

  Even now, even with the horrors unfolding between them, Gin couldn’t help but zero in on what her mother had said—and what she hadn’t. It was true: Lily had been her parents’ treasure. They loved Gin, she knew that, but they could never love her as much as the daughter they’d lost.

  “Not Dad. And if not Spencer, who?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know. If I did—if I could have been sure—don’t you think I would have told someone? I was so certain she was dead, you see, but what kind of mother says something like that? I had to pretend to hold out hope. I had to try to make myself hope. And Virginia, let me tell you, that is its own kind of hell. All those candlelight vigils . . . the anniversaries of her disappearance—and your father, always reminding me that we had to keep believing, even while he railed against Jake as though he’d found him with her blood on his hands.”

  Tears coursed trails through her smudged mascara. “If I ever believed Jake could really have hurt her, I would have killed him myself,” she said matter-of-factly. “But I couldn’t do that to you and your father. And eventually, life sort of . . . grew back around me. Not the same, of course. But something.”

  “Mom.” Gin reached across the table and took her mother’s hand. It seemed so small, so cool. Her nails were perfect, her rings glittered. But the hand lay heavy and immobile in hers. “I don’t know what to say. I’m trying to wrap my head around this. But . . . whatever happened, I don’t blame you.” If it wasn’t true, it was close enough that she could pretend. “But you have to see that this changes everything. I mean, all the possibilities. Spencer, Tom—”

  “What does it matter!” Madeleine yanked her hand back as though she’d touched a hot stove. “She’s dead. Her baby—our grandchild—is dead. Nothing will bring them back.”

  “But we have to know—”

  “What if it’s Jake?” her mother’s eyes narrowed, glittering with emotion. “Would you still want to know then? What if he found out somehow, what if he was seeing Lily like everyone said?”

  “But if you didn’t tell anyone, and the test was confidential—”

  “Well, someone found out, now, didn’t they?” Madeleine grimaced. “You see, that’s the part that your father left out, when he was preaching medical ethics to me. The thing that you can never change. Doctors are people just like the rest of us. So are nurses. So are lab techs. Someone obviously remembered that ‘confidential’ result. Where did you get it, anyway?”

  “It was in Lawrence’s things,” Gin said quietly.

  She watched her mother think it through. “Oh no,” she whispered.

  “Yes. Lawrence knew, and someone killed him to keep from telling,” Gin said. “That’s one way to look at it, Mom. But it wouldn’t be too good for you, would it?”

  Where was this urge to cruelty coming from? As Gin watched her ordinarily imperious mother crumple, as her frosty façade disintegrated until she was every bit as human as anyone else, it wasn’t compassion that filled Gin but a faint, reprehensibly smug satisfaction.

  Her mother’s mistakes had somehow led to Lily’s death.

  Gin didn’t want to blame Madeleine. She wanted to remember that everyone was human, and everyone made mistakes. But the stakes were simply too high. If Lily had lived . . .

  So many things would have been different. She and Jake would have gone to Ohio State together.

  And Lily would have given birth to Gin’s niece or nephew. Gin shuddered as the ugly truth crowded out the image: the baby could well have been the child of Lily’s half brother, potentially burdened with genetic issues in addition to being condemned to the inescapable shame of an unthinkable taboo.

  Bile rose up fresh inside her. This time, she made it to the bathroom just in time to expel the bitter, foul mess, to hunch heaving on the cold tile floor over the toilet, tears mixing with her own sweat.

  She wasn’t aware of her mother’s presence in the powder room until she was kneeling next to her, wrinkling her linen suit, unmindful of her hosiery on the floor. “Baby,” she whispered. “My poor sweetie, just get it out, that’s right, poor angel . . .”

  She waited patiently, stroking her back, until Gin was done. And then she held Gin close, just like a mother was supposed to do.

  32

  After Gin had brushed her teeth and changed into clean clothes, she came into the kitchen to find that her mother had poured two cups of coffee and set out a plate of sliced fruit and muffins.

  “You need to eat something.”

  Madeleine was back to herself, for better or worse. And, Gin had to admit, she was right. She helped herself to a muffin.

  “Mom, I need to get a few things straight.”

  “That’s fine. And if you feel that it’s time to get the detectives up to date with all of this, I’m ready.” She took a breath. “I just ask that you let me talk to your father first.”

  “Mom . . . let’s just take this one step at a time, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “I understand now why you objected to Lily dating Tom.”

  “That was . . . that was one of the most wrenching things I had to do. I know this sounds naïve, but I just never believed that Lily would be . . . intimate with him. My God, she was only sixteen.”

  Gin shook her head sadly. She’d seen girls as young as twelve on
her table, fetuses born premature to girls barely old enough to menstruate.

  “I convinced myself that they would get over it quickly. I mean they were so unsuited to each other. Tom was so . . . well, self-satisfied, I suppose. I mean I loved the twins, you don’t raise children in your own home, alongside your own children, without developing a certain . . . attachment to them. But still. I saw even then that he was going to struggle in life. He had it too easy, too early.

  “And Lily was nothing like Spencer. That helped. I convinced myself she took after Richard, which . . . well, I guess that shows you my state of mind. But she also reminded me of myself in some ways. And in other ways, she was just—purely, irrepressibly herself. Your father and I used to worry about the choices she would make, but that all seemed so far in the future . . . like her time in Trumbull was safe, protected. The four of you, and then Jake, running around together in a little wolf pack. We thought we were so blessed—right up to the day that Lily came home and told us Tom was now her boyfriend.”

  “I remember that you tried to forbid it.”

  “And if your father would have, just once in his life, let me have my way without analyzing it to death—but I couldn’t argue with his logic without raising suspicion. And Spencer was so delighted, you see. He convinced Richard it was a terrific idea.”

  “But didn’t Spencer have any idea that she could be his daughter?”

  Her mother was already shaking her head. “That night when he came over . . . he said he’d been working late but I could tell he’d been out. He used to do that once in a while—his way of blowing off steam, I guess. It’s like what Tom does now, but Spencer always used to keep it under control. He’d go out to some roadhouse over in Archer and have a few drinks. He hid it well, but . . . well, that night he came in the door and the minute I told him the kids were asleep he had me up against the wall.”