Never Far Away

by Michael Koryta

  “He’s a friend,” she said. “He took care of Tessa.”

  The note was simple, nothing intimate, just a welcome-back. He’d filled the wood rack and changed the bedding. He hoped everyone was doing okay. He would come by when they were settled in.

  She read the note and set it back on the counter beside the vase of asters. Hailey had drifted across the room to a framed map of Maine.

  “We’re on Moosehead Lake?”

  “Yes. Near there.”

  Hailey located the big lake and placed her finger on it. Then she eyed the rest of the state. Everything that indicated civilization was down and to the right, crowded in southern Maine. Everything near her fingers and above it was empty, unbroken by highway lines or towns. Just lots of blue water and green forest. As Leah watched, Hailey began to trace the map with her fingertip, following the winding blue line of the Allagash River. Leah was confused; she was tracing it backward, moving north to south. Then she remembered that her children had known only the Midwest. Rivers there emptied southward, to the Mississippi and out to the Gulf of Mexico. Hailey had probably never encountered a river that flowed north.

  “It’s cold in here,” Nick said.

  Leah didn’t think so, but she said, “I’ll get a fire going. Warm it right up.”

  “But it’s summer,” he said, wandering to the window and staring out at the stacked pines beyond. “If it’s cold in August, what is it like here in the winter?”

  Breathtaking, Leah thought. Brutal and beautiful. Up here in the winter, you remember just how small you are and how little you matter, and you find peace in that. You take your peace where you can find it, sometimes.

  “We won’t be here in the winter, buddy,” she said. “We’ll be in Camden. Hailey, Camden is down on the right-hand corner of the—”

  But her daughter had turned away from the map.

  Leah set to work making the fire.

  11

  The transfer schedule was for five prisoners, but just before the six a.m. pickup a change order came through, and five became two. They came from different cellblocks and were of different ages and one was white and the other was black and if you didn’t bother to scrutinize their entire lengthy files, you would not know that they’d ever crossed paths previously.

  The corrections officers at United States Penitentiary Coleman 2 in central Florida did not bother to look at the files, let alone scrutinize them. All they cared about was getting the men secured in the MG&L van and shipped off the property. No one cared much where they’d come from or where they were going. Prisoners were transferred in and out of Coleman every day. Most were bound for another cell or maybe a courtroom.

  The COs who hadn’t finished their morning coffee yet did not give a shit about the destination of Marvin Sanders or Randall Pollard.

  The bulletproof MG&L van was a converted Ford Econoline with reinforced-steel grates separating the cargo area from the cab. There were three bench seats behind the grates, and aluminum bars ran alongside each seat at shoulder level and on the floor.

  Sanders and Pollard were cuffed to the bars above and below. Chains allowed them to sit and granted about six inches of motion in any direction.

  There was room for eight prisoners in the back of the van, but due to the change order, each inmate got his own bench row. They did not speak, did not exchange so much as a glance or a nod. That boded well for the MG&L guys. It would be a nice, quiet ride. There were two representatives from the transport company, a driver and a guard. Both were white guys who looked like they’d just walked off the field following yet another year of failed tryouts for a pro football team.

  They moved quickly through the process, though. No time wasted on small talk and no confusion with the paperwork. They’d done it before, many times. A lot of Americans believed the nation’s prison system handled its own transportation. In reality, there were far too many inmates on the move for that. Private transport companies were the norm, and of late, private prisons were too.

  MG&L vans passed through Coleman constantly. The driver and guard would be seen again, but they wouldn’t be remembered as noteworthy.

  Neither would Marvin Sanders or Randall Pollard. They had replacements en route. There were rarely empty cells.

  Once the change order was processed and the transfer paperwork signed, the gates groaned open on heavy hinges, parting to reveal the road. The sun was a red band in the east, the humidity already so high the blacktop seemed to smoke in the rose-colored light.

  The MG&L van headed toward the free world, the gates closed behind it, and Coleman prison went on about its day.

  The van made its first stop in north Georgia. The driver exited the highway, turned onto a two-lane county road, and drove two miles to a truck stop. There he parked, killed the engine, and got out. The guard joined him. They spoke in hushed tones and smoked cigarettes and waited.

  Ten minutes passed and then the door to the truck-stop diner opened and a tall man with thick, perfectly combed white hair and a golf-course tan walked out and crossed the parking lot in brisk strides. He moved well, far better than most men of his years. He wore jeans and a crisp white T-shirt under a lightweight blazer. His eyes were shielded by silver-framed Ray-Bans. He nodded at the MG&L driver and guard without speaking to them or slowing, then walked around the van to the far side and slid open the unlocked door. He leaned against the frame casually as he looked from one prisoner to the other.

  “Randall,” he said.

  The white man was forty-four years old with a shaved head, stubble of beard, and corded neck muscles. His eyes were different colors, one brown and one green.

  He nodded and said, “Good to see you, sir.”

  “Likewise. And you too, Bleak.”

  Marvin Sanders was thirty-nine years old, black, with a shaved head and no tattoos or distinguishing features whatsoever. He was utterly unremarkable except for his eyes, which were noticeable but for very different reasons than Randall Pollard’s. Sanders’s brown eyes matched perfectly, but they were so flat and unemotive that they somehow compelled immediate attention—and, often, immediate anxiety. Sanders, whom the white-haired man had called Bleak, did not nod or speak. He just waited.

  The white-haired man smiled at this and seemed pleased.

  “You ready to go missing?” he asked.

  Randall Pollard chuckled and nodded. Marvin “Bleak” Sanders did not move or speak.

  “It’ll cost me,” the white-haired man said. “You know that. Shit, we lose a few from time to time, accidents happen, and it’s why you have insurance. But you boys? Yes, you two will cost me a little bit more. Insurance premiums might even go up. Wouldn’t that be a bitch?” He sighed. “Such is the cost of doing business. We live in the age of liability. We protect ourselves the best we can.”

  The prisoners waited. They knew he wasn’t through.

  “I’ll deal with the fallout,” the white-haired man said. “Despite the cost. I may lose some money, and I may have to lose a few employees. Accountability matters. But I can handle that. Now, do either of you have a guess as to why I’m willing to take such risks for your freedom?”

  They waited some more. Waited until at last he smiled a cold, empty smile.

  “You get her,” he said. “Lucky sons of bitches. You two drew her.”

  Silence. Randall shifted. Looked over his shoulder at Bleak. Bleak did not look back at him. Randall returned his attention to the white-haired man. When he spoke, his voice was lower than it had been before. “We get her, meaning we get…”

  “Nina,” the white-haired man said, and he nodded. “Yes, Randall. You get Nina.”

  “She’s alive?” Bleak said, his voice soft but deep.

  The white-haired man nodded, and the skin around his mouth and eyes tightened. “So it would seem,” he said.

  “Explain?” Bleak said.

  A deep breath. “I monitored the husband and the children over the years. It felt necessary at one point because I’d
never seen the body. But the years stacked up and she didn’t visit and so I believed…” Again, the tightening around the mouth and eyes. “I trusted that the work that I’d been told was done had, indeed, been done. I took comfort in that. In knowing that she was dead. Last week, we received a death-index hit on the husband’s new name. Those things can take weeks, I’m told, to reach the Social Security system.” It was obvious how deeply he hated this fact—or any delay.

  Pollard said, “Who clipped him?”

  “No one. It was a car accident. But my curiosity was piqued. I arranged an inquiry into the whereabouts of the children. I understand that his sister took custody.”

  Pollard shifted. “So?”

  “He didn’t have a sister,” Bleak said, and the white-haired man nodded.

  “No,” he said, his voice very soft. “He did not.” He tossed a pair of black iPhones onto the seat beside Pollard.

  “Details for the attorney who dealt with her are on the phones. Read and delete.”

  “Is she close?” Pollard asked.

  “I’m not sure. Point last seen was Louisville.”

  “How fast to find her, do you think?”

  The white-haired man shrugged. “Unknown. That’s why it’s you two.”

  “I ask only because it’s a difficult thing, doing a job and disappearing at the same time.”

  “That’s why it’s you two,” the white-haired man repeated. “If you don’t think you can handle it, I can make sure the van delivers you back to prison, where things are less challenging.”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  “I thought not.” The white-haired man nodded in the direction of the highway. “The boys will see to your escape up the road. You’ll have a three-hour start and a clean vehicle. Licenses and passports are in the vehicle. Registration will come back to a construction company in Atlanta. Anyone asks, you’re carpenters.”

  “No problem,” Randall Pollard said. “I’ve used a hammer plenty of times. A drill too. Seen Bleak here make nice use of a miter saw once.”

  He laughed. Bleak didn’t join in.

  The white-haired man said, “Don’t fuck it up.”

  “We won’t.”

  “Hope not. You find her, and you call me. I want to be there at the end. I was supposed to be there the first time, and I will not—under any circumstances—trust someone who tells me that the job is done. I will do it myself. Understand that?”

  Silence while he looked from Pollard to Bleak, confirming that they understood.

  “That’s all, then. Enjoy the fresh air, gents.”

  Pollard said, “Thank you, Mr. Lowery.” Then he added, “We’ll get her. No problem.”

  Bleak didn’t utter a word. The white-haired man gazed at him for a few seconds, taking in the endless depths of those unblinking dark eyes, and then he smiled. “It’s good to see you again, Bleak. It truly is. You were always the best of them.”

  Pollard didn’t object to this assessment. Bleak didn’t respond to it.

  The white-haired man slid the van door shut, nodded once at the two employees of MG&L Security Transportation Solutions, a subsidiary of the Lowery Group, then walked back across the parking lot.

  A black Range Rover was waiting, the motor already running.

  12

  Ed came by on the kids’ second afternoon at the cabin, and Leah had never been so glad to see his battered Dodge Ram rattle up the drive and into the yard.

  “This is my friend Ed,” she said as Tessa bounded in delighted circles, herding him up to the porch of the cabin.

  “Right—the friend,” Hailey echoed. Quiet scrutiny. That was Hailey.

  Ed shook Leah’s hand without visible affection. He seemed to read the situation easily enough; everything was new to the kids, and he was the newest thing, don’t overload any emotional circuits.

  “Good to see you, Trenton,” he said.

  Trenton? Trying too hard, maybe, but it was hard to blame him.

  “You too,” Leah said. “Thanks for watching Tessa.”

  “She watches me.”

  As if in affirmation, the dog gave his hand a playful nip.

  Leah smiled and went through the introductions: “This is my niece, Hailey, and my nephew, Nick.”

  Hailey offered Ed a nod and a peace sign, a gesture Leah had never seen her make before and one that seemed more like a hex, warding him off. Ed returned the nod without stepping toward her. Nick charged forward, regarding Ed curiously.

  “You’re the hunting guide?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Do you have a gun with you?”

  “It’s not hunting season.”

  “So…no?”

  “So no.” Ed’s grin seemed to draw Nick in.

  Nick jutted a thumb at Leah. “She says you’ve killed moose and bears.”

  “Yep.”

  “She says she doesn’t kill moose and bears. Or bears, I mean.”

  Ed shot Leah an amused glance from beneath his dusty Cabela’s cap. “She finds them, though. She’s better at that than me. If she wanted to start shooting something other than pictures, she’d run me right out of business.”

  Nick gazed at Leah with newfound respect. “Really?”

  “Facts,” Ed said. He leaned against the porch rail, more at ease now.

  Leah nodded at the door. “Come on inside.”

  “Too nice of a day for that,” he said. “I’m going fishing. Figured I’d see if anyone wanted to join me.”

  “Yes,” Nick said at the exact moment Hailey said, “No, thank you.”

  Ed looked at Hailey first, nodded, then turned to Nick. “We’ll hit the lake for a couple hours, get you a trout, Mr. Nick. Sound good?”

  “Sure.”

  Hailey, reproachful, said, “I don’t think he should go alone. He doesn’t know you.”

  Ed, lounging against the railing, waited on Leah.

  “You want to fish?” Leah asked Nick. He nodded emphatically. “Okay.” Looking at Hailey, she said, “He’ll be safe. Ed’s a professional guide and the weather’s great. I’ll stay here with you.”

  Her daughter’s stare seemed laced with tumbleweeds.

  Hailey said, “Then we’ll all go. I don’t need to fish. I can just hang out, right?”

  “Sure,” Ed said. “I need someone to haul the anchor. My shoulders get sore.” He waited until Hailey shot him an uneasy look before he smiled. “Kidding. You can get some sun and relaxation while your brother gets his fish. Sound fair?”

  “How big is the lake?” Nick said. “I’ve only fished on rivers.”

  “It is the biggest lake east of the Mississippi that is—”

  “That’s a lie,” Hailey interjected. “Superior is the biggest lake east of the Mississippi.”

  Ed gave that slow grin again. He liked Hailey, Leah realized. There was something in her contentiousness that he appreciated. She granted no free passes, and he respected that.

  “Biggest lake east of the Mississippi that is contained entirely in one state,” he said. “How is that for obscure trivia?”

  Hailey gave a grudging nod, but Leah guessed that she would probably fact-check him.

  “Put Nick in a life jacket,” Hailey said. “If it’s that big, it’s probably deep.”

  “I can swim!” Nick cried indignantly.

  “Put him in a life jacket,” Hailey repeated.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ed said. “I have enough aboard for everyone. State law.”

  “I’ll get my sunglasses,” Hailey said and went back into the cabin. Ed looked at Leah and raised his eyebrows. Leah just shrugged. Her daughter didn’t hand out trust. It had to be earned.

  And you’re undermining it, she told herself. Every second of every day, you’re undermining it. Your life is a lie.

  “I’ll get my sunglasses too,” she said, because she didn’t want anyone to be able to look into her eyes right then.

  Moosehead Lake was stunningly beautiful, and, yes, it was the large
st lake east of the Mississippi that was contained entirely in one state. It was populated with islands, dozens of them, and when the sun settled over the western mountains, the land was as perfect as anyplace Leah had ever been. There in the isolated mountains she’d actually made more friends than she had intended to when she’d arrived seeking solitude. Maybe it was because the region was so sparsely populated that you couldn’t stay anonymous even if you tried. Or maybe it was because she’d grown tired of seeking anonymity. The years passed, she stayed alive, and her children stayed safe with their father. One life had faded behind her but there was still daylight ahead. Time didn’t heal, but it moved you forward, whether you liked it or not. The current of time respected no anchors; it swept you along, indifferent to your sorrows or rages or fears. The current of time had swept Leah here. She’d still thought of her old life daily, prayed for her children each night, wished death upon J. Corson Lowery each morning…but time had worked on her with its relentless power. The past receded with each sunset, never forgotten but always farther away. She’d begun to find a true identity of her own. The first new skills. The first real friendships. The first romantic relationships. Nina Morgan faded; Leah Trenton emerged.

  It was a fine afternoon. Leah loved the lake and Ed’s humor and warmth, the way he took time to explain the difference between a brook trout and a lake trout to Nick, the way he accepted a reel with a backlash and showed no trace of annoyance, simply talking in his low, unhurried pace while he unraveled the snarl. He didn’t leave Hailey out but was wise enough not to push her, too. The only thing she displayed any interest in was Mount Kineo. The steep rise of granite on an island in a freshwater lake intrigued her, and she asked questions seemingly despite herself, interested in the stories Ed told about the early American Indians who’d come there for the stone to make tools, the old hotel that had at one time been the largest waterfront hotel in the United States, and the golf course.

  “There’s golf here?” Hailey asked.