Never Turn Back

by Christopher Swann

  He actually smiles. It holds more sorrow and bitterness than humor, true, but he smiles nonetheless. “I know how to clean a car,” he says. “But they found hair. Just not mine or Susannah’s.”

  I look blankly at him, and he looks back at me, waiting for me to figure it out. It doesn’t take too long. They found other evidence, Johnny Shaw told me. “Donny Wharton’s,” I say. “You … you planted his hair in Marisa’s car?”

  “Your sister did,” he says. “She’d been following Donny Wharton a long time. Had some of his hair in an evidence bag in her backpack. I asked her why and she said she didn’t know, just thought it might come in useful someday.” He says this last as if he’s proud of her.

  “Wait,” I say, because realization has washed over me and I’m struggling for air as if I’ve been pulled underwater by a sudden riptide. “You lied to me,” I continue. “You … you already knew Susannah had killed Marisa when I came to you. You fucking asked me if I’d done it.” Uncle Gavin begins to open his mouth, and I talk over him. “Don’t you tell me not to curse in front of you, Goddamn it. You don’t get that option. How long were you going to string me along?” Then another wave of realization hits me. “Did Susannah fake everything? The suicide attempt, all of it?” I grip my head as if that’s the only thing keeping it together.

  Uncle Gavin gets up from his chair and makes his way around his disaster of a desk until he is standing next to me. “I lied because I was protecting Susannah,” he says. “No one could know. Not even you. She wanted to tell you about what she’d done, but I said no. And I’d do it again. I let Caesar check Marisa’s phone to make sure there wasn’t anything connecting either your sister or you to her death. I didn’t want to drag you into it any more than you already were.” He lets out a heavy sigh. “I didn’t count on Frankie and his loyalty to you. It’s as deep as any that he has to me.” He puts his hand on my back, just below my neck, and while part of me wants to shove it away and scream in his face, I stay there in my seat, head in my hands, my uncle’s hand heavy on me. “Your sister wasn’t faking. She would have jumped off that bridge if you hadn’t been there. She told me that after you saved her, she was going to commit herself at the hospital. But when she heard about your student who took those pills because of Marisa, I think it was the last straw. She felt she had to do something.” Uncle Gavin pauses. “But I am sorry, Ethan. I’m sorry I lied to you. I was doing what I thought was best.”

  I take my hands from my face, take a deep breath, and let a shaky breath out. “I know,” I say, and I do. I know my uncle was trying to protect us. It’s not enough for me to forgive him, not yet, but I know why he did it.

  Uncle Gavin squeezes my shoulder, then withdraws his hand. “Where is she now?” he asks. “Your sister?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “She left.”

  And we have nothing else to say.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The last Saturday of spring break, I walk down my driveway to my mailbox. It’s late afternoon, and the sun touches the clouds and sets them afire as it lowers in the west. Birds are singing, trees are budding, and tender shoots of grass are poking out of the ground, rejoicing that winter is finally gone. My hand still looks like someone went after it with a chain saw, but the gauze and bandage are off and the skin held together by the stitches is healing, pink as a newborn’s.

  I open my mailbox, and there with the catalogs and other junk mail is a white envelope with ETHAN handwritten across it.

  Sitting on the front porch of my house, I open the envelope. It contains two pieces of paper. One is a letter, and I read that first:

  Dear Ethan,

  I’m sorry. And I’m okay, or will be.

  She was like a cancer, a virus that would find a place inside of you and just grow and grow until there wasn’t anything left but her. I’m not sorry for that.

  I’ve found everyone I wanted to find. Now I just have to find myself. (Insert barf emoji here.) The last person I’ve left here for you, if you want.

  You’re my brother. Always. Even if you don’t like Dirt Plow. I mean, seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you?

  Please don’t try to find me.

  There is no signature.

  The second sheet of paper, to my surprise, is a poem:

  The ancient Norse, white-haired, eyes lashed with frost,

  dreamt the world as a mighty tree of ash,

  its branches reaching to heaven, its roots

  bound in the darkness of the underworld,

  while humankind scrambled upon the bark

  of the trunk, not knowing which way they went,

  toward heaven or into hell. In my dreams

  I see a tree as well, a living oak.

  From roots to crown one half is green and young;

  the other half burns, charred limbs, black bones,

  the flames red tongues that lick the living side.

  I do not know which vision I accept.

  In both are yoked together life and death.

  Yet only one springs from my own dark thoughts,

  and so I claim it as my very own

  as one would claim one’s offspring, darkling child.

  Instead of crawling toward my final doom

  I choose both green and flame, to suffer each.

  Yet at the end one only will remain.

  But shall I claim your ever-living half,

  or shall I grasp at last the burning branch?

  The poem is signed S.

  I sit on my porch and sip cold beer from a bottle and read my sister’s poem again. A tree half-alive and green, the other half burning. Life and death, green and flame. I choose both green and flame, to suffer each. That’s my sister. I raise my beer. “To Suzie,” I say, saluting the setting sun, and I drink, then brush the tears from my eyes.

  My phone rings, and the screen says it’s my vet. God. They have been so kind about Wilson having gone missing, even offering to send me meals, which I’ve declined. Now they’ve probably found half a bag of kibble I’ve left with them and they’re calling to ask me what to do with it. I put down my beer and answer the phone, not wanting to deal with a voice mail, and there’s an explosion of babble on the line. It’s Nora, the purple-haired girl who runs the office, and it takes me several seconds to get her to slow down so I can understand.

  “She brought him in,” she says, breathless, nearly hysterical, as if she’s close to tears. “Said she was your sister; she found him on Craigslist—can you believe that? Someone in Brookhaven found him in their yard—how did he get all the way to Brookhaven?—they were looking for the owner and posted an ad on Craigslist, and your sister just walked in here and dropped him off, she wouldn’t stay—”

  I stand. “What are you saying? What—”

  “It’s Wilson, Mr. Faulkner,” Nora says, and she’s definitely crying. “She found Wilson.”

  I run for the car.

  * * *

  WILSON IS FILTHY and he has a scratch on his nose and his ribs are bruised on one side where the vet thinks someone kicked him, but when I enter the exam room where the vet is checking him out, Wilson raises his head and gives this little howl, and both the vet and I burst into tears. When I crouch to get to Wilson’s level on the exam table, he licks the tears off my face and pats at me with his paws.

  After petting Wilson and baby-talking him for about half an hour, I leave him at the vet so they can give him a thorough checkup and observe him overnight. Nora can’t tell me anything else about Susannah, just that she came in holding Wilson, handed him to an astonished Nora, and told her about finding him through a Craigslist ad before vanishing while the staff all gathered around Wilson. My best guess is that when Donny attacked Caesar, and most likely kicked Wilson in the process, Wilson hightailed it out of the yard and just kept going until he was lost. My feelings toward my sister right now defy easy explanation, but her tracking down and returning Wilson to me is a peace offering, and I accept it as such.

  It�
��s not until I get home that I remember the letter, which I tossed onto the passenger seat of my car when I jumped in to drive to the vet. Sitting in my driveway, I look at her letter again. The last person I’ve left here for you, if you want. I look at the back of the letter, then the back of the poem, and then the envelope. There it is: a third piece of paper, a thin, yellow strip that looks like it’s torn from a sheet on a legal pad. I pull the piece out—it’s about twice the size of the slip you find in a fortune cookie—and on it, in the small block lettering that Susannah sometimes uses, is a street address, followed by one word: Kayla.

  * * *

  WOODBINE DRIVE IS in Marietta, a few miles northwest of the Perimeter across the Chattahoochee River. It’s part of the suburban tracts that surround Atlanta, subdivisions with cul-de-sacs and winding streets lined with pine trees and oaks, an occasional magnolia dropping its seed pods like organic grenades. It’s a landscape of mowed front yards, basketball goals in the driveway, trampolines and gas grills and block parties and an occasional backyard pool. The houses are split-level ranches and modest Colonials, in contrast to the regal piles of brick and stone alongside the newer and gaudier McMansions in Buckhead.

  That Sunday afternoon, well after church services are over and the faithful have mostly returned home, I turn onto Woodbine Drive and roll slowly down the street, looking for number twelve. And there, at the far end of the street, on the left just before the cul-de-sac, I find it: a dark-gray two-story stucco house with white trim and a red door, sitting back on a fringe of ivy that decorates a brick walkway.

  There’s a swath of grass from the walkway to the curb, and a woman and a small boy are playing in the grass. The boy is three, maybe four, towheaded and kicking a soccer ball to the woman. The boy is not kicking the soccer ball very far, but each time he kicks it, the woman claps and cheers and the boy grins, and the woman gently kicks the ball back to the boy.

  I pull up to the curb, and the woman straightens up and shades her eyes to look at me. When she stands up, I realize she’s pregnant, just a few months along but with a definite baby bump. “Can I help you?” she says.

  I look at her face, her brown hair floating in wisps at her temples, and try to see the younger woman with stringy blonde hair who stumbled into my home one night all those years ago.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I was … looking for someone.”

  She smiles. “Who you looking for?”

  I’m thinking of a reply when the front door opens and a man walks out, wearing a green polo and blue jeans and flip-flops, a Georgia cap perched on his head. The towheaded boy cries, “Daddy!” and runs to him, flinging himself against the man’s legs.

  “Hey, buddy,” the man says, dropping a hand on the boy’s head. “You playing soccer with Mommy?” He looks up and sees me at the curb, then walks down the yard toward me and the woman. “Sheri?” he says, his tone questioning but not alarmed.

  “This fella’s looking for someone,” the woman says.

  The man nods and stands next to his wife, their son still clinging to his father’s leg.

  “I don’t think she lives here anymore,” I say.

  “Well, we moved in, what, two years ago?” the man says, looking at the woman.

  “Three, right after Billy was born,” she says, smiling at the towheaded boy. She rests a hand on her belly.

  “Yeah, three,” the man agrees, smiling. “I don’t remember the folks who lived here before, though. Friends of yours?”

  I shake my head, smiling. “It’s all right,” I say. “Sorry to bother y’all.”

  The towheaded boy is looking up at me. “What’s your name?” he says suddenly.

  “Billy,” his father says, laughing and shaking his head.

  The boy looks at his dad, frowning. “You told me to be friendly,” he says.

  “Sorry about that,” the man says, and he sticks out a hand. “I’m Tom. This is my wife, Sheri, and our son Billy.”

  I shake his hand. “Nice to meet you all.” Then I reach out to shake Sheri’s hand. “My name’s Ethan.”

  She takes my hand and gives it a firm squeeze. “Nice to meet you, Ethan,” she says, and that’s when I see her, like the child hidden in every adult’s face.

  “Y’all have a good afternoon,” I say. “Nice to meet you, Billy.”

  Billy nods solemnly at me.

  “Hope you find your friend,” Tom says.

  “That’s okay,” I say, putting the car in gear. “I don’t think she exists anymore.” And I pull away from the curb, leaving Tom behind, a slight frown on his face. When I circle around the cul-de-sac and pass them going the opposite direction, Tom and Billy are playing with the soccer ball, having already forgotten me. But the woman stands apart from them, staring at me, her mouth open in recognition. I wave good-bye, then drive away.

  As I drive out of the suburbs, I hear on the radio a report about a woman found dead on 285, in the breakdown lane. It’s the third body found on the interstate in the past month. The police have no leads on whoever the murderer is, but the press have already dubbed him the 285 Killer. I turn the radio off and drive in silence. At a stop sign, I wave at a boy with a leashed golden retriever who crosses the road in front of me, and he waves shyly back and hurries through the crosswalk, the retriever trotting by his side. I make a note to take Wilson on more walks once he gets home.

  I drive on, and the road crests a hill and then I merge onto the highway, a river of asphalt carrying cars into the city. Ahead of me, on the horizon, Atlanta’s towers rise like spires. It’s a welcome sight. It means home. And yet somewhere out there, a man is plotting another death on the highway that encircles the city. There are always men like him, like Brandon Cargill and Donny Wharton. But my sister is out there in the world as well, and Frankie, and Caesar, and Coleman and Teri Merchant and Betsy Bales. And Uncle Gavin as well. That must be worth something, a starshine to counter the darkest impulses of our hearts. There are good people in the world. I hope to be one of them. I think of Kayla, with a new name and a new family. I hope I haven’t scared her. I hope she goes on to have a good life with Tom and Billy and her unborn child. She deserves that. We all do.

  ALSO AVAILABLE BY CHRISTOPHER SWANN

  Shadow of the Lions

  AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

  Christopher Swann is a graduate of Woodberry Forest School in Virginia. He earned a B.A. in English from Washington and Lee University, an M.A. in English and creative writing from the University of Missouri-Columbia, and a Ph.D. in creative writing from Georgia State University. He lives with his wife and two sons in Atlanta, where he is the English department chair at Holy Innocents’ Episcopal School. Shadow of the Lions, published in 2017 by Algonquin, was his debut novel.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, organizations, places and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real or actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Christopher Swann

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Crooked Lane Books, an imprint of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.

  Crooked Lane Books and its logo are trademarks of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.

  Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publication data available upon request.

  ISBN (hardcover): 978-1-64385-537-0

  ISBN (ebook): 978-1-64385-538-7

  Cover design by Melanie Sun

  Printed in the United States.

  www.crookedlanebooks.com

  Crooked Lane Books

  34 West 27th St., 10th Floor

  New York, NY 10001

  First Edition: October 2020

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