“Look,” Sam said, trying again, “I was hoping we could make something of this time together.”
Hunter jostled his weight from one hip to the other. “No, you weren’t.”
“Hunter—”
“You’re lying.”
That accusation made for another ten miles of silence between them. Sam waited a good while, worrying, before he pursued this conversation further. “I don’t know what makes you say a thing like that.”
“I heard you when you told Mom you didn’t want to take me anywhere. Don’t you know?”
Sam checked his blind spot, signaled, pulled around a combine that was bouncing along the shoulder of the road.
“I was awake,” the boy said. “I was listening. So, let’s not fake each other out, okay?”
Things changed for me, Sam wanted to tell the boy. But he was sick of making excuses. “Okay,” Sam said instead.
“I heard my mother ask if you’d spend time with me. I heard you tell her you didn’t want to.”
Hunter’s CD had ended and started over again. He ejected it and slipped it inside the plastic sleeve. “You going to make us drive all night?”
“We’ll stop in a while and find a motel.”
“If we have to go to a beach, we ought to go to a real beach. Someplace with a water park and people my age and other things to do.”
“What part of the Oregon coastline, Hunter, do you think is not real?” But it hit Sam then. He barely missed a beat before he said, “You’re talking girls in bikinis, aren’t you, sir? More like—”
“Cancun.”
“Ah. I see. Cancun.”
“Or Florida.”
“Yes.”
“Swimming in Oregon, you freeze to death. You get hypothermia. You’d probably die. You’d have to wear a wet suit or just be plain dumb.”
“Well.” Sam decided it was dusky enough to remove his glasses. He dropped them on the console beside Hunter’s leg and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Call me just plain dumb.”
“You went swimming in Oregon?”
“All the time. It took bravery, of course. But I was very brave.”
Or stupid, Sam guessed his nephew wanted to say. Really, really stupid. But Hunter shuffled his huge Nikes under the cooling vent and only said, “Whatever.”
They stopped to fill up at a gas station that doubled as a campground. As Hunter worked the pump, Sam snapped Ginny’s leash on and took her walking along a grassy knoll. At least three dozen motor homes and tents stood lined next to each other below him. A number of fire pits on the lawn were alight with moving, golden sprays of flame. Aluminum camp chairs stood at right angles to each other on the manicured grass. Everywhere Sam turned there were gatherings of people, laughter and conversation, the muted smell of grilling food.
Who could say what it was that started the ache inside him? Ginny must have sensed something; dogs do that. She pressed herself up hard against his knee.
But the boundary that had kept Sam’s isolation at bay had disappeared. His sense of hiding in darkness, of watching others assembled around warmth, overcame him. Father. Yahweh? One who loves me? Are you there? Suddenly he’d never felt so wounded and raw.
Inside the glare of the store, the cash register was lined with mechanical hamsters dressed in karate garb. Sam had seen them; you pressed a paw and the hamster twirled its nunchuck and sang “Kung-Fu Fighting” for way too long. He could turn them on all at once, maybe get a smile out of Hunter. Common sense won out, though. That would embarrass the kid so much he’d want to sink through the floor.
“You hungry? Want something to eat?” He could see the top of Hunter’s head browsing the snack aisle.
Sam found himself a cellophane-wrapped sandwich with a slab of rubbery cheese and turkey that had gone gray. Hunter arrived with something equally as healthy—a bag of beef jerky, a burrito, and a Mountain Dew. Sam handed over his credit card. “Any place close to spend the night if you don’t have a camper?” he asked the clerk as he signed the receipt and pocketed his wallet.
“Oh, there’s plenty of motels up ahead. There’s a Little America just after you get past Cheyenne. About forty more miles, I’d say. Can’t miss it, place is lit up like a Christmas tree at night.”
“Thanks.”
Sam hesitated with door handle in hand when they arrived back at the car. He looked at Hunter, who was already ripping into the bag of jerky with his teeth. It would be the perfect time for Sam to suggest his nephew help him drive, the perfect time for him to pitch the keys over the hood and say, “Why don’t you take the wheel for a while, kid?”
As a result of the accident, Hunter’s license would be suspended for at least three months. Even if the boy had been able to share driving, handing over that duty would have implied too much trust. It would have implied a sense of camaraderie that the two did not share. Sam caught the keys inside his own fist and slid behind the wheel again. They drove away from the pump and left the canopy of harsh florescent light behind them. When they turned off the asphalt, the frontage road ran up a short hill to the green interstate sign. When they merged onto the highway, their headlamps seemed alive and warm slipping into the night ahead of them.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
If anyone were to stand on the outside of her life looking in, Aubrey McCart reasoned, that person would never suspect that her life might be less than satisfactory. Anyone looking in would see only a spotless, beautiful house, the living-room carpet as lush and cushioned as the golf-course turf that edged the patio. He would see the arrangement of Town and Country magazines on the coffee table and hear the sound of the children as they argued over who would have the next turn on the thick cedar swing set that Gary had built outside.
On Monday and Thursday of next week, the housekeeper would arrive. Giramina kept her own key. She would dust the furniture and polish the brass utensils beside the fireplace. She would rearrange the scads of stuffed animals and wash and iron the sheets. She would invade Billy’s hamper—something so frightening that Aubrey had told her not to do it—and every soccer shirt and pair of jeans would be found neatly pressed and folded, sorted in his drawers.
It all seemed terribly normal, but today that deception would be forever destroyed.
Aubrey heard heavy, muffled thumping on the stairs. That would be Hannah, she knew, the youngest, bringing her suitcase down, the tatters of her pink blanket protruding from the zipper. Aubrey reached her arms out to assist, but the five-year-old veered wildly around her mother, saying, “I can do this myself,” as the wheels on her bag bumped across the seams in the hardwood floor. Billy bounded down next, headed straight for the door, his mouth set into a grim line. He clutched his soccer-ball pillow against his chest as if he were clutching a shield to protect himself from her.
Billy was the one she needed to intercept. “Where are your clothes?” she asked.
“In here.” He hugged his pillow tighter.
“You’re not taking enough, then. Not if it fits in there.”
“I’ve got everything I need, Mom.”
“Your toothbrush? Where’s your toothbrush?”
“In here.”
“Underwear?”
No answer.
She lowered her chin at him. “Billy?”
“I’ve got enough.”
“How many?”
“Enough for two weeks.”
“In your pillow?”
“Yes.”
“How many?” She kept him under arrest with her eyes.
“Two pairs,” he conceded. “Mom, Aunt Emily’s got a washer. I’ve got everything I need.”
Channing came trouncing down, ready for the airport, in a hip-hugger skirt shorter than the minis Aubrey used to wear, an off-the-shoulder sweater, and a pair of lambskin mukluks more appropriate for a ski resort than a flight to California. She wore her straight blond hair slung off to one side of her face. The braces on her teeth, flashing silver, were the only thing that pegged her at fifteen instead
of twenty. Just watching her teenage daughter enter a room made Aubrey feel helpless.
Channing was the one Aubrey ached to touch. Hannah was still young enough to belong to her. If Aubrey timed it right with her young son, she could manage to capture him long enough for a little squeeze or slip him into her lap for one millisecond or capture that sweaty, irreplaceable scent of his hair. Channing liked to pretend she hadn’t been born of parents. At slightest provocation, she would flinch and bristle and scurry away.
Lately Channing and Gary had been talking about finding her a car. Gary, always the hero. She would find those two with their heads together over eBay, talking high-mileage Bonnevilles or maybe an old Jetta or a truck. Thirty minutes later they’d be searching Corvettes, motorcycles made for off-road travel with horsepower off the charts, purple custom vans with flames on the side.
“Breakfast?” she asked, tossing the suggestion into thin air. “I’ve got—”
The door slammed. Billy returned and pressed his face flat against the screen. “McDonald’s, Mom. Duh.”
“Okay. McDonald’s.”
The most difficult part of today was pretending this was a regular trip, something they ought to look forward to. She grabbed a box of chocolate Pop-Tarts and handed them to Gary as he came downstairs, too, shrugging into his jacket.
He gripped the box inside one huge paw the same way he would grip a football. “What are these for?” He studied the label. Anything to keep his eyes averted from hers.
“For emergencies,” she said. “In case one of us gets stranded on the road.”
He studied his shoes.
“Do you have the map?” she asked. “The brochure?”
He placed his hand over the folded papers in his breast pocket. “Aubrey, listen. I—”
She touched his hand where it lay on his coat. “Let’s just get on the road.” When he moved his fingers, she rearranged the papers in his pocket to make certain the children wouldn’t read anything revealing.
The center Gary had agreed to go to was one of the best private rehabs, everyone in the court system had told them. The judge had researched and approved it himself before the prosecutor would even agree to Gary traveling there. Aubrey had found the place herself, on the Internet, and made the arrangements via the phone at odd hours when Hannah and Billy and Channing wouldn’t overhear, talking to staff to be sure he could be admitted and that a bed was available, talking to the insurance company to see if they would pay.
In spite of the court documents being public record, Aubrey had vowed to protect the children from this. Her second priority had been to keep Gary’s problem hidden from everyone. It seemed the worse thing she could think of, having people look at her and know.
My husband is an alcoholic.
“You ready to go?” Gary asked her now.
Aubrey nodded.
“Might as well get this show on the road.”
“A circus,” she commented without meeting his gaze. “Do you ever wonder where clichés come from? They were talking about a circus when they said that. ‘Get this show on the road.’”
“That fits us,” he said, a feeble attempt at joking. “Our lives are a circus.”
She didn’t smile.
“Kids!” Gary raised his voice. “Load up. Don’t want to miss your plane.”
“Did you get Hannah’s suitcase? She carried it down for you.”
He nodded. “Everything’s in. Billy’s already outside.”
“You ready?” Aubrey asked Hannah. As she reached to scoop her littlest daughter into her arms, Channing grabbed Hannah instead and, in a sulk, bore her out the door.
Aubrey stared sadly after her oldest child, at the churlish set of her spine, the self-righteous way she tromped down the front steps. She said to her husband, “Channing doesn’t want to be gone three weeks.”
“She wouldn’t have to be,” Gary reminded her. “We don’t have to ship them off to my sister’s. We don’t have to pretend that you and I are going off together.”
“Of course we do.”
“You could stay with them here while I’m in rehab.”
“And just exactly what would I tell them? It’s too much for them to have to deal with, Gary. It’s too much for them to have to try to understand.”
They’d come to the same stalemate at least a dozen times. Now that the children had gone ahead, the silence of the house seemed to wrap itself around them in censure.
My husband is an alcoholic.
“You’re ashamed of me,” he said.
“I’m not,” she lied.
He gripped her shoulders. “Look at me, Aubrey. You haven’t looked at me all morning.”
“We’re going to be late to the airport. Billy wants to stop by McDonald’s.”
“Look at me, Aubrey. Please.”
Reluctantly, she raised her eyes to his. She saw her husband swallow in frustration, his Adam’s apple move up and then down.
It doesn’t matter what he thinks, she reminded herself. I have every right to keep myself protected from more pain. Gary’s drinking has hurt all of us.
He’d left Billy at Carson Taylor’s birthday party so late that Carson’s mother had phoned to inform Aubrey that there must be some mistake, no one had come to pick up Billy, and he certainly hadn’t been invited to a sleepover. He’d arrived at Channing’s choir concert so drunk that he’d barely been able to stand. Aubrey lived in fear that Gary might drink too much and do something to hurt the baby. She counted it as a blessing that the police had picked him up while he staggered across the eleventh hole at Westmoreland Links in the dark, trying to find his way home.
“Please listen to me,” he said now, and she could read the earnestness in his eyes as he clutched her shoulders. But Gary had been earnest before. “Don’t you know that, if I could, I would do things differently?”
Aubrey steeled herself against his words. Gary never would have admitted that he had a problem, never would have even sought this treatment, if it hadn’t been a court decree.
“I’d move the clock back if I could,” he said, “but I can’t. I can only go forward.” Her husband stood over her, brooding, unable to say more. If this had been three months ago, if she had still been trying to read his emotions, she would have thought him bitter, nervous, embarrassed. But she knew better now. Emotions didn’t rule her husband. His drinking did.
“We’re going to be late to the airport,” she said.
“You’ve closed yourself off from me, Aubrey,” he said. “We’ll never be able to salvage this if you aren’t willing to give me another chance.”
The afternoon Hunter and Sam reached Piddock Beach, it had begun to rain. As they’d driven toward the Washington border where the highway joined the Columbia River, the sky had turned as dark as smoke. By the time they reached The Dalles, where wagons had forded a hundred and fifty years ago, they found themselves inside a gorge, amidst forests of ancient juniper and hemlock.
The road dropped dramatically toward the Pacific Ocean. The shadows became deep and mossy and the air took on a chill. Hunter, who’d only worn a T-shirt and baggy shorts, dug in his duffel until he found a hooded sweatshirt to keep warm. As the river grew wider and they passed Multnomah Falls, rain plinked the leaves of the trees the way fingers plink piano keys. They drove past scenic turnoffs, and narrow passageways with arrows to wilderness areas, and a dam built with locks so the salmon could spawn upstream.
After they shot through Portland and headed northwest, the small blackberry farms and fruit stands emerged like watercolor blotches through the car’s rain-streaked, fogged windows. Occasionally the foliage that crowded the two-lane road would break away to reveal a misted distance of green hills, a scattering of Holsteins grazing beside a barn. Then they came upon a weathered sign for the old Agate Shop, a roadside store that sold rocks from the beach and local crafts and cement birdbaths. Sam glanced across the front seat at his nephew.
“Well, buddy. Looks like we’re almost there.�
��
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
Which brought complete silence, except for Ginny’s panting, in the car.
When they entered Piddock Beach, Sam did not try to appraise his rush of feeling. Everything here seemed so small through the blurred windows. Was that because he had been here when he was small so he remembered everything large? Or was it because the details of Piddock Beach had grown in his memory and now, seeing details in reality, he found them deflated?
“Right around this corner,” Sam said, “is the taffy shop. Your mother ate so much taffy, I’m surprised she didn’t lose all her teeth in there.”
But the Seaside Salt Water Taffy Shoppe was no longer in business. Sam recognized the remains of the white stucco gas station on Main Street, its broad glass front shattered and crosshatched with tape, its sign broken out in chunks. Instead of the hodgepodge of shops and kites and wooden tables that had once lined the boardwalk, a strip of uniform signs now bordered the street. Gone were the elaborate parking meters at the curb and the steps that had led to the Scandinavian pastry shop and the place that had sold hand-blown fishing floats beside the pier. They passed acres and acres of outlet mall. Placards directed him to the nearest underground garage.
Nothing was as he’d remembered it. Sam knew without question where the motor court ought to be. But when he made the next turn, expecting a vast expanse of dunes and the Sunset Vue Motor Court to appear, he found high-rise condos blocking the view of the sea.
“How do you even get to it anymore?” Sam wondered.
“What?”
“The water.”
Hunter shrugged. “How am I supposed to know?”
Sam floored the accelerator and headed in the only other direction he knew to go. When he turned onto the street, the traffic was bumper to bumper. A dune buggy inched along in front of them, its pistons hammering discontent. Guiltily, he proceeded toward the McCarts’ house, thinking he might as well get that disappointment out of the way, too.
The entrance to the neighborhood had been widened; they entered through a broad gate marked SANDVIEW POINT. Yes, there were tract houses here just as he’d expected, perfect lawns with flagstone walks snaking toward front doors and profusions of geraniums. But towering over the shingled roofs, Sam could still see grandfather evergreens growing. It gave him hope to see rooflines of older bungalows among the trees.
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