The Road to You

by Piper Lennox

  “That’s great,” I wheeze, “because, you know, medical knowledge is inherited genetically.”

  She glares at me. “Or,” she counters, “people can, you know, learn things from each other.” As soon as she reaches for me, I flinch and bat her hand away.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  “I’m helping you.”

  “Just give me a minute, okay?” Slowly, I sit up, determined to breathe through it. I pat myself down for anything jagged or dislocated. The only thing I find is blood, when I touch my forehead.

  “It’s tiny.” She squints at the wound. “Like, half an inch long, not deep. The ones on your chest are, uh…just scrapes.” While I struggle to my feet, she shakes her car keys. “I can give you a ride to the hospital, if you want.”

  “I don’t have insurance.” I kick the rug I landed on into the corner and steady myself before I look at her.

  She’s not a high schooler, that’s for sure. She looks about my age, maybe a little younger. Her lips, which she’s biting, are chapped and pink. I stare at them as she speaks.

  “I didn’t mean to barge in, I swear. I thought the house was abandoned, and...see, I got this letter, and the envelope said she lived here—”

  “Who?” I touch the wound on my head without thinking and wince. “Shit.”

  “Here.” She looks around, then ducks into the half-bath under the stairs and emerges with a wad of toilet paper. I take it from her when she tries to press it against my forehead. It startles her, but she takes a breath and moves on. “Um, anyway, I was looking for Tillie.”

  Ah, so she’s a collector. This is nothing new. Collections used to call here all hours of the day. When I disconnected the phone, some reps actually started showing up in person, looking for her. Never met one with the nerve to come inside.

  “Tillie doesn’t live here anymore,” I tell her, breezing past to grab an ice pack from the kitchen. The wine glasses on top of the fridge rattle as I slam the freezer shut.

  “Oh.” The girl leans against the doorjamb. “Do you know where she is now? It’s important.”

  Her stare floats in the range of my torso. I assume she’s just checking out the scratches from my fall—until we make eye contact, and she looks away. Fast.

  “Look,” I tell her, “I know you’re just doing your job and all, but the woman’s gone. And she probably doesn’t have money to pay you or anyone else. If she did, you think her house would be abandoned?”

  “If it’s abandoned,” she says, “what are you doing here?”

  I wipe my mouth and turn, surprised to find she’s now only a foot away. “I used to be her tenant. Just stopped by to get the last of my stuff.” As though this proves it, I grab my jacket off the hook by the back door and shrug it on.

  “But you knew her?” Her voice gets weird. “Like...you actually knew her?”

  “Yeah, kind of. Why’s that matter?” I notice there’s an envelope in her hand, instead of a folder or clipboard, the usual accessories for collectors. “Wait, are you not here from an agency?”

  Her eyes widen. “How did you know?”

  “So you are from a collection agency.”

  She stares at me a second, then shakes her head. “Oh, no, I’m not...I thought you meant....”

  Up close, without pain wracking my body, I notice she’s pretty cute. Especially when she blushes. I’d go so far as to think she’s sexy, if she weren’t a home invader.

  “Okay,” I say, setting the ice pack on the counter, “you need to tell me who you are.”

  Lila

  Between the shock of getting a clock thrown at my head, and the fact my eyes can’t stay away from his scratches—or rather, the muscles of his scratched chest, still visible through the open jacket—I have no idea what to say.

  Instead, I hold up the letter. The guy leans in and reads it, but doesn’t take it from my hand.

  “This is from Tillie?”

  I nod.

  “To you.”

  “Yes.” Finally, the words surface: “It was in a file, at this adoption agency.”

  Now, he takes the letter. My hand feels strange without it.

  “Kathryn,” he says, skimming the contents again. He shoots me a look. “So your name is Kathryn, and you’re Tillie’s daughter?”

  “Yes. Well, no—my name is Lila.” My throat feels scorched. I tuck my hair behind my ear and shrug, as if I can make this whole situation smaller, easier to handle. “My parents must have changed it. My adoptive parents, I mean.” I look around the kitchen. “So...she left?”

  “Yeah. About six months ago.” His face is softer now, a look I recognize: he feels sorry for me. Maybe it’s because he’s a stranger (or because I just watched him fall down a flight of stairs), but pity doesn’t feel quite so humiliating, coming from him. “Tillie never told me she had a kid.”

  “Yeah, well, my parents never told me I was adopted.” It’s only when he snorts that I realize I’ve made a joke.

  He presses the toilet paper against his cut, then pulls it back to gauge the blood loss. “I wish I could help you out, Kathryn, but—”

  “Lila.”

  “Lila. Right.” Blood trickles towards his eyebrow, but I don’t mention it. He clearly doesn’t want my help. “I have no idea where Tillie is. She didn’t warn me she was leaving, didn’t leave a note, nothing. Sorry.”

  I nod, already figuring as much, and take a step backwards. “Okay. I’m sorry again, you know...for breaking in.”

  “No problem. You were on a mission.”

  “If you do hear from her, though,” I say, already turning on my heel, “could you let her know the agency has my contact information, so she....” I pivot back. “You said you’re her tenant?”

  “Used to be, yeah. Like I said, I came by to get the rest of my shit.”

  “You were asleep in that bed.” I point to the ceiling above us. “And if she’s been gone six months, why are you just now getting your stuff out?”

  The guy stares me down. I blink, but don’t look away. “I didn’t have room in my new place to store it all, yet,” he says, voice like steel: smooth, but ice cold.

  “And you were sleeping because...?”

  “Because I was tired? Because that was my old room?”

  “Uh-huh. Just taking a quick nap, shirtless. Whatever.” I stride to the fridge, open it, and point to the light. “And I suppose you have an explanation for why the electricity still works?”

  “Hey, why are you grilling me?”

  I fold my arms. “I think you’re lying about getting your stuff. I think you’re squatting here.”

  “Okay,” he says, “let’s say I am squatting.” He edges by me, gets a soda from the fridge, and opens it, all without breaking eye contact. “What would you do about it?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing, probably.”

  He hesitates, the bottle poised at his mouth. “I’m squatting.”

  “Why?”

  “Why, what?”

  “Why are you staying here, if she’s gone?”

  “You ask a lot of questions, you know that?” He sets the bottle down and motions towards the back door.

  “It was nice to meet you and all,” he says, holding it open for me, “but like I said, Tillie isn’t here. So...see you around.”

  I stay where I am. A chill blows in—not that the house could get much colder. It feels like he hasn’t had the heat on for days. “Can I just ask you a few more things about her? Since you knew her, kind of?”

  Again, his face looks kinder than I’m sure he wants it to. He scratches the back of his head and sighs. “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Thanks.” I stick out my hand, realizing we didn’t have a proper introduction. Any introduction, for that matter. When he shakes it, I say, “Lila Ashbury.”

  He nods.

  I tilt my head. “And?”

  “And...what?”

  God, how hard did he hit his head? “And you are?”

  “Oh. Shepherd.”


  “First or last?”

  “Just Shepherd.”

  I roll my eyes. “Really? A fake name? I told you, I’m not going to report you for squatting.”

  “Shepherd,” he says patiently, zipping his coat, “is my real first name.”

  “And your last name?”

  “None of your business.” He follows me out onto the back porch. I kick the wet leaves, clumped together and decayed, from the top step and sit. Shepherd takes an overturned plastic crate on the ground in front of me.

  I offer up a cigarette. “Smoke?”

  “No, but thanks,” he says. “I quit last year.”

  I stare at the smoldering end of my cigarette. “Me, too.”

  “So why’d you start again?”

  Something about Shepherd makes me feel more relaxed than I have in a while. Again, it could be the fact he’s a stranger: I’ve got nothing to lose and no opinion to worry over. It could have nothing to do with him, simply the result of shock as I struggle to accept, in a single weekend, that I’ve got a mom out there again.

  Whatever it is that makes it easy to talk to him, I like it. It’s a nice change from guarding myself so closely, the way I always had to with Donnie. And that restless feeling is gone again—as though, right now, I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.

  “My dad getting sick,” I tell him. I flick the ashes into an empty soda bottle nearby. “He had kidney failure.”

  “Had?”

  “Yeah. He died.” I take another drag and hold it in my lungs, savoring the burn. With this much heat in my chest, it feels like I couldn’t cry even if I wanted to, all the tears evaporated. Which is exactly what I want. I’m tired of crying. “Last Wednesday.”

  “Oh.” He shifts on the crate. “I’m sorry.”

  I nod my thanks. “So, uh—how long were you Tillie’s tenant?”

  “Three years. Give or take a few months.”

  “How’d you meet?”

  “We used to work together at the Warbler Street outlet,” he says. “She was a cashier, I was stockroom, so it’s not like we talked much, but she heard I needed a place to stay when my dad kicked me out. She asked if I wanted to rent her spare room, and...yeah. That’s about it.”

  This catches my attention. “Your dad kicked you out?”

  “Hey, you’re here to learn about your mom. Don’t feel pressured to do the normal back-and-forth thing.”

  “I don’t feel pressured. I was curious.”

  “Anyway,” he goes on, ignoring this, “she’d have me do odd jobs around the place, for lower rent and dinner a few times a month. We got along pretty well.”

  “Did she take anything with her?”

  He shakes his head. “Just a suitcase and some clothes. Her purse. She didn’t even take her car.”

  “So why did you stay?”

  “I told you, we aren’t talking about me.” He cracks his thumb inside his fist, sweeping his gaze across the back of the house. “What else do you want to know about your mom?”

  Hearing him call her that, even though I’ve been thinking the phrase for hours, trying to make myself believe it, feels strange. I still picture my mom as...well, Mom, the one I grew up with, the one who raised me.

  “Whatever you know about her, I guess,” I answer. I stomp out my cigarette and pull my hands into my sleeves, shivering. “I’m not sure where to start.”

  Shepherd gets to his feet. “I can do that,” he says, “but let’s go somewhere warm, first. My heaters are broken.”

  I raise my eyebrow. “You’re kidding.”

  “No need for sarcasm.” He stretches his arms over his head. I try not to stare at the flash of abs I see when his jacket rides up. He notices.

  “I’ll get a sweater.” He smiles. It’s the first one I’ve seen him give, and the first one I’ve believed in days.

  Four

  Shepherd

  “You didn’t have to pay for me.”

  She waves off my money. “I want to. Call it payback for you telling me stuff about Tillie.” Her smirk is subtle, but I catch it. “Or for me scaring you so bad you fell down the stairs.”

  “You didn’t scare me. I tripped.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Once we’re seated at a booth near the back of the café, she starts with the questions again: How old is Tillie? (Forty.) What hobbies does she have? (Sewing, crafting, volunteer work.) What music does she listen to? (Sappy country love songs and a lot of jazz, which I despise, but tolerated, for her.)

  “And you don’t know why she left?”

  “No clue.”

  “Did she owe money or something?”

  “Not that I know of. She does now—the utility companies and some credit cards—but that was all after she left.” I take another bite from my sandwich and realize, suddenly, I’m starving; I forgot to eat dinner last night. “She didn’t owe anything on the house, though. She left the outlet after she paid it off, then got a job as a freelance editor. So I don’t know why she up and left the way she did.”

  “That’s why you live there,” she says, so proud of herself, like she’s solved a mystery. “No mortgage, no rent. Not a bad deal.”

  “The house would just sit there and rot, if I left,” I point out.

  She takes a long sip of her drink. “Is that why you’ve let the yard get so overgrown, or refused to take in the mail?”

  She’s got you there. “Okay, so I’m not the best housekeeper. Let’s get back to the real topic.”

  Lila shakes her head, but, thankfully, takes her focus off me again. “So was she the type to take off like that, no warning?”

  “At first I thought she was on vacation. She was kind of impulsive like that: sudden trips, buying furniture on a whim, signing up for random classes. Like this one time, we saw a documentary on candle-making? She went and signed up for a candle workshop, right then and there.”

  Lila laughs. The sound is quiet, drowned out by a blender at the counter.

  “Anyway,” I shrug, “she’s up and left before, so I didn’t find it that strange until a few weeks passed. I called the police after a month to report her missing.”

  I mean for this to be casual—just telling Lila the facts—but her face makes it obvious it’s anything but. She sits back against the booth, like I knocked the air out of her.

  “Sorry. Maybe I should have told you that sooner.”

  She blinks, getting her bearings. “Um…did they find anything? Leads, suspects?”

  I almost laugh, but know better than to show it. “It’s not exactly a ‘foul play’ kind of situation,” I explain. “Since she took her suitcase and wallet, all that, the cops basically told me there wasn’t anything they could do. The verdict is that she left willingly and doesn’t want to be found.”

  “That makes sense, I guess.” Lila coughs, but her voice stays raspy.

  “I, uh—I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “No, no,” she says quickly. “It’s fine. I mean, I asked, right?”

  “They’re still looking for her, if that helps.” Technically, I’m lying. The police are willing to keep looking, but can’t actually do it: there’s no evidence to go on. But I don’t see the point in telling that to Lila.

  “Was she by herself?”

  I think a minute. “She was seeing a guy she met at this singles group thing. I didn’t think they were that serious, but maybe she went with him. Guess that would explain the car thing, too.”

  “I assume you don’t know his name or number.”

  “Nope. Sorry.”

  Lila studies the tabletop. “What does she look like?”

  I wipe my mouth again and look at the widow’s peak in her hair, her eyes with shifting colors: green and blue, like lake water, but clearer.

  “Actually,” I say, “like you.”

  “Really?”

  Her smile, for some reason, makes me smile. “Really.”

  After lunch, we sit in her car with the heater blasting. “I just wish I cou
ld find her,” she sighs. “It’s stupid, how much I want to meet her, when I didn’t even know she existed until a few days ago.”

  “That’s not stupid.”

  She smiles again, this time sadly, and shakes out a cigarette. Her lighter sputters, but won’t ignite. “I just bought this one,” she grumbles.

  “Hang on, I think I have matches.” I pull the contents of my pocket out piece by piece and pile them in my lap. Paper scraps, receipts, a mint. When I finally come up with the matches, she’s staring at my crotch.

  “Where did you get that?” She reaches for something.

  It’s the photo from the locket.

  “This is me,” she whispers, turning it in the light. “My parents, they had this photo on their mantle. And it was in my file at the agency, too.” Her eyes turn on me. “How did you get this?”

  Just like that, I feel like a dirt bag again.

  “It was in some stuff Tillie left,” I shrug. That’s it: play it casual. “You can have it. I mean, it’s yours, basically.”

  “It’s cut into a heart.” Her breathing is louder now. I have the feeling I’ll be walking home.

  Especially since, compelled by some God-awful force I don’t understand, I feel like I have to tell her the truth.

  “It was in a locket.”

  “A locket,” she repeats.

  “Yeah, like, this gold heart locket, and it had KD on it. I guess...that was Kathryn Davidson.” I force my eyes to hers. “You.”

  Lila stares at me so hard, I have to look away again. “Where is it?”

  I shift my jaw. “I pawned it.”

  “You what?”

  “I’m not proud of it, okay? And it’s not like I knew it was yours.”

  “But you did know it wasn’t yours.” She sighs through her nose, closing the picture up in her palm. “I could have you arrested for this, you know.”

  “Over a locket?”

  “Yeah,” she snaps, “because if she left pretty much everything she owned behind, I’m willing to bet you pawned a lot of stuff before you got desperate enough to sell a locket.”

  Damn. She’s pretty smart.

  “Hey, as far as I knew,” I argue, “Tillie had no family or friends whatsoever, other than me. And she was gone for three months before I even touched the stuff she left. The necklace didn’t look important—it’s not like it was in some fancy jewelry box in her room.” I sit back against my seat and fold my arms. “Like I said, I’m not proud of it. I needed some extra money, and that stuff was just sitting there in the basement, rotting in a bunch of moldy boxes.”