by Sean Platt
Cedar Park had the largest estates on the island, but even the most massive, was dwarfed by Conway Gardens, which sat at the crest of the foothill, like an idol looking down from the peak of a mountain.
While Jon had made it his mission to leave Cedar Park behind as soon as he could, his older brother, Warren Jr., was still sucking on the family tit, living with his wife, Melinda, and their daughter, Anastasia, at the Gardens.
Warren had invited Jon to dinner, and of course Jon had to accept. Though he could avoid the family when he was home, he couldn’t do so when returning to the island without offending everyone. Their father, Blake Conway, had a way of bringing the Conway men together, whether they wanted a union or not. But he wasn’t responsible for this particular visit, nor would he be present. He was out of town. And Anastasia was in her freshman year at Columbia, so it would be just Jon, Warren, and Melinda, plus the usual staff.
Jon swung a left and felt the Avalon struggle. Only slightly, but for the first time since he was handed the key, Jon missed his own car — a BMW Z8 which cornered like it was on rails. The Avalon was a golf cart by comparison.
He idled by the gate and pushed the buzzer, but didn’t have to identify himself since he was looking into a closed circuit video camera.
A crisp voice crackled through the speakers. “Welcome home, Mr. Conway.”
“Thanks Carl,” Jon said, smiling. “It’s good to be back.”
The gates opened, and Jon pulled the car around the long circular drive, parking behind what had to be his brother’s brand new Bentley. Warren was such a dick. Their smallest garage was big enough to house a family, Warren only left the Bentley out for him to see. Jon couldn’t fathom why his brother always felt such a need to compete. Well, he had a few ideas, but diving into Warren’s psyche wasn’t something Jon cared to do at the moment. Warren was a lost cause, not worth the time or effort. Once an asshole, always an asshole, was Jon’s belief in general and iron law when it came to his brother.
Jon killed the engine and went to the front door, which swung open before he could knock. The Conway’s oldest living employee, Madge Rasmussen, smiled at Jon, asking him if he had a coat, even though it was a perfectly crisp 74 degrees outside.
“Hi Madge,” Jon said, giving the woman who had first introduced him to her sister’s cookies 25 years earlier. “How are things?”
Madge gave him a sly smile, then said, “The usual, Mr. Conway.”
“I really hate it when you call me that. You can tell Carl the same thing.”
Madge held his eyes, but said nothing.
“Jon, or hell, even Jonny, if you like.”
“As you wish, . . . ” She started to say “sir,” but mercifully didn’t.
“So is the family circus waiting?”
“Yes,” Madge said. “Mr. and Mrs. Conway are waiting for you in the dining hall.”
“You mean Warren and Melinda?” He smiled. She smiled back, but he wanted to see it go wider, so he added, “Or Humpty and Dumpty as I like to call them.”
Madge surrendered to a hearty laugh, “You’re so bad, . . . Jonny.”
She then told Jon to follow her as if they’d moved the location of the dining hall.
“Jon!” Warren exclaimed, setting his iPad on the end-table beside an overstuffed chair. He stood and crossed the carpet to greet Jon like he was some beloved hero returning from war. Melinda was reading on her own iPad several feet away. She set hers down as well, then followed Warren’s lead.
“How are you?” Warren said, wrapping his arms around his brother. Melinda stood to the side, like her usual cold fish self, but Warren was uncharacteristically warm.
Jon said, “Better than most, not as good as some, I suppose,” then surrendered into his brother’s embrace. Jon pulled away and asked, “How are you?”
Warren smiled. “Good, not great. Same as you I guess. Dad’s driving me crazy, but nothing new there. You know how that goes.”
“I try not to,” Jon said.
Warren met his smile with a thinner version. “Hungry?”
Jon realized he was starving. “Yes,” he said. “I guess I haven’t really eaten today, except for a couple of cookies, and a half-gallon of coffee. What’s on the menu?”
Warren laughed. “Carmen figured you would want a steak. So we’re having Kobe and lobster. Ready when you are.”
Jon smiled as his stomach growled. A steak did sound great. Carmen didn’t make the best steak in the world, that honor belonged to Queue de Cheval Steak House in Montreal, if you wanted fancy, and Peter Luger’s, in Brooklyn, NY if you didn’t. But she did come in third, and third was his favorite, since it was the only one that could make Jon remember everything from being 11 years old, building his own treehouse in the backyard, to being 17 and losing his virginity with Sarah, inside it.
The steak and pasta were on the table just minutes after they sat, and the 2006 Chevalier-Montrachet before that. Jon cut his meat, imagining the taste as he looked down at the gorgeous red flesh, then put it in his mouth, and let his mind wander to Sarah’s girlish grin, and his final words before that long ago evening had taken him from boy to man.
“Are you sure you’re ready?” he had asked.
“I’m always ready for you, Jon,” she had said. Then, “thank you for waiting,” before lying on the sleeping bag, curling her finger, and beckoning him forward.
It was a beautiful memory, one of his favorites. He hoped it wouldn’t make him cry.
More than keeping his tears inside, Jon hoped Warren would soon steer the conversation away from business and toward golf. It wasn’t that Jon liked to talk golf. It just happened to be the only topic which Warren could go on forever about, which kept his tongue too busy from saying something stupid like he usually did, to end dinner with drama.
Warren went on and on about the latest in augmentation technology. To hear Warren put it, Conway Industries was on the verge of something big, but he couldn’t really say anything yet. At least, not to an outsider such as Jon.
It was just one more of Warren’s subtle jabs at his brother, trying to puff up the importance of whatever project they were working on. Usually when he pulled a stunt like this in front of their father, the old man would call his son out.
“It’s an artificial eye, Warren. Don’t be so damned cloak and dagger,” Blake would say, putting Warren in his place and bringing a subtle smile to Jon’s face.
But Blake wasn’t there during this dinner, so Jon just let it slide. It wasn’t as though he really cared. The biotech business may have made the family rich, and Conway Industries was revolutionizing limb and artificial organ replacement, but it all bored Jon to tears. He wasn’t a scientist, nor a businessman. He was just an actor, a kid who never grew up and made lots of money playing pretend. It was the best job in the world, and no matter how much Warren tried to belittle Jon’s profession, Jon wouldn’t let it get to him.
After Jon failed to grovel and say, “please, please, tell me more,” Warren stared at Jon, his red eyes redder than his glass of wine. Warren poured himself a third, then changed the subject, moving immediately into golf.
Jon laughed.
“Am I amusing you?” Warren said.
“No, not at all,” Jon smiled, shaking his head.
Melinda placed a dime-sized piece of steak into her mouth, chewed, then said, “So what brings you to town, Jon?”
Jon stared across the table, wondering if she were really that oblivious to the rest of the world. He cleared his throat, then said, “The Memorial, Melinda,” adding her name to the end in a quiet fuck you.
“Oh,” she put another mini piece of meat into her tiny mouth. “That. Yes, that was so tragic, all those poor kids.”
Warren took another large swallow of wine and said, “Jon used to date Sarah Hughes, the teacher who was shot. They grew up, best of friends. Used to do everything together. You know the bunch of wood out back, Dad had cleared out four years ago? That was Jon’s “Clubhouse,” he us
ed to spend a million years out there with Sarah, the two of them making out all the time with Jon acting like no one knew what they were doing.”
Jon chewed his steak, growing more annoyed by the second.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Melinda said, her eyes suddenly soft and kind. “I didn’t know.”
“It’s okay,” Jon said, putting another piece of steak in his mouth.
“Did you see her sister?” Warren asked. The way he said the second syllable of “sister,” made Jon want to walk to Warren’s side of the table and punch him in the ear.
“Yes,” Jon said, no emotion. “Sarah’s sister was at the memorial.”
“She kick the drugs yet?” Warren said, taking another long sip of wine.
Jon almost laughed at the irony, but held his laugh, and the nasty response he wanted to give, firmly in place.
“I don’t get daily updates on the Hughes family,” Jon said, “but Cassidy looked good.”
Jon was pretty sure Warren was about to say something that might get him out of his seat and over to his brother’s side of the table, but before Warren could open his mouth, Melinda set her fork down and opened hers.
“How long are you going to be in town?” she asked.
Warren answered for him. “I’m sure Jon has pressing business back home.”
Jon could feel his blood boil, like it always did within an hour of stepping foot inside Conway Gardens. He caught the glint in Warren’s eyes; interest, anxiety, maybe concern. Whatever it was, the hairs on Jon’s neck didn’t like it a bit.
Jon lied, “Actually, I’m between projects, reading some scripts. Since I’m back at Hamilton Island, I figured I might as well stay a while, catch up with some old friends.” He swallowed, then added, “I’ll be here at least a week.” Jon turned from Melinda to Warren, then asked, “When’s Dad coming back?”
“He’ll be back next week,” Melinda said.
Warren shot her a look.
Jon smiled ear to ear, his eyes fixed on Warren’s. “Excellent,” he said. “I’ll stay until then, at least.”
Jon continued to smile as his brother twisted under the thumb of discomfort. The rest of the meal had talk small enough to be mostly invisible. Jon finished his meal, muscled his way through polite goodbyes, then went to the garage where the family kept the classic cars and a motorcycle, and traded his Avalon for his silver Porsche 356, built in 1963, and still looking showroom shiny. He was glad that he’d asked Carl to have someone maintain the car in his absence.
Jon climbed into the driver’s seat, thrilled to find the keys in the glovebox where he’d left them a year ago. His face suddenly lit with a smile as he fished beneath the seat hoping his treasure was still buried there, too.
It was.
Jon pulled the small wooden box from beneath the seat, smiling, then flicked the latch and opened the lid to a vacuum sealed baggie and seven perfectly rolled joints. He wondered how long weed stayed fresh, but figured anything was better than nothing.
Jon turned the engine, pulled the car from the garage, then left Conway Gardens, waving to a smiling Carl on his way past the gates.
Jon hit the coast and gunned the engine, speeding toward the island’s north end.
The entire north side of the island belonged to the Conways, originally as his grandfather’s retreat where he wined and dined politicians and the powerful, and later as home to several Conway Industries laboratories, where they worked on the more sensitive, and Jon suspected, government projects. Jon followed the winding road through acres of unspoiled woodlands which were beautiful during the day, but nothing more than blots of darkness against the night sky as he headed toward Jensen’s Cove, his favorite chill-out spot on the island.
He needed time to think about Emma, and the possibility that she might be his daughter. If she were, why hadn’t anyone yet told him? Had Sarah kept the secret even from her family?
As Jon drove through the darkness, he felt more alone than ever, wishing he had a friend he could dig into the deep shit with. Odd, he thought, how the closest people to him these days were people in his employ, his agent, Marty, and his assistant, Felicia. But neither relationship was one which Jon would consider intimate.
It wasn’t that he didn’t trust them. He did, implicitly. But they weren’t friends with long shared histories. They weren’t the kind of people he talked to about the stuff that kept him up at night. Truth was, he hadn’t had anyone like that since Sarah. Perhaps the closest thing to a friend he had these days was his private detective buddy, Brock Houser. But he wasn’t sure if this was something he’d feel comfortable talking to Brock about.
A mile from the cove, Jon was surprised to find a gate that wasn’t there before, blocking the narrow road with a large red sign that said “No Trespassing” sitting snug between two others, warning trespassers that they WILL BE PROSECUTED.
Jon stepped from the 356 to get a closer look at the fence, and to see if he could maybe pick the lock. Houser had showed him how plenty of times before, and the last couple of times it had even started to stick. He was searching the trunk of his car for something he could either pick or break the lock with.
The bright beam of a flashlight suddenly blinded him. Jon felt exposed as the light drew closer, and whoever held it remained obscured. Jon’s hand gripped the tire iron, just in case.
And then, as the light grew closer, he could see who was holding it — a Paladin guard.
“Can I help you?” Jon said, noticing that the guard was on foot, without a vehicle in sight.
The guard replied, “I was about to ask you the same question. What in the hell do you think you’re doing out here?”
“I’m trying to get to the cove, but someone put up a damned fence,” Jon said, letting go of the crowbar and pointing at the fence. “You got keys? Maybe you can unlock it for me?”
The guard looked Jon up and down, no recognition in his eyes, surprising given that the Conways paid for the security force. “I’m going to need to see your license and registration,” he said, unnecessarily rude.
Jon shook his head. “No, you don’t. My name is Jon Conway. Of The Conways . . . you know, the people who pay your salary. The people who own this land. So I need you to step off right now like you never saw me.”
The rent-a-cop pulled a gun, then aimed it at Jon and said, “I’m serious as a stroke, mister. I need to see your license and registration now.”
Despite the gun aimed directly at his chest, Jon took a step closer. No way was this clown going to shoot him.
“Is there something about ‘I own this land’ that you didn’t understand?” Jon shoved his finger in the rent-a-cop’s chest.
The guard lowered his gun, but grabbed Jon’s finger, giving Jon the excuse he’d been looking for. He slapped the guard’s hand, then punched him in the face, hard. A spray of blood flew from his nose and coated Jon’s knuckles.
The rent-a-cop fell to the ground, just as a second guard appeared from nowhere. Jon saw the gun a second before its trigger was pulled.
The dart slapped him in the shoulder. He swayed on his feet for a second before falling on his face. The second rent-a-cop cuffed him as the first stood from the dirt.
“You’re under arrest,” he said.
* * * *
CHAPTER 6 — Cassidy Hughes Part 1
Wednesday
September 6
8:42 p.m.
Cassidy sat on the couch, flipping through channels as Emma curled up beside her.
“Are we going to watch something, or are you gonna keep going too fast to see what’s on?” Emma asked.
“I’m gonna keep going too fast to see.” Cassidy said. “What do you want to watch?”
Emma said nothing. But then again, what else was there to say? They’d both exhausted themselves, talking and crying, then talking some more. Cassidy had done everything she could to comfort her niece; swearing that everything would be okay, and giving her hope and comfort in the way her sister would have w
anted, rather than the angry death rattle coming from Vivian.
Fortunately, Vivian was in the other room, sleeping off her countless glasses of wine.
It must’ve been especially confusing for Emma, losing her mother, then staying with someone who looked so much like her. Genetics made them identical, though life and their ages made it easy to tell them apart. Sarah had softened edges, while Cassidy’s years of hard living were clear from the lines under her eyes to the matching faded pink scars lining both her wrists.
Cassidy found an episode of SpongeBob Squarepants, and left it on. She wasn’t sure if Emma even liked the show, but at least she could be certain that Nickelodeon wouldn’t break into programming with pictures of Sarah and news footage of bodies in black bags outside of the school.
“Are we going to stay at Gram’s forever?” Emma asked, nudging herself closer.
Cassidy wished she knew, for herself and for Emma. But it wasn’t as though Sarah’s death had been marked on the calendar. There was no contingency plan, just a drunken promise two years earlier when Sarah made Cassidy swear on her life that she would take Emma if anything happened to her, since their mother was too “batshit crazy” and unreliable to be trusted for the job.
And sure, their mom may have been crazy, but that didn’t mean Cassidy was any better suited for the job. At least their mom had raised children before; two of them. And she’d done a good job with at least one.
What in the fuck did Cassidy know about raising a child?
She shouldn’t have to deal with raising a child, but then again, what choice did she have? Sarah was right about their mom, and Cassidy sure as shit wasn’t going to give Emma over to her father.
The way Jon had looked at Emma at the service made Cassidy wonder if he’d figured things out, or if perhaps Warren had told him the truth after all these years. And if so, what then? Would he sweep in with his high-priced attorneys and take Emma away?