by Bella Abbott
Hey. I’m alive. Going to be gone a few days, I typed.
Almost instantly, a response pinged the inbox. What happened? Tell everything!
We took off but had some car trouble, so we put up for the night while it got fixed, I typed, blending truth with harmless fiction.
U & Jared spent the night together? OMG!!! u totally rock!
I didn’t see any point in insisting it wasn’t like that – nobody would have believed that after three days together that nothing had happened. Or at least, nothing I could talk about. Instead, I let Kate cyber high-five me for a while, and then told her I wouldn’t be back for a bit.
What do u mean? Where are u? she demanded.
Can’t say. Jared made me promise, I typed.
Is he holding u prisoner or something? What’s going on, Lacey?
Everything’s fine. Long story. I’ll tell you when I get back
Details! Pics or it didn’t happen!!
I smiled to myself and looked around the kitchen. I thought about Kate’s request and smirked at an image that popped into my mind. I ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time, and switched on the lights in the bedroom. After setting the phone to automatic flash, I snapped a photo of the bed and forwarded it to Kate without a heading. Instead, I typed, Gotta run. Tell the others I’m fine, but if anyone from admin asks, you haven’t heard from me.
What about Robert? He’s right here. We’re chillin at his place
Don’t tell anyone, I warned.
What is this photo? OMG, did u get married or something crazy? Kate demanded. That bed is all kinds of amazing
No wedding. Now I really have to go. I’ll text tomorrow
When will u be back? Kate asked.
Hard to say. I’ll let you know. Bye
I switched off the phone, carried it back to the kitchen, and plugged it in again. After munching on a hodgepodge of food, I unplugged it and removed the battery, as Jared had asked. He was probably being completely paranoid, but that was his call, and I deferred to his greater knowledge of the threat. Although, sitting in the kitchen of a mansion with the lights blazing, the entire thing seemed a million miles away.
I wandered through the house and found a small room that served as a library, and was thrilled to find hard copies of some of my favorite novels – Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Anna Karenina. I decided to revisit the Bronte tale, which fit the mood of the house, I figured, and had settled into one of the padded chairs and was a quarter of the way through the novel when Jared appeared beside me, startling me so badly I dropped the book on the floor and cried out.
“Sorry,” he said, his tone contrite.
I scooped the book up and stood. “Don’t do that! You scared the hell out of me.”
“Didn’t mean to.”
“When did you get back? I didn’t hear the car or anything.”
“Maybe twenty minutes ago.”
“And?” I asked.
“Nothing odd happened. Shooting was typical, and I didn’t see or sense anything unusual.”
“What about Christina and Carl?”
“Nothing new there. But I don’t expect any news at this point. Carl’s now dust, I’m sure.”
“Then it’s safe to go back to Ridley?”
He frowned. “I didn’t say that.”
“Jared, I’m bored out of my skull, and it’s only been one day.”
“I know, and I’m sorry. But you can’t go back until we know there’s no risk.”
I glared at him. “So what you’re saying is that it’s fine for you to go film there, hang out with your entourage and fans, but I need to stay locked away, even if it means I lose my scholarship.”
“I didn’t say that at all, Lacey.” He glanced around. “Look, I have a hunch I want to follow up. I just wanted to let you know I’m okay, and make sure you didn’t need anything, but I have to get back on the road.”
My glare hardened further. “You came just to tell me you’re leaving again? Is this a joke?”
“I wanted to check up on you, Lacey. What I’m asking is that you go to sleep and not worry about anything. I promise I’ll be back by dawn.”
“You’re stranding me alone in this mausoleum while you’re out and about? What – do you have another surprise show or something? What’s so important, Jared?”
“It’s nothing like that. I have a suspicion about who might be after me. I need to look into it more, and the clock’s ticking.”
My bottom lip began to tremble and I averted my eyes. “I thought we were supposed to be…inseparable. Isn’t that how you described it? So far, that’s more like you order me around, and I have to do what you say.”
Jared took a step toward me, but I held my ground.
“What’s wrong, Lacey? What happened while I was gone?”
“Nothing happened. I just had some time to think about things. About your life, and what I want for mine. So far you haven’t got any solutions, other than I’m supposed to hide for as long as it takes.” I looked up at him. “Has it occurred to you I might not want to hide and be bossed around?”
His brow furrowed. “Why are you being this way, Lacey? You were fine this morning.”
“I’m fine now, too. I’m just disagreeing with your master plan for me, is all. And you don’t seem to like it. Not that I’ve heard anything other than some stupid legends. I’m supposed to sit here reading classics while you go about your important business, and hope that something occurs to you while I’m quilting or whatever?”
His eyes widened slightly. “Quilting?”
“You know what I mean. Is that what I used to do…before? Sit around the house while you went out and led an active life?”
He ignored my last question. “I need time to figure things out, Lacey. It isn’t going to all happen overnight. There are a lot of pieces…”
“I want to go back to Ridley,” I announced. “You go ahead and figure out everything you want, but I’m not going to lose my scholarship and be out of options while you tour the world with your army of groupies…and Christina.”
Jared’s voice was nearly a whisper when he responded. “It isn’t safe for you to return to Ridley, Lacey. We’ve already discussed that. As to the rest…”
“We haven’t discussed anything. You did the telling, and I listened,” I corrected. “I never said I wanted to stay here. You told me I had to. There’s a big difference.”
He looked around. “Is there something wrong with the house? I can find someplace else.”
I bit back a harsh response. “Jared, it’s not the house. It’s…it’s everything. It’s just all wrong.”
Jared regarded me with a puzzled expression. “I know this is all new to you, Lacey. I know it’s hard to adjust to such a big change. It’s a lot to absorb…” He closed his eyes for a moment and, when he opened them, fixed me with the hypnotic stare that had melted me every time in the past. “I have to go, but I’ll be back by dawn. We can talk about everything then. I thought…I thought you understood how I felt, what you mean to me. But I can see something got lost in translation.”
“How do you think it feels to know that it’s not really me you’re in love with, but some dead woman you think is inside me? Let’s start with that, okay, because we both know if it was just me, you wouldn’t have looked twice in my direction.”
“How can you even think that?” he asked quietly.
I waved his comment away. “Whatever, Jared. Go do what you need to do. Your fans are calling for you.”
“Promise you’ll wait for me. I’ll be back by dawn.”
I snorted. “Like I have a choice. I’m sort of at your mercy, aren’t I?”
A long pause. “You’re never at my mercy. More the other way around, Lacey. You have such power over me…you can’t even imagine.”
My eyes began moistening, and I fumbled with the book. “Talk’s cheap. Just remember who’s leaving in the middle of the night. It isn’t me.”
I stormed from the room an
d took the stairs to the bedroom two at a time in my rush to be as far from Jared as I could get, every crooked grin and flash of sapphire eyes a reminder of my own inadequacy, and of a love that had seemed doomed from the start.
Chapter 30
After a restless night filled with half sleep and ugly dreams of betrayal and rejection, I found myself staring at the bedroom ceiling, my eyes wide open as a salmon tinge of dawn glowed beyond the curtains. My heart was thumping in my chest when I swung my legs from the bed and crossed the room to the bathroom, where I quickly rinsed off and dressed.
There was no sign of Jared downstairs, and the head of steam I’d built up overnight threatened to boil over. He hadn’t come home in spite of his assurances, and now it was a new day. The question being what I planned to do about it.
I wolfed down a tasteless breakfast as I mulled over my options, and when I finished, I slammed down my empty cup so hard I nearly shattered it.
“Fine. Have it your way, Jared,” I whispered, pronouncing his name like a curse.
I had my duffel packed in about three minutes, my pulse pounding angrily in my ears as I stuffed clothes inside. Jared’s failure to live up to his promise to return was further confirmation of the mistrust that had been churning in my guts. Was this relationship – if that’s even what it was – about us? Or just about him? My doubts after seeing scores of beauties throwing themselves at him at his shows felt validated, even if my rational side argued I was being impulsive.
The air was brisk when I stepped onto the front porch, and I realized I’d never seen the house in the daytime. I turned and drank it in for a minute, and then pounded down the long drive toward the rural road beyond, unwilling to give Jared another minute to arrive and try to bend me to his will.
“You got the wrong girl,” I muttered under my breath, and picked up my pace, my Docs clumping on the cobblestone as I hurried to the gate.
Which was locked.
Of course.
I looked both ways along the stone wall topped with wrought-iron fencing, and after slipping my bag’s strap over my shoulder, climbed to the top, swung my legs over, and dropped to the other side. I cocked my head, listening for the sound of any vehicles, and tried to remember which way we’d come when we’d arrived in the car.
Recalling that we’d turned right into the gate, I set off down the road. The morning sky was overcast this close to the sea, and I felt grateful I wouldn’t be trekking under a beating sun. I trudged along, the motion feeling good after being cooped up all of the prior day, and my head started to clear some of the fog that had descended over my spirit the prior night and thickened in the predawn.
Twenty minutes later, I arrived at Maine’s sorriest intersection. Even the main road was little more than a two-lane stretch of pocked asphalt stretching into the green hills. I switched my phone on and pulled up a map, and saw I was at least seventy miles from Ridley, most of it on secondary roads like the one I was looking at.
Determined to distance myself from the manor house, I set off along the road at a pace I figured I could maintain for hours. The map didn’t show any towns within easy reach, so I would probably be walking much of the way, barring a miracle.
After a half hour of marching, the duffel growing heavier with every step, the rumble of a poorly muffled vehicle from behind me drew my attention, and I spun around just as a faded blue van came into view from around a sweeping curve. It slowed as it drew near and pulled to a stop in the middle of the road a few yards from me.
A woman with a thick mop of unruly brown and gray hair leaned from the passenger-side window and called out, “Your car break down, honey?”
“No. Nothing like that,” I replied.
She looked me over. “Where you headed?”
I glanced past her at the driver, who had long hair and a graying beard, and then returned my gaze to her. “Trying to get to Ridley.”
“You a student there?” the woman asked.
“That’s right. I kind of got stranded.”
The woman nodded. “I’ll say. You’re a million miles from nowhere.” The passenger door opened and the woman got out. “If you can squeeze past the seats and into the back, we’re headed that way, more or less. Sorry, but the side door hasn’t opened for years.”
Doubt must have shown on my face, and she offered a tanned, gap-toothed smile. “I’m Kindra, and this here’s Wade. We’re headed north, to the border. Don’t worry, we won’t bite.”
Her assurance instantly reminded me of Jared, and I returned her smile. “I’m Lacey. I appreciate the ride. It’ll be a big help.”
“No problem. We’ve all been there before.”
Kindra stepped aside and I climbed into the cab, which smelled vaguely like incense and patchouli oil and maybe pot, although I couldn’t tell from the incense, which might have been the whole point. A double mattress lay in the back, with three old rucksacks and a suitcase that looked like it dated from the sixties. I shouldered between the bucket seats and placed my duffel beside an acoustic guitar case, and then crouched between the seats, supporting myself with my hands.
Kindra got into the van and twisted toward me. “You can use that bunch of blankets to make a seat if you want. You’re going to be pretty uncomfortable on your haunches like that, Lacey.”
I did as she suggested, and soon we were bouncing down the road. The old van’s engine hummed in a monotone under the crooning of the Grateful Dead from ancient speakers as Wade rolled north. Kindra eyed me in the rearview mirror and grinned happily for no apparent reason. I shifted on the blankets and watched the landscape blur by, my thoughts filled with the images from Jared’s disks.
Now that I’d burned off some energy with my early morning hike, my decision to leave the house and return to Ridley didn’t seem as wise as it had at dawn. I was doing exactly what Jared had pleaded with me not to do, and I had no plan other than to return to school and pretend I didn’t know anything about what he’d spent the better part of two days telling me.
Which had felt rebellious and empowering when I’d been angry and a little scared, but in the cold light of morning, I wasn’t so sure.
“So, you’re at Ridley? Academy, or the high school?” Kindra asked.
“Academy,” I said. “If all goes well, I’ll finish up after another year and then maybe transfer to the university.”
“Those were the good old days. Wade and I met when we were both freshmen.” She shot a glance at him. “Seems like forever ago now.”
“Twenty-nine years,” Wade said, with a smile of his own.
Kindra nodded slowly and toyed with a beaded necklace dangling down the front of her peasant blouse. “They go by in a blink,” she said softly.
“Wow. That’s a long time,” I said.
Another nod. “Saying it out loud like that, it sure does. But I still remember it like it was yesterday. We were both away from home for the first time, living in apartments with three to a room. It had seemed like we were embarking on a great adventure. Little did we know just how great,” she said.
“What did you study?” I asked.
“I was really into botany. Wade was thinking about becoming an engineer. You couldn’t have picked two different people, but when we met at a concert, it was…it was like magic.”
“And we’ve been together ever since,” Wade confirmed. “Although Kindra’s tried to get away a bunch of times. But I’m faster – she can never outrun me.”
They both laughed at the well-worn joke.
“So…you’re heading to the border. Are you on vacation?” I asked.
“Sort of. I mean, every day’s a vacation for us. There’s an arts fair up there for a week – I make jewelry, and we’re hoping for some sales. And maybe Wade here can probably find some odd jobs. He’s turned into quite a handyman since his old slide-rule days.”
“You travel around to fairs? All over the country, or just Maine?” I asked.
“Oh, all over. We hit the northern states during th
e summer months, and then spend the winters in Arizona and California.” She paused. “We decided a long time ago neither of us liked being tied down, so home is wherever we park for the night. Kind of like the old days when we were Deadheads.”
Wade turned the music up a notch. “We were tapers for the first five years. Taped every show. Kindra got really good at jewelry, and we were able to sell enough to get by. The nomad life suited us, and when we drifted out of the scene, we decided we didn’t need to follow a band around to have what we wanted.” He patted Kindra’s leg affectionately.
She took his hand. “Which was each other, and to do what we felt like, when we wanted, and travel wherever our hearts led. We both quit school our sophomore year and never looked back.”
“That’s a beautiful story,” I admitted. Among my friends, many came from divorced families, and more than a few from single mothers.
“It’s all about enjoying the trip with someone you love,” Kindra said. “The roads all lead to the same place, so having fun on the ride is the most important thing. Which we do every day.”
Wade winked at Kindra. “You’re just trying to get on my good side, aren’t you?”
Kindra caught my eye in the mirror before looking to Wade. “I wound up with the most amazing man I ever met. I would hope I’m on your good side every day. I’d better be, after this buildup.”
They laughed together again, and I could see they were easy with each other’s idiosyncrasies and flaws, and saw each other differently than I did.
I fell silent and thought about Jared in light of Kindra and Wade’s obvious attachment to each other so many years after first meeting, and especially about the magic they felt, which had clearly continued to this day. They were obviously dirt poor and leading an existence many would shun, yet seemed completely happy with their choices…and each other. I considered my own situation and wondered whether I was sabotaging our budding relationship out of anxiety that he’d never come up with a solution where we could be together. Was that possible? That my fear over losing the only man in my life I’d ever loved had brought about the very thing I was afraid of?