“Adventures are usually voluntary,” Dennis answers. “Desperate times, desperate measures.”
“This is our version of AA,” Phee fills in. “Sobriety through adventure and creating fun for other people.”
“Cool,” Steph says. “Can I be one?”
“Maybe an honorary member. For God’s sake, don’t become an alcoholic just so you can join.”
Braden listens to the chatter, small conversations here and there among the group, but his mind keeps drifting. His fatigue, born of a string of mostly sleepless nights and ongoing worry, catches up with him, and he drifts in and out of wakefulness.
When he jolts sharply awake out of a dream of falling, at first he has no idea where he is. It comes back to him in pieces. Allie’s suicide attempt. The intervention. Jean beside him, the dog behind him. Also the cello. He can feel its presence, wants to turn around and reach for it. He also wants to touch Allie there in the seat in front of him, to reassure himself that she’s okay. She’s talking to Katie and Steph about some rock band they all listen to, and he contents himself with a visual check.
His gaze goes to the road outside, trying to gauge their location and how long he’s been asleep.
“We’re on the pass,” Jean says, in answer to his unasked question. “Stopping in Easton for dinner.”
“And after that?”
“Infinity and beyond,” Dennis supplies. “Hey, this is a full-scale adventure planned and plotted by Phee. Likely to be epic.”
Braden has his suspicions. Phee couldn’t be farther away from him if she’d planned the seating arrangement. Which, of course, she has, he realizes with a little jolt of adrenaline. When they all bail out of the vehicle in Easton, she manages to be always somewhere he isn’t. Walking the dog, sitting as far away as she can get in the café.
When she shifts places with Len and takes over the driver’s seat, it’s all plausible and reasonable. Len is tired, changing drivers makes perfect sense. Braden tries to guess where they’re going, to calm the anxiety at his center. Until they reach the town of Ellensburg, there are still options that make sense to him. A cabin at a resort or a campground. An out-of-the-way bed-and-breakfast, maybe, or a resort. But when she turns north off the I-90 onto Highway 283, his suspicions and his anxiety both ratchet up to a whole new level.
Even Phee has to stop sometime. The rig is a gas guzzler. Steph and Katie have been clamoring for a rest stop for miles, and when Jean adds her quiet voice to their demands, Phee pulls into a service station in the little town of Soap Lake.
Braden is out of the vehicle before she has the keys out of the ignition, and he confronts her as she opens her door. “Where are we going, Phee?”
“Don’t ask me to spoil the surprise.”
“You’re up to something.”
“Of course I am! This is your intervention adventure.” She laughs, but her eyes evade his. She hands him Celestine’s leash.
“Can you walk him, please? I need to pee in the worst way.”
Braden watches her retreating back with increasing misgiving. “Do you know?” he asks the dog.
Celestine just wags his tail, and Braden takes him to a narrow strip of winter-dead grass and lets him do his business. When Phee comes out, she gets directly into the driver’s seat, leaving Braden to load up the dog. As he suspected, the cello is there, and he has a terrible presentiment of what Phee is planning.
His eyes seek out hers, which are watching him in the rearview, but she quickly glances away, ducking her head to adjust a to-go cup of coffee in the cup holder.
Braden scrambles for an escape. He could refuse to get back in. Pull Allie out of the SUV, supposing she’d be willing to go with him. And then what? He might be able to get a hotel for the night, but there’s no bus station or car rental in this town. He hates to disappoint the rest of the Angels. For what seems an eternity, he stands there, the hatch still open, catching his breath. Phee’s eyes meet his again in the rearview.
Trust me.
He doesn’t. He can’t. Not because she’d ever hurt him on purpose but because she doesn’t know what she’s doing.
His feet carry him back to his seat, but he feels now like a man going to his own execution. He leans forward. “Phee.”
She ignores him.
“I know what you’re doing,” Braden says to the back of her head. “I believe you think this is a good idea. You have to listen to me, Phee. This is the worst idea ever.”
“It’s time,” she says, eyes straight ahead, shifting the SUV into gear.
“Don’t you think that’s my decision?”
“You’ve had eleven years. And now there’s Allie to consider.”
There’s always been Allie, Braden thinks, with the weary old guilt seeping in. I’ve always failed her. And now you’ll push me into doing it again.
“Ophelia MacPhee,” Len says, “please tell me this isn’t that theoretical dynamite scenario. I told you—”
“You said dynamite should be left to the experts. So I brought along an expert.”
“I am not getting sucked into this! It’s not ethical.”
“Well, you can be an innocent bystander if you want.”
“Why don’t you stop the vehicle and we’ll discuss this rationally?” Len asks.
“No.”
“Phee!”
“Not stopping until we get where we are going.”
“I don’t get it.” Allie sounds bewildered, maybe frightened. “Where are we going?”
She looks back at Braden over her shoulder.
“We’re going to my family’s cabin. The one where my hands got hurt. Where your uncle Mitch . . .” His throat closes over the words and he coughs to clear it. “Don’t do this, Phee.”
She doesn’t answer, just keeps driving.
“Wow,” Steph says with enthusiasm. “I’ve never been kidnapped before.”
“It’s not a kidnapping, precisely,” Katie says. “No ransom. More like a hijacking.”
Dennis glances across at Braden, his face registering consternation. “Hey, man. I had no idea.”
Jean pats his hand. “It’s the right thing, honey. You’ll see.”
“You knew about this?”
“Oh no. Not at all. I have no idea where we’re going or why we are going there. I just feel that it is the right thing.”
Braden tries again. “Phee. Can we at least talk about this? It’s going to be midnight when we get there. The roads could be bad; there’s still snow up there this time of year. Let’s at least stop somewhere for the night, discuss this in the morning.”
In answer, she turns the radio on, volume loud enough to bar communication.
Unless he wants to open the door and jump out of a moving vehicle, Braden is trapped on a road that was once part of a regular pilgrimage. When he and Lilian were first married, they visited regularly, once or twice a year. Family is family, even when you’ve got nothing in common. Even Lilian agreed with that. She accompanied him, though she hated the cabin and engaged in a running commentary of criticism over his father’s endless smoking, Jo’s language, Mitch’s evening drinking.
She hated the long days outside by, on, or in the water. The mosquitoes, the blackflies, the dirt, the rain. She’d hovered over Allie, half sick with anxiety.
“Germs, Braden. Have you ever heard of germs? Does your family ever wash their hands before they eat?”
“Of course.”
“Rinsing in the lake water is not washing, for God’s sake. Do you want her to get sick? And could you please ask your father to smoke outside?”
Braden’s family wasn’t any fonder of Lilian than she was of them. His mother doted on Allie and was excruciatingly polite to Lilian. Jo took her in stride. Her husband, Mitch, handled the conflict by spending long hours on the lake fishing or sitting in a quiet corner nursing a beer.
Braden’s father was never one to just go along with anything. In his eyes, marriage did not equate with blood ties, and Lilian was an in
trusion in his routine at best. He didn’t like her and didn’t feel compelled to try to keep that to himself.
“That woman doesn’t bend,” he told Braden the first time he brought Lilian home. “Hard frost and a bit of wind, and she’ll go right over like a tree without roots.”
His mother’s complaints were different. “She doesn’t understand your music. She won’t help your career.”
They’d both been right, but so was Lilian. He had to be honest about that.
Managing a toddler at the cabin wasn’t easy. Allie was forever crawling around in the dirt or toddling out onto the dock. Braden’s parents were endlessly practical about that, just as Jo and Mitch were with their son, Jimmy.
“Put a life jacket on her and let her be. If she falls in, she’ll float.”
By the time Trey was born, Lilian refused to visit at all. “There is no way I’m going to try to wrangle two kids in that nightmare,” she said. They started taking separate vacations. Braden off to the cabin while she watched the kids, and then Lilian somewhere warm and relaxing while he took his turn.
Over time, his visits grew increasingly infrequent. It was easy to find excuses, but the truth was that, between his mother’s awe of his musical talent and his father’s complete disregard of it, even as an adult he’d felt like a bone at the mercy of two very determined dogs.
“Are you much of a fisherman?” Dennis asks, trying to make conversation despite the nearly deafening music.
“Never had much chance,” Braden shouts back. “My sister did the hunting and fishing. My mother was always too worried about my hands.”
An irony, that. His mother had fussed about them endlessly.
“His hands, Frank. You can’t risk his hands.”
“It’s just a fishing trip, for God’s sake. We’re not rock climbing or learning how to skin a bear. Do you think a fish is going to eat his precious hands? They’re trout, Min. Not piranhas.”
“Fishing hooks, fires, falls. He has a concert this weekend. It’s an important one. There will be a professor from the music conservatory there.”
“He’s ten!” Dad’s voice booms louder now. “You’ve got him so wrapped in cotton wool, he’ll think he’s a girl.”
“I’m not a girl,” Braden says. “I want to go fishing.”
Neither one of them hears him. They are squared off, aware of nothing outside of each other and this war they are fighting. Even at ten, he’s dimly aware that it isn’t really about him but about something deeper that is broken between them.
It doesn’t matter, or change anything, any more than his questions about God and the universe change the color of the sky or the temperature outdoors.
“What does a professor of some music conservatory have to do with the kid?”
“He’s gifted!” his mother says. “Maybe even a prodigy. This could open doors for him. Scholarships. Opportunities.”
“I don’t care if he’s a prodigy or a potato. I just want to take my son on a fishing trip. One weekend out of the summer.”
“Maybe next weekend, then, if you’re so set on it.”
“Summer’s almost over. He’ll be back to school in a couple of weeks. What’s wrong with this weekend?”
“He’s committed. You want to teach him it’s okay to be irresponsible? That he doesn’t have to honor commitments? Be my guest.”
“How committed can he be? He’s ten.”
“A ten-year-old genius. How do you not keep hearing this? The music, Frank. How can you not understand how important the music is?”
“What about being a man? What about me? All I ask for is a son.”
“You have a son.”
“No, I have a fucking prodigy. Never mind. I’ll take Jo fishing. Is that okay with you? She hasn’t turned into a genius lately, has she?”
Braden feels sweat cold on the back of his neck. His mother is dead and buried, five years ago, maybe six. He’d been drinking hard at the time. Jo had managed to track him down, tried to reel him in for the funeral, but he’d been unable to face it. Or at least that’s what he’d told himself. In truth, he’d do pretty much anything to avoid the memories that are waiting for him here.
Bits and pieces surface as Phee drives him inexorably toward the last place in the world he wants to be.
Most of the drive is through nowhere, intercepted by a series of small towns. Darkness falls. Most of the occupants of the car drift into sleep. Allie’s head leans on Steph’s shoulder. Braden marks the landmarks, each town bringing him closer to his fate. They pass through Colville, and then onto Williams Lake Road. The headlights offer glimpses of dirty snowbanks and evergreen trees.
Not the cabin, then, or at least not yet. Dread crowds the car, an unwelcome passenger, and all the while the cello plays in his head.
Chapter Thirty-Three
PHEE
It has to be done, it has to be done, it has to be done.
Phee runs the words over and over in her head, her new mantra. Sometime during the long hours of the drive, they’ve meshed themselves with the haunting music and become a never-ending melody: The Song That Never Ends, arranged for cello, with variations.
All the same, her heart misgives her.
She feels like there’s an invisible wire connecting her and Braden, and every shock of emotion that hits him travels directly from his heart to hers. Bringing him here, ambushing him, really, is something he’s never going to forgive her for.
If it helps, if it heals him and heals Allie and brings both of them back to the music, then she can live with that. But what if she makes things worse by meddling? Bringing Braden out here to face his past in front of witnesses might be the stupidest thing she has ever done. What seemed like a brilliant idea earlier in the day has begun to feel like insanity.
Still.
It has to be done.
The directions Jo gave her are clear and concise, and she turns off what seems to her an already isolated road and onto a narrow driveway, closely lined by evergreens, packed and rutted with snow. As they emerge into a cleared space in front of a low, cozy-looking house, Phee is relieved to see lights on in the windows.
Almost midnight. The timing really couldn’t be worse. It was Jo who insisted on her stopping here first, Phee reminds herself. Before she’s even switched off the engine, a porch light comes on, illuminating a wide circle that includes the SUV.
The door opens and a woman steps out, striding across the yard and yanking Phee’s door open.
“Phee? I can’t believe you pulled this off.”
“Got him,” Phee says.
Jo looks past her into the back seat. “Braden. You’re actually here.”
“I was shanghaied.” His voice is wound so tight, it sounds ready to snap.
“I wish . . . ,” Jo says, then clears her throat. “Where is that Allie girl?”
“Here,” Allie says.
“Don’t suppose you remember me. I’m your aunt Jo.”
“Hey,” Allie says.
“Well, come on in, all of you. Dad will want to see you.” She says it like she means everybody, but she’s looking at Braden.
“It’s so late,” Phee says. “We don’t want to intrude—”
“We’ve been expecting you. Dad waited up, and there’s a pot of soup on the stove. I sure hope you are all hungry, because there’s no way Dad and I are going to eat it all.” As she talks, everybody unloads from the SUV and Jo leads them up to the house. “Mute that TV, would you, Dad? They’re here.”
The noise from the television shuts off sharply in response to her command.
Braden reaches for Allie’s hand. “Come on, little bird. Nobody’s going to eat you.”
“Are you sure?”
“Reasonably.” He tries to smile, but it looks more like a grimace. “If anybody gets eaten alive, it will be me.”
The inside of the house is spotlessly clean. Heat emanates from a woodstove at the center of a room that holds a comfortable-looking couch and a couple of
armchairs. An elderly man lays back in a recliner, a TV remote resting on a rounded belly. Tubing snakes from his nostrils down to an oxygen canister at his side, and his breathing is the loudest thing in the room.
He has the same face shape as Allie and Braden, the same cleft in his chin. As they enter the room, he slams his feet down to the floor and stands.
“Well, well, well. Look what the cat drug in. Come here and give me a hug, boy.”
Braden crosses the room, stiff as a robot, and allows himself to be hugged. The old man is already looking past him to Allie.
“And this must be Alexandra. My God. Last time I saw you, you was just this little bit of a thing, all eyes and hair. Guess that hasn’t changed much. Clear to see where you fit in the family tree, anyway. Well, are you just going to stand there?”
Allie gives him a hug that is fractionally less stiff than Braden’s. “So,” the old man says, looking from Allie to Braden and back again. “What’s new?”
“Dad!” Jo warns. “Behave yourself. We have company.”
“Well, maybe you tell me what we’re supposed to talk about,” he retorts. “The weather? Can’t talk about the last time you were here, orders from Jo. Can’t talk about anything that matters. Don’t know shit-all about your life over the last few years. Tell me about the funeral, then, since I wasn’t invited.”
“It wasn’t exactly an invitation-type event.” Braden stands frozen in the middle of the room, as if something will break if he dares to move.
“Maybe we could talk about your mother’s funeral, then. How you weren’t here. Or how she cried her eyes out over you after—”
“Dad!” Jo interrupts. She turns toward the little troop still standing just inside the door. “The bathroom is down the hall there, if any of you need it. Just jiggle the handle if it sticks. Food is in the kitchen, right through that door. I’ll just put the pot of soup out on the counter. We’re not fancy here; you can serve yourselves. Not enough chairs at the table, but you’re welcome to have a seat in the living room. Don’t be shy, now.”
“I totally have to pee,” Steph says, heading for the bathroom.
Katie follows. “Right behind you. Better hurry.”
“Lovely house you have here.” Dennis lowers himself onto the couch. “Did you build it yourself, Mr. Healey?”
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