But now she was gone, and though the feelings of guilt and sadness still took up residence in the back of Lance’s mind, buried beneath everything he could find to pile on top of them, his mother had become one of the thoughts he had to push away so frequently it sometimes felt like a betrayal.
When he did think of her, he tried to focus on the bright spots—the happy memories, of which there’d been plenty. But the final memory of them together was the one that usually butted its ugly face into his mind. The image of her broken and bleeding body lying in the parking lot adjacent to the Great Hillston Cemetery, dying in his arms. The words she’d offered with her dying breath—Go, Lance. It’s only what’s right. I love you.
She’d sacrificed herself for him. Died so he could live, though Lance didn’t find it quite as biblical as that. But though his mother had made her choice—urged on by influences Lance did not fully understand, no matter how many times he’d replayed the scene of Pamela Brody gripping the wrought-iron fence of the Great Hillston Cemetery, head bowed as if in prayer, while what looked like hundreds of spirits stood stoic beyond the fence and all whispered in unison—in Lance’s mind, she had been murdered.
The Reverend and the Surfer had killed her.
And while Lance had no substantial evidence, he knew without question that they were still after him. Hunting him down.
Which was why he’d fled his hometown and had bounced from bus to bus, town to town, ever since. Stopping where he felt he needed to, and then moving on again.
It was why he’d left Leah behind in Westhaven. Until he had a better understanding of what he was really up against, he could not endanger her like that, and also could not create such a liability for himself. It was easier this way, if not also incredibly more difficult.
But there was a shimmer of light in that tunnel. After another near-death experience in the small town of Ripton’s Grove, two new friends had inspired Lance to come to a new conclusion about his relationship with Leah. Whereas his initial instinct was to seal the memory of her off completely, a sort of all-or-nothing approach, Lance had had the realization that maybe, just maybe, it was okay to allow himself a small pleasure. He could not survive the rest of his life never allowing himself to have friends. If that was the case, he might as well allow the Reverend and the Surfer to come get him and do whatever it was they wanted. Life without any joy, even if only the smallest amount, is a life not worth living.
So, as he’d taken a seat on another bus, headed toward another town, he’d pulled his out-of-date flip phone from his pocket and sent Leah a message.
Her response had come so quickly, Lance couldn’t help but laugh.
I miss you, too!!!
Three exclamation marks. That had to count for something.
The bus hopped over two speed bumps as it pulled into the parking lot of a bus station so brightly lit with fluorescents and neon signage that Lance felt he needed sunglasses, despite the nearly hidden sun as dusk dissolved to night. The airbrakes hissed and the bus driver welcomed them all to Sugar Beach with about as much enthusiasm as someone might inform you they were headed off to get a root canal, and then the big bus door swung open and people began to amble off.
Lance Brody waited his turn, then grabbed his backpack from the seat next to him, thanked the driver, and made his way down the steps. The feeling at the base of his skull was still there, but for now, Lance was ignoring it. It’d been a long trip, and now, before anything else, he needed coffee.
* * *
Sugar Beach was a small touristy town on the coast of Maryland, not quite an hour north of Ocean City, tucked away on the edge of the peninsula. Lance only knew this because, after he’d purchased his ticket at the last depot, he’d had close to a two-hour wait before his bus departed. He’d spent some time walking around the mostly empty bus station and had stumbled upon a wire display rack that housed magazines for sale, as well as travel atlases that were grimy with dust. After studying the map of Maryland for a moment, he’d replaced the atlas on the rack, and for the first time since the night his mother had died, he’d had a clear understanding of exactly where he was headed. Directionally, at least.
He hadn’t left the state of Virginia since high school, and he was oddly at peace with the idea of moving on, if not a bit somber.
“Headed to Sugar Beach, son?”
A man, maybe seventy years old, in a heavy sweater and corduroy pants with loafers on his feet, was sitting on a bench nearby, a paperback novel facedown on his lap. Before Lance could answer, the man offered, “Make sure you get crabs.”
“Sorry?” Lance said.
“Sugar Beach has the best crabs you can eat. Softshell, crab legs, crab cakes, you name it. Beats the pants off the bigger commercial places south of ’em.”
And with that, the man went back to his novel.
Lance chose a bench three down for the remainder of his wait, thinking that Make sure you get crabs would maybe make the world’s worst t-shirt.
Like a lot of things, Lance couldn’t explain the decision to buy the ticket to Sugar Beach. All he could say for sure was that, after the bus had pulled into the station and he’d stepped down onto the sidewalk, his first inclination had been to head right inside and move on, and then suddenly he had been standing in front of a ticket window, scanning names of cities on the departures list, and had heard the words Sugar Beach pass his lips.
Despite the loneliness that often weighed Lance down, he could never say he was truly alone. The Universe was always there, pushing, pulling, suggesting. It had saved him. It had infuriated him. It had baffled him. Lance would even go so far to say it had joked with him.
But one thing Lance would not concede was that the Universe had ever actually guided him. Because that would be too easy, right? Lance still had to keep up his end of the unspoken bargain. He was the soldier, and the Universe was more the general.
And now here he was, in a new town—a new state—with the all-too-familiar feeling growing inside him. The general, letting him know it was time to assemble the troops. Though maybe it was nothing. Maybe Lance was only meant to arrive in Sugar Beach for some R&R, get some rest before heading off to the next thing, whatever that might be. It wouldn’t be the first stop he’d taken that would begin and end without dilemma or disaster or an agenda.
As Lance watched the elderly man in the sweater and corduroys amble off down the sidewalk and round the corner out of sight, he thought, Maybe I’m just here for the crabs. That would be a nice change.
The bus station, like many, as Lance had come to learn, was on the outskirts of the town. An old building with a fading façade and weathered features. Neon signs glowed in the windows, advertising parasailing, charter fishing, golf, and the ever-tacky t-shirts and souvenirs, desperate to catch newly arrived tourists with newly arrived dollars. There was a timeshare sales office attached to the far end of the building, but its window blinds were drawn shut, its door chained, and a sign posted in the window reading Closed for the season. See you in the spring!
Lance looked at the chain on the door for a long time. When he turned back around to survey the parking lot, he realized his bus was the only one on the large expanse of asphalt, engine purring as it idled like a lone beast resting in its den. He counted six cars in the parking lot and had to wonder how many belonged to bus station employees.
Off-season, Lance thought. Maybe this will be a quiet stop after all.
He turned and pushed inside the bus station’s double doors and was greeted with the smell of cleaning solution and saltwater taffy. The space was large and open, with bright overhead lights and a white floor that looked freshly mopped. The walls were adorned with posters showing families and couples smiling and laughing as they played in pools and on beaches, dined together at seafood restaurants and stared up at the darkened sky in awe as fireworks decorated the night.
They all looked so happy, so in love with each other. So free.
Lance looked past them, blocked out th
e projected happiness, and found the sign pointing to the restrooms, which were located down a small alcove next to a gift shop that suggested Lance should BOOK AN EXCURSION NOW! in the form of a flashing digital sign in the window. Lance headed toward it, passing by the ticket window with a middle-aged woman behind the glass, her feet on the desk and an iPad in her lap. She was flicking brightly colored fruit around the screen. She sat up as Lance passed. He nodded and smiled, and when she realized he wasn’t stopping, she continued with her game.
The door to the gift shop was locked—no chain here, just a simple deadbolt—and the interior was all darkness and the vague outlines of shelving and clothes racks. Likely full of the t-shirts and souvenirs promised by the outside window.
Lance made his way down the alcove and found the men’s room. There was a small janitorial closet located at the end of the hall with a mop bucket propping it open, shelves full of cleaning agents and supplies weakly illuminated by an overhead lamp.
He pushed through the men’s room door and found a man dressed in faded blue work pants and matching shirt washing his hands rigorously at the sink, soap thickly lathered and water steaming hot. Their eyes met in the mirror. The man’s face was sun-damaged and heavily wrinkled, but Lance guessed he wasn’t more than forty years old. His eyes were bloodshot, but looked very much alive. Lance nodded a hello, and then moved to slide past the man in search of a urinal.
The man stood from the sink and turned, the water still running full blast, steam still billowing from the basin, and blocked Lance’s way. Not aggressively, not exactly, but Lance took a step back all the same. The man’s bloodshot eyes took Lance in, head to foot, as if performing some sort of inspection.
Then, as casually as he might ask Lance if he’d like a stick of gum, the man asked, “Did you come here to die?”
2
Lance was tired.
He’d been riding busses for nearly twenty-four hours and had slept little. He hated to sound giddy, but something about Leah’s text message response to him—(I miss you, too!!!)—had stirred up some sort of adrenaline in him. It was different from the types of instant energy he’d been used to. The ones that had given him his second wind on the basketball court as a close game came down to the wire, or, most recently, the kind that pushed his legs a little harder, gave his muscles a little more strength as he fought or fled for his life. This new type of feeling that rushed through him was more euphoric. It was driven by happiness, followed by his mind wandering off into daydreams of a life he wanted, with the girl he wanted. He’d allowed himself these moments, isolated on a bus ambling down a highway with nothing but his thoughts to occupy him. But eventually, the rush faded, the bus slowed, and now here he was, tired and in need of caffeine or a bed, whichever came first.
Which was why Lance was certain he had misheard the man in the bus station men’s room.
“Sorry?” Lance asked, taking another small step backward.
The man in the blue work outfit, presumably the handler of the mop bucket out in the hallway, didn’t hesitate. Repeated himself again with the same nonchalance.
“Did you come here to die?” The way he said it, he might have been asking if Lance wanted fries to go along with his burger.
Though Lance’s battery was drained, he didn’t sense any real threat from the man in front of him. He didn’t appear aggressive, he didn’t even seem to be that interested in Lance’s answer. He stood patiently, still blocking Lance’s path to the row of urinals along the far wall. Lance strained his mind, trying to come up with some sort of scenario where any of this made sense, and finally gave up.
“Umm, no, thank you. I actually came here to pee.”
The man waited a beat, let his eyes do another slide up and down Lance’s body, then nodded.
“My mistake,” he said and finished washing his hands. He dried them with a handful of paper towels and then, without another word, slid past Lance and left the restroom.
Lance stood in place for another moment, trying to figure out if the conversation had really happened. Then he looked at himself in one of the mirrors above the sink, shrugged, and finally made his way to the urinal.
When he left the restroom, he found that the mop bucket was gone and the door to the storage room was closed, a placard reading STAFF ONLY thwarting curious hands. Lance made his way down the short alcove, passed the locked-up gift shop where he could book his excursions, and then stopped at the ticket window. The woman with the iPad flicked some more digital fruit across the screen before placing the device on the counter and standing to greet him.
“How can I help you?” she asked, her eyes narrowing slightly as she took in the sight of him, as if it was difficult to focus on the real world after staring at a screen for so long. On the other side of the glass partition, Lance felt a bit like a zoo exhibit as the woman studied him.
Lance adjusted the straps of his backpack and leaned down a little to speak through the tiny metal grate. “Yes, ma’am. I was hoping you could direct me to a place to get a decent cup of coffee.” Then he added, “And possibly suggest a place to stay the night. Nothing fancy, but hopefully clean.”
The woman’s hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail, gray roots peeking out. She wore very little makeup, with no jewelry, and while her face betrayed her boredom at sitting behind the little counter in an empty bus station all evening, when she let a small grin escape, Lance could see was actually very pretty. But still, there was something sad in her eyes.
“There’s a diner a mile from here, right on the corner of Sand Dollar Road and Highway 19. It doesn’t look like much—nothing around here really does—but their coffee will kick you in the face. You know, in a good way.”
Lance nodded and smiled. “Sounds perfect.”
“As far as where you can stay … how long are you planning to be here?”
Something in her voice was funny to Lance, suggesting maybe there was a lot more to the question than Lance could see on the surface.
He answered the way he often answered questions. “I don’t know.”
She eyed him again, and Lance put on a smile and shrugged. Something about his answer, or his unwillingness to elaborate more on her question, must have set something off, because instead of making a suggestion, she pulled a brochure from one of the drawers beneath her counter and slid it through the small opening at the bottom of the window.
“Just stay away from any of the places on Riptide Lane, they’re dumps. Most all the other motels are about the same.”
Lance nodded again. “No Riptide Lane. Got it. Thank you, ma’am. Have a good evening. Good luck with your fruit.”
He turned to leave and was halfway across the newly mopped white floor when he heard a door open behind him and the woman called out, “Hey!”
Lance stopped and turned, found the woman sticking her head out an opened door a few feet down from the ticket window. He met her eyes and again saw something that looked like sadness.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
Lance hesitated for just a second, then said, “Lance, ma’am.”
The woman pushed the rest of the way through the door and hurried after him. When she reached him, she wrapped her arms around him in a hug, giving him one gentle squeeze before pulling away and saying, “My name’s Barb, and I just want you to know that somebody out there loves you, Lance.”
Then she patted his arm, smiled, and made her way back through the office door and out of sight.
Lance’s first thought after the woman’s proclamation was of Leah, and how if there was somebody out there thinking about him right now, he wanted it to be her. He didn’t know if Leah loved him—they’d only known each other a few days, after all—but he was confident she cared about him, at the least.
Lance’s second thought was that the two people he’d met so far in Sugar Beach sure did have some strange ideas about what casual conversation needed to be.
3
The sun was completely gone when
Lance pushed through the bus station door and found himself back in the parking lot. The bus he’d ridden in on was gone, either pulled around back somewhere for the evening or off to another city, another town, part of someone else’s story. The sky was cloudless and the stars popped like diamonds on black velvet. Lance could smell the ocean in the air, salt and sand, and he wondered just how close he was to the shoreline and the high tide.
He pulled his flip phone from his pocket and saw it was almost six thirty. A steady stream of cars was passing by on the road, headed into town. Commuters on their way home, maybe. If Barb hadn’t informed Lance that his cup of coffee was a mile away, he seriously would have considered hitchhiking. It was something he’d never done before, but right now he was running dangerously low on fuel. His body seemed heavy, and his thoughts were getting loose.
A breeze blew across the parking lot, throwing the strong scent of the ocean into Lance’s face. He inhaled deeply, filling his lungs, and then set off toward the road. A sidewalk carried him toward town, headlights growing and shrinking Lance’s silhouette on the ground as they passed him one by one. Somebody honked, and Lance heard a group of girls’ laughter from an opened window as the vehicle sped by, a pop song turned up on the radio.
Lance passed a battered road sign telling him he was walking parallel to Highway 19, and after another couple minutes saw the bright neon sign of the diner on the corner of an intersection with a traffic light swaying slightly in the breeze.
The Lance Brody Series: Books 3 and 4 Page 2