Desperate Paths

by E. C. Diskin

  “And?”

  “Let’s just say I’ve overheard the jokes and conversations between our dads over the years. I can tell you that you and Margaret—there are some people in this town that still think that’s a big deal, some sort of unnatural thing. Hey, I ain’t one of ’em, but her dad—oh yeah, he is. Whatever you got going there, it would be over.”

  Brooklyn scanned through several pages quickly. She couldn’t read fast enough. The fall play had wrapped, and the theater kids planned a “friendsgiving” for the holiday weekend.

  Afterward, Anthony drove several kids home. He saved Margaret’s stop for last. “I don’t want to go home,” she said. They parked the car a few miles out of town in a field. She pulled a CD from her bag and grinned.

  “Shania Twain,” Anthony joked, scanning the cover. “You’re determined to get me to like country.”

  “I am,” she said. “But I really love the words of this song. I wanted you to hear it.” She put the CD in the player and played “From This Moment On.” They listened in silence, holding hands, and as it ended, Anthony looked at Margaret. “I’m in love with you.”

  Margaret smiled. “Me too.”

  They began to kiss, softly at first and then with more passion as the scene faded to black.

  The narrator’s voice would play over more scenes of the two together. Within a month, it seemed like every conversation was about the future and leaving Eden for our own paradise, where we could walk down the street, hand in hand. Suddenly, it felt impossible to graduate and move away without her.

  Ginny stood on the porch of Darius’s house and knocked on the door, holding her breath.

  A moment later, his father opened the door just a few inches.

  “Hi, Mr. Woods,” she said meekly. “We met on Thursday afternoon at the hospital, remember? I’m Ginny.”

  “Oh, sure, sweetie,” he said, opening the door wider. “I just saw Brooklyn at your dad’s store yesterday. I had no idea you were sisters.”

  She nodded, unable to come up with a response.

  “Guess you heard the good news about my boy getting out.”

  “I did. He home?” she asked, noticing the binder in his hand.

  Mr. Woods smiled and raised it. “You know about this? Darius’s screenplay. I finally get to read it.”

  Her face flushed. This man would soon hate her too.

  “Just a sec,” he said, waving and leaving her at the door.

  Ginny’s heart rate picked up as she heard the slow footfalls on the wood floor getting louder, closer. The door opened wide. Darius suddenly stood before her. It was hard to believe twenty years had passed since they’d stood this close. Everything about him still felt familiar—his emerald-green eyes, his easy smile, like nothing could take him down. Not even gunshots. There was no stress on his face, no furrowed brow, no residual . . . anything, as if he’d forgiven her for breaking his heart, for failing to stand up to her dad, for being a coward when he needed her to be brave. She never thought she’d get to feel the warmth of that smile again.

  All the years instantly melted away, and she recalled their farewell that summer, their long embrace, the way he’d lifted her during that hug, making her laugh and lightening the mood, whispering in her ear that the weeks apart would pass quickly. He’d promised to call every week at the pay phone in town until she joined him. “We’ll be together soon,” he’d said.

  “I’d give you a hug,” he said now, “but everything is still pretty sore. I’m moving slower than my pops right now.”

  “You look . . . good,” she said. The words caught in her throat. She had to knock her chest to get it all out. “I’m so sorry about what happened to you.”

  “No big deal,” he said, waving it off sarcastically. “I been shot dozens of times.”

  “Ha-ha. Listen, Darius, I really need to talk to you.”

  He stepped out to join her on the front porch. “Sure. I’ve been wanting to catch up with you, Ginny. Wanna sit?”

  She looked over at the chairs, suddenly terrified of what was to come, what might be said.

  “Maybe I can take you out for coffee?” Neutral territory, a way to escape quickly.

  He looked down at his sweatpants and T-shirt. “I’m in need of a shower,” he said.

  “You look great,” she said. “Please.” If she waited, she might lose her nerve.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let me just tell my dad. He’s a worried mess these days.” He went back into the house before she could say more.

  She walked down the porch steps, keys in hand, and stepped over to the driver’s side of her car.

  Darius came outside. Twenty years had passed, but the pain of lying to him and watching him walk out of her life came back like a wind that might knock her over.

  “Should we take my dad’s car?” he asked. “Convertible would feel great today.”

  A silver BMW convertible, as unlikely in this town as a movie star.

  She looked down at her hand, tightly gripped around her door handle. “Actually, let’s take two cars. I’ve gotta get to the hospital as soon as I leave you.” Riding together after she shared her news felt impossible.

  He nodded. “Mary’s Diner. See you there in a sec.” Darius slowly eased his way into the driver’s seat. She watched him grimace in pain. She was at the root of it all.

  The waitress poured them coffees and removed the menus they’d rejected. Ginny gripped the mug with both hands and stared at the table, unable to break the silence. She couldn’t look him in the eyes.

  “You look good,” Darius said. “The same.”

  She smiled. It wasn’t true, but he was being kind.

  Twenty years melted away. She wanted to reach out and hold his hand and take back everything she’d ever done. She took a deep breath, trying to stir up the strength to come clean.

  Darius filled the void before she had the chance. “So I know I’ve been busy fighting for my life and all, but before that happened, I was really just excited to see you and hear what you thought of the script. You okay with it? I mean, no one will guess it’s about you and me, don’t you think?”

  She let go of her mug and, with elbows on the table, rubbed at her temples. She didn’t know how to start.

  “You read it, right?”

  “I read it,” she said, nodding. She took another deep breath and blew it out, pushing past her fears. “Here’s the thing,” she said, removing her hands from her face, sitting back. “Everyone will know it’s about you and me.”

  The creases between his brows deepened, his soft expression suddenly hard. It was hard to tell if he didn’t understand how, or if he was just hurt that she wanted to hide their relationship after all these years.

  “There are a lot of things that you don’t know,” she continued. “Things I’ve kept from you and other things that happened—and your movie is going to bring everything to light.”

  Darius pulled back and tilted his head, searching her face.

  “I’ve never had your courage. You were always so brave. It’s part of what made me love you.”

  “O-kay.”

  “Before I tell you, I just need to say how sorry I am. I know you’ll probably never forgive me for what I’ve done, but I’ve struggled my whole life to live with this.”

  “Ginny, what is going on?”

  “First, I gotta tell you—” She pushed out one final breath to summon the courage. “I believe my father shot you last Sunday night.”

  His fingers tensed around the mug in his hands. “What? How do you know . . . Why?”

  “He’s not well. He’s not thinking clearly. I thought it was dementia. It might be some drug interactions.” She shook her head. “Anyway, it’s not the point. I found him last Sunday night. He was rambling about you coming back here, ruining lives with that screenplay. I don’t know how he knew about it. He said he couldn’t live if you destroyed his family. It was almost like he was in shock. There was a gun on the table. I ran out of the house, afrai
d of what he might have done. By the time I reached your house, you were being put in an ambulance. And Sheriff Wilson confirmed—you were shot with a .38. My dad has a .38.”

  Darius sat back and took it in. “But I don’t understand. You read the script. I thought it might be great if something happened to that pastor, if he were exposed for the man he is, but I didn’t use names, and I didn’t make it clear that your dad was the shooter at the clinic. No one could arrest him based on any of this. I really thought—”

  “It’s not that,” she interrupted.

  He reached over, putting his hand on hers.

  She pulled her hand away. “When I broke it off with you, I told you I had a miscarriage. It wasn’t true.”

  She looked into his green eyes, wide and watering, his expression frozen, waiting for her to finish.

  “I didn’t know how far along I was when you left after graduation. I assumed it was early. I didn’t show at all. I didn’t feel sick. But I obviously got pregnant that first time we were together. After Thanksgiving. Darius, I didn’t know what was happening, but I had a baby that summer. A tiny, premature baby, clinging to life, and my parents found out, swooped in, and took over.” She couldn’t go on. She couldn’t get any sounds out as the reality of that summer came crashing forward.

  She couldn’t look at his face but watched his fingers wrapped tightly around his mug.

  “I know it’s unforgivable,” she continued. “I should have told you. I was in shock. I wanted to run away and go to New York and start our life together, but they wouldn’t let me give it up. No one would let me go.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “My mom said they’d bring the baby home and that I needed to take responsibility. They acted like I’d been attacked. They didn’t even ask about the father. It was the day they came home from the mission trip. Pastor Gary was with them when they found me. The three of them got me to a hospital. He stood in the corner of the room, advising Bonnie, consoling her, saying he wished he’d known, agreeing with her that of course I needed to stay in Eden, that even from tragedy comes miracles. They stood there, whispering, plotting my future, and I knew I couldn’t tell them about you. I knew it wouldn’t even matter.”

  Darius’s gaze dropped to the table. Tears began to fall.

  He was the one man who’d never hurt her, who showed her what real love looked and felt like. “I couldn’t tell you. We had this plan. You had a dream. I didn’t want to hijack all of it. I didn’t want you to feel guilty or obligated. I knew our plans would never happen. I—”

  “So when I came to your house, when I called out to you, begging for you to come to the door, and you just ignored me, you were hiding our baby?”

  “She was in the hospital,” Ginny said, shaking her head. “I didn’t even know at that point if she was going to survive.”

  “But she did?”

  Ginny nodded. “And I heard my dad threaten you. We both knew what he was capable of after he shot that doctor. I didn’t want anything to happen to you. I thought he’d try to ruin your life. I just thought you’d be better off forgetting all about me.”

  “So you’ve raised our child all these years without me? Without even telling me that I was a father?”

  “No,” she said, the guilt overtaking her ability to speak at all. She finally shook her head and wiped at her face. “You don’t understand. I fell apart. My mom even put me in a hospital because I shut down so completely after it happened. She said no one would ever know. They told the whole town that they’d adopted a baby from their mission trip.”

  Darius sat back in his chair, stunned. “Our child has been raised by your parents and never knew about us? You either?”

  “I just told her. Literally, just before coming to see you.”

  He shook his head. He wasn’t looking at her anymore. Ginny felt the wall rising between them. She’d never again see him look at her with love or compassion.

  “I have barely been in her life all these years,” Ginny said. “I felt so guilty, I avoided her. Looking at her reminded me of you, and I hated my father for what he said to you that day at the house, what he wouldn’t let me do. I tried to come clean after she was a few years old. It seemed so wrong to have this secret and get married. But my mom was terrified of the scandal and of losing her. She loved her.”

  Darius shook his head. He said nothing.

  Ginny couldn’t stop the tears. “She’s beautiful,” she added, sniffling. “She turned out great. She’s an actress. She’s nothing like me—”

  “I have a daughter,” he uttered, his voice barely audible.

  “Her name’s Brooklyn. Every time I heard my mom call her name, I thought of you, of the life we planned, the apartment you’d found, how being with you—it was the happiest time in my life. Everything got so dark after she was born, after I watched you walk away. That girl you loved—it was like she was the one who died that summer. I was a coward.”

  Darius was staring out the window. She needed him to look at her, so he would see her regret.

  “I’ve made one disastrous decision after another, and that screenplay,” she said, “it will bring it all to light. And I know you don’t worry about exposing Pastor Gary. But he’s not the only villain. I’ve kind of built my life around denying reality.”

  Darius finally looked at her. She could feel the pain, the anger seeping from his silent glare. His eyes filled with tears again, but he pushed his way out of the booth, wincing as he stood.

  “I gotta go,” he said.

  She didn’t try to stop him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  ANOTHER NURSE APPROACHED BROOKLYN. “SORRY the doctor is taking so long, but your dad is awake now if you want to see him.”

  She didn’t. She couldn’t face him until she got through the rest of the story.

  She thanked the nurse, looked back down at her phone, and kept reading.

  It was just days after that moment when everything began to go horribly wrong.

  The next scene was to take place at the Garden of the Gods in the Shawnee Forest. Anthony and Margaret would be sitting on one of the high rocks, watching the sunset over the vast treetops that were just beginning to bud. “You gonna miss this view?” Anthony asked.

  “I’ve been coming here my whole life,” Margaret said. “My mom always said church was for communicating with God, but this is where you see his best work.”

  Brooklyn smiled, recalling all the times Mom had said the same to her.

  “But I’m ready for a view of skyscrapers,” Margaret continued, resting her head on his shoulder. “Should we stay for the stars?” she asked. Before he could answer, she lay back, cradled her head in her folded arms, and crossed her ankles, ready for viewing.

  “I don’t know. It’ll be tough to see when it gets dark. Don’t want anything happening to my girl. Aren’t there copperheads in here?”

  “A few,” she teased. “Come on. A couple more minutes. These stars are the only thing I’m going to miss. I hear you can’t really see stars when you’re in the city.”

  Anthony lay back beside her and looked at the cloudless abyss. She was right. Anthony had never seen a sky like Eden’s when he lived in Chicago.

  “When I was ten, I started crawling out my bedroom window to sit on the porch roof after I was sent to bed,” Margaret said. “I’d look up at the millions of dots in the dark sky. I’d talk about my day.” She turned her head to Anthony and smiled, embarrassed. “Didn’t have a lot of friends as a kid.”

  “Me either,” he said.

  Brooklyn had sat on the same roof outside her bedroom window, staring at those same stars. She’d felt the same loneliness.

  “Anyway, I’d whisper all my secrets—a crush I had or an insecurity. Anything I couldn’t share with people. I’d cast them out into the sky. I told myself that all those millions of stars were other people’s secrets. Made me feel better.”

  Anthony looked up at the darkening sky, imagining the blan
ket of dots that would soon arrive. “Have you whispered our secret to the sky?”

  “Many times,” she said, smiling.

  “Then I guess it’s safe.” Anthony propped himself onto his elbow and leaned in for a kiss.

  Until today, Brooklyn had spent years imagining her parents. She’d looked at that photo of Eimy, wondering if she’d been in love, hoping that even if the pregnancy had been unwanted at such a young age, that something good was behind it. She’d always feared the possibility of an assault, a criminal’s genes swimming around in her veins. But suddenly, she was reading her parents’ love story. It was the strangest gift.

  The stage direction on the next line of the script simply read: The sky darkens. A bunch of burnouts from high school show up. Margaret and Anthony recognize one.

  “What in the world is going on here?” a voice behind them said.

  Margaret and Anthony sat up and turned.

  “Margaret, you can’t be serious,” one of them said.

  “Shut up, Evan,” she answered. “You remember Anthony?”

  She and Anthony stood. Anthony offered a nod and his hand to the guy, but Evan ignored it, staring at him. “Margaret, I knew you liked chocolate, but come on now.”

  The other burnouts laughed. “Go to hell,” she said. Anthony looked at the seven guys behind Evan. None were big, but they looked drunk and excited, wild dogs ready for anything.

  “He’s on drugs,” Margaret whispered to Anthony.

  “We don’t want any trouble,” Anthony said to the guys. The sun had disappeared behind the horizon, and it was quickly getting dark. In another few minutes, it would be tough to see and difficult to climb down to the path. Anthony took Margaret’s hand to help her down from the rock, but Evan climbed up to where they stood, blocking the path.

  “I don’t think this is gonna work,” he said. “Margaret, what would your dad say?”

  “Get out of my face,” Anthony said in a measured tone.

  “Or what?” Evan asked. “You gonna take on all of us?” He looked back at his friends. “I think we better show Anthony the way outta here.”