The Road to You (4 page)

But in my excitement, I made a stupid tactical mistake. “I can’t wait to talk to that person,” I murmured, realizing my error the instant the words were in midair. I tried to cover it up by smiling and shuffling my feet. Unfortunately, Donovan wasn’t fooled.

His dark eyebrows rose slowly. “You’re
going
there? When?”

I took a step back, regretting having requested the closed office door. We did not, perhaps, need
this
much privacy after all.

“Um,” I said, shrugging and reaching for the journal. “It’s not really set…”

Okay, this was a blatant lie. I had my excursion all planned, right down to my alibi for the weekend. No one would mind or even really notice. Not unless, like my brother, I happened to go missing the summer after
my
high-school graduation, too.

This worrisome thought distracted me. It was only for a second, but that was long enough for Donovan to snatch the journal from my grasp and say again, “Aurora,
when
are you going?”

Much as I preferred to keep him and everyone else out of it, maybe it would be wise to tell at least one person my real whereabouts. Just in case.

I sighed. “Tomorrow at noon. After I’m done with my shift at work.”

“At the Grocery Mart?”

I nodded, not surprised he remembered that was where I had my part-time job. I’d felt his eyes track me when we were out in public. I knew he’d been aware of me all this time, just as I’d been aware of him. Unfortunately, the foolish crush I had on him only went one way. “I won’t be gone long. Two days, at most.”

In my mind, I’d already begun formulating the questions I wanted to ask in Crescent Cove. Seemingly innocent things that might draw out the responses I needed. I was sure if I asked just the right question to just the right person, the truth would be spontaneously revealed to me—by their hands, their eyes, their vocal tone, their posture. I didn’t need their words. Soon, I’d know what happened to my brother and his best friend, and then this deadening sense of helplessness would have to stop.

Donovan was shaking his head again. With his Army buzz-cut long gone, his dark hair grazed the back of his black crewneck t-shirt—a faded tribute to The Who.

Appropriate band for him.
Who are you...Donovan McCafferty? Who? Who?

He flipped through a few more journal pages and glanced at the wall calendar, stroking one of his sideburns in thought.
“June’s Muscle Car Babe!”
the calendar proclaimed, showing a tanned blonde, her hair feathered à la Farrah Fawcett-Majors, clad in a skimpy cherry-red bikini and leaning like a slutty go-go dancer across the hood of an equally cherry-red Ford Mustang. I gagged a little.

“Do you know Johansen’s Diner in Alexandria?” he said suddenly.

“Sure,” I replied. Everyone knew it. The owners served some of the better Norwegian specialties in the area.

“Good. There aren’t many spaces out in front, but they have that free public parking garage across the street. Park on the second level. I’ll meet you there at one p.m. tomorrow, and we’ll drive to Crescent Cove together. ”

“What? No,” I said, my irritation rising. “I’m not going there with
you
. I’m not going with
anyone
.”

He stared at me for a very long moment. Opened the office door and motioned me out. He followed, locked up behind us and led me to the parking lot while clicking closed the third and last garage door. Then he pulled out his car keys and strode over to his Trans Am, turning to me a second before hopping in. “You sure as hell are, Aurora.”

Too late, I realized he was still holding the journal. I broke into a run after him. “Donovan! Give me the—”

But he’d already started the engine and was partway to the street. He rolled his window down and added, “I need to read it tonight. You’ll get it back tomorrow in Alexandria. Be there at one.”

Then he sped away.

Friday, June 9

“
I
T’S A
birthday party for Betsy’s cousin, Ruth Ann,” I lied, pretty damn believably, I thought, to my mom. “She’s in St. Cloud for the weekend.”

“How old is she? And where did you say she was from, dear?” Mom asked, even though I’d told her these details twice before.

“Nineteen,” I said. “And she goes to school in Valparaiso, Indiana now.”

This part was true. Betsy, my best friend from high school, did, in fact, have an older cousin who was road-tripping back home from Indiana and visiting her family in the area, and Betsy had invited me to the girls-only birthday bash.

Betsy was leaving that night and staying in St. Cloud for the weekend at her aunt’s house. Her aunt—Ruth Ann’s mother—was totally on the hippyish side. Tie-dyed shirts, bandanas, crystal necklaces and slim marijuana cigarettes rolled up in her pockets. The whole look. So things were going to get wild. Too wild for my absence to be noticed by anyone except, maybe, by Betsy, and she’d cover for me if I asked.

“That’s nice that you girls are going to do something together,” Mom said absently, accepting, as I’d expected, the explanation without question. There was a haunting hollowness in my mother’s eyes, even as she tried to smile. Gideon and Jeremy used to get together for parties all the time, many held out of town. Just hearing about this type of event had to be dredging up Mom’s memories of them.

Of course, it was hard to escape the claustrophobia of remembrance anywhere in my parents’ house, or even in central Minnesota. Gideon had a way of forever altering whatever environment he came into contact with—tinting it, like a droplet of dark-blue food coloring in a shallow pan of water.

I put my arms around Mom’s shoulders, feeling the indentations with my fingertips where there had once been flesh but now was nothing but bone and more hollowness.

“I’m going to work,” I told her, “and I’ll leave for St. Cloud from there. But I’ll call you tonight, okay?”

She nodded. I was just about to make my escape when she added, “You’ll be back on Sunday, right? Before dinnertime?” Oppressive worry, always on the fringes of her voice.

“Yes,” I said, projecting confidence, reassurance, permanence. “Don’t worry, Mom. I’ll be back.”
And, hopefully, with some helpful news. Unless what derailed Gideon is as successful in derailing me.

Mom lifted her hand in a slight wave and let me go. I strode away from the house as if it were just another normal morning, threw my overnight bag in the trunk of my car and cursed Donovan a time or two under my breath. Then I drove to my job and clocked in for my obligatory four hours at Dale’s Grocery Mart.

To put it plainly, working there sucked. But I knew when I first started the job last summer that it wasn’t a place anyone with half a brain looked to for career advancement.

My boss—Dale Geiger—was a paunchy, combed-over, fifty-something northern redneck and penny pincher, who tended to nod at me dismissively when I walked through the door, as if I were leaving not just arriving. We tolerated each other from eight a.m. to noon every weekday during vacations (I’d worked the deadly dull afternoon shift during the school year) because he needed someone who could stock shelves correctly and who could quickly calm complaining customers. I was more than competent at both, and he owed me a few favors as a result.

For me, I needed a place to go that was out of the house, plus a paycheck of some sort so I could put gas in my car and save money for “my future.” Whatever that might be.

I spent the morning trapped between my coworker Sandy, who was bitching about her boyfriend Kevin on one side of me, and an endless supply of canned tuna on the other side.

“He promised he’d take me to the movies last night. We were going to drive to the theater in St. Cloud because they’re showing ‘Corvette Summer’ over there, and I’ve been waiting to see it all week, you know? Mark Hamill just makes my heart flutter,” Sandy said, pausing and putting her hand on her chest.

She’d seen “Star Wars” over thirty times since it came out last year and had loved Luke Skywalker so much that she was now a card-carrying Mark Hamill Fan Club member.

“But we were too late leaving town because he was shooting pool with his stupid friend Jake, so we missed the show.”

Box one: Chicken of the Sea brand tuna.

I wrinkled my nose and started unpacking it. “Sorry to hear that. You must’ve been disappointed,” I said to her.

“I am. I hate Jake. He’s so lazy. So…laidback. And slow! It takes him a half hour to cross the room. He walks like this.” Sandy imitated Jake with such precision and with that distinctive heightened color in her cheeks that I knew Sandy liked him. A lot. (Though maybe not as much as Mark Hamill.) But she just didn’t want to admit this to herself. Poor boyfriend Kevin.

Box two: Bumble Bee brand tuna.

“Oh, and don’t get me started on his bad jokes. I could shoot Jake and Kevin both.” She waved her pricing gun in the air. “Especially when they get going on their
blond
humor. They think they’re so funny.”

Sandy was blond.

“Sorry to hear about that, too,” I said.

Box three: StarKist brand tuna.

Sandy shrugged. “What’cha gonna do? A guy’s a guy.” She stuck her tongue out at the four still-unopened boxes of tuna in front of us and lowered her voice so Dale wouldn’t hear. “And a job’s a job.”

“Yeah,” I murmured back. It would have been so much easier if I’d been able to follow my original career plan, which had been to graduate from high school and immediately go off to college at U of M, in the Twin Cities, a good ninety miles away. To study
what,
I didn’t know, but at least I’d have been out of this myopic little town.

A whisper of long-buried discontent resurfaced and swirled up around me as Sandy and I unpackaged, priced and shelved those final boxes. This was a sensation I hadn’t felt in nearly two years. Like an appendage that had fallen asleep, I had to shake off the prickles of pain that accompanied it. While I’d believed Gideon to be dead, I hadn’t allowed myself to resent him or my humdrum life here, but now…now…

The hours didn’t exactly fly by, but at least they were predictable. When it came time for me to leave, I didn’t look back for a second. I hung my ugly puce-colored Grocery Mart apron on its hook in the back room, grabbed my car keys and headed out of town—toward Alexandria, not St. Cloud.

As I drove down the main—and only—drag, I found myself looking at Chameleon Lake like the out-of-towners visiting over Memorial Day must’ve seen it. Like the way
I
always saw it after a weekend away somewhere.

Homespun and mostly harmless.

With a corner grocery store stocked with beer (and a God-awful
lot
of tuna) and a tiny post office where my dad and everyone in it knew your name after you’d been in there once.

A local garage/gas station where the workers fixed up cars, flatbed trucks or tractors and gave the ladies full-service fill-ups, all while listening to hard rock on the FM radio.

A town where Viking football was big, NHL hockey was even bigger and bowling in the alley on the outskirts of town was considered a recognized pastime.

Where guys would take off school or work to go deer hunting in the fall and everyone had ice skated in winter on the lake, grabbed a Super-Tastee burger in summer and dreamed of spending spring break somewhere—anywhere—warm.

Where most of the residents had gone to see the one and only featured movie showing in the Main Street Cinema, which was wedged between an eggs-and-sausage diner and a local bar known for its “Half-Price Tuesday” beer specials.

Welcome to Hometown, Midwestern America.

Had Gideon cataloged all of these things as he drove away two years ago? Since his car was missing, the police had a theory that it might have been stolen—maybe even with him in it—but no vehicle was ever found. They even dragged the lake for his 1974 Galaxie. Nothing. It still hurt like hell to think about it.

Maybe he was unconscious or blindfolded. Unable to notice the buildings as he left. But he must have been fully aware when he returned to hide the journal. What was he thinking when he saw our little town again? Did he feel stabs of sentimentality, missing it? Or, much as it squeezed by heart to even consider it, was he glad on some level to have escaped?