I’d know that copper-hued gaze anywhere.
I tap my fingers against the wheel, focusing on the beat of the tinny pop music playing low from my speakers, and try not to make eye contact.
The light flicks to green, and the truck turns right.
Without giving it a second thought, I do too.
“Oh my God, oh my God,” I mutter under my breath. “What the hell am I doing?”
This is crazy.
I am crazy.
I stay a few car lengths back, as if that could possibly make any of this less obvious given we’re the only two vehicles on this side street.
Five blocks later, he takes a left, pulling into the parking lot of the Pine Grove Motel.
My chase—if that’s what I want to call it—comes to an abrupt end. It’s all for the best, though, because I didn’t have an end goal. I don’t even know why I was tagging him. My fiancé is long gone, and he’s never coming back. And it doesn’t matter who this look-alike stranger is or how much he resembles Donovan—because he’ll never be him.
And thank God for that.
Snapping out of it, I continue home to my empty house on the other side of town: past the main drag with the charming shops, beyond the cozy park with the shiny blue slide, miles from Arcadia Grove K–12 and all the places that remind me of the life that was never meant to be.
Once home, I slip into a pair of coveralls, crank my favorite Madison Cunningham playlist to drown out the echo of my lone footsteps, and sandblast the hell out of the dining room floor.
By three o’clock, I’m chugging a glass of ice water in front of an open window to cool off, debating whether I want to continue to the point of collapsing in exhaustion—or call it a night with a five-dollar bottle of twist-cap wine and a few episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm . . . a show Donovan would never watch with me because he didn’t get Larry David’s offbeat humor.
It’s then that I see him again . . . the striking look-alike in the vintage truck.
He slows down in front of my house, his piercing stare homing in on my front door.
But before I can do anything insane—like chase after him on foot this time—he’s gone.
TWO
LACHLAN
rantipole (v.) to be wild and reckless
“Well, well, well. Look what the dog dug up.” Lynnette Hornsby steps out from behind her screen door, arms folded across her chest like she has a bone to pick with me. Not that I’d blame her. I’d tell her to get in line.
“Lynnette,” I say. “Sorry to show up unannounced. Bryce isn’t around, is he?”
Her stoic expression softens, and a smile that feels somewhat like home meanders across her face.
“You show your face at my door for the first time in years, and you ask for Bryce?” She feigns annoyance.
“Good to see you, Lynnette,” I say. Bryce has worked in construction since we graduated high school. Last I knew, he’s a foreman. I was hoping he could find me some quick work while I’m in town.
“That’s better.” She looks me up and down, like she’s taking me in for the first time in forever. “And you just missed him, actually. He’s working in New Hampshire for the next month. Why don’t you come in, take your shoes off, tell me where you’ve been all these years and why you didn’t so much as write a letter.”
“You didn’t get my Christmas cards?” I ask with a straight face.
She hesitates, and for a second, I almost have her.
“Nice try, kid.” Lynnette’s smile turns into a shit-eating grin. “You can’t bullshit a bullshitter. Get in here.”
She props the door open with her bare foot and motions for me to step inside. I kick my shoes off on the rug and take in a view that hasn’t changed since the last time I was here. The same old brown floral couch is shoved up against the wall, a knit blanket along the back. The same saggy chair is positioned for prime TV viewing, next to an end table with an ashtray full of cigarette butts.
“You going to stand there gawking, or you going to give me a hug?” Lynnette opens her arms wide and waits for me to meet her halfway. I’ve never been a touchy-feely guy, but I’ll make an exception for Bryce’s mom.
She practically raised me.
Not in a traditional sense.
But she picked up the ball that my asshole father dropped more times than I can count.
She fed me, at times clothed me, and showed up to all my football games to cheer me on as if I were her own.
Lynnette’s trademark Calvin Klein perfume, stale cigarette smoke, and Diet Pepsi breath wrap around me like a blanket, and she holds on a little longer than necessary. She’s smaller than I remember. Or maybe I’m bigger. When I was growing up, she was always larger than life to me. It’s fair to say my perspective has warped over the years. Time will do that to a man.
“There,” she says when she’s done. “I gave you extra—in case I don’t see you again for another ten years.”
Shuffling to her favorite chair, she sinks down, crosses her pencil-thin legs, mutes the TV, and lights one of her Virginia Slims.
“Bryce is going to freak when he finds out you’re back in town. You know that, right?” she asks.
“That’s not saying much.” I take a seat on the couch, which sags deeper than I remember.
Lynnette chuckles, her voice raspy. I tried like hell to get her to quit smoking when we were kids, going so far as to break those damn cancer sticks in half every time she bought a new pack. In the end, she’d always make me pay her back. And if I didn’t have the cash, she’d make me mow the lawn or wash dishes or pick up dog shit.
“Bryce has always been . . . excitable. Unlike you.” She points her lit cigarette my way. “Getting any kind of reaction out of you required pulling teeth with dull pliers.”
“Forgive me for not wearing my heart on my sleeve.”
“Sorry about your brother.” She takes a long drag, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “Such a shame. Just wanted to get that out of the way.”
“We all get what we deserve in the end,” I say without pause.
She doesn’t flinch. “Time doesn’t heal all wounds, does it?”
“Not all of them.”
The flash of headlights in the driveway steals Lynnette’s attention, and she pops up to check the window. The car backs out a second later, as if they got the wrong house.
She flicks her wrist. “Thought it was the pizza I ordered. Anyway, what are you back in town for? Thought maybe I’d see you at the funeral . . .”
She doesn’t finish the sentence—she doesn’t have to.
My one and only brother died in a horrific car accident, and while some preacher read his eulogy and a crew of funeral home workers lowered him into the frozen ground, I celebrated with beers and strangers at a pub in Glasgow.
It’s not the kind of thing I expect anyone to understand.
“Just got back to the States,” I say. “Thought I should tie up some loose ends with his estate before I figure out my next move.”
“Ooh, a worldly gentleman now, are we?” She lifts a shoulder and gives me a teasing wink.
“Nah. Just wanted to get as far away from this place as possible.”
Her demeanor shifts. She gets it. No need to rehash what took me from point A to point B.