Road and Beyond: The Expanded Book-Club Edition of The Road to You Read online

  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.

  10:34 a.m.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Pasadena, California ~ Friday, August 15, 2014

  No one else was home, of course, when I got the call that my twenty-eight-year-old son was missing.

  “The Benson Plastics people are already here for the eleven o’clock presentation, but Charlie isn’t,” Gloria, the company’s secretary, informed me, her piercing voice tinged with an edge of hysteria. I’d only spoken with the woman on the phone twice before, but I got the distinct impression that her circuits were forever at risk of being overloaded.

  “He’s not answering his cell?” I asked, surprised more than anything, actually, because both of my boys had their iPhones all but super-glued to their palms.

  “Aurora, I’ve tried to reach him for an hour and a half,” Gloria insisted, the shrillness in her tone rising like high notes in a chorus and dancing for dear life on the other end of the line. “There’s no answer at home. His cell goes straight to voicemail. And I even called his girlfriend because she’s his first contact. She has no idea where Charlie is either. You’re his second contact, so I hope you’ll know where we can reach him.”

  For a long, uncomfortable moment I was distracted by something ridiculous. The fact that I was only my son’s second contact. Well, he was practically living with Cassandra, so I supposed it made sense that she was his first. But still...

  Then the deeper meaning of the secretary’s comments seeped in. No one knows where Charlie is. I tried to be calm, reasonable, rational and not like some TV sitcom mother who’d overreact to everything. But, naturally, given my family’s history, that was impossible.

  I fought back the panic and asked, “Was he at work yesterday?”

  “Yes,” Gloria said. “He was here when I left at four-twenty, and, one of the department heads, said he saw Charlie still working at his desk when he left at five. Martin, the team leader, was going to give the presentation to the plastics people this morning, but his wife called in saying he was sick with bronchitis. So, Charlie is the one who should be leading the meeting, but he didn’t come in or call in an absence, and none of the managers here were told about any changes in his plans.”

  I understood instinctively that Gloria’s first priority and much of her loyalty was to the company—Cornman, Grabher & Pressly—a financial firm my youngest son had worked at for these past three years. But it irked me that her focus remained on not disappointing “the plastics people,” rather than on my son’s safety.

  “He never said anything to me about being gone from work today,” I admitted, my mind reeling with that ever-present parental worry, which spun a dangerous path from my head to my gut. It settled there and began its slow, painful twisting.

  Where is he? Is he okay? Why didn’t he tell anyone where he was going? Unless, of course, he wasn’t able to tell because he was hurt or in danger...or worse.

  The questions started, and it was like 1976 all over again.

  “I’ll call his father and his brother,” I told the secretary. “If either of them know anything, I’ll contact you immediately.”

  “Thanks,” the secretary said, but I could tell her attention was still fixed entirely on the wrong things, at least in my opinion. Then, finally, she added, “This just doesn’t seem like him.”

  “No,” I said. “No, it doesn’t.”

  I hung up. I knew my son. He was a risk taker, an adventurous type, the kind of guy who loved thrill rides and fast cars and extreme sports. Different from his computer-obsessed older brother, who played Xbox when he was in the mood for serious activity and read ebooks when he was tired of programming things on his PC.

  But Charlie wasn’t irresponsible. If he was going to be gone from work, he would have told somebody. Maybe not me, but someone.

  I thought back to when I’d spoken with him last—on Wednesday night. I’d asked him about his girlfriend Cassandra. She’s okay, he’d said. And about work. Yeah, it’s fine. And if he had any special plans coming up. Nope.

  The ticking clock on the wall marked the passing minutes as my worry flooded the rest of my body. Ripples of dread meted out in sixty-second increments. Everything had seemed all right with him just two days ago but, then, kids often lied to their parents or, at the very least, withheld crucial information.

  I should know.

  “As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.”

  ~Andrew Carnegie

  CHAPTER THREE

  Chameleon Lake, Minnesota ~ Friday, June 9, 1978

  “It’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 bon
e 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 my heart to even consider it, was he glad on some level to have escaped?

  I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was saying goodbye to Chameleon Lake, too. At least for now. I had an undeniable hunch—and I’d learned to trust my instincts—that the discoveries of the coming weekend might just change everything.

  ***

  Twenty-five miles of Minnesota farmland later, I drove into the covered garage in Alexandria, parked on the second level and scanned for Donovan’s Trans Am. I didn’t see it, which meant I’d gotten there first. Good. That was my plan, and I’d been kind of speeding to make sure of it.

  I checked my watch—12:36—rolled down the window and slouched in the driver’s seat, waiting. My mind slid between memories like water around rocks in a ravine.

  Gideon and Jeremy in the driveway.

  Laughing.

  Drinking bottles of Old Style beer.

  Working on their cars.

  Talking about girls they’d liked…or dated…or gotten frisky with at a party somewhere.

  I used to eavesdrop on them all the time. Despite their incredible mechanical skills and strong general intelligence, neither one had immediate plans for college. Once, when I’d asked them why not, they’d shrugged and mumbled something about “not wanting to sell out.” Then they snickered at my innocent questions and my girly-ness, certain there was no way I’d ever understand how their boy brains operated.

  They were right. No matter how naturally perceptive I was, I never could crack the code on how or why they’d disappeared. I knew there had to be a good reason and, for months, I just couldn’t bring myself to believe they�
�d really died.

  Everyone around me slowly but surely lost hope in their return or recovery and, eventually, I got tired of trying to defend my intuition. But I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself for whatever puzzle pieces I’d overlooked until the day I finally figured out what really happened.

  I squeezed my eyes closed to force back the tears that had risen up behind them. God knew, I’d already cried enough to fill up all of the Mississippi River and one or two of the Great Lakes...but a knock on the hood of my car had me jumping half out of my seat.

  “You awake?” Donovan asked, peering at me through my open window, his dark eyes taking in more than I wanted him to see.

  “Of course,” I said, irritated and not trying to hide it. I could’ve been an hour down the road to Wisconsin if it weren’t for him. I reached over to unlock the passenger-side door. “Well, hop in,” I told him. “I want to get going.”

  He laughed. “We’re not taking your car.” He studied the body of my Buick and smirked.

  His Trans Am was parked a few spaces away and, with the parking garage’s neon overhead fixtures slanting a shaft of light upon it, his choice of vehicle couldn’t have looked more like an obscenely red beacon of obviousness.

  “Everyone will notice your car, Donovan. Everyone who sees it will remember it. I’d like to be not quite so conspicuous when we’re asking people questions.” I crossed my arms. I didn’t know what skills he’d learned during his army training but, clearly, basic covert operations didn’t top the list.

  One glance at his expression, though, told me I’d be an idiot to say this aloud.

  “Being inconspicuous is really big with you,” he said. “Why is that?”

  Oh, I could think of a thousand reasons—the better to observe people, for one—but he didn’t give me a chance to say anything. He just tapped on the hood of my car again and said, “C’mon.” Then he waved Gideon’s journal at me, tauntingly, and he took several steps back from my Buick. None of those steps happened to be in the direction of his Trans Am.