The Taker (31 page)

The caretaker’s doubts were plain on his face, and he said the claim would have to be presented to the king of Romania. If Adair was not a blood descendant of the physic, the king had the right to decide the disposition of the property. The king’s decision took years but ultimately was not resolved in Adair’s favor. He was allowed to remain on the estate and to keep the family’s title, but the king took ownership of the lands.

The day came when Adair was no longer able to remain. Lactu and everyone else had withered and aged with time, while Adair had remained the same as the day he’d returned to the castle. So as not to arouse suspicion, the time had come for Adair to disappear for a while, lay low, perhaps to return in a few decades’ time pretending to be his own son, golden seal in hand.

He decided to go to Hungary, as his heart directed, to track down his family. Adair longed to see them—not his father, of course, whom he hated only second to the physic. By now his mother should be old and living with the eldest son, Petu. The rest would be grown, with children of their own. He burned to see them and to know what had happened to them.

It took Adair two years to find his family. He started at the estate where he’d been taken from them and painstakingly reconstructed their route based on threads and scraps of information from former neighbors or overlords. Finally, as the second winter was setting in, he stopped at Lake Balaton and rode through the village, searching for faces that were like his own.

As he came to a gathering of huts on the outskirts of the village, a feeling passed over him, a feeling that someone he knew was very close. Adair dismounted, crept through darkness toward the huts, and peered through the windows. Pressing an eye to a chink in the shutters, where candlelight was barely visible, he saw a few familiar faces.

Though they had changed with time, had gotten rounder, wrinkled, and worn, he recognized those faces. His brothers were gathered around the fireplace, drinking wine and playing the fiddle and the balalaika. With them were women Adair didn’t recognize, their wives, he supposed, but no sign of his mother. Finally, he caught sight of Radu, grown up, barrel-chested, tall … How Adair wanted to rush into the cottage, throw his arms around Radu, and thank God he was still alive, that he’d been spared all the hell and torment Adair himself had been through. Then it struck him that Radu looked older than Adair did, that all his brothers had passed by him in time. And then he saw a woman come up to Radu and smile, and Radu slipped an arm around her shoulders and drew her tight. It was Katarina, a woman now and beautiful, and in love with Radu, the brother who looked just like Adair. Except older.

As he stood in the dark and cold, Adair still burned with the desire to see his family, to embrace them and speak to them, to let them know that he hadn’t perished at the physic’s hands—when the terrible truth settled on him in its fullness. This would be the last time he would look on them. How could he explain all that had happened to him and what lay ahead still? Why he would never age. That he was no longer mortal like them. That he had become something he could not explain.

Adair went to the front of the hut and slipped a bag of coin from his pocket, leaving it before their door. It was enough money to end their wandering. It would be hard for them to fully trust in this miracle, but in time they would accept their good fortune and thank God for his generosity and mercy. And by then, Adair would be several days to the north, losing himself in the crowds of Buda and Szentendre, learning to cope with his fate.

By the end of the story, I had withdrawn from Adair’s arms, the narcotic smoke’s effect worn off. I didn’t know if I should be in awe of him, or fear.

“Why did you tell me this?” I asked, recoiling from his touch.

“Consider it a cautionary tale,” he replied cryptically.

TWENTY-FIVE

M
AINE BORDER, PRESENT DAY

L
uke turns off the highway and onto a shaggy dirt road, letting the engine’s low torque pull the SUV along over the ruts. When they come to a bend, he parks just off the access road but lets the engine run. Their view is clear owing to the nakedness of the winter trees, and both he and his passenger can see the U.S.-Canadian border crossing in the distance. It looks like a child’s play set of a construction site: an enormous span of booths and bays clogged with trucks and cars, the air above it heavy with the fug of exhaust fumes.

“That’s where we’re going,” he says, gesturing toward the windshield.

“It’s huge,” the girl replies. “I thought we’d be going to some backwater outpost—two guards and a bloodhound, inspecting cars with a flashlight.”

“Are you sure you want to go through with this? There are other ways to get to Canada,” Luke says, though he’s not sure that he should encourage her to break the law any more than she already has.

The look she gives Luke goes straight to his heart, like a child
turning to a parent for assurance. “No, you brought me this far. I trust you to get me over the border.”

As they approach the checkpoint, Luke’s nerves begin to falter. The traffic is light today but still, the prospect of sitting in a queue for an hour is daunting. There must be a police bulletin out on them by now, for the murder suspect and the doctor who helped her escape … He nearly jerks out of line, but stops himself, hands shaking on the wheel.

The girl glances over, nervous. “Are you okay?”

“It’s taking too long,” he mutters, sweating despite the chilly winter air outside the car.

“Everything’s fine,” she croons.

Suddenly, a green light snaps on over a booth the next lane over, and with surprising speed, Luke cuts the steering wheel and stomps on the gas, throwing the car toward the border police benignly waving traffic in. He cuts off a car that was waiting two vehicles ahead in line and the woman behind the wheel gives him the finger, but Luke doesn’t care. He brakes hard in front of the border agent.

“In a hurry?” the official says, disguising his interest with nonchalance as he reaches for the doctor’s identification. “We normally take the next person waiting in line when we open a new lane.”

“Sorry,” Luke says abruptly. “I didn’t know …”

“Next time, okay?” he responds, amicably, not even looking up as he goes over the driver’s license, then Lanny’s passport. The agent is middle-aged, in a dark blue uniform, his utility vest bristling with a walkie-talkie and pens and whatnot. In his hands are a clipboard and an electronic device that seems to be some kind of scanner. His partner, a younger woman, walks the perimeter of the car with a mirror on the end of a long pole, as though they expect to find a bomb strapped to the underside of the SUV. Luke watches the female guard in the side-view mirror, a new round of nerves breaking over him again.

Then it dawns on him: if they ask for the vehicle registration, he’ll be in trouble. Because it’s not registered in his name.
Don’t you own this vehicle?
the agent will ask.

People borrow cars every day, Luke tries to tell himself. Nothing criminal there.

I’m just going to have to run this through the system to make sure it’s not stolen
…

Don’t ask for the registration, don’t ask for the registration
, he thinks, as though by directing this mantra at the agent, he will keep the guard from thinking of it. If Luke’s name is flagged in a database somewhere—
wanted for questioning—
their chances for escape dwindle to nothing. This glitch makes Luke even more nervous because he has never been in trouble, never, not even as a kid, and so he is ill-suited to try to trick authority figures. He is afraid of sweating and appearing too anxious, and—

“So you’re a doctor?” the agent at the window asks, jolting Luke to attention.

“Yes. A surgeon.”
Stupid
, he catches himself;
he doesn’t care about your specialty
. It’s his doctor’s vanity rearing up, demanding attention.

“Reason for traveling to Canada?”

Before Luke can answer, Lanny leans forward, to be seen by the border agent. “He’s doing me a favor, actually. I’ve been staying with him and it’s time for me to go sponge off the next relative for a while. And rather than put me on a bus, he generously insisted on driving me there himself.”

“Oh, and where is the cousin?” the agent asks, a gentle prod hidden in the question.

“Baker Lake,” the girl answers casually. “Well, we’re meeting him in Baker Lake. He actually lives closer to Quebec.” She knew the name of a nearby town, which seems like a miracle to Luke. The doctor relaxes a little.

The agent steps into the booth and, through the scratched Plexiglas window, Luke watches him, hunched over a terminal, filling in
a database no doubt. It’s all he can do to keep from stomping on the gas. There’s nothing to stop him, no striped automated arm or strip of metal teeth waiting to puncture the tires, blocking their escape.

The agent is suddenly at his window, the driver’s license and passport in his extended hand. “There you go … have a nice stay,” he says, waving them along, already looking to the next car in line.

Luke doesn’t start breathing until the border-crossing station is shrunken in the rearview mirror. “Why were you so worried?” Lanny laughs, looking over her shoulder. “It’s not like we’re terrorists or trying to smuggle black-market cigarettes over the border. We’re just nice American citizens going to Canada for lunch.”

“No, we’re not,” Luke says, but he is laughing, too, in relief. “Sorry, I’m not used to this cloak-and-dagger stuff.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to laugh. I know you’re not. You did great.” She squeezes his hand.

They stop at a motel on the outskirts of Baker Lake, a nondescript place, not part of a chain. Luke waits in the car while Lanny is in the office. He watches her chat up the older gentleman behind the counter, who moves slowly, stretching out his one chance that morning to speak to a pretty young girl. Lanny climbs back into the SUV and they drive around to a unit in back, overlooking a stretch of trees and the tail end of a neighborhood baseball field. Theirs is the only vehicle in the parking lot.

Once inside the hotel room, Lanny is a blur of activity, unpacking her bag, checking out the bathroom, complaining about the quality of the towels. Luke sits on the bed, suddenly too tired to remain upright. He lies down on top of the polyester bedspread, staring up at the ceiling. His surroundings spin like a carnival ride.

“What’s the matter?” Lanny sits next to him on the edge of the bed, touches his forehead.

“Exhaustion, I guess. On the midnight shift, I usually go to bed as soon as I get home.”

“Then go ahead, take a nap.” She eases the doctor’s shoes off without untying the laces.

“No, I should head back. It’s only a half hour away,” he protests but doesn’t move. “I have to return the car …”

“Nonsense. Besides, it will only arouse suspicion at the border station, turning right around and going home like that.” She spreads a blanket over him, then digs around in her suitcase and pulls out a Ziploc bag filled with the most voluptuous marijuana buds Luke has ever seen.

In less than a minute, she expertly rolls a generous doobie, lights it up, and takes a long, greedy hit. She closes her eyes as she exhales and her face relaxes with satisfaction. Luke thinks that he would like to bring such a look to this woman’s face sometime.

Lanny holds the joint out to him. After a second’s hesitation, Luke takes it, brings it to his lips. He inhales and holds the smoke, feels it spread into the lobes of his brain, feels his ears clog and stop up. Sweet Jesus, this stuff is potent. Fast.

He coughs and hands the joint back to Lanny. “I haven’t done that in a while. Where’d you get that stuff?”

“In town. St. Andrew.” Her answer both faintly alarms and surprises him, reminds him that there are other unseen worlds that exist right under his nose. He’s just glad he didn’t know she was holding when they crossed the border or he would have been even more nervous.

“You do this kind of thing a lot?” He nods at the joint.

“Couldn’t get by without it. You don’t know the memories I carry around in my head … Lifetime after lifetime of things you regret doing … things you’ve seen other people do. Stuff you can’t get away from—without this.” She regards the spliff in her hand. “There are times when I’ve wished I could knock myself out for, say, a decade. Go to sleep, make it all stop. No way to erase the bad memories. It’s not
doing
that’s so hard—it’s living with what you’ve done.”

“Like the man in the morgue—”

She presses a finger to Luke’s mouth to keep him from saying another word. Time enough for that later, he imagines; in fact, she has nothing but time stretching out before her to realize the irreversible thing she has done to her true love. Not enough pot in all the world to wash that away. Hell on earth.

The things he’s done seem small in comparison. Still, he reaches for the joint.

“I’m going back,” he says, as though he has to convince her. “As soon as I take a nap. It’ll be safer driving if I take a nap. But I have to get back … things to do, waiting for me … Peter’s car …”