Tumble & Fall (14 page)

“Are you okay?” Nick calls out from the window. “Zan?”

Zan slowly lowers her hands from her ears, the din of metal on concrete still echoing in her head. “Yeah,” she shouts back. “I’m here. Come around to the side door, I’ll let you in.”

Zan unlocks the bolted door and starts to pull it open, when she hears a rustling behind her.

“Not so fast.”

Zan turns to find herself staring at the shiny, bulbous head of a golf club. Gripping tight to the other end is the smallest old woman Zan has ever seen in her life. Her coarse, white-gray hair is partially covered in a scarf, tribal-looking with swirls of orange and red, and her skin is deep brown and wrinkled.

“What you trying to do here, girl?” she asks, her voice syrupy and thick with an accent that makes Zan think of palm trees.

Zan swallows and backs up toward the sliding garage door. She hears the shuffle of Nick’s feet on the other side.

“And who you got there with you?” the old woman asks, nodding at the door.

“I’m, I’m sorry,” Zan stutters. “We were just…”

The woman struggles to hold the club up to Zan’s waist, while unlocking the door and slowly pushing it open. Nick stands on the other side, and she swings the club clumsily toward his face.

“Whoa.” Nick dodges the golf club as the woman swipes blindly at the air between them.

“You trying to rob me, boy? The whole world going crazy and you trying to rob me?” Her voice is high and screechy. Zan stands uncertainly behind her. Up close she can see that the woman is shaking, her petite frame trembling beneath the billowing tent of her housecoat. She’s not just angry, Zan realizes. She’s terrified.

“Ma’am,” Zan tries. “We’re so sorry. We, our car broke down, and we didn’t think anybody was in here. We just needed some tools. We can pay you.”

“Pay me?” The woman turns to look at Zan. She loosens her grip on the club but there’s still a wild fury in her small, dark eyes, now glassy and brimming with tears. “What I’m gonna do with your money now? All by myself in this garage, nobody here with me. What I want your money for?”

Zan looks over the woman’s head to Nick, who is slowly walking back toward them. “You’re all alone here?” he asks.

The woman jumps again at his voice. “My son, this his garage. He tell me ‘Come stay with me, Mama, I take care of you.’ And then this morning, he gone! Leave me here, with people climbing in, and stealing things, the whole world going crazy…”

The woman shakes her head and drops the golf club to the ground. The trembling intensifies, and suddenly she is rocked by loud, violent sobs. Zan knows she should do something, but her arms feel stuck to her sides.

“Where’s your son now?” Nick asks, his voice soft and low. He slowly reaches a hand to the woman’s shoulder, and Zan winces, expecting her to furiously bat him away. Instead, the old woman crumples like a broken marionette, falling to the floor in a heap.

“He say he be back tonight,” the woman says between sniffles. “His girl Lucy, she live out of town, he say he go pick her up and bring her back, and we all be safe here together. Now it’s nearly dark and they nowhere.” The woman takes a breath and clenches her arthritic hands into trembling fists. “I told him, didn’t I tell him, I always say that girl be trouble.”

Zan looks to Nick, crouched over the old woman, one hand still resting on her shoulder. It’s late, and they should get going. But there’s a funny, screwed-up feeling in her stomach that she knows will just get worse if they leave.

“Ma’am?” Zan asks quietly. “Would it be okay if we waited here with you for a while?”

The woman wipes at her eyes with the puffy sleeve of her dress. “What for?”

“Just until your son gets back,” Nick interrupts. “In case, in case we need help. With the car.”

The woman considers this for a moment. “All right,” she says with a sigh. She leans into Nick’s arm and he lifts her up to her feet. He guides her back to the door connecting the garage to the shop beside it. She pauses with her hand on the metal knob. “We only have the microwave, but I can find you something to eat. Are you hungry?”

Zan looks to Nick, who shrugs helplessly from behind the woman’s hunched back. He holds the door open and ushers them both inside.

“Starving,” Nick insists, winking at Zan as she ducks beneath his arm.

Zan smiles and follows the woman into the shop. “Me too.”

SIENNA

“We’re almost there, I promise.”

Sienna clutches Owen’s hand in both of hers, her eyes blinking in the moonlight, the uneven ground crackling beneath her sandals. The trees hang close in the darkness, the whispering shadows of outstretched branches clinging to their shoulders as they step carefully along the pine-scented path.

The trail began at Owen’s house. After they’d hitched a ride back from town, Owen had grabbed Sienna by the hand and led her up his darkened driveway, turning into the woods just before they reached his front door. Sienna knew she should be getting home; the sun would be up in a few hours. But as she felt Owen’s fingers wrap around hers, she knew she wasn’t ready for the night to end.

Ahead, the trail opens to a small patch of wild grass that connects to a long, rickety dock. Owen helps Sienna over a knot of burly roots, and in an instant, she sees it. The pond, big and clear as a painting, cut perfectly into the towering pines and maple trees on either side.

“The neighborhood’s best-kept secret,” Owen says proudly, taking her hand and leading her out to the end of the dock. The moon, nearly full, dances in shimmery white ribbons on the still, dark surface. She sits beside him and peels off her sandals, letting the tips of her toes skim the cool water.

“What do you think?” Owen asks. He rolls up the bottoms of his pants, his feet disappearing beneath the dark surface.

“I think it’s maybe the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.” Sienna laughs. It’s hard to believe that it’s real, any of it. The pond. The moon.

Being here with Owen.

Owen smiles. He reaches back for her hand. “I had a feeling you wouldn’t hate it.”

Sienna stares at him, the serious pitch of his dark, full eyebrows, the long, narrow line of his nose.

“What?” he asks, touching his face as if something might be missing.

Sienna shakes her head. “Nothing,” she insists. “Just looking.”

There’s an easy quiet between them. Sienna’s ears are still buzzing from being in town. After the carousel, they’d met up with Owen’s friends. He’d introduced her to the group of kids that were building the boat, led by a big guy with a beard named Jeremy. Ted, another band member, had played his guitar on the beach, fighting to be heard over the wash of music and voices still thrumming from the streets.

“It’s weird, right?” Owen asks. He’s playing with her fingers, unbending them one at a time in his palm.

“What is?” Sienna asks.

“Just … seeing you again, I guess.” He shrugs. “I mean, I really was thinking about you. Wondering where you were. You know how it is when you’re a kid, and you have these friends, and then you don’t see them for a while? You always remember the way they were, like they’re all still out there somewhere, running around with a smaller version of you.”

Sienna laughs. She pictures the two of them, little on the beach, Owen chasing her through the waves. “You think you’re still running after me somewhere, with seaweed in your hair?”

Owen nods. “Definitely,” he says with a smile. “I had the right idea, I guess.”

Sienna leans into his shoulder.

“Maybe not the seaweed part.” He laughs. “But I’m glad you finally stopped running.”

Sienna feels something stick in her throat. “Me too,” she says, and realizes it’s the truth. It’s never felt so good to sit still.

“Thanks for putting up with all of those guys,” Owen says, leaning back on his elbows. He smiles. “They can be a little overwhelming.”

Sienna remembers the group on the beach, the familiar way they talked and teased, the nicknames they had for each other. “Have you known them all long?” she asks.

“Since preschool. A lot of them live around here. Waited for the bus together, that kind of thing,” he explains. “Maggie always calls us the Tribe. Kind of lame, but I guess it’s true. We do everything together.”

Owen looks out across the pond and Sienna senses a shift in his posture. He hasn’t said much about his parents, except that they had finally given up on family game nights. It didn’t seem like Owen wanted to spend much time at home anymore, either.

Sienna closes her eyes and she sees them again, two little blond kids playing in the sand. Owen is right. They are still here. Right here. There’s nowhere else Sienna would rather be.

“Let’s go in,” she says quickly. She’s already standing, peeling off her sweater and stepping out of her jeans, the crisp night air prickling her arms and legs.

Owen stares at her, his eyes wide with surprise. “You want to?”

Sienna stands facing him. “Turn around,” she says. She can’t believe what she’s about to do. She’s never gone skinny-dipping. She’s never even been swimming at night. In a quick burst, she pulls off her clothes and jumps in.

The cold of the water greets her with a shock, and she sputters up to the surface. Owen dives in over her head. He wriggles out of his shorts underwater and tosses them in a heavy heap onto the dock. He paddles to her and pulls her into a hug. Her legs wrap easily around his waist, his hands are in her hair. And when they kiss, he tastes cool and bright, like the glow of the moon on his shoulders.

DAY FOUR

CADEN

The stone steps in front of the cottage door are damp and cool from the morning shade. Caden moves to a sunnier spot on the grass. He unpeels the outer layers of a still-warm cream cheese Danish, licking the sticky filling from the sides of his fingers. The peak of Mount Greylock looms over the house like a burly, watchful guard.

It was dark by the time they arrived last night. The drive from Boston to North Adams took over two hours, but Caden had fallen asleep somewhere near Worcester, and the rugged, uneven terrain as they pulled off the access road shook him awake. The “cottage,” which was roughly seven times bigger than any cottage Caden had ever seen, clung to the lip of the mountain, and the path from the circular driveway was lit by a trail of hanging metal lanterns, like something out of Edgar Allan Poe.

Only a few lights were on inside, and Arthur had quickly shown him to a guest bedroom at the top of the stairs. Caden fell into the four-poster bed without changing or brushing his teeth.

“Punctual.” Arthur’s voice startles him now from the doorway. “I like that.”

Caden takes another bite of Danish. There had been a note under his bedroom door when he woke up: “Meet by the stables at 8 —A.” Caden immediately wondered three things: 1. Where were the stables? 2. What happens there? And 3. Just how sprawling an estate was he dealing with, if his father couldn’t just yell to him from down the hall somewhere?

He showered—an annoying ordeal that involved crouching inside a claw-foot tub with a handheld nozzle that looked more like a telephone than a shower—and quickly got dressed, arriving downstairs a little after seven-thirty.

“I see you’ve met Russell.” Arthur pulls the enormous wooden door shut behind him and starts down the steps toward the lawn. He tips his wool hat in the direction of an attached wooden barn—Caden had guessed these were the stables but didn’t want to take any chances—and motions for Caden to follow.

“Kind of,” Caden mutters, stuffing his face with the last of his pastry. At the bottom of the main staircase, Caden had smelled something sweet, and followed his nose into a formal sitting room. The hardwood floor was covered in pelts—Caden wasn’t exactly sure what a pelt was but he was pretty sure these rugs had heads, if not now then very, very recently—and the frozen eyes of an eight-point buck stared down at him from above the giant stone hearth.

No sooner had Caden settled into one of the room’s two cracked-leather armchairs than an older man in dirty overalls appeared from a low doorway at the other side of the room. Without speaking, the man carried in a tray of pastries—croissants, Danish, muffins—a mug of hot coffee, and a single glass of juice, and set it down clumsily on a small fireside table.

“Russell is a man of few words,” Arthur continues as they cross the open lawn. The mountain is everywhere above them, brushed at the peak with broken strands of gauzy clouds. “He’s been the caretaker here since before I was born.”

Caden stops short at the red barn doors. He had eaten his Danish because he was starving. He drank the coffee because it smelled strong and rich. But what, exactly, was happening here? How did he end up at the top of a mountain he’d never seen, with his kidnapper/father, on a private and potentially haunted estate?

“What are we doing here?” he asks, folding his hands over his chest. “What is this place?”

Arthur opens the latch on the door and peers down at Caden from under the brim of his hat. “It’s the family lodge,” he says. “It’s been passed down through generations since the mid–eighteen hundreds. It was in terrible condition for a while, but it’s been restored. I come up here as often as I can.”

“Why?” Caden asks, looking around. Sure, the view’s not bad, but they’re stuck at the top of a mountain. Everything in the house looks like it was salvaged from the set of a black-and-white movie, the kind that Ramona was always passing out in front of late at night on PBS. Aside from the baking, all of the rooms smelled like dust and mothballs. It wasn’t exactly Caden’s idea of the perfect weekend getaway.

“I like the quiet,” Arthur says, disappearing into the barn.

“You like that it’s yours,” Caden says under his breath as he follows Arthur into the dark, dank room.

“Yes.” Arthur sighs heavily. “I like that it’s mine. One day, I hope you’ll like that it’s yours, too.”

Caden chuckles. “Whatever.”

He’s done trying to convince his father that none of this matters. The view, the houses, the business, the toys—if this last-ditch rocket launch doesn’t work, which he can’t imagine it will, all of this could be rubble in just a few short days. Nothing would ever belong to anyone again, and especially not to Caden. Not that he ever thought that it would.