Chapter One

I DRIVE A CAB in a town where no one needs a cab but plenty of people need rides. I’ve been paid with casseroles, lip gloss, plumbing advice, beer, prayers for my immortal soul, and promises to mow my yard, but this is the first time I’ve ever been offered something living.

The girl’s around eleven or twelve. About twenty years too soon, she already possesses the self-centered, self-destructive attitude of a survivor of a string of bad relationships, failed diets, a drinking problem, and the realization that life is just a bunch of confusing, painful stuff that fills up the time between your favorite TV shows.

Her outfit looks like it’s been picked out by a pedophile with a penchant for banging hillbilly girls, but more than likely her mom bought it for her. She’s dressed in a pair of tight denim shorts with eyelet trim, a pair of clear plastic platform sandals encrusted in silver glitter, and a skimpy halter made from red bandanna material. Her exposed midriff sports a unicorn tattoo which I hope is water soluble.

She wants a ride from Jolly Mount to the mall and wants to pay for it with her four-year-old brother.

“I’m not doing this for my health,” I explain to her as I put the nozzle back into the gas pump. “This is my job. I have to make a living. I can’t pay my mortgage or my heating bill with a toddler.”

“You could sell him,” she suggests.

“That’s against the law.”

“The law won’t ever find out.”

I screw my gas cap back on. She watches me while she stands with all her weight positioned on one skinny leg, one nonexistent hip thrust out with her hand resting on it, the bent angle and sharp point of her elbow making an almost perfect triangle of bony flesh against the yellow custom paint job of my Subaru Outback.

Her other hand holds the hand of her brother, not tightly but not casually either, the way a daisy holds on to its petals.

“Maybe he doesn’t want to be sold,” I tell her. “Maybe he wants to stay here.”

“Then you could keep him. He can’t do much now but when he gets older he could be like a slave for you.”

I look down at the little guy. The spray of freckles across his nose and the hand-me-down jeans with rips in the knees and the cuffs rolled up several times remind me of my own son, Clay, when he was that age.

He turns twenty-three today. I have to remember to give him a call later. I don’t make a big deal over his birthday now that he’s grown. I don’t let myself get emotional either, since the emotions surrounding his birth have always left me feeling torn up inside. I guess that’s what happens when the best thing in your life is the result of the worst mistake of your life.

I wasn’t all that much older than this girl standing in front of me now when my dad dropped me off at the entrance of the Centresburg Hospital, already two hours into my contractions, and told me to call him when I was “done.”

Shannon was with us, sitting in the cab of the pickup crushed between the enormous globe of her sister’s belly and the silent, hulking presence of our coal miner father who’d been pulled out of the damp, black earth midway through his shift in answer to my emergency call. Since he was going right back to work, he hadn’t bothered to clean up or change out of his dirty coveralls. His face and hands were coated with rock dust: the crushed limestone sprayed inside mines to control the combustible coal dust. It gave his skin a bluish-white pallor, like someone who’d been frozen solid and dug out of a snowdrift.

Shannon was this girl’s age and full of the same sort of generalized contempt and misplaced confidence in her ability to not care about anything as long as she told herself nothing was worth caring about, but I remember she looked worried that day as I climbed down out of the truck wincing and breathing funny and cradling the baby still inside me. I couldn’t tell if she was afraid for me or afraid for herself because she was going home with dad alone.

“I don’t believe in slavery,” I tell the girl. “Besides, maybe he wants to stay with you.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I think he’s pretty attached to you.”

We both look at the boy this time. He doesn’t have the exuberance of most children his age. He hasn’t been fidgeting or whining or trying to get away. He stares back at us with the endlessly patient gaze of a sheep waiting at the gate to be let out or let in.

“But he ain’t mine. He’s my mom’s,” she says.

“He doesn’t belong to you or your mom.”

I walk around to the driver’s side of my car. They follow me.

“He’s not a dog. He’s a person. You can’t own another person. Although another person can own you. You’ll learn about that when you start dating.”

“I already date.”

“Okay, enough.” I hold up my hands in a sign of defeat. “This is more information than I need. If you don’t have any money, what else do you have?”

She opens up her grimy purse, pink with a jeweled kitten on it. I would have killed for a purse like that when I was her age although I never would have taken it outside the house for fear E.J. or some of the other guys would have made fun of me for being a sissy.

She pokes through the meager contents with the tips of her fingers, which are polished in chipped purple: a cracked pink plastic Barbie wallet, a lipstick, a comb, a piece of notebook paper folded into a small square, a lighter shaped like a pig, and a handful of what looks like ordinary gravel.

She gestures with her head toward the boy.

“Kenny collects rocks.”

I take the lighter and flick it on. The flames come out the pig’s nose.

“The lighter,” I state.

“No way. I love that lighter. I just stole…I just bought it with my own money inside.”

“No lighter, no ride.”

It’s her turn to size me up. She looks me over. I wonder what she thinks about my outfit, if she’s being more generous than I was with hers. Ancient scuffed Frye harness boots, long bare legs, a camouflage miniskirt, olive drab tank top, cheap drugstore sunglasses, and a pink Stetson that Clay gave me two years ago as a Mother’s Day gag gift that I was never supposed to wear: looks like she was dressed by a Vietnam vet with a penchant for banging middle-aged cowgirls.

Her gaze leaves me and runs over the car. JOLLY MOUNT CAB is written on both sides but about a month ago, someone blacked out JOLLY and CAB on the driver’s side door and added the word ME.

It now reads MOUNT ME.

I don’t have any idea who the vandal is. I’m sure it was nothing personal. I’ve even taken my time getting it fixed. I tell myself it’s because I don’t have the money, but part of the reason is simple admiration and encouragement for the creative thought process behind it.

When E.J. and I were in sixth grade and the Union Hall was still standing and hosting community events, a square dancing club called The Naughty Pines came to town to put on an exhibition. E.J. and I switched two letters and the next day the marquee read TONIGHT ONLY: THE NAUGHTY PENIS.

We thought we were the two most brilliant people alive.

It was inevitable that we would be caught, since we bragged openly about what we had done. Eventually word spread throughout the school, and we were sent to the principal’s office. I never did understand why our teachers were allowed to become involved, since the act didn’t occur on school property or during school hours, but I guess they believed that, since I didn’t have a mom to teach me right from wrong, they were responsible for disciplining me.

Apparently, I’ve passed the girl’s inspection because she hands me the lighter and opens the back door.

My cell rings.

“Jolly Mount Cab,” I answer.

“I need a cab to drive me from Harrisburg to Jolly Mount,” a man’s voice greets me. “There’s not a single cab company here that will do it. One of the drivers I spoke to recommended you.”

“What’d he say?”

“He said he thought you’d take the job.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. What’d he say about me?”

“He said he thought you’d take the job,” he repeats.

The girl crawls inside the car and motions for her brother to follow. Once he’s seated beside her she makes him fasten his seat belt but doesn’t put on her own.

“What’d he really say about me?” I ask him.

A brief silence.

“He said you’re attractive, although he didn’t use the word ‘attractive,’ but I think that was the point he was trying to make.”

“Does that make you more eager to have me drive you?”

“I doubt I’d be interested in you in that way.”

“Why not? Are you gay? Faithful? Celibate? Impotent?”

“Picky.”

“Fair enough,” I say.

I’m trying to figure him out. His manner of speaking sounds almost rehearsed. There’s not the slightest trace of any kind of a regional accent in his voice; he enunciates too well, and he uses very little inflection. He talks rapidly but he’s also fond of dramatic pauses. He’s sort of a cross between Captain Kirk and the guy who did the English voice-overs for all the old Kung Fu movies.

My guess is he grew up talking one way and puts a lot of effort into not talking that way anymore.

“Where are you exactly?” I ask him.

“I’m here at this ridiculous, godforsaken excuse for an airport.”

“Harrisburg International?”

“International? You can’t even fly to New York from here.”

“That’s true, but there’s one flight to Canada.”

Another silence.

“Can you pick me up or not?”

“Yeah. Sure. I can pick you up. You realize it’s a two-hour drive?”

“Yes, I do. The other cab drivers enlightened me. Is it also true that there are no hotels in Jolly Mount?”

“The nearest motel would be in Centresburg, about thirty miles from here.”

“Unbelievable.”

“What’s your name, sir?”

“Why do you need to know?”

“Because I’m about to invest four hours of my life and sixty dollars worth of gas on the assumption that you’re going to be there when I show up. The least you can do in return is tell me your name.”

He doesn’t answer.

“Fine. I’ll just call you Sparky.”

“Gerald,” he says sharply. “Gerald Kozlowski.”

He hangs up.

I click my phone shut happily. A fare from the airport. Big bucks.

Then I notice the two little ones in my backseat.

“Sorry, kids,” I tell them while opening the door and motioning for them to get out. “There’s been a change in plans. I can’t take you to the mall after all.”

Kenny does what he’s told. The girl glares at me.

“Why the hell not?”

“It was a bad idea to begin with, now that I think about it. If I take you to the mall then you’re going to be stranded at the mall. How will you get home?”

She gets out and slams the door. She doesn’t answer my question.

“Where is home anyway?” I keep after her. “And what are you doing out by yourself in the middle of town on a Saturday morning?”

“It ain’t none of your business where our home is and we can be wherever we want to be. It’s a free country.”

“So I’ve been told.”

She joins Kenny and takes up a stance next to him with her hands jabbed back on her hips. I notice her gaze flicker toward a red Radio Flyer wagon parked next to the front door of the convenience store.

“Well, I guess you can’t live too far away if you pulled Kenny in a wagon,” I comment. “Where are your parents?”

All I get from her in reply is hostile silence and sharp elbows.

Kenny gives me the sheep stare.

“Who are your parents?”

Nothing.

“Can I at least know your name?”

She thinks about it.

“Fanci.”

I know I’ve heard the name before. It’s unusual enough that it sticks out in my mind, although having an adjective or noun for a name that conjures up images of pretty things isn’t that strange around here. I went to school with a Taffeta Tate and a Sparkle Wisniewski. Clay briefly dated a girl named Dainty Frost who had a sister named Lacey.

“What about a last name?” I ask.

“Simms.”

“Is your dad Choker Simms?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that explains a lot,” I say under my breath.

“Do you know him?” she asks me.

“Yes, I do.”

“You probably heard bad things about him because he was in jail but none of it’s true. He was set up by a lady cop who had the hots for him and decided to ruin his life when he spurned her.”

I’m so stunned by this explanation I laugh out loud.

“‘Spurned’?” I practically choke on the word.

“You know. Spurned. When somebody tells you they don’t love you.”

“Your dad…,” I start to say, then stop as I look down into their little faces, hers daring me to say anything bad about their father so she can defend him and his full of genuine curiosity.

She holds out her hand, palm up.

“Gimme my lighter back.”

I give it to her.

She returns it to her purse, grabs Kenny by the forearm, and stalks off.

         

IT TAKES ALL of two minutes for me to drive through downtown Jolly Mount. Aside from the Snappy’s gas station and convenience store, there’s a Subway, three bars, one church, a drive-thru branch of a bank, a red brick post office, and a two-story abandoned corner building that used to house a five-and-dime store, and an insurance agency.

A corridor of tall, thin row homes, identical except for the amount of color and care spent on them, forms the outlying border. There’s a house of flaking bubblegum pink, one of pale turquoise, one a fading canary yellow, and two painted a mint green—all the colors of a bucket of sidewalk chalk interspersed between the traditional whites and tans. Some are well tended; others appear to be uninhabited except for the lawn ornaments, and the limp curtains hanging at lopsided angles behind windows smoky with age and grime.

I take the most direct route to the interstate even though I prefer driving the forsaken, twisting side roads where the worn-down, wooded mountains lie on all sides of me like the backs of slumbering giants.

When I was a kid, I used to believe the land was as alive as any fairy tale ogre. I believed it could feel, and I went around filling in potholes with hay and mud with the same care I used when putting sandwich bags full of ice on my own bruises.

The drive is long but I don’t mind. It’s beautiful countryside where Nature’s majesty and Man’s shabby attempts to survive in it have blended together over time into a comfortable harmony of abandoned industries and permanent hills.

The mountains rise and fall for as far as the eye can see like a dark, paralyzed sea. Between the waves are valleys peppered with towns. They have different names but they’re always the same town: straight rows of small, dilapidated houses; a few cold, rust-streaked smokestacks; a white church steeple; a gutted warehouse or factory or a silent quarry; an occasional jarring splash of color in the form of a Domino’s pizza sign, or a Blockbuster Video storefront, or the ubiquitous golden arches.

I take off my hat and roll down my window and enjoy the mild air blowing in my face and through my hair.

It’s been unseasonably warm and sunny for late April this past week. Everyone’s enjoying the break from our usual cold and dull white skies this time of year, but no one is taking it seriously. It could snow tomorrow. I’ve been to cookouts in June where I’ve worn shorts and a parka.

Picking up fares at the new Harrisburg airport is a piece of cake. It’s only a few years old, clean, modern, and never crowded. It’s true that there aren’t many flights to places people want to go. It’s more of a have-to airport: I have to go to Detroit on business; I have to go to Cincinnati to visit my sister; I have to go to Birmingham for a college buddy’s wedding.

I’ve never flown in or out of it. I’ve only been on a plane once in my life and that was when I lived in D.C. and briefly screwed around with a senator. He flew me to a tropical island once in the private jet of some corporate bigwig who I’m willing to bet contributed mightily to his campaign fund.

I was more interested in the pilot and spent most of the long weekend with him while the senator was tied up with conference calls to Washington, assuring various people that he was going to do things he wasn’t going to do, and private calls to his wife, assuring her he was someplace he wasn’t.

He wasn’t a bad guy, though. I wouldn’t say he was morally corrupt, just morally inept. Lying was simply a part of his nature, like under-tipping.

I don’t regret my time with him. He was generous to me and showed me the Caribbean. In return, I taught him how to check his car for cut brake lines for that inevitable day when his wife was going to try and kill him.

I pull up to the curb at arrivals. I know exactly who I’m looking for even though I’ve never met the man.

Kozlowski’s cell phone number on my caller ID had a Manhattan area code, so it’s doubtful he’ll express any dismay over the amount of money I’m going to charge him for this trip. He wants to hire a cab rather than rent a car, which would probably end up being cheaper in the long run and more convenient for him.

I’ve gathered from all this that he’s a lifelong, non-driving New Yorker who has money but earned it by working for it because the way he speaks isn’t natural Snob-ese but something he learned. So I look for a man standing by himself dressed in black and looking casually uncomfortable.

I spot him immediately.

I’d put him in his mid-thirties. Short dark hair parted on the side. Eyes the color of weak tea. His individual features would be considered the ideal shape and size by most people. As a matter of fact, there might be laminated Polaroid snapshots of his nose, lips, eyebrows, ears, and chin in a plastic surgeon’s catalog of parts somewhere. The combination of all of them makes for a face no one can criticize or remember, the kind of face a police sketch artist could capture perfectly yet no one would ever be able to identify.

He’s wearing glossy black leather loafers, black wrinkle-free pants with sharp pleats down the front of the legs, a braided black leather belt, and a black silk T-shirt. His black suit jacket is hooked to his finger and thrown over his shoulder. The shirt alone probably costs more than my monthly car payment.

I try to make small talk with him during the drive but he won’t bite. He spends the two hours perusing papers from his briefcase and talking on his cell. It’s obvious from several of the conversations that he’s a lawyer who deals predominantly with contracts.

Nothing I do gets a rise out of him. He doesn’t comment on any of the music I play: Sonny Rollins followed by AC/DC followed by the Broadway score from My Fair Lady. He doesn’t mind the windows open. He doesn’t object to my periodic, animated cursing of left-laners, the self-centered, oblivious assholes who get in the passing lane and don’t pass. He doesn’t respond at all when I ask him if he wants to hit a McDonald’s drive-thru and get an Egg McMuffin.

“We’re almost there,” I tell him when we’re about ten miles south of Centresburg. “Do you want me to drop you somewhere in Jolly Mount or do you want me to take you straight to your motel?”

I glance in my rearview mirror. He begins packing away papers in his briefcase.

“What’s your name again?” he asks without looking up.

“Shae-Lynn.”

“Right. Shae-Lynn. You can take me to my hotel for now, but I was wondering if you’d be available if I need you during the next couple days to drive me around?”

“I might be.”

“I’d pay you well.”

I make up my mind instantly to do it, not only because I need the money, but because I want to know what this guy is doing here.

“I guess I can make myself available,” I tell him.

“Good,” he says.

He clicks the briefcase shut and finally looks up, but not at me. When he speaks again, he’s looking out the window.

“I imagine you know a lot of people around here,” he says.

“You could say that.”

“Do you know a Shannon Penrose?”

At the mention of the name, I temporarily forget where I am and what I’m doing and almost drive off the road. I glance in the rearview mirror, and he’s giving me a strange look.

“I…,” I start to say, “I don’t think so. No.”

“Do you know any other Penroses? I’ve checked phone listings for towns in the area, and I couldn’t find any. Although a lot of people are unlisted these days.”

“Well,” I say, quickly, while gathering my wits again, “Penrose is a common name around here.”

“I don’t think she’s lived around here for a long time, but I know Jolly Mount is her hometown.”

“Is that why you’re here? You’re trying to find her?”

“I have something very important to tell her. It’s good news, I assure you.”

“Sorry.”

I don’t trust him. That’s why I lie, even though the truth wouldn’t help him.

I finish the drive to the Comfort Inn with my heart pounding heavily in my chest.

Before he gets out of the car, he asks me if I’ll drive him to Jolly Mount tonight, maybe take him to a bar or someplace where he can meet some locals. His word: locals. He lowers his voice when he says it and uses a dramatic courtroom pause as if he were addressing a jury that’s nodding off.

I agree. After he gets out of the car, I watch him walk into the Comfort Inn. Then I pull into the parking lot of the Ruby Tuesday next door and sit.

I don’t fall apart and begin to cry. I don’t get angry. I don’t allow myself to feel guilt or pain. I understand that I will have to deal with all of these emotions eventually, but for now I close my eyes and take deep breaths while trying to find the safe place in my soul.

It’s a small, cozy room full of plush, overstuffed furniture, with a fire blazing in a fireplace and a velvet-eared puppy asleep on a rug on the floor, twitching in his dreams. On the table is a deep blue china plate the color of a predawn sky as the sun’s glow from behind the mountains begins to lighten the black overhead. It’s heaped with some of my mom’s homemade cookies: chocolate chip, pecan tassies, and peanut butter thumbprints with Hershey’s kisses stuck in the middle. Beside it sits a cup of hot chocolate with mounds of whipped cream. Outside a storm rages, but I know it can’t touch me. The room is made of stone and has no doors. The more the wind blows and the thunder rumbles and the rain lashes the only window, the happier I am.

It’s the place I always went to as a child whenever I missed my mom too much or when my dad’s eyes lost their human spark and began to harden into the red-rimmed, black marble stare of a mad dog straining at his chain.

It’s the place I still go to during those rare moments when I allow myself to think of Shannon.

My little sister, Shannon. If someone is looking for her, it must mean she’s alive.

For the past eighteen years, I’ve believed my father killed her.