of school could ever do.
After landing, we rented a car, a nice little compact that probably got twenty-eight miles to the gallon.
Given how you practically had to sell a kidney to fill up a tank of gas these days, I would have seriously consid ered a motorized skateboard if Hertz had one available.
The drive to Bend took just about three hours. Once we merged onto US-20, I began to feel my stomach rumbling and beginning to churn. I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I hadn't set foot in Bend in nearly ten years. The same amount of time had passed since I'd last seen my parents. And while some children might find a hole in their heart, in their soul, due to this absence, mine was finally able to fill up.
I wondered if coming back here was a good idea, whether it was best to let dead dogs lie. Yet that image of Stephen Gaines lying on an examining table, his head nearly blown apart, made this trip a necessity.
Anger had driven me away from my home. Now the same was leading me back.
As we approached the city limits, I could immedi ately tell that the last eight years had changed my hometown a great deal. And all the changes looked to be for the better.
To the west, the spectacular beauty of the Cascade
Mountain Range. The lush green foliage was tipped with hints of snow from winter. I could make out the magnificent peak of Mount Bachelor, rising to a snowcapped point. I rolled down the window to breathe in the fresh air. It was warm, dry and clean. For a moment
I considered what I'd given up. Part of me missed the air, the scenery. Being able to see for miles, the horizons rising blue and bold above the skyline. For everything
I loved about New York-the hustle and bustle, the thriving heart of media and business, the diversity of its inhabitants-I missed the open world.
By seven-thirty, we were approaching Eastview
Drive, the street in the northeast section of Bend where
James and Eve Parker had lived for nearly thirty years.
I still didn't have the timeline sketched out completely, so I wondered if my father had had his affair with Helen Gaines in the very house I'd grown up in. Perhaps a quickie in the room that later became my bedroom.
Every moment spent thinking about it made me more angry. I'd have to restrain myself once I saw him in person.
I turned the car onto Eastview Drive tentatively, slowing the car down as my old house came into view.
The first eighteen years of my life forgotten and now remembered. A bad dream interrupting a peaceful sleep.
The dark green paint hadn't been refreshed in years.
The two-car garage was still surely filled with old records, antiques my parents had grown weary of and empty photo albums. A black 1994 Chevy C/K 1500 flatbed truck was parked outside the left garage. The paint was scratched and faded, but I had no doubt the old truck still purred like a kitten. The grass was fairly short, so as least they cared about some sense of decorum, and the cobblestone walkway leading up to the front door was still there like the day I left. Much had changed in Bend over the last decade, and it seemed as if my parents had resisted that change as much as possible.
I steered the car into the driveway, parking next to the flatbed, then turned off the engine and sat there in silence. Amanda did as well. Neither of us said a word for a long time. Finally Amanda said, 'Henry, do you want to do this? We can go to a hotel, wait until you're ready.'
'I'm ready,' I said. 'Or at least I need to be.'
I opened the car door, cautiously stepped out as though expecting the driveway to swallow me whole.
Amanda climbed out, and we walked up the cobble stone path to the front door. A faded yellow button popped out like a pimple to the right of the front door.
I could see a faint glow from inside one of the windows.
Somebody was definitely home.
I looked at Amanda, smiled weakly, tried to gather my strength and rang the doorbell. The bell startled me for some reason, like I wasn't ready to accept that there was actually a person who lived here.
I hadn't phoned ahead because I didn't want him to know I was coming. Didn't want to give him a chance to think, to make up excuses. I wanted him face-to face. To see how he reacted. If he did at all.
I heard footsteps, someone mumbling under his breath. I shifted my weight from foot to foot, trying to forget the resentment I had toward this man. Knowing the pain he'd put us all through. Knowing there was a young man lying in New York with two bullets in his head, a man who my father could, like me, call his blood.
The front door opened with a creak. A man stood in front of me, rubbing his eyes. He looked older than I remembered, lines creasing his face like small ditches, a thin coat of gray stubble covering the worn skin.
When his eyes came into focus and he saw me, the man's mouth opened slightly, his reflexes working faster than his mind was able to keep up with. He shook his head slightly, unsure.
I took a step forward and said, 'Hi, Dad. It's been a while. It's Henry. Your son who's still alive.'
7
We sat there in his living room. James in an easy chair, me and Amanda on a faded, stained, uncomfort able brown couch. It was probably uncomfortable because nobody ever sat in it, nobody ever told James the springs bit your legs. My father wasn't exactly someone who entertained. James Parker was wearing a tattered light blue bathrobe, the same one he used to wear years ago. It was worn. Threads hung out, waiting to be yanked free. The robe looked as if it was now worn out of convenience rather than comfort. A skin that couldn't be shed.
Though it had been eight years since I'd seen my father, it felt like longer. He looked as though he'd aged twenty. The brown hair-the same color hair I'd inher ited-was streaked with gray. The skin around his neck had begun to sag into full-on jowls, and whatever was left of the muscle tone in his forearms had turned soft. His eyes were lined, as though tired of keeping up the appear ance of the rebel he'd long considered himself to be.
Maybe thirty years ago James Parker was a man to be feared and possibly even desired. Now, though, he was just an angry old man with a distant wife and an es tranged son. A man whose indifference to any life but his own had driven away everyone who'd ever cared for him, driven him to the point where his very voice brought up anger inside of me.
When I was hidden in a dingy building and needed to hear something, anything, to keep me going, I called my father. I'd spent much of my adult life trying to hard to distance myself from him and what he repre sented. My anger had, in essence, become a fuel.
Recently, the fuel had begun to burn itself out. But sitting there, watching this man in front of me, knowing what he'd done in his past, knowing just how little of the story I knew, it was all I could do not to leap up from my chair and knock him head over heels, that ugly bathrobe flailing like paper in a gust of wind.
Those striking green eyes kept flicking to me, then to Amanda, then back to me. Anytime he had unex pected visitors, James Parker figured it was either a court summons or an IRS audit. Amanda sat leaning forward, eyeing James, as though trying to understand an entire family history through those eyes.
He held a beer in his hand. The bottle was halfempty, and the bottom half was covered by his hand, which was sweating. The air was hot, blowing from some unseen fan that appeared to simply recirculate the warm air over the whole house. He eyed me with a look of confusion and contempt.
'Where's Mom?' I asked.
'Bridge lesson,' he said. 'Plays with her girlfriends once a week. Whatever keeps her busy and out of my hair.'
I bristled at the comment. 'When will she be home?'
I hated being here, hated that he'd even put us in a situa tion where we needed to be. But my hatred for this man couldn't get in the way of finding out the truth about
Stephen Gaines. About myself.
'Listen, I don't know what you want from us,' he said, swigging from the bottle, grimacing because the beer had likely grown warm. Not quite the 'you never call' line you'd expect from a parent you hadn't seen in years.
'I just want to know the truth about you and Helen
