Down the Darkest Road

“Wow,” Leah said as her mother’s black BMW rolled into the yard.

“You should come with us,” Wendy said.

“It’s just us girls,” Anne started to say.

“Me too, Mommy!” the little boy piped in.

“And Antony,” his mother added.

“I’m all boy!” he announced.

His mother smiled at him and kissed his curly head. “You certainly are.”

The boy grinned. “Pizza! Pizza!”

Haley, the dark-eyed little girl, looked up at Leah. “Do you ride horses too?”

“Yes.”

“I got to ride a pony for my birthday.”

“Come with us,” Wendy insisted.

Leah gave a little shrug. “My mom’s here to pick me up.”

“She should come too.”

Leah said nothing. Wendy didn’t know her mother.

Lauren Lawton slowed her step as she neared, looking suspicious to find her daughter with a group of strangers, like maybe she was walking into an ambush or something.

She hadn’t always been that way. Leah could remember when her mother had been happy and social. Her parents had entertained all the time, had gone out with friends. She remembered the two of them laughing all the time, always happy. But those memories were so old, sometimes she wondered if she hadn’t made them up.

“Hi, Mom,” Leah said as her mother reluctantly joined the group. “This is my friend Wendy. She rides with Maria Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

Wendy gave a little wave. “Hi, Mrs. Lawton.”

Anne offered a warm smile and reached a hand out. “I’m Anne Leone. Welcome to Oak Knoll. Leah says you just moved here.”

“Yes,” she said, meeting Anne Leone’s hand with hers for the briefest handshake. “Lauren Lawton.”

She turned to Leah. “Are you about ready to go?”

“I have to put this tack away,” Leah said, turning to tend to the task.

“I just invited Leah to join us for pizza tonight,” Anne said. “My husband is out of town. Wendy is joining us. Would you like to join us?”

Leah watched her mother out of the corner of her eye. She expected her to say no, thank you, but Lauren seemed a little taken aback at the offer.

“If you don’t have plans,” Anne Leone said to fill the silence. She set her squirming son down and he immediately dashed after a barn cat.

“Can we, Mom?” Leah asked, slipping Jump Up’s bridle over her shoulder. “We need to find a good pizza place.”

“Marco’s is the best,” Wendy said. “They have every kind of topping, like sun-dried tomatoes and artichokes and broccoli—”

“Broccoli is gross,” Haley Leone declared, making a face.

“Can we, Mom?” Leah asked again.

It wasn’t like her to press an issue knowing her mother was against it—and certainly she was. Leah couldn’t remember the last time they’d done anything fun with other people. It was like they weren’t supposed to be allowed to have fun or to have friends because of what had happened to Leslie. It wasn’t fair.

Her mother frowned a little. “But you would have to clean up and change clothes and—”

“I can clean up in the lounge,” Leah said, pulling the saddle off the rack.

“I have an extra top with me,” Wendy piped in.

Everyone looked expectantly at Leah’s mother.

“Well . . . I didn’t manage to get to the market today anyway,” she said, caving in without a fight. Leah didn’t take time to question her good fortune. She headed to the tack room with the saddle and bridle, Wendy hot on her heels.

5

“I can’t believe I said yes to this,” Lauren muttered.

“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” Leah said, sulky. “I could just go with them.”

Lauren glanced over at her daughter in the passenger’s seat. “I’m supposed to send you off with people I have never met before just now, people I know nothing about?” she said with an unmistakable edge of anger in her voice.

“Anne’s husband used to work for the FBI.”

“Forgive me if that doesn’t impress me,” Lauren said, staring at the back of Anne Leone’s minivan as they made their way back to town. She paid no attention to the scenery—the horse farms, the lavender farm, the roadside vegetable stand that also sold miniature bonsai trees.

“Do you know how many FBI agents I’ve dealt with in the last four years?” she asked. “Did any of them bring your sister home? Did they do one thing to put Roland Ballencoa behind bars?”

Leah didn’t answer. She looked down at her hands in her lap. Finally she said, “You should have just said no.”

“You don’t want to go now?”

“I want to go.”

“You don’t want me to go.”

“Not if you’re just going to be pissed off the whole time.”

Lauren sighed. What was she supposed to say? Was she supposed to tell her daughter that she was on edge because she had imagined she’d seen Roland Ballencoa in Pavilions today? Or that she’d lost her mind and rammed her shopping cart into a total stranger? That she’d chased Ballencoa through the streets of Oak Knoll, or that she’d been pulled over by a cop who probably should have taken her driver’s license away from her?

None of those seemed like good choices or information she should share with her fifteen-year-old. As a single parent she thought she should try to present some semblance of sanity to her child, to give her some sense of stability. She wanted those same things for herself. Maybe pretending to be normal would help toward that end, even if the idea of dinner with other people was the last thing she really wanted.

Think of your daughter, Lauren. She deserves a normal life.

“I promise not to embarrass you,” she said at last.

From the corner of her eye she could see that Leah was neither convinced nor happy, and it made her feel guilty on top of all the other shitty emotions she was drowning in.

“I’m glad you’re making a friend in Wendy,” she said. “She seems like a nice girl.”

What she actually wanted to say was, Who the hell is Wendy Morgan, who are her parents, what’s their story? And on the heels of that, she hoped to God they served alcohol at this pizza parlor.

“She is,” Leah said.

“Will she be in your classes at school?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“She’s younger than me.”

“That’s too bad.”

Still looking at her lap, Leah barely lifted one slender shoulder to shrug. She was tall, like her father, and willowy, with legs that went on forever. The boys of Oak Knoll were going to follow her around like puppies—not that Leah would enjoy that. She was almost painfully shy—so unlike her older sister. By fifteen, Leslie had already mastered the art of tying boys around her little finger and dancing them around like puppets.

“Are you going to pout all through dinner?” Lauren asked. “Because that will be almost as pleasant as me being pissed off. Maybe we could do both and really make a good impression on people we’ve never met