Chapter 7
Lucas
I envy Farrow Kelly and Noah Van der Berg. For their youth. For their proximity to everything I love.
Unease has been chipping away at my mind like a pickax, and talking to Quinn tonight on the phone made it worse.
I want to go home. To Dubai.
I miss the restaurants. I miss the pool at my gym. I miss coming into my office building and hearing the music Isobel has playing because she’s already been there for two hours and loves having the place to herself before everyone arrives in the morning.
My mind calms there.
But I’m dreading every minute that passes too. Every second that takes me closer to my flight leaving. Why?
The time on my phone reads 1:36 a.m.
The party still goes on. Sitting in my car at the curb, blending between two SUVs, I can’t take my eyes off the firehouse about thirty yards down the street.
Green Street. The name of the road, the firehouse, and the people inside. The headquarters of Weston’s racketeering, which according to my research, includes crime that isn’t as petty as I’d hoped it had become in Drew’s absence. Hard drugs, weapons, embezzlement, thievery, prostitution…
Hugo Navarre runs it now, and I guess that’s who’s been trying to call me. It’s a local phone number that I didn’t have saved, and with the car parked outside of my house a couple of days ago, it’s a safe assumption they know I’m back.
Green Street wasn’t always bad, and Weston wasn’t always rundown.
The faded red brick firehouse still stands three-stories tall, surrounded by a parking area overrun with grass and weeds, unmanicured trees, and a quiet road, dilapidated from years of neglect.
The town is a quarter of what it used to be.
Maybe two-thousand people now. There are no police, and barely any businesses to service the community.
This mill town across the river from Shelburne Falls was once an eclectic place, I’m told, with hiking trails, restaurants, and community gatherings like carnivals, car cruises, and bingo nights at the VFW. Always a little poorer than Shelburne Falls, but it had its own character.
Unfortunately, a flood more than twenty years ago instigated a mass evacuation, and most of the citizens never returned.
There’s a spot in the forest full of cars that had to be moved off the streets when they were abandoned in traffic because no one could get out, and people needed to find higher ground quickly.
Many houses were destroyed, but the buildings downtown still stand. The massive warehouses, mills, and anything made of brick. The thousand or so windows that once had lives and stories playing out behind them are now just views into rooms of silence.
I glance down at my shoes, the ones I wore to the gym when I tried not to look for her, or wait for her, when I was there earlier. Caked in fresh earth, I shouldn’t have worn them out to the forest tonight. They’ll leave easily identifiable tracks.
With the rain, I’m hopeful my prints are already gone, along with any other evidence of my visit to the grave. I shouldn’t have driven out there at all, but I needed to face it one time before I left.
It’s such a lonely place. Dark. And cold.
Forgotten.
Engines zoom past, and I count four motorbikes speeding to a halt in front of the firehouse.
My elbow rests on the door as I rub one of my fingers over my lips, watching Farrow Kelly climb off his bike.
No helmet and his hat on backward, he swings open the door that I put on that fucking place twelve years ago. Three others follow him in.
Quinn won’t have the future she deserves with someone like him. I don’t want Green Street to touch her at all, and if that means I can’t be in her life either to ensure my past doesn’t spill over onto her, then I’ll continue to live without all of them.
Even though it feels like it’s going to hurt to leave this time a little more than it did the first.
I was so desperate for something of my own back then that I sold my integrity for nothing.
It didn’t seem like it at the time. Young and excited, we only saw life getting better and better. Remembering that first day, it’s amazing how little I anticipated what Green Street would become.
Or how shit would change for me.
“What are we doing here?” I griped, climbing out of Lance’s 4Runner.
“I’ve got something to show you,” he called out, running for the old building. “Come on.”
Drew Reeves jumped out from the back seat, leaving his black ski cap and buffalo plaid button-up on even though it was clear we weren’t hitting the slopes. At least, not yet.
Lance broke his arm last week falling wrong on a black diamond run, and I thought he insisted on coming today so he could sit in the lodge and get drunk, watching us have fun.
Instead, we were in Weston, or what was left of it. This town had been dead since I was a kid.
Following him around the side of the building with its door missing and all the windows broken, I winced at the stench that hit me as we entered. Damn, did an animal die in here?
The water line from the flood more than a decade before rose up the walls about two feet, and various pieces of furniture sat broken, ripped, and decaying.
I wandered deeper in, the large cement floor and closed garage door to my right allowing for one fire truck, or a few smaller vehicles, to fit inside.
I let my head fall back and gazed up at the fireman’s pole.
“It’s the old firehouse,” Lance explained, “but it’s got a kitchen, bathrooms, and a shitload of space.”
“For what?” I asked.
Drew kicked a piece of wood out of the way, hands in his pockets as he strolled.
“A hangout.” Lance grinned.
Drew and I stared at him.
Like a biker clubhouse? I laughed to myself.
“I mean, it’s the deadfuck of winter,” he pointed out, gesturing to his arm.
“I’m useless on a snowboard, and I know you two won’t have any fun on the slopes without me, so what do you think?
” He held out his arms like we were eleven and he’d found us a treehouse.
“By summer, we could elevate the hell out of this place. Clean it up, a little paint, a bar…”
“Someplace away from girlfriends…” Drew chimed in.
And Lance added, “…with our other girlfriends.”
I shook my head, knowing exactly what would happen in this place, and all of it with the express purpose to fuck something.
Might be fun for a night, but…
I don’t know. Maybe we could put in a pool table. A gaming system. Could be cool, I guess. Someplace to hang out—away from family and school—where we could relax. Maybe that was what I needed. A home of my own with a family I made.
Madoc never made me feel like an outsider, but it’s been a long time since he didn’t have to stretch his attention. Fallon, his brothers, the kids… I’ve wondered for a while if I should still be one more person he has to tend to.
Maybe it was stupid that I still hung around? I was an adult, after all. And they weren’t my family.
“Do we rent it?” I asked.
“We can buy it,” Lance told us, lowering his voice as if he was telling a secret. “The bank that owns it is out of Chicago, and they consider the real estate here a non-starter. If we get approval from the remaining city council, it’s do-able between all of us.”
Or Lance and me, anyway. Drew didn’t have any money, but Lance was trying to be nice. I wouldn’t have to use all of my inheritance from my dad for college.
But still… “Why do I want to own a run-down, old building before I own a house?”
“This is a house.”
“It’s our house, Lucas.” But it wasn’t Lance who said it. I glanced at Drew, his hands still in his pockets and his shoulders relaxed.
He approached and gripped my shoulder where it connected to my neck, squeezing with a light in his eyes.
I’d known these two since we started college two-and-a-half years ago.
Now, here we were, last half of our third year, and we’d kept our circle small and close.
I liked my friends, and for the first time, I had people I chose rather than people who were obligated to care about me.
Not that I’d ever felt like a burden to my mom, but it was nice to create my own circle.
Madoc would never tell me I wasn’t welcome anymore, but his life was very different from when it was just us.
I was a responsibility he didn’t need anymore.
“What do you want to do here?” I teased.
“Oh, I plan on being my own worst enemy,” Drew replied with a smirk. “And you can handle security.”
Security?
I pinch my brow. “You want cameras outside?”
I’d installed them for my mom a few months ago.
“And in my room,” he added.
Lance snorted, and I just drew in a breath that felt heavy already. He said shit like that to make me nervous, but I knew he wouldn’t film girls in his bed.
And definitely not without their knowledge.
Drew headed to the back, toward a staircase, and spun around. “First dibs!” he called.
Lance darted after him, and I followed, joining them in exploring and daydreaming of the possibilities. My mom would freak if she found out I spent money on something like this. Madoc, on the other hand, would want in. He never really grew up, in all the right ways.
Staring out an upstairs window, I spotted a little girl, maybe eight, with a ski cap covering the top of her head and dressed in an oversized hoodie as she carried a backpack.
She trudged through the snow in what looked like broken Doc Martens and stopped in front of a darkened shop window.
Quickly surveying the area, she jammed her elbow into the glass.
It broke, and she reached in, unlocking the door before she opened it and disappeared inside.
Drew and Lance were in another room, no one but me seeing her. And to my surprise, I didn’t move. Didn’t call the police. Didn’t run to stop her.
Madoc has showed up for me for years. Made sure I was seen. Remembered.
No one in the Falls remembers that Weston is still here. It’s my turn to show up for others.