CHAPTER NINE
The sky turned pink by degrees.
At first, it was only a wash above the tree line, pale and uncertain.
Then the color deepened until the western horizon looked almost painted, bands of rose and orange laid over the darkening fields.
Selena drove with one hand on the wheel and the other resting near the gearshift, windows up, the last warmth of the day fading off the glass.
The drive had begun to look familiar, and as it did so, she knew where she was going.
She was going to see Jessie. Her best friend.
At least, before she left Harlan County.
Maybe she just needed to confront the problem, get it out of her system, then on with the case.
That seemed better than going around half-terrified she might bump into her.
It would certainly be good to shut Connor up about it.
Jessie’s place was out past the old feed mill and a few turns south of the county road.
A sign appeared ahead in the fading light.
ROAD WORK AHEAD
Another one followed.
DETOUR
“Of course,” Selena muttered.
Orange barrels choked the intersection where she needed to turn.
A county truck sat angled across half the road.
Men in reflective vests moved around a trench cut into the asphalt, finishing up for the day, their voices carrying faintly through the closed car.
No way through without waiting, and waiting suddenly felt impossible.
Selena slowed, glanced toward the line of brake lights, then took the detour arrow instead.
The route sent her down an older residential street she had not driven in years.
Trees leaned over the road from both sides.
Their branches knitted together above the hood, dark against the bright scraps of sky still burning through.
Mailboxes stood crooked at the ends of pristine drives.
Porches came and went between hedges and old maples.
A bicycle lay on its side in one yard. A dog lifted its head from beneath a truck and watched her pass.
A white-shingled house with an old porch and a deep front yard came into view. It was as if she had drifted onto that street in a dream or slipped back fifteen years to the day she left.
The swing still stood beneath the big maple, though time had nearly taken it. Ivy had climbed the chains and wrapped itself around one side of the seat. The grass around it had gone wild, tufts and weeds pushing up where her mother had once kept everything neat enough to shame the neighbors.
Selena’s foot eased off the gas without conscious thought.
Smoke drifted from the porch in a thin blue curl.
Her heart jumped and dropped in the same beat.
Robert Raven sat in the old chair near the screen door, one ankle over the opposite knee, pipe in hand.
For a second he looked exactly the way memory wanted him to look.
The porch as dusk approached. Bugs gently humming in the grass.
Little Lena sitting cross-legged on the top step while he blew smoke rings into the evening and acted as if it were magic made just for her.
Then the car rolled closer and time corrected the picture.
His shoulders were narrower. His face looked cut down, as if illness had pared away everything unnecessary and then kept going. The hair was still there, thick enough, but gray had taken most of it. One hand rested on the arm of the chair with the loose stillness of somebody saving strength.
Selena pulled to the curb and killed the engine.
For a moment she stayed where she was. It was as if fate was telling her to go over and speak to her old man.
Her friend Jessie could wait. The detour, the porch light, the pipe smoke, all of it had placed this in front of her before she had time to brace against it.
Running now would be obvious. Worse than obvious.
Cowardly. If she turned and he saw her, it would be like admitting the big-time city girl wasn’t tough enough to even look her own father in the eye.
She got out and closed the car door quietly.
Gravel pressed under her shoes as she crossed the yard. The swing creaked once in the evening breeze. When she was halfway up the path, Robert turned his head. He squinted toward her through the thinning light, pipe still between his teeth.
Then recognition reached him.
He took the pipe out of his mouth and got slowly to his feet.
“Lena!”
No one else called her that. Not anymore. She was used to Selena or Agent Raven, but how quickly the trappings of her DC life were melting away.
“Hey, Dad.” She tried her best not to tear up.
Seeing him after all this time hit her harder than she thought.
It had been two years since she’d seen him when he and Diane and come to visit in DC.
That trip had been strained and had ended in an argument about Selena having changed too much.
It was an argument Selena did not want to have again.
He opened his arms before she reached the porch.
The gesture was small, a little uncertain, but it undid something in her all the same.
Selena stepped up and into the embrace. He felt lighter than he should have.
Bone under flannel. Tobacco and wool and the familiar clean scent of soap that made her chest tighten.
“It’s so good to see you, my girl,” he said, voice rough near her ear.
“You, too, Dad.” She could hear her voice breaking with emotion for a moment.
When they drew apart, he kept one hand on her shoulder for a second as if to make sure she was real. Then he gestured toward the empty chair beside his.
“Sit down. Sit down.”
Selena lowered herself into it while he eased back into his own. The movement cost him more than he wanted it to show. A brief wobble. A careful grip on the armrest. By the time he settled, the smile had returned, but the smile didn’t fool her.
“Still smoking your pipe, I see,” she said.
A spark of humor touched his eyes. “You always loved this one when you were a kid.”
He lifted it and drew once, then tipped his head and sent two smoke rings drifting into the dusk. They floated out past the porch rail and broke apart over the yard.
Against her will, Selena smiled.
“Show-off.”
“Worked on you back then.”
“It did.”
A dozen things she could have said sat uselessly in her throat. You need to quit. You look tired. Why didn’t anyone tell me you’d gotten frailer. Instead, she watched the smoke unravel and let the silence settle.
Not the time, she thought. Not for any of it.
“I thought you’d be mad at me,” she said. “I know I haven’t called much lately.”
Robert looked out across the yard before answering. “When you get sick, you learn to let go of the things that don’t matter.”
The words cut into her, though they were delivered gently.
That made them worse somehow. Three years ago, he had been diagnosed with cancer.
It had been a tough fight. Selena had paid for him to stay in a hospital in Washington during the treatment when his insurance didn’t cover all of it.
That meant she could visit. It was supposed to have been for a few weeks.
It took almost eight months before he was well enough to walk out of the hospital.
Ever since then, he’d never had the same strong frame of his younger days.
He went back to Harlan, and her sister, Diane, took over his care.
She seemed to hate Selena for not relocating to help. But she couldn’t. She just couldn’t.
He shrugged one shoulder. “I’m just glad you’re here.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t call ahead.”
“You’re here now.”
The screen door stood shut behind him, the mesh gone silver in the dusk.
Beyond it lay the kitchen in shadow, a strip of linoleum, the corner of the table, the dark mouth of the hallway.
For one stupid second Selena expected her mother to come through with a plate of sandwiches and a dishtowel over one shoulder, complaining that the evening air would bring on a chill.
Nothing moved.
That absence was older than it should have been and still raw in places she didn’t like to touch.
“Is Diane around?” Selena asked.
A laugh escaped him, followed by a cough that bent him forward hard enough to make her lean toward him.
“Dad?”
He held up a finger, coughed into his fist, then sat back with wet eyes and a breath he had to work for.
“I’m all right,” he said.
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“What’s so funny?”
Robert wiped at the corner of his mouth with his thumb. “You shouldn’t be scared of your sister.”
Annoyance rose fast enough to cover everything else. “I’m not scared of her.”
“You could have fooled me.”
“I’m an FBI agent. It takes a lot to scare me.”
That earned a sideways look. “Then maybe you’re not scared. Maybe you just don’t like losing.”
Selena let out a short breath through her nose. “I just don’t want the old arguments.”
“Well.” He fitted the pipe back between his teeth, then took it out again before lighting it. “Can’t avoid it all forever. Maybe just take it on the chin. Then the two of you can have a chat and bury the hatchet.”
“You make it sound simple.”
“Most things are simpler than the people involved.”
Selena couldn’t help but think of her own words back in Washington. Things were sometimes simpler than they appeared.
The match flared in his hand. He lit the pipe, drew in, then exhaled slowly. Dusk had deepened while they talked. A porch light came on in a neighboring yard. Somewhere down the road, a screen door banged shut.
Robert turned to look at her properly.
“You back because Diane told you I took a turn?”
Selena frowned. She didn’t like the sound of that. “She never told me. What happened?”
His gaze slipped away at once. “Doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.”
“I’m well on the mend. I got pneumonia. But now I’m back on my porch, have been for a couple of weeks. Getting stronger every day.”