CHAPTER THIRTY
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It was a little past noon. They were right on schedule.
The car climbed a rise, heading straight into the sun.
Conor shaded his eyes and looked out the window.
They’d been driving for fifteen minutes.
Ten more and they’d be at Malabar Farm. The landscape was beautiful this far out of Brannigan.
The ground rolled away from the road on both sides, thickly wooded in some spots, fenced-off and well-manicured in others.
Farming wasn’t big here, because of the uneven, hilly terrain, but after they passed the padlocked gates of a shuttered ski resort, the land evened out, bordering the road with fields of corn.
They slipped through the fields, banked around a curve, and then shot into a straight-away of paved road blazing with sunlight.
Conor looked at his dad’s hands. They were trembling, but he drove straight and steady.
He was smiling and his eyes were as clear as the sky.
Yesterday they’d partied. Beer. Music. And food.
So much good food. They’d danced and played cards and through it all his dad had never touched a drop of alcohol.
He’d watched everyone else get drunk and stupid, knowing that no one was in any shape to give him trouble if he decided to join in.
But he stuck with ginger ale. Conor snuck another look at his dad.
His hair was combed, and he’d even shaved again.
Someone had fired up a time machine, sending his father back in time.
Conor half expected to see his mother materialize in the backseat, reach up, and hug his dad around the neck.
After his father’s seemingly overnight change, it felt like anything was possible.
Conor sat back, feeling lightheaded with joy.
This was the day he’d been praying for since his father got drunk and shot his partner.
The day when his real father returned and threw that alcoholic, pathetic version of himself out of his life forever.
It was the day the man Conor had looked up to since he was a child—the man who was his hero—came back from the dead.
His dad turned on the radio and fiddled with it. Music and commercials and weather reports and talk radio blurred as he scanned the dial. He clicked it off. Only the hush of the road beneath the car wheels broke the silence. Then his dad glanced over. “You know what’s crazy?” he said.
Conor leaned back, feeling the sun on his face. “What?”
“That I forgot what this felt like.”
Conor looked over. His dad’s eyes were shiny. He looked straight ahead as he talked.
“Life is so strange. Years go by. You wonder where the time went. You just want to die and get it over with. Then you see a chance. So, you grab it, and the sun shines again.” He stopped to wipe his eyes and shifted a quick glance at Conor before continuing.
“I’m not sure if we’ll ever do anything together again, but today, Conor, you can count on me. Today, I’m a rock.”
He reached over and patted Conor on the shoulder.
“Glad to hear it,” said Conor. “I missed you.”
His dad settled back in his seat. “I missed me too.”
Ten minutes later, they pulled into Malabar Farm.
It was a perfect summer day. High seventies.
Low humidity. A few puffy white clouds floated in a light blue sky.
The parking lot was nearly full, which was good.
The more people, the better. As his dad searched for a parking spot, Conor looked over the grounds.
Open fields spread away from the parking lot, eventually turning into thickly wooded forests.
A walking trail from the parking lot led to a barn where cows, goats, and sheep milled around in outdoor pens.
The prize was past the barn at the top of the hill.
A big white house with a green tin roof.
That was Louis Bromfield’s house, where the Grandma Moses paintings waited.
His dad backed into an end spot, underneath a tree.
Conor opened his backpack and checked his equipment.
Everything was there. He zipped it back up.
“Let’s do it,” said Conor.
His dad nodded. “Remember, I’m going to pick you up across the road at Mount Commons. I’ll be there no matter what. Nine at the latest.”
“Ok,” said Conor.
He walked to the house and bought two tickets.
The tour group was big. Conor followed his dad inside into a huge, open foyer with a grand piano.
Two staircases curled along the far right and left sides of the foyer, meeting in the middle of an upstairs landing.
The tour guide talked about the history of the house.
Conor hung back as the guide led the group upstairs.
His dad—the last person in line—turned and nodded.
Conor moved quickly, slipping into a hallway on the left and ducking under a velvet rope that cordoned off a bedroom.
He took off his backpack, slid it under the giant four-poster bed, and looked at his watch.
It would be hours before the park closed.
He crawled under the bed, curled up, and went to sleep.
* * *
It was dark when Conor woke. He slid out from under the bed, pulled out the backpack, and listened. Crickets chirped from the fields surrounding the house.
He took a penlight from his pocket, clicked it on, and pulled a blueprint from his backpack.
The wooden floor creaked as he walked through the house.
It took him a few minutes to find the first painting.
Another ten and he’d marked off where he needed to cut.
The saw barely made a sound. It cut through the plaster, then the lathes.
Conor stopped cutting and pulled out the last of the lathes.
The backside of the painting was now fully exposed.
He rummaged through the backpack, finding a razor knife.
He carefully cut the canvas from the frame, rolled it up, pulled a reproduction from a tube, slid the original canvas in the tube, and taped the paper reproduction into the frame.
A quick patch job covered the giant hole in the wall.
If anyone looked at it for more than a few seconds, they’d see something was wrong, but they didn’t need more than a day or so to sell the painting.
Hopefully, no one would see the patched wall before they had their money.
He cleaned up, sweeping the dust and debris under a couch, then he moved on to the second painting, repeating the process.
The whole job took just over an hour. He never broke a sweat.
Making sure the two tubes holding the paintings were tightly capped, Conor tied one tube on the left and one tube on the right side of his backpack.
He then followed Angel’s blueprint to the attic, which was dark and full of spider webs.
The penlight helped him find the spot on the roof under the cupola.
He cut through the roof, climbed into the cupola, pushed out a vent, slipped through, replaced the vent, and then crept across the roof with his backpack hooked over one shoulder.
At the edge of the roof, he slid on his belly feet-first until he was hanging by his fingertips, and then dropped ten-feet to the gravel driveway. No problem.
He ran across the road toward the silhouette of Mount Commons. All he had to do now was get in the car with his dad and drive back to Angel’s.
He stopped at the bottom of the road that led up to the top of Mount Commons.
There was no car. No sign of his dad anywhere.
Maybe his dad parked at the top to stay out of sight. He trudged up the road, feeling his calves burn. It was a straight uphill climb.
At the top of the hill, he took in the view. The summer night spread out under him, fireflies winking over the fields around Malabar Farm. A cool breeze touched his face. But there was no sign of a car anywhere. He looked at his watch. Twenty-five after nine.
Damn it.
It was a long way back into town, but since Angel had taken his cell, there was only one way to get there.
He walked down to the road, hiked the straps of the backpack up on his shoulders, and started jogging.
There was a chance that something held his dad up.
He might come barreling through the night, making up for lost time.
Conor hoped he would. He prayed he would.
But he knew he wouldn’t.
A sweat born of anger and frustration broke over his face as he ran.
In the first two miles of jogging, headlights came his way twice.
The first car was a big SUV. The second was a police cruiser.
The cop car scared him. He slipped behind a tree, hoping he’d gotten off the road before he was seen.
He was sure the cruiser was going to squeal to a stop and spin its bubblegum lights.
Maybe he’d tripped an alarm back at Malabar—or his dad or Angel had done something.
That would explain things. For all he knew, his dad was sitting in an interrogation room being grilled by detectives.
Maybe the whole job was blowing up and he was the last to know, hiding behind a tree on the side of a country road, waiting for the hammer of the law to come down on his head.
The brake lights on that cruiser would signal the end of everything.
The money from selling the paintings—gone.
He and Julia leaving town and starting a new life—poof.
Everything would be wiped away in a blink if the cop stopped.
But the cop’s brake lights never came on.
Walking out from behind the tree, Conor tightened the straps on his backpack and watched the cruiser dip out of sight around a curve. He started jogging again, then he started running.
When he finally stopped, he looked at his watch.
He’d been running for a half hour. He wiped his face with the front of his shirt, catching his breath.
There was a shopping plaza a couple miles ahead, on the Route 13 exit off the interstate.
A long-haired hitchhiker with a backpack like himself wouldn’t draw any attention.
He could hitch a ride to Angel’s garage.
With no other option coming to mind, he started jogging toward the lights of the shopping plaza glowing out beyond the horizon.