Chapter 2 Leith
Leith
What exactly had my plan here been? Show up on Clarke’s front porch and then what? I had nothing.
On my twenty-minute drive down here from Wilkes Farm, I tried to piece one together, but all I could do was hope that she wouldn’t still be at work.
All the old shit at Toades gave me the heebie-jeebies.
If I spent too long there, I always felt like something was a little too close to me.
It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
Toades was a weird-ass place—even for this weird-ass town.
So I figured it would be better to meet Clarke when she arrived home, surprise her before she even got settled. That way she wouldn’t have a chance to not answer the door once she figured out it was me. It wasn’t much of a plan, but I wasn’t really a plan guy. So I thought it was a good one.
I know. It sounds creepy as hell. But…desperate times and desperate measures and all that.
But now that I was here, I second-guessed everything.
Clarke’s truck had been parked outside, but there weren’t any lights on, so I assumed she walked to and from work today.
There wasn’t even a porch light glowing.
How would she feel, getting home after dark, to find me lurking in the shadows, waiting for her?
I’d be lucky if I made it out of here without a punch to the jaw and a swift kick in the ass.
Clarke could hold her own with the best of them.
I watched her clothesline a kid—with force—in gym when we were in junior high for saying some shit about Collins.
Then, she gave him a honey-sweet smile, looked up at him through her lashes, said “whoops.” Then she helped him up.
She was like that Sour Patch Kids slogan: “Sour. Sweet. Gone.”
She had never clotheslined me, personally, but I still always seemed to find a way to push her buttons. Teachers often sat us next to each other in the hopes that she might help me stay focused, but I liked to gab—still do—so that wasn’t exactly successful. But I liked sitting next to Clarke.
I liked to watch her eyebrows knit together when she was working on a tough math problem, the way she’d focus intently on something I could never see out the window when we had to work on an essay.
It was safe to say that Clarke awed me. She was always so determined and so sure of her future.
Even now, I am not either of those things.
The feeling wasn’t mutual. No matter what I did, I always seemed to get on Clarke’s nerves.
She spoke to me through huffs and puffs and eye rolls, even when I was being nice.
In eighth grade, I got the guts to bring her a jar of honey from the farm on Valentine’s Day.
I thought I was being cute. Clarke did not.
In response, all I got was a deep, eviscerating eye roll: the Clarke Cartwright specialty, but apparently that was reserved only for me.
Everyone else got a friendly, softhearted, empathetic Clarke, but I had never been so lucky.
I could charm just about anyone, except for her. And it drove me fucking crazy.
Until three months ago. Clarke and I had been…
a little drunk at the Old Church—that’s the bar in town.
Nothing crazy about that on its own, at least for me.
After all, it’s the only bar in town, and it was Friday night.
Clarke was there celebrating her best friend’s birthday, and I think it was some sort of going-away party too.
The details are a little fuzzy, okay? The crazy thing, though, was that Clarke and I were talking—in like a… vibing sort of way.
Clarke’s thigh had kept bumping into mine.
I put my arm on the back of the booth we were sitting in.
I remember thinking about how nice it was to be close to her.
How her eyes had these little gold specks in them, and how she hadn’t rolled them at me once the entire night.
And then, out of nowhere, I watched those eyes catch something in the corner and when she looked back at me, she said, “You should read the fine print on your dad’s will. ” It was almost like she was possessed.
Then she got up and left. Basically evaporated into thin air. For months.
Listen, Clarke being weird isn’t a new thing.
The Cartwrights are a quirky bunch. So I didn’t think much of it, honestly—of that part anyway.
But I thought about the part leading up to that a lot.
At this point, I didn’t know how much of it was an actual memory and how much of it was wishful thinking driven by the part of my brain that was still sixteen years old and obsessed with getting Clarke Cartwright to pay attention to me.
But a few weeks passed, and I hadn’t been able to shake what Clarke said about my dad from my head.
And then, a few weird things happened: My dad’s sunglasses ended up on the kitchen table; it was like I could smell his tobacco pipe; and I felt like I could hear his favorite song—“Never Could Toe the Mark” by Waylon Jennings—in the wind.
This is a good time to mention that Sweetwater Peak is a little…
odd. The whole place feels kind of tilted, I guess—both actually and conceptually.
The buildings don’t stand straight, the few asphalt roads we have are cracked and uneven, and when wolves howl at the moon, it echoes in a way that makes your body feel hollow.
I’ve lived here my whole life, so I’m no stranger to things feeling…
off, but like any local, I also don’t take the weird shit at face value.
We think that there’s merit there. You’d be hard-pressed to find a Sweetwater Peak local who didn’t believe that whistling in the house brought spirits to the door or that you should leave your shoes outside after coming home from the cemetery.
And that’s why hearing my dad’s favorite song and smelling his pipe, along with Clarke’s cryptic warning, pushed me to call my dad’s lawyer, Ron Rummager, and ask him if there are any details in my dad’s will that I might’ve missed or should be aware of.
Ron said no. I asked him if I can get a copy anyway.
He said yes, but that it might take a while.
My dad trusted Ron, so I trust Ron. Plus, I didn’t know any other lawyers. But even for a guy as clueless about the legal system as me, the fact that I’ve been waiting a few months and Ron is still giving me some version of “I’ll get to it,” I’ve become more than just a little suspicious.
As of today, I still haven’t seen a copy. The sunglasses are still appearing, and the song is still playing. It makes something about my dad being gone feel…unfinished, even though it’s been nearly five years.
I decided to draw the line at two people being weird about my dead dad. And I was more experienced in getting Clarke to pay attention to me…or at least trying to.
My first attempts at text messages had gone unanswered and to be honest, it was impressive. I had to give it to her. Avoiding someone in a town that’s basically five square miles is no easy feat, but I wouldn’t be bested any longer—not by Clarke Cartwright.
It’s not like I had anything better to do on a Friday night.
Our growing season was approaching fast, which meant there was always plenty of work to do.
I lived on my family’s farm—in what used to be a tack shed for our horses—but I spent a lot of my downtime in the main house, so I could be with my mom or my little cousin, Lainey.
After my dad died, I was worried about my mom spending too much time alone, but as it turns out, she channeled her grief into having the busiest social calendar in all of Sweetwater Peak.
So she was hardly home—especially in the evenings.
Lainey usually was, though. She’d been living with us since she was four.
So usually I kept her company instead of my mom.
But the single-screen movie theater was playing Phantom of the Opera tonight, and Lainey went to see it with a friend.
So there was nothing keeping me from anxiously waiting for Clarke.
And I thought Clarke was supposed to be the weird one.
Jesus, it was cold out here. I zipped up my work jacket.
Clarke’s house was nice—a little bungalow surrounded by mature plants and trees.
It’d be hard to find if you didn’t know it was there.
There was an iron garden bench on the porch outside of the front door.
I sat and took in my surroundings. Her rain gutter was detached, and from what I could tell, full of dead leaves.
My eyes narrowed on the portion of the roof that covered the porch. It was kind of…concave.
I wondered if her attachment to old shit made her resistant to fixing things, or maybe she just didn’t know what needed fixing.
I sat there long enough for my nose to get a little numb, so I stood…
and paced. I’ve never been good at sitting still.
There was a rustle somewhere, so I looked down the gravel driveway, but there was no one.
Well, except for Bill, my dog (well, part dog, part demon), in the truck parked on the road shoulder—with his puppy dog eyes on me.
He had been excited for a drive when we left the farm, flying out of the thicket of woods near my house when I whistled for him, catapulting himself inside the truck, dust and dirt flying, but now it was clear he was bored with all the waiting around.
Me too, bud.
And frankly, a little spooked too.
I hear the rustle again, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up.
I wasn’t alone—figured there was most likely an animal in the woods behind Clarke’s house or something.
The hibernators were probably starting to wake up—even though it was still early.
That’s what happened when winter went mild, just like it had the last couple of years.
That was not a good sign for the planet, and a bad sign for the planet was a detrimental one for a farmer.
I took off my hat and ran a hand through my hair.
There was something about the noise, though, that felt familiar—like all the things that led me here. I took a deep breath.
Then there were footsteps—unmistakably human footsteps. I looked up and Clarke was walking toward me. She didn’t look happy to see me, but I grinned at her anyway, scrambling for something to say. Maybe this time, for the first time, I could convince her to give me the time of day.