What Lies in the Woods(16)

Once the waitress was gone, the silence turned sludgy as pond scum. Fifteen years was a lot of time, and we hadn’t exactly had much in common to begin with, other than one very bad day. “So, Cody Benham. Where have you been hiding yourself?” I asked, before the quiet could get any thicker. “The circus? County lockup? Some internet start-up that sells artisanal mustache wax?”

He chuckled. “Believe it or not, the state legislature. I’m Representative Benham now.”

“Huh.” I adjusted my weight on the split vinyl seat, patched over with a geological age of duct tape, and propped my elbows on the sticky tabletop. I peered at him, trying to get “state legislator” out of that scruff. “So when did you get respectable?”

“Oh, it’s just an act,” he said jokingly. “Guess it finally occurred to me that I could stay here or I could do something with my life, but it couldn’t be both. So I took off. Got a degree. Met Gabriella.”

“That’s your wife?” I asked. He nodded.

“Her dad was a state senator, and talking to him, I realized I actually had some opinions to go along with my fancy degree. I ran and for some goddamn reason people voted for me, and here we are.”

“You make it sound like you had hardly anything to do with it,” I said. Miss Butterfly showed up with our drinks. The bar had started stocking some hipster-approved microbrews to suit the tourists, so I’d indulged in the snootiest-looking IPA on the chalkboard, in honor of Mitch. Cody stuck with a can of Rainier, the ancestors of which had littered the hangout spots of our youth.

“Gotta maintain my local credibility,” he said as he poured. “So how shocked are you that I’m all respectable now?”

“A little,” I conceded. “I wouldn’t think they’d let a guy who got into as much trouble as you did become a politician.”

“You know, weirdly, none of our hijinks ever led to official records,” Cody said, scratching his chin as if puzzled.

“If you’re going to do crime, do it with the mayor’s son?” I suggested. Nothing ever seemed to stick to Oscar. He was his father’s only son and heir, the town prince. Even Cass worshipped him. And whenever he did piss anyone off, he always managed to charm his way out of it—or his father stepped in.

“Well, I didn’t have your poker face, so I didn’t have the option of lying my way out,” he said.

“You’re not still mad that I cleaned you out, are you?” I asked, laughing.

“That was my gas money,” he said in mock outrage. I’d forgotten all about that—him teaching me poker in the hospital, until the nurses kicked him out. “Or how about the time you convinced the whole town your dad had cancer, so they’d give you free stuff?”

I winced. “Not my finest hour.” I’d kept that ruse up for four months before my dad caught on. But since we were getting free pizza out of it, he let it keep going for another six weeks. I’d been such a wreck in high school. Maybe that was inevitable. Cody had saved me from the woods, but he couldn’t save me from myself. I picked at the label on my beer, peeling it from the glass. “I guess being a hero didn’t hurt your campaign.”

“It came up,” Cody said. “But never because I brought it up. I wouldn’t use you like that.”

“You earned whatever you can get out of it, as far as I’m concerned,” I told him quietly. He hadn’t just carried me out of the forest. He’d been at the hospital almost as much as my dad, checking up on me. Bringing me presents. Jokingly offering to smuggle me cigarettes. The prickle of tears stung my eyes. I cleared my throat. “So, two kids?”

“Twin boys,” he said. “Just turned four. And you? Boyfriend? Husband?” He paused. “Girlfriend?”

“None of the above. Probably,” I said.

“Probably?”

I shrugged. “I left on a note of mild ambiguity.”

“In my experience? When it comes to relationships, if you could take it or leave it, leaving is always the right choice,” Cody said.

“Stop. I cannot handle Cody Benham with words of wisdom,” I told him, fending him off with an upheld hand.

“Everything changes,” he said.

“Except Chester.” But that wasn’t true, was it? “Jesus. This place. I swear, every time I come back it’s like the ground starts crumbling under my feet. And what’s underneath is all the shit I’d rather leave buried.”

“I heard about your dad and the house,” Cody said.

I groaned. “I don’t know what to do. I know I should help, but how am I supposed to do that if he won’t let me touch a damn thing?”

“You could get a crew out. There are specialists for this sort of thing,” Cody suggested.

“Sounds expensive.”

“Got any of that murder money left?”

I snorted at the turn of phrase. “Turned out I wasn’t any better at managing it than Dad. Paid my tuition and then spent the rest as fast as I could. I didn’t like having it,” I admitted. “I’m doing fine, I just don’t have a ton of extra cash lying around.”

“You could sell the house. The land’s got to be worth something.”

“I’d have to talk Dad into it.”