Lineage(44)

On a particularly sharp curve, a large white cross made from laminate or wood had been pressed into the soil a few yards off the road. As Lance drove past, he could see brightly colored yellow ribbons hanging from the cross, spinning and dancing in the breeze. Another, much smaller, cross came into view, next to its parent. Pink strings of color waved from its arms, and as the road straightened out, Lance pressed on the brake and guided the vehicle to a stop on the gravel shoulder.

“It was a car crash,” he said breathlessly. “He was driving. His wife and daughter were with him.” Lance looked over to the passenger seat and could almost see a dark-haired woman smiling prettily back at him. Her eyes were a deep green, sea-foam green he would’ve called them. When he turned his gaze to the back seat, the kicking legs of a small girl in a pink sundress caught his attention. She was perhaps six, with black hair to match her mother’s. She was looking wistfully out of the window at the sunlight streaming in. There was a curve at each corner of her mouth, as if she knew something wonderful but couldn’t quite put it into words yet. She was beautiful. Lance looked forward at the highway ahead of him, then saw something in his rearview mirror. When he leaned closer, there was straight blond hair where his should have been.

A semi blasted by Lance’s window, close enough to rock the Land Rover on its springs, accompanied by a rude honk of its horn. Lance jerked back in his seat, his muscles straining and his stomach tightening into a hard ball. The imaginings in his car evaporated as though they had been made of steam and light. When he pushed his face closer to the mirror in the center of the windshield, his own face was there to meet him.

He sat back and breathed deeply, trying to calm his heart rate and drain off the rush of adrenaline that pounded in his temples. When his hands no longer visibly shook, he put the gearshift into drive, checked his mirrors twice, and pulled onto the deserted road.



Stony Bay appeared when Lance wasn’t expecting it. There had been no sign welcoming him to the small town just before the bend that hid it from view. It simply emerged from the land; the single road he had been following opened up into a thoroughfare lined with small shops and businesses. As Lance slowed the vehicle to abide by the speed limit, his head turned on a swivel, taking in each shop’s front and what it offered.

There were two cafés nearly side by side, a store that proclaimed souvenirs of all kinds, an ice-cream parlor decked out in colorful blues and reds, and an ornate-looking business with the simple word Books over the wooden front door. Lance could see several bars and a contemporary restaurant made almost entirely of stone scattered closer to the slight rise on the lake side. A relatively new gas station sat forlornly at the far end of the long street, seemingly an outcast among the older stores. Lance took it all in—the wide sidewalks, the flags flying from every lamppost, the people strolling along the fronts of the businesses and every so often entering them for a look at their wares. It was a northern tourist town at its best, so quaint that it was memorable enough to return to year after year, not large enough to tempt visitors to put down roots permanently.

Lance pulled into a parking spot directly in front of the twin cafés and glanced at the clock again before turning the Land Rover off. He had another hour to kill before he had to be at the house, and his hunger had become a living thing in the past ten minutes. The remainder of the drive to the town had been uneventful. No more visions or breakthroughs had come to him, but a part of his mind began to glow with a small flame. Despite how unsettling the drive had been, the story was starting to take on a shape and the fire burning in his brain was one of hope.

The inside of the café on the left was narrow but long, lined with worn wooden booths and tables that rocked back and forth no matter how you turned them. Lance ordered a club sandwich and a bowl of chicken-and-wild-rice soup from the middle-aged waitress, who smiled at him with no recognition in her eyes. Being a best-selling author was a good thing, but being unable to enjoy a quiet lunch without being accosted by at least one person for an autograph was something else altogether.

After appeasing his aching stomach with the sandwich and soup—which were surprisingly good—Lance stepped out of the café onto the sidewalk. Like the waves that beat on the shore of the great lake to his right, the sun’s rays pummeled his shoulders and back as he strolled down the sidewalk, and he began to regret wearing a black shirt in the heat. After checking his watch, he realized he still had time to kill before the showing. Lance ran his fingers through his hair and squinted at several of the signs on the buildings, silently cursing himself for not grabbing his sunglasses from the car. His eyes finally landed on the bookstore he had noticed, and without thinking, he made his way up the building’s short walk and opened the heavy oak door.