Lineage(56)

“I’m sorry you lost your mom so young, that’s tough for anyone, and it’s worse when you’re a kid.” He smiled halfheartedly, pushing back dark thoughts that had begun to surface. When he looked at Mary, he saw her posture stiffen a little, but her voice remained steady when she spoke again.

“You lost one of your parents too, didn’t you?” Her question threw him off guard and she must have seen it, because she leaned forward with concern in her eyes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to overstep my bounds. I can just tell sometimes.”

Lance shook his head in dismissal and smiled weakly. “My mom disappeared when I was young and my father wasn’t that nice to me. It’s not one of the things I put in my interviews or on my jacket covers.”

They sat silently for a few minutes, each wading through thoughts and absorbing what had been said. Finally, Mary broke the silence as she checked her watch and began to gather her things.

“I’ve got to get back to the store. The owner’s a real pain in the ass.” Lance considered asking if her father was still alive but thought better of it, considering that she had already mentioned the death of her mother. “Thanks for sitting with me, it was nice.”

“Yeah, thanks for letting me invade your lunch,” he said.

She smiled and turned to throw her empty soup container away, and before Lance could stop himself, the words that were echoing in his mind slid off his tongue and into open air.

“Would you like to have dinner some night? I don’t want to seem like a creep, but I like talking with you.” Outwardly he tried to keep his face and body language neutral, while inside his guts writhed in nervous agony.

Mary paused at the garbage, letting the Styrofoam bowl drop from her hand. Her face was obscured by her dark hair and Lance had the urge to push it back so he could see her expression. She turned her head and looked at him curiously, as if he had asked her an extremely difficult math problem.

“I’ll think about it” was all she said before turning and walking out of the deli and around a nearby aisle. Lance stood where he was, running over the words he had used to make sure he hadn’t said anything offensive during their conversation. When their exchange became a muddled mess in his head, he sighed and followed Mary’s path to the coffee, wondering all the while if he would ever be able to work up the courage to speak to her again.



The yard came into view as he rounded the last curve of the driveway. The house stood monolithic and as intimidating as ever, but it didn’t hold his attention for long.

The grass had been manicured within an inch of the ground and Lance couldn’t see a single stray clipping on the surface of the lawn. The bushes on the edges of the clearing had been shaped into neat corners, but there was no sign of the man responsible for the work.

As he walked up to the front door, Lance marveled at the amount of work John had accomplished in his brief absence. He could only conclude that year upon year of familiarity with the grounds and tasks at hand had streamlined the process for the old man.

The house was quiet and the click of the lock in the front door rebounded back to him like a shout in a cave. Lance carried the small bag of groceries to the kitchen and placed the items into their rightful places in the nearly bare cupboards. He set a pot of coffee brewing, the lacework pain of a caffeine headache beginning to tighten in the back of his skull.

When his mug was full of the steaming brew, he sauntered out to the front windows overlooking the lake. A bank of clouds, thousands of feet high, hung above the northern edge of the shoreline. He could see the mottled reflection of the storm on the surface of the water, short spikes of lightning arcing through it every so often. The light began to fade from the sky, throwing the shadows of the house into elongated phantoms.

A loud bang issued from behind the closed door a few yards behind him.

Coffee slopped over the rim of his cup, painfully searing the skin on his forearm as his body jolted with surprise. He spun and stared at the door as the seconds stretched into minutes. His eyes began to water because of his refusal to look away from the door, or even to blink. He waited. Slowly, a sound returned. It rumbled and grew in volume until it hit a crescendo with another bang, this time above the house.

“Thunder,” Lance said out loud in the hopes of calming himself with his own voice. He looked at the door for a few more minutes, a cavalcade of disturbing ideas prancing down the main street of his imagination like a demon parade.

He turned from the door and sat down with his back to it, at his computer desk. He could see the last escaping rays of sun cutting through the edges of the storm as they reflected off the surface of the lake. Gradually, they were extinguished and a dirty sheet of light settled across all he saw.