Lineage(84)

The bartender turned from them without a word to fix the drinks, and Lance was about to ask Mary how long she’d been drinking whiskey when he felt a hand on his arm.

“Lance! Nice to see you again!” the older woman from the bar exclaimed in a thin voice. It took Lance a split second to place her lined face, and then he remembered her sorting through the produce in the grocery store.

“Hi Josie, nice to see you too,” he said, turning toward the older woman.

Josie’s smile lit up her whole face, and as she leaned to look over Lance’s left shoulder at Mary, it seemed to broaden even more. “Hello, Mary! Well, isn’t this cute. You two out on a date?”

“Hi Josie, and if you must know, yes, I suppose we are,” Mary answered in the tone of an exasperated grandchild dealing with a doting grandparent.

“Oh, that’s great! I just knew you’d fit in here, Lance, and if Mary’s taken a shine to you, you must be okay! Harold, come over here and meet our new resident author,” Josie called over her shoulder to the man who still sat on a barstool several spots over.

Harold threw a pull-tab into a growing heap and snorted his annoyance before walking over to join their small group. Harold smiled as he outstretched a small hand, his watery eyes blinking at Lance through a pair of black-rimmed reading glasses. “So nice to meet you, Lance. So you’re the one who bought the old Metzger place.”

Lance’s hand spasmed and he saw a look of pain shoot across Harold’s face. Lance instantly released his grip and cocked his head to one side, sure he had heard the other man wrong.

“Did you say Metzger?” Lance asked, reaching out to grip the bar with his left hand, assuring himself the world wasn’t tilting or falling away.

“Yes, the old house on the bay up north. I suppose there isn’t too many people that still call it that. The bay is the town’s namesake, you know,” Harold said, rubbing his hand, the polite smile returning to his face.

“Yes, I know. Why is it called the Metzger place?” Lance asked somewhat more forcefully than he meant to. He noticed Mary sidle closer to him and Josie take a little step back.

Harold scrunched up his small face and then raised his eyebrows before continuing. “Well, it was the last name of the very first owner. He built the place back in 1950. Wasn’t from the country, if I remember correctly … name was Erwin, I believe.”

A feeling began to flow through Lance’s chest, like freezing motor oil seeping into the pit of his stomach. It collected there as the thoughts, indistinct at first like distant figures in a thick fog, began to gain edges and shape. Lance swallowed and realized his hands were trembling. He heard the words before he knew his mouth had spoken them. “Did he have any children?”

Harold looked up to the ceiling as if he intended to roll his eyes all the way back and inspect the archives of his brain for the answer. The older man nodded finally, and Lance felt his heart begin to pick up its already thundering pace.

“Yes, just one. A boy.”

“What was his name?” Lance asked so quickly that Harold and Josie frowned at almost the same time.

Harold glanced at Mary, who now stood beside Lance, a hand resting on the back of his arm. He then looked back at Lance, who had leaned farther toward him, his eyes wide in his pale face.

“Umm, something Italian. He moved away after he graduated.” Harold scratched his balding head, and then nodded with assurance. “Anthony. His name was Anthony.”



The Land Rover slid to a stop a few feet from John’s garage door, the brightness of the headlights blinding on the white paint. Lance threw the gear into park and turned the ignition off so forcefully that the key nearly snapped off in the narrow slot.

His feet crunched across the gravel and then became silent in the softness of the grass, the cold dew wetting through the tips of his shoes. Through the red glaze of rage that filmed his narrowed eyes, Lance saw a light come on in the living room of the house. The steps of the front porch groaned under his weight as he launched himself up them. He punched the doorbell with his fist, feeling skin tear from his knuckles and hearing the plastic around the button crack.

He could still hear his father’s name sliding off Harold’s lips, still feel his legs giving way and the seat of the barstool connecting with his lower back. Mary had braced him, and if it hadn’t been for her hands, he would have fallen onto the floor of the restaurant. His father’s face had replayed over and over in his mind, sliding back behind the rock pillar, the crooked smile playing at his lips. As the shock set in and questions, too many and too fast to register, ripped through his mind, something else began to build there. Anger, so deep and pure it seemed elemental, pulsed in time with the image of John’s face. He could hear the caretaker’s words from the first day they had met again: There’s nothing for you here. They had echoed in his mind as he sped from the restaurant to John’s home.