Chapter 8 - The Shell Game
The road to the old Hocking Hills cabin wasn't maintained by the county in December. It was little more than a logging trace cut into the side of a sandstone ridge, hemmed in by stands of pitch pine and frozen hemlock that leaned over the ruts under the weight of the snow.
Grandma June shifted the Buick into low gear. The transmission let out a high-pitched, metallic whine that vibrated through the floorboards, but the heavy old sedan crawled forward, its wide tires churning through four inches of fresh, unplowed powder. Ahead of us, our headlights caught the twin tracks of a heavy vehicle that had passed this way less than an hour ago—wide, deep tread with the distinct zig-zag siping of Goodyear Wrangler tires.
Dad’s truck tires.
"She’s there," Wyatt said. He hadn't unbuckled his seatbelt, but he had pulled his hood up, tucking his chin deep into the fleece collar of his new jacket—the North Face jacket that Brooke had wrapped in silver foil with a big red velvet bow that morning. "The gate’s open. Look."
The headlights swept across a rusted tubular steel gate that hung drunkenly from a cedar post. The heavy chain had been cut with bolt cutters; two links lay like severed iron fingers on top of the snow, their fresh metal gleaming under the high beams.
"June," my father’s voice crackled from the dash. He was half a mile behind us in the HVAC van, struggling with the grade. "I see your tracks. Don't go up there alone. Wait for me. The sheriff’s dispatcher said they have a cruiser coming from Logan, but it’s going to take them twenty minutes because of the ice."
Grandma June didn't answer. She didn't stop, either. She followed the tire tracks around a sharp bend where the sandstone cliff dropped forty feet down into a dark ravine choked with ice-covered laurel.
At the end of the clearing stood the cabin.
It was an old, single-story board-and-batten shack with a corrugated tin roof that had rusted into a deep, velvety orange. A brick chimney poked through the center, puffing thin, erratic wisps of gray smoke into the freezing air—someone had tried to start a fire with damp pine logs. Backed up against the rotting porch, its hood still ticking as the engine cooled in the sub-zero wind, was my father’s silver Silverado.
The truck’s tailgate was down. Two heavy plastic totes from our garage—the gray ones with the yellow lids where Dad kept his copper fittings and specialized gauges—were sitting on the snow-covered tail, both of them popped open and half-rummaged through.
Grandma June pulled the Buick to a halt thirty feet back, leaving the headlights blazing directly onto the cabin’s front door. She turned the key, cutting the engine.
In the sudden, suffocating silence that followed, the only sound was the wind scraping dry pine branches against the tin roof and the rhythmic *tick-tick-tick* of Dad’s cooling manifold.
"Lucy," Grandma June said, not turning around. "Stay in this car. Lock both doors behind me. If you see her come out with anything in her hands that isn't a suitcase, you lay on this horn and do not take your hand off it until your father’s van pulls into this clearing. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, Grandma," I whispered.
"Wyatt," she said.
Wyatt reached for his door handle.
"No," Grandma June snapped, her voice like an iron bar falling across his lap. "You stay right there with your sister."
"She’s my mother," Wyatt said, his voice breaking into a harsh, cracked sob that sounded entirely unchildlike. "She took my name. She used my dad’s name for that company. I have to know why."
"Because you were an excuse, Wyatt," Grandma June said, and this time, she didn't soften it. She looked at him squarely, her eyes magnified behind her red glasses by the interior dome light. "You were an excuse to take more than she needed, and Lucy was an excuse to give less than she owed. That’s what women like Brooke do with children. They use them as shields when they’re advancing, and they use them as sandbags when they’re retreating. Now sit down and lock your door."
She opened the driver’s side door. The freezing wind swept inside instantly, carrying the smell of wet bark, sulfur from the chimney, and the faint, sweet trace of the vanilla perfume Brooke had sprayed in our hallway five hours ago.
Grandma June didn't hurry. She stepped down into the snow, her heavy rubber boots sinking to the mid-calf, pulled her wool coat tight around her chest, and walked directly toward the cabin porch.
She didn't knock. She put her hand on the brass knob, turned it, and shoved the door inward.
Through the windshield, Wyatt and I watched the rectangle of dim yellow light spill out across the snow. Inside, the cabin was small—one large room with an open rafters ceiling, a woodstove in the corner, and an iron cot stripped down to a stained blue mattress.
Brooke was standing by the woodstove.
She had her shearling coat on, but it was unbuttoned, revealing the cream-colored cable-knit sweater she’d worn to serve Christmas breakfast. On the rough pine table in the center of the room sat three things: a bottle of Maker’s Mark Dad had been given by a commercial client two weeks ago, a thick manila envelope bulging with documents, and Wyatt’s dark blue passport, laid open like a tent beside a stack of hundred-dollar bills.
When Grandma June walked through the door, Brooke didn't scream. She didn't drop the iron poker she was holding.
She looked at Grandma June, then past her shoulder, straight through the open doorway toward the glare of the Buick’s headlights where Wyatt and I were sitting.
She smiled. It was the same bright, tidy, church-auxiliary smile she had used when she handed me the red box behind the Christmas tree stand that morning.
May you like
"June," Brooke said, her voice carrying clearly through the freezing air between the cabin and the car. "I was wondering if Mark had the guts to drive down here himself, or if he’d send his mother to do the heavy lifting like he always does."
***
