The Progeny (3 page)

“Oh yeah?”

“You’re obviously not from around here—”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Okay, yeah.” He laughs a little. “You been to the Mad Moose yet?”

“I’ve been pretty much nowhere.”

“I thought I’d go into town and grab a sandwich. Join me.”

I had been planning to head back, but it’s not like I have a full afternoon planned. And aside from the Fly Shop, Food Mart, and gas station, I’ve never been anywhere in town.

I shrug. “Sure.”

His face lights up, and I decide there must be some woefully slim pickings around here to warrant a smile like that.

He unties his green apron on the way to his Cherokee, then gets the door for me. It’s a whole three-quarters of a mile to the restaurant on the public dock where resident feral ducks dart between outdoor tables fighting over the intermittent dropped French fry. It’s warm enough that the place is half full. He pulls my chair out for me, and as I sit down I realize this is the most people I’ve been around since my arrival over a month ago.

“Were you really coming here before I showed up?” I glance at him over my menu.

“Nope.”

We order, and he sits back and regards me. He’s the kind of ruggedly pretty that makes me wonder if I went for his type before—and if that’s what landed me here. I remember exactly one date from my past, if it can even be called that, when some kid’s mom dropped us off at the mall with thirty dollars to see a movie in sixth grade. I don’t remember the name of the movie—or the kid.

“How do you like Maine?” he says.

“It’s quiet. You live in town?”

“I’m renting a studio over Charlie’s down the street. It’s not bad. I basically hear whoever’s playing at the Dropfly on the weekend for free. So, Bronco, do you have a name?”

“Emily. Porter,” I add.

“Emily,” he says, trying it out. And then he leans forward, hand extended. It’s warm, his grip firm. “Luka Novak.”

“So what brought you to Greenville?” I ask, fiddling with a straw wrapper.

“The fishing.”

“Really?”

“No.” He laughs, though it sounds more ironic than anything. His eyes have turned gray as the drifting clouds. “A fresh start, I guess.”

My skin actually prickles.

It’s then that I begin to notice a few people at the next table over staring in our direction. Mine, specifically. I reach toward my ear, checking that the scrubby patch of hair is covered by my ball cap. It is. I tug the hat a little lower.

“Hey,” Luka says quietly. “Everything okay?”

“I feel like people are staring.”

“It’s because you’re pretty,” he says.

I stammer something stupid about thinking it has more to do with not looking like I’m from around here.

When our food arrives I busy myself spreading mayo on my burger, glad for something to do.

Luka offers me some of his lobster roll, but I’m suspicious of anything that looks like a scorpion, no matter what it tastes like. He eats with relish, shaking his head with appreciation after each bite. “You don’t know what you’re missing, Bronco.”

I’m just happy to be eating something that isn’t made of cold cuts or my cooking. And to be socializing like a normal person, the sun shining on the parts of my face not obscured by my Red Sox cap.

I glance up when I realize he’s stopped eating.

“What?”

“What are you doing Saturday night?” he says.

“Working, probably.”

“On a Saturday?”

“Pretty much every night.”

“Doing what?”

“I, um, tie fishing flies.”

“At night?”

I drag a French fry through some ketchup, flick another onto the ground, and immediately regret it because it incites a stampede of feral ducks—not to mention several more gazes our way. “Yeah. I guess I’m kind of a night owl.”

“Come catch a band with me for an hour or two.”

“Wow. Groceries, lunch, live music . . .”

“I just got in last month and haven’t had a chance to make many friends yet. I’m guessing you haven’t, either.” He smiles when he says it, though there’s a tension in his posture that doesn’t match his offhanded shrug. I don’t get it. A guy this good-looking and outgoing just can’t be that desperate.

The next table over is talking about a bear one of them shot on a hunt the day before, and orders a round of celebratory shots. I was envious of the couples and groups seated around us when we first sat down. Now, as laughter erupts from the table and a few more stares bypass them to turn my way, I feel jittery and more isolated than before. I told myself to live a quiet life, to fall in love, even. Obviously, the former me didn’t think this through; I might make friends, might even be attracted to a guy like Luka. But I’ll never be able to tell the truth. And what kind of friendship—let alone relationship—is that?

“It’s the fall spawn and the weather’s good. There won’t be much demand once it gets cold.” I’m not exactly desperate for money, but he doesn’t need to know that.

“I’ll tell you what. I’m going to be at the Dropfly at eight—”

“I thought you could hear them from your place for free.”

“I can. But I don’t have Guinness on tap.”

“Ah . . .”

“So if you can, come by. If not, we’ll do it another time.”

“Okay.”

He asks for the check and I try to pay—he bailed me out the other night, after all. But he waves me off and lays one of the twenties I gave him on the table.

As we return to the Cherokee, I notice a guy in a pair of khakis and a black jacket standing near the small crowd outside the ice cream place, staring in our direction. What
is
it with people here? I glance at Luka, but he’s opening my door. When I climb in and look over again, the man is gone.

By the time Luka drops me off at my truck, I’m relieved to head back up the hill. But I keep one eye on the rearview mirror all the way.

3

S
unlight is slanting through the windows of the living room by the time I wake on the sofa. I shield my eyes and squint at the clock in the kitchen. After 4:00
P.M
.

That can’t be right.

I shove up, clammy beneath the down comforter from the bedroom. But when I twitch it aside and drop my feet to the rug, I pause. My legs are bare. So are my arms. I glance from the clock to my legs with rising confusion.

My name is Emily Porter . . . I am in a cabin on a lake in the north woods of Maine. I stayed up late making—I glance at the table—nymphs and streamers, by the look of it. It’s September 25. It was warm yesterday and the day before, when I went into town. Warm days translate into very cool nights this time of year. Hence the comforter, which gets too warm with my sweats. I exhale. No wonder I threw off my clothes.

I drag the comforter off the sofa to carry it back to the bedroom, but my foot tangles and my knee hits the coffee table. I stumble away and gather up the comforter before I trip on it again. That’s when I notice something blue sprawled beneath the edge of the table.

A faded towel from the bathroom. I lean down and pick it up. It’s damp.

I drop the comforter back onto the sofa and take the towel to the bathroom. After hanging it on the rack, I grab my toothbrush and root around for the toothpaste. At the sight of myself in the mirror, I stop. Tilting my head, I slide my fingers into the thick side of my hair. It, too, is damp. And now I’m chilled.

I glance around me, walk into the bedroom, for once ignoring the bear. The floor and bed are empty. I pad out to the kitchen. The table is filled with multicolored bits of feather, glues, thread scraps, and an impressive array of flies. The spool on the bobbin is empty. A half-finished lure is still in the vise.

I don’t remember running out of thread. Granted, I’ve also woken up more than once to find the mustard on the counter after a forgotten predawn sandwich—further proof that my meds are off. But if I showered sometime this morning, where the heck are my clothes?

In the tiny laundry room just off the kitchen I rifle through the basket, peer in the washer and dryer. In the living room again, I shake out the comforter, check beneath the sofa. Hands on hips, I take in the DVD case sitting open on top of the TV, a stack of board games on a listing double shelf just to the right of it, the wooden coasters on the coffee table next to the year-old copy of
Discover Maine
magazine . . .

Clare’s tao cross is lying on top of it.

I know I left that hanging in the truck.

I rush to the bedroom, pull on jeans and a T-shirt. Not bothering with shoes, I hurry out the front door. Outside, the sun has dappled the water gold against the pebbly shore. The johnboat is beached, the rope tied to a nearby fir exactly the way I left it. But there—at the end of the floating swim dock: a rumpled pile of clothes.

What was I doing? Swimming in my underwear in broad daylight? It’s somewhere in the sixties. Not exactly swimming weather. And I have never once had the urge to jump off that wooden platform.

I walk to the beach and drop a foot ankle-deep in the water. It isn’t freezing, but it’s cold enough to wake a person up.

Or merit a comforter after getting out.

I spend the next hour trying to retrace my steps. I can’t imagine that I drove into town in dripping-wet underwear. What did I do—swim to shore just to retrieve Clare’s cross? Why?

But it’s impossible to retrace what you can’t remember. I begin to wonder if my activity the other evening had nothing to do with tequila.

Back inside, I sit down with the tao cross, turn it between my fingers before looping the string over my head. And then a thought makes my hands go cold. It’s not possible that I had company—is it? No. I never told Luka where I was staying, and no one followed me home. Even Madge at the Fly Shop has only my box number at the post office. Still, I clasp the cross so hard that the string digs into my neck—and then goes slack as the pendant slides right off its bail.

I sigh, pull the string over my head, and move to the kitchen table where I grab my bottle of head cement and brush some on the end of the thick wire bail. I’m just about to push it back into the hole at the top of the cross when I pause . . . and reach up to turn my work lamp on.

Tilting the cross this way and that, I see it wasn’t a trick of the light; there’s something curled within the tiny opening. I pick up my needle and press the tip against the lining, slide it upward until I can grab the edge of it with my tweezers. I pull slowly, turning the cross as I do. The paper comes out in an elongated spiral half the length of the cross.

I spread the tiny scroll open on the table with the tweezers and a fingernail. A series of minuscule numbers is written on the inside.

385911571269

Twelve digits. No sequence I recognize.

This was Clare’s cross. Did she know this was here when she gave it to me? I don’t recall seeing a number like this associated with anything religious. Was this series, this code—if it’s even that—intended for her or someone else before her?

Or for me?

I squint at the numbers. Too many for a phone number. A bank account, then. A tracking number. A ticket number. A bar code. A serial number. Latitude and longitude. I rifle through every series of numbers I can remember—even in reverse order—but I have never seen this sequence before. If I had a computer, I could search for it, but out on the Dorito I don’t even have a landline.

I try it as a number with commas. I try adding them together. I try finding the difference between the first two, then the second two, and so on. I add up the occurrence of the digits.

By now the sun has dropped low enough across the water that the cabin is getting dark. I retrieve the notepad from the counter, tear off my latest grocery list, find the roll of tape in the drawer. Spreading the tiny scroll on the top page, I carefully affix it to the pad.

I glance at the clock: 7:43. The library is long closed by now on a Saturday. The Center in Indiana, my only access to Clare, is closed now as well.

A thought itches the back of my mind.

I bolt up and throw a jacket over my smiley-face Nirvana T-shirt, pull on my sneakers. Hurry to the bathroom to brush my teeth and smooth my hair. Three minutes later I’m in the boat with the flashlight, headed toward shore.

I find the Bronco just as I left it—minus Clare’s cross—and drive toward Lily Bay Road just slow enough not to die on the off chance I actually encounter a moose.

4

I
t’s a quarter after eight by the time I pass the Fly Shop and turn onto the town’s main drag. Pritham Avenue is lined with sandwich, sweet, and ice cream shops interspersed with tourist traps and a handful of restaurants, all centered on the public dock on the south side of the lake. I drive two blocks to the Dropfly, across from the small high school.

Before I even cut the engine I can hear muffled music and people talking outside—a town turned out for the last gasp of Indian summer at the end of tourist season.

The entrance, on the opposite side of the building from where I parked, is crowded with smokers. I duck my way through a carcinogenic cloud to the steps, show my ID to the bouncer on the landing, pay the cover, and shoulder my way inside.

The bodies inside the small pub are packed against the hewn-log bar. Those fortunate enough to have snagged a stool are penned in place by people standing in groups behind them. A band is wedged into the corner of the adjacent dining room, the singer barely two feet from the nearest table. The entire place smells like hot wings, beer, and body odor.

I search the tables and then worm my way toward the middle of the bar, craning to see around a really tall woman in boots and a denim skirt—probably the most dressed up I’ve seen anybody around here. A few people glance over their shoulders at me, and I check to make sure the stubby patch behind my ear is covered, wondering for the second time this week if there’s a stamp on my forehead marked
NOT FROM HERE
. If I had something in my hand I’d at least feel less awkward.

“You want to order something?” a guy in front of me with a better view of the bar offers.