Page 44 of Forever Dark
A sign appeared ahead in the fading light.
ROAD WORK AHEAD
Another one followed.
DETOUR
“Of course,” Selena muttered.
Orange barrels choked the intersection where she needed to turn.A county truck sat angled across half the road.Men in reflective vests moved around a trench cut into the asphalt, finishing up for the day, their voices carrying faintly through the closed car.No way through without waiting, and waiting suddenly felt impossible.
Selena slowed, glanced toward the line of brake lights, then took the detour arrow instead.
The route sent her down an older residential street she had not driven in years.Trees leaned over the road from both sides.Their branches knitted together above the hood, dark against the bright scraps of sky still burning through.Mailboxes stood crooked at the ends of pristine drives.Porches came and went between hedges and old maples.A bicycle lay on its side in one yard.A dog lifted its head from beneath a truck and watched her pass.
Awhite-shingled house with an old porch and a deep front yard came into view.It was as if she had drifted onto that street in a dream or slipped back fifteen years to the day she left.
The swing still stood beneath the big maple, though time had nearly taken it.Ivy had climbed the chains and wrapped itself around one side of the seat.The grass around it had gone wild, tufts and weeds pushing up where her mother had once kept everything neat enough to shame the neighbors.
Selena’s foot eased off the gas without conscious thought.
Smoke drifted from the porch in a thin blue curl.
Her heart jumped and dropped in the same beat.
Robert Raven sat in the old chair near the screen door, one ankle over the opposite knee, pipe in hand.For a second he looked exactly the way memory wanted him to look.The porch as dusk approached.Bugs gently humming in the grass.Little Lena sitting cross-legged on the top step while he blew smoke rings into the evening and acted as if it were magic made just for her.
Then the car rolled closer and time corrected the picture.
His shoulders were narrower.His face looked cut down, as if illness had pared away everything unnecessary and then kept going.The hair was still there, thick enough, but gray had taken most of it.One hand rested on the arm of the chair with the loose stillness of somebody saving strength.
Selena pulled to the curb and killed the engine.
For a moment she stayed where she was.It was as if fate was telling her to go over and speak to her old man.
Her friend Jessie could wait.The detour, the porch light, the pipe smoke, all of it had placed this in front of her before she had time to brace against it.Running now would be obvious.Worse than obvious.Cowardly.If she turned and he saw her, it would be like admitting the big-time city girl wasn’t tough enough to even look her own father in the eye.
She got out and closed the car door quietly.
Gravel pressed under her shoes as she crossed the yard.The swing creaked once in the evening breeze.When she was halfway up the path, Robert turned his head.He squinted toward her through the thinning light, pipe still between his teeth.
Then recognition reached him.
He took the pipe out of his mouth and got slowly to his feet.
“Lena!”
No one else called her that.Not anymore.She was used to Selena or Agent Raven, but how quickly the trappings of her DC life were melting away.
“Hey, Dad.”She tried her best not to tear up.Seeing him after all this time hit her harder than she thought.It had been two years since she’d seen him when he and Diane and come to visit in DC.That trip had been strained and had ended in an argument about Selena having changed too much.It was an argument Selena did not want to have again.
He opened his arms before she reached the porch.The gesture was small, a little uncertain, but it undid something in her all the same.Selena stepped up and into the embrace.He felt lighter than he should have.Bone under flannel.Tobacco and wool and the familiar clean scent of soap that made her chest tighten.
“It’s so good to see you, my girl,” he said, voice rough near her ear.
“You, too, Dad.”She could hear her voice breaking with emotion for a moment.
When they drew apart, he kept one hand on her shoulder for a second as if to make sure she was real.Then he gestured toward the empty chair beside his.
