Chapter 6 - The Interception at the Gates
We did not go straight to Midlothian.
We had to stop at the twenty-four-hour CVS in Scottsville to fill the prescription for the pain medication, the truck idling in the gravel lot while Ryan went inside. I sat in the high passenger seat, my right arm strapped so tightly to my chest that my breath came in short, shallow sips, watching the neon red letters of the pharmacy sign hum against the dark country sky.
When Ryan came back, he wasn't carrying just the amber plastic bottle. He had a two-liter jug of water, a package of clean white t-shirts three sizes too large for me, a pair of gray fleece sweatpants with a drawstring, and a fresh pair of wool socks.
"The dress was getting stiff," he said, setting the bag on the floorboards between my feet. "You can change in the single-stall restroom at the service station across the road, or you can wait until we hit the house. It’s forty minutes."
"I want this off me," I said.
The dusty-blue bridesmaid dress smelled of drying pond scum and sulfur. The hem was stiff as cardboard where the mud from the estate had dried in the heater blast.
He drove across the road to the Exxon, parked the truck directly under the floodlight, and helped me down the two high steps to the asphalt. He didn't hover; he walked three paces behind me, carrying the bag of clean clothes, his eyes scanning the empty lot with the quiet, professional paranoia of a man who knows he has broken a very expensive machine and the owners are currently searching for the pieces.
Inside the small, linoleum-tiled restroom, it took me twelve minutes to peel the ruined blue silk off my ribs with one hand. Every time I had to bend my left wrist behind my back to work the zipper, my right shoulder screamed in sympathy, but I didn't call for help.
When I looked in the mirror above the rusted metal sink, the woman staring back at me didn't look thirty-four. She looked sixty.
The black mascara had dried in dark, vertical streaks down my cheeks, looking like prison bars against my pale skin. My collarbone was bruised—a dark, purplish-yellow stain already spreading toward the sternum where the strap of the torn brace had dug into the flesh as I twisted in midair.
I used paper towels and hand soap to scrub the makeup off my face until my skin was raw and pink. I pulled the oversized white t-shirt over my head, working my left arm through the sleeve first, then letting the loose cotton drape over the canvas immobilizer like a tent. The sweatpants were absurdly long, bunching three times over the tops of the wool socks, but they were dry. They were clean. They didn't belong to the Cole family wedding budget.
When I stepped back into the gravel lot, Ryan was standing beside the open driver’s door of the truck, his phone finally pressed to his ear.
His voice was low, rhythmic, and flat as slate.
"I don't care what Dennis told the partners, Donald," Ryan was saying. He didn't see me yet; his back was turned toward the pumps. "The contract for the Hanover pumping station is already executed. If Dennis tries to pull the surety bond, he’ll be in breach of the municipal charter by nine o'clock on Monday morning... No. No, we are not going to have a meeting at the club... Because I am not interested in hearing Richard Cole explain the legal definition of 'sisterly horseplay.' If he calls your office again, tell him to contact my counsel. I’ve already retained Miller & Harris."
He paused, listening to whoever was screaming through the small speaker.
"She’s fine," Ryan said, and his voice dropped into an octave that was almost gentle. "She’s with me... Because she didn't have anyone else who wasn't worried about the cost of the flowers."
He hung up without saying goodbye.
He turned, saw me standing in the fluorescent glare of the pump island in my oversized sweatpants, and his posture softened by a fraction of an inch.
"You look twelve years old," he said.
"I look like an escapee from a county facility," I countered, the pain medication finally beginning to lay a thin, fuzzy blanket over the edges of my shoulder joint. "My mother is going to hire an investigator, Ryan. You know she will. She used one when Paige started dating that tennis coach from Richmond."
"Let her hire three," he said, opening my door and bracing his forearm so I could climb into the cab. "The private investigators in this part of the state all buy their fuel from my uncle’s bulk terminal in Goochland. If someone puts a tail on this truck, I’ll know before they clear the turnpike."
We turned east onto Route 6, following the dark contours of the James River as it wound through the timberland toward Richmond.
The medicine was heavy now. My chin kept dropping toward my chest, the rhythmic thrum-thrum-thrum of the diesel engine turning into a dull, hypnotic vibration that felt like being carried down an underground stream.
I woke up once when the tires left the asphalt, crunching into deep, clean crushed gravel.
The house was not a stone manor.
It was a long, low-slung structure built of rough-sawn cedar and river rock, nestled into the crest of a hill surrounded by massive white oaks that had never seen a landscape architect's pruning saw. There were no boxwoods. There were no limestone balustrades. A wide, screened-in porch ran the entire length of the front, lit by two simple yellow barn lanterns that threw warm, amber circles across a flagstone path where four large, mixed-breed dogs were already rising from their cedar beds with low, rhythmic wags of their tails.
"Home," Ryan murmured, cutting the engine.
The silence that followed was absolute. No string quartets. No ninety guests. Just the high, clear whistle of autumn tree crickets and the slow, heavy sigh of the truck's manifold cooling in the night air.
The front door opened before we reached the porch steps.
An older woman stood in the threshold, wearing an oversized denim work shirt, heavy wool trousers, and reading glasses on a silver chain around her neck. She had the same wide, blunt cheekbones as Ryan, her gray hair pulled back into a thick braid that hung over her left shoulder.
She held an iron tea kettle in one hand and an old cotton dish towel in the other.
"Donald called me forty minutes ago from Richmond," she said, her voice carrying the dry, unhurried cadence of the mountain counties. She didn't look at Ryan's torn morning coat. She didn't look at my oversized sweatpants. Her eyes went straight to the canvas immobilizer strapped across my chest, then to the blue bruises visible above the collar of my white t-shirt.
"Mom," Ryan said, stepping between us on the flagstones. "This is Marissa."
Mrs. Mercer set the kettle down on the small wooden bench beside the door, wiped her hands on the dish towel, and walked down the three cedar steps until she was standing six inches from my good shoulder.
She smelled of peppermint tea, woodsmoke, and lavender laundry soap—the kind you buy in brown paper bars at the agricultural co-op.
"You’re the one who teaches the tenth-graders about the frogs," she said.
I blinked through the haze of the Percocet. "I... yes. Biology. At Douglas Freeman."
"Ryan told me six months ago you were the only one in that whole house who knew how to plant an heirloom tomato without calling a service," she said. She reached out with two fingers—rough, calloused from gardening—and gently touched the side of my face, right where the skin was still red from my father’s accountant’s tie. "Come inside, child. The bed in the back room is made with the flannel sheets, and I’ve got four hot-water bottles already under the wool."
She turned to her son, her eyes narrowing into two gray slits that would have made Richard Cole reconsider his entire judicial career.
"Did you leave the car at the gate?" she asked.
May you like
"I left it in the lower barn," Ryan said.
"Good," she nodded, taking my good elbow with an iron grip that had sixty years of farm work behind it. "Because that little blonde thing’s brother is already sitting at the crossroads in a black Range Rover, and I’ve got the birdshot loaded in the hall closet if he decides to turn into my lane."
