The Dark Road Home, page 1
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Title Page
Copyright
The Dark Road Home
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Author’s Note
About the Author
The Dark Road Home
Zoe Cannon
© 2024 Zoe Cannon
http://www.zoecannon.com
All rights reserved
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and events are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
The Dark Road Home
The first floor of Derek Middleton’s home currently held a higher concentration of political, social, and financial power than it was possible to find anywhere else on earth. Every influential person in the state of California had come out to celebrate with him tonight, as well as many more from around the country and several from around the world. Politicians, tech moguls, billionaire investors, at least one presidential hopeful… and they were all eating out of Derek’s hand, or at least his bone china. Their plates piled high with hors d’oeuvres, they circulated through the living room, careful not to make the mistake of sitting on the spartan gray couch or resting a glass on one of the brushed-metal end tables. Minimalist though the decor might be, every person in this room was no doubt aware of how many thousands of dollars each piece had cost.
As the guests talked and laughed among themselves, they all had one eye on Derek. He had hosted enough of these events to know they all hoped to catch his attention without looking like they were trying, and all feared inadvertently inviting his disapproval. Everyone knew a word from him in the right ears was as good as a blessing from God… or a curse. With a single phone call, he had rescued the senator in the corner from defeat and obscurity. As for what had happened to the senator’s predecessor… well, no one talked about him anymore.
Derek had no Fortune 500 company of his own, and no political power. He had money, but his personal fortune was pocket change next to the least wealthy of his guests. And yet he was, without question, the most influential man in this room.
But as he looked at his daughter, standing rigidly in the corner and gripping her plate like she was trying to strangle the life out of it, he felt like the least powerful person in the world.
The crowd parted for him like the Red Sea as he walked over to her. He didn’t spare any of his guests a glance. All his attention was on Lila. As always, it was difficult to reconcile the elegant woman in front of him with the image of the skinny tomboy, all muddy feet and scraped knees, that he had held in his mind for the past ten years. She was the inverse of the ugly duckling, a duck forced to wear a swan’s feathers. He wanted to tell her to forget about the cocktail dress he had insisted she wear, to go upstairs and put on a pair of jeans and that old grubby daisy-printed t-shirt she used to adore back when they had lived in the trailer. Before she had gone away.
But even if she could have done it, even if the old clothes Jen had carefully packed away in the basement would still fit her, it wouldn’t have helped. Nothing would fill in the missing ten years she had spent growing up without him. And nothing would make his mind stop protesting that the real Lila was a child, and this grown woman was nothing but a stranger.
Not that he was ungrateful. He would have fallen down on his knees right then to thank whoever had sent her back to him, if he hadn’t known how everyone in the room would look at him if he did. Instead, he tucked his hands behind his back to hide the tremble as she looked up at him with her dark eyes. Ten years ago, they had been as blue as a summer sky. Now they were almost black, and if he looked too closely, he sometimes thought he could see streaks of red running through the irises like lightning.
“Where’s your mother?” he asked, because he couldn’t ask any of the real questions in his mind.
She answered with a barely perceptible jerk of her chin toward the stairs.
That wasn’t a surprise. Jen had barely spoken a word to him since the day Lila had shown up at their door a week ago, pale and shaking, arms wrapped around her nude and scarred body. She had locked herself away in the spare room, having food sent up to her during the day, sleeping there at night instead of in their shared bed—although she hadn’t truly shared his bed since the night Lila had gone away. Some people dealt with change better than others, and Jen had always had trouble in that area. She had never really settled into their new life, even after she had learned to dress the part and perfected her polished porcelain smiles. For years, he had waited for her to come around. But gradually he had grown to accept that Jen’s unguarded crooked smile, and the easy companionship they used to share, were simply more things he’d had to sacrifice.
Still, when their lost child had reappeared on their doorstep, he had thought she would be grateful. To what or whom, he didn’t know. That wasn’t the point. The point was that even now, she didn’t know how to gratefully accept a gift.
But there was no point in dwelling on Jen’s failings, when he’d had ten years to learn to live with them. He brought his attention back to his daughter. “You shouldn’t waste the evening hiding in the corner. All of this is for you. To celebrate you coming home.”
She mumbled something he couldn’t hear.
“What was that?”
“This isn’t home,” she repeated, a little louder.
The familiar words sprang to his lips, all the things he used to tell Jen before he had given up. He wanted to ask her what she remembered about the home she was so nostalgic for. Other people’s used needles strewn across the driveway? The screaming fights in the night from the trailer next door that had ended in breaking glass and broken sobs? He wanted to tell her she should show a little gratitude.
But the look of misery on her face reminded him too much of the nights she used to crawl into his lap after a bad dream. It was his job to comfort her, not to lecture her. And after all, this party was for her.
So he swallowed the words, along with as much of his pride as he could stomach. “This party wasn’t really what you wanted, was it?”
She dropped her eyes as she shook her head. “I’m sorry.”
“Derek!” A voice from across the room slurred his name. “You have got to hear this story!”
Derek gave the British finance minister a just-a-minute gesture. He turned back to Lila. “What would you like to do to celebrate, then?” He gave her the smile he had become known for, the one that promised the world. “Whatever you want, I can make it happen.”
She raised her gaze to his. Red lightning flashed in her eyes. Then the storm passed as she ducked her head shyly. “I was planning to ask you for something, actually.” She hesitated, shifting onto her back foot. “I was hoping… you could take me home.”
He wanted to tell her this was her home. He didn’t. “To the trailer?”
She nodded without looking at him. “I’d like to see it again.”
“Someone else is probably living there by now. If it’s even still standing.”
“It’s empty. Mom looked it up.”
Derek didn’t know which weighed more heavily on him when he thought about the trailer: the years he had spent trapped in a bleak hellscape he had done nothing to deserve, knowing his life would never change, or the night when change had finally come. All he knew was that, on the rare occasions when he had to pass anywhere near his old neighborhood, he avoided any streets that would take him within five miles of the place. Ever since he had left, the trailer had loomed like a dark void in his mind, waiting to suck him back in.
“Please,” said Lila softly.
This celebration was for her. He had promised to give her anything she wanted. And he made good on his promises. He dug his fingernails into his palms. “All right, then. Let’s go.”
“Right now?” Lila looked past him at the crowd. “You’re going to leave your own party?”
Derek forced a smile he didn’t feel. “No one will object. They all know better.” He raised his voice so everyone in the room could hear. “Lila and I have an errand to run—we’re picking up something special for her celebration. Try not to drink all the champagne before I get back.”
Everyone laughed politely as he and Lila walked toward the door. If anyone thought it was strange that he was leaving his own house with a party in full swing, they didn’t say so.
In the garage, he felt another flash of dissonance, watching Lila climb into the passenger seat of the sleek black Maserati. He had to bite his lip to keep from reminding her, out of reflex, that she wasn’t old enough for the front seat yet. Not that this car had a back seat anyway.
He climbed in next to her and started the car. It hummed to life underneath him, but the sound didn’t make him smile in anticipation this time. The void yawned wider ahead of him as he drove toward the trailer. He knew what route to take, even though he hadn’t gone back in ten years. He had a feeling that wherever he went, he would always know exactly where his old home was, and what roads to travel to get back. It didn’t want to let him go.
Lila didn’t say anything. Neither did he. He hadn’t been able to figure out what to say to her since she had come back. Light small talk—how are you, what have you been up to, read any good books lately—would have been laughable. Jen had laughed, the first and only time he had tried it, the one time the three of them had eaten dinner together. And he didn’t dare raise any more serious questions. Not that he didn’t want to. He wanted to ask about the red in her
He wanted to ask if she remembered anything.
He kept looking over at her, small furtive glances out of the corner of his eye, as the miles and minutes passed. Sometimes she had her head turned away, staring out the window. Other times, he caught her studying him with those unnerving eyes. She didn’t look away when she saw him looking back; she kept watching him, her body still, her face unreadable, until he had to turn back to the road or risk an accident. As the traffic grew lighter, the silence grew as thick and deep as the darkness of the roads.
Derek cleared his throat. “You said your mother told you no one was living in the trailer. So you’ve been talking to her, then?”
Lila had been looking out the window again, her chin resting on her elbow. She straightened. “Of course we’ve been talking.”
He didn’t know why he should have assumed that. It wasn’t as if she had spent any time talking to him. But if she had talked to Jen, at least that meant she was reaching out to someone. “Have you talked about…” He stumbled, the questions clumsy in his mouth. “About where you’ve been? And how you came back?”
Her answer came so quietly he almost missed it. “Are you afraid I’ll say too much?”
He snapped his head toward her. The car followed his movement, and they almost veered off the road. They would have crashed if the car’s safety system hadn’t taken over and self-corrected in time. He had assumed she didn’t remember anything, because if she did, how could she have lived under his roof for the past two weeks and said nothing?
He had to ask. He had to know. But the words lodged in his throat. He couldn’t breathe.
“You’re wondering what I remember.” He couldn’t hear any emotion in Lila’s flat statement.
He didn’t answer. He fixed his eyes on the road. The streets were getting familiar now. More familiar than the ones he drove every day, even though he hadn’t lived here in ten years. The trailer was waiting, pulling him through the dark streets, drawing him in like a black hole.
The next time he looked at Lila, her eyes were also black holes. “I remember everything.”
The next turn was his. There was the old abandoned gas station on the corner; no one had bothered to tear it down yet. He tried to drive past, but the pull of gravity was too strong. He couldn’t be sure whether he was making the choice to turn, or whether something else was making the choice for him.
“I remember you waking me up in the night,” she said, her voice low. “You told me you had a surprise waiting for me in the kitchen. Mom was away for the weekend with Aunt Elsie. I thought you had baked cookies again, like last time she was away—the double-chocolate ones she said had too much sugar. But I didn’t smell cookies. I smelled smoke. When I saw the candles on the floor, and the chalk circle, I laughed, because I thought with Mom gone we were going to do all the things she always said no to. Playing with candles, drawing with chalk inside the house. And I was still hoping for those cookies.”
He remembered that laugh. He had thought of it as a final gift—a sign that some part of her understood and was telling him it was okay, that he was doing the right thing.
The trailer squatted on the square of grass like a fat and lazy spider, drawing him into its web. Their old car, a rusty green Honda, still sat abandoned in the driveway. One of Lila’s drawings was hanging at an angle in the kitchen window, the paper yellowed and curling at the edges.
He stopped the car. Or the car stopped. He couldn’t remember putting his foot on the brake.
“You took my hand,” said Lila, “and walked me into the center of the circle.”
Her small hand had felt so warm in his own, which had been cold with nerves. She had giggled, a little nervously, maybe finally starting to realize something wasn’t right.
Next to him in the car, Lila lifted her shirt to display her tangle of scars. Some of them were unfamiliar to him, but others he remembered all too well, from the night he had taken her apart piece by careful piece.
“You did it slowly.” As lightning flashed in her eyes again, her voice rumbled with matching thunder. “It was supposed to hurt.”
Derek held up his hands. “I never wanted to hurt you,” he protested. “I followed the instructions I was given. That was all. I tried to make it as easy on you as I could.”
Something dripped onto his lap. He touched his cheek; his hand came away wet with tears.
“I died confused and terrified,” said Lila. “I woke up in a stitched-together body, with a creature that had too many eyes and too many limbs looming over me, telling me I belonged to her now.”
He hadn’t given much thought to what would happen to Lila, after. Truth be told, he had tried not to think about it. When his thoughts did travel those dark roads, he had tried to tell himself that she had simply ceased to exist. And really, that might have been better for her than a lifetime in that trailer. If he had ended her existence while she was still happy, before she could grow into a life like his, then maybe his choice had been best not only for him and Jen, but for her.
He didn’t want to ask the question. But it crawled out of his mouth against his will, like a squirming thing with too many legs. “Where were you?”
“The place you sent me,” Lila said flatly. “I was in hell. And the demon you sold me to enjoyed my fear and my pain. You wanted to know where the other scars came from, didn’t you? I saw you looking. Well, there’s your answer. But she didn’t keep that up for long. Instead, she started showing me everything you had bought for yourself with my life. That was a worse pain than anything she could do to me physically.”
Derek squeezed his eyes shut, as if that could block out the images her words had put into his mind. “I’m sorry, Lila. I’m so sorry.” The tears came faster now, roaring up from his chest until he was blubbering like a baby. He clutched the steering wheel with both hands and rested his forehead against the rough plastic. Ten years of unacknowledged memory crashed down on him at once. Every moment of doubt he had felt while holding the knife and watching her blood well up. Every nightmare since, the ones he awakened from with the sound of her screams still echoing in his years. He was glad the people at the party couldn’t see him now. Even if he destroyed every one of their lives with a whisper afterward, they would never have respected him again.
“Are you?” asked Lila, in that voice like distant thunder. “Do you really wish you had chosen differently? How much of it would you have given up to have me back? The money that let you leave this place? The power to raise someone high or bring them low with your word? That part of the bargain meant more to you than the money, didn’t it? You didn’t hate it here because we were poor. You hated it because you felt powerless. You say you’re sorry for what you did—but do you regret it enough to wish you had never had that power?”
He tried to say yes, of course he did, he would snap his fingers and undo it all right this second if he could. But the words caught in his throat. His lips opened and closed like the mouth of a fish, but no sound came out.
She smiled. Her eyes glinted red. “People think of hell as the home of lies. But there are no lies in hell. There’s only the cold, brutal truth.”
It wasn’t worth it. I’ve regretted it every second for the past ten years. The more he tried to force the words out, the more his throat closed up. He clawed at his neck, straining for breath.
“I learned some things while I was away,” said Lila. “You won’t be able to lie to me anymore. Not unless I allow it. But it doesn’t matter—I didn’t come here to hear your apologies.”
Lila let out her breath, and suddenly Derek could breathe again too. He gulped in air. “Are you going to kill me?” he asked when he could speak again. “Is that why you brought me here?”
“No,” said Lila. “And you can trust me on that. I’m a creature of hell now. I can’t lie anymore.” She opened her car door. “But I want to see it—the place where I died. And I want you to see it, too.”
As soon as she stepped out of the car, he tried to drive away. The engine sputtered and died.
She yanked open his door. It tore from the car with a shriek of tortured metal. She pulled him out by the arm. Her nails dug into the skin of his forearm, drawing blood. With a grip too strong to be purely human, she dragged him toward the door of the trailer. He had no choice but to stumble after her.
