Saved by the Outlaw(11)

Back to the parking lot miles behind me.

Back to the man with the flashing green eyes and the wicked, damning half-smile.

Something about him awakens a long-buried sentiment deep in my soul, sunken under over a decade of memories. When he grasped my wrists, when he pulled me out of that squad car, I felt a disturbing sense of deja vu. Like he’s done it before.

But that’s insane. I’ve never been anywhere near a situation like this before, and I certainly don’t know who the guy really is. In fact, all I do know about him is that he’s dangerous. He’s got some kind of motorcycle group and he’s got at least one crooked cop on his side. I also know that he is willing to chain a guy to the filthy floor of an abandoned warehouse — and murder scene — to interrogate him mercilessly.

So, no. I don’t think I know him. There’s no way.

But then why does he feel familiar?

It’s not a conscious recognition. More like a soft, subtle stirring of a strained memory from another lifetime, as though he’s stepped into my world from a parallel universe. Like he’s an acquaintance of some other Cherry LaBeau, a version of myself I wouldn’t recognize today.

I drive the Focus into town, intending to head for the hotel to check in, recuperate and change into some different shoes. But after zoning out for a while, lost in my thoughts, I suddenly realize with a startle that I’m not driving toward the hotel. In fact, I’m on the other side of town entirely, en route to a destination I can find on autopilot, even after all these years.

My dad’s old place. My childhood home.

I haven’t been back there since my father’s death. The funeral was held a few days ago, in a church just outside of town. Even after the service, I returned to my hotel room in Newark, not wanting to commit to a night in Bayonne just yet. It was too close. I couldn’t take it.

But today I’m supposed to check into an inn on the west side of town. After all, I didn’t leave New York just to hide out in Newark while the mystery of my father’s death festers and runs cold in my hometown. I force myself to rip my gaze off the road for a second to check the time. Just after half-past-two. Still early in the afternoon. I suppose since my automatic instincts have guided me back toward home — my old home — I might as well oblige them and go ahead.

Driving down the familiar streets, I’m struck by just how little has changed in the time I’ve been away. The same mailbox on the hairpin bend is crooked, leaning at a forty-five degree angle like it always has. I swallow back a lump in my throat when I drive past the tall, majestic silver maple in a vacant, overgrown lot I used to climb as a child. Seeing the lacy white undersides of the leaves triggers instant memories in my head, reminding me of how I used to collect the fallen leaves in early autumn into my pockets and dump them into a massive pile in my front yard, poring over the pretty foliage for hours.

When I drive down the road I lived on with my father, I can’t stop the tears from burning in my eyes. I don’t let them fall just yet, but the urge is definitely building. I haven’t cried at all yet. Not even at the funeral. I think the day of the service, I was still in a state of profound shock. Straight off the train from New York City, I was dressed in my sleekest, slinky black dress and a designer blazer. I was in stark contrast to the working-class attendees, my father’s friends from the industrial side of town, dressed in shabby suits and well-worn shoes. The older women wore outdated, moth-eaten dresses that probably hadn’t seen the light of day since 1995. My professional-grade makeup job made me look like a total fish out of water in comparison to the mostly bare faces filling the pews. Everyone else mourned loudly, unabashedly, unafraid to release their grief and pay their respects, displaying a kind of vulnerability New Yorkers don’t dare embrace.

Meanwhile, I sat in the front pew alone, unaccompanied, looking more like a character from a Lifetime movie about a funeral than an actual mourner in real life. I was cordial and responsive to the other funeral-goers when it was required of me, but I didn’t say much. I mostly sat quietly and kept to myself until it was over, when I returned to my Newark hotel room.

Even then, alone in my hotel bathtub that night, I did not cry. I wanted to. I tried to. But the tears just sat stubbornly behind my eyes, burning and threatening but never quite spilling free. I suppose I was simply too numb to fully embrace my devastation yet. And then, deciding to visit the warehouse in which he died was more of a whim than anything else. I didn’t think it through. I certainly didn’t plan it very well.

I realize now, pulling my car into the gravel driveway, that perhaps I was acting recklessly because I didn’t have anyone left in the world to tell me not to. My mother disappeared from my life when I was a child, and my father was the only one who ever successfully kept me in line. To be fair, I wasn’t a terribly misbehaved little girl — but I have always been obstinate and willful, causing some trouble for my teachers and babysitters growing up. But my dad… my dear, patient, honest father, all he ever had to do was give me a disappointed look and I immediately shaped up. He never raised his voice or lifted a hand in anger, never did anything to clip my wings or tether me down to earth.