Wrong (A Bad Boy Romance)(143)

Turn on 3rd onto Market, catch I-95. It’s a straight run now. I obey all posted limits and traffic signals.

Have to. I’m on parole, after all. I wouldn’t want to get pulled over on my way to steal a car.

Driving gives me a lot of time to think. My knuckles go white. The wheel creaks in protest.

I’ve had plenty of time to think.

That’s what prison is. The punishment isn’t confinement. They put a roof over your head. It’s not isolation, either, unless you get sent to solitary. I never did. It’s not following orders, it’s not the shitty therapy groups, either. (Evidently, I have an anger management problem.) No, the punishment is time. Time to think, time to brood, time to plan. When you’re out in the world all you want is time. People say “there aren’t enough hours in the day” and try to stretch them out.

In prison, the bars just keep you in. It’s the time that punishes you.

Time has come today.

The drive takes almost an hour, out to Lancaster County, the very eastern edge. This is an old place. Everything around here is old. Old for the United States, anyway. I went to Europe once, went on a tour. Saw lots of history. Thousand year old buildings that just go about their business like buildings do. They’re just there. Around here anything older than a century or two always goes behind velvet ropes. We think it’s so special.

Europe. I was sixteen. There was good coffee and better company, but I can’t think about that. If I try to hard I can’t remember half the girls’ names. I was never good at that to begin with. There was a time in my life when there were so many girls I’d have to take notes to remember who I fucked when. Then one day there were two girls. The one, and all the rest just kind of lumped together.

The windshield wipers tick away the seconds, minutes, an hour and a half or so. Take it easy in the rain.

From the mist, the high chimneys and glowing lights fold into existence, vague shapes growing more solid as I approach. It catches in my chest.

This is my home. I am going home.

Except I’m not. Now the high walls with their jagged glass tops and wrought iron spear points are there to keep me out, not in. My home no longer.

One of the oldest continuously occupied homes in the entire state, the Amsel estate is sprawling expanse of almost three hundred acres. Kolonie, my great-great-insert-more-greats grandfather named it. It’s the German word for rookery. The family name, Amsel, means Blackbird. The house sits far back from the road, so far back, in fact, that in the deep gloom of a cloudy moonless night the only thing visible is the windows, like the distant lights of Xanadu or that green light in The Great Gatsby.

I didn’t pay any attention in high school English, but I used to know somebody who cared a lot about that shit, and it meant I started caring about it, too.

If I keep driving half a mile there will be a break in the ancient brick wall that surrounds the wilds of the estate. The trees peel away and there’s a huge wrought iron gate, almost fifteen feet tall, overtopping the wall itself by five feet. I’ve been casing the place for a while now. The new owners patched some broken places in the wall.

My ancestors coated the very top with broken glass, and the wall is also adorned with six inch long wrought iron spikes, each wickedly sharp. When they built the walls there was a real possibility the house might actually be attacked.

On top of the old school security system, there’s all the modern conveniences. Motion sensors, cameras, and a pack of dobermans running on the property. Silent sentinels. I’ve always liked dobermans. They don’t fuck around with barking, they just rip out your throat. If you toss them some sausage they’ll eat it after they finish with you. Good, loyal, no nonsense dogs.

The place is a fortress, and with good reason.

It’s old, though, and old houses have secrets. They start to love their families.

I could go on and on about my family. It used to be a huge extended network, all over the East coast. Distant relatives of mine fought on both sides of the Civil War, and both sides of the Revolutionary War, but only on one side of the French and Indian War. I can trace my ancestry back to a Hessian mercenary who switched sides and married into the family and took the Amsel name for himself, as the current patriarch at the time had only daughters. They did things like that back then.

Later on, the owners of the house were abolitionists, and the estate was a stop on the Underground Railroad. That’s where I’m headed now.

I’m not sure who owns the farm that borders my family home, but the dilapidated barn is still there, edging up to the wall. I pull the Toyota off the road, bounce and jounce down a dirt track, and pull it right into the barn. I’m going to leave it here. It’s not mine anyway, and after today I won’t need it anymore. Four-thirty in the morning, now. Plenty of time, plenty of time. I leave the keys in the ignition and the doors unlocked.