Down the Darkest Road

33

Lauren felt like someone had beaten her from head to toe with a baseball bat. But the battery was more emotional than physical. Over and over her memory replayed Leah’s outburst, and her daughter’s pain was magnified many times by her own sense of guilt and grief.

What a mess she’d made of their lives. She should have been her daughter’s rock. Another mother would have focused on making her remaining child feel safe and loved in the wake of losing both her big sister and her father. Bound up in her own anger and grief and guilt, Lauren had left her daughter to deal with her own feelings.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, she had put her child in danger as well. She had brought Leah here, and now Ballencoa knew where they lived.

She tried to rationalize. Ballencoa had known where they lived in Santa Barbara. He could have come there any time. Instead, he had finally left town and gone to San Luis Obispo.

Those facts didn’t make her feel any better. Another fact remained: that she had come to Oak Knoll knowing he was here. She had brought Leah here knowing full well that she would at some point confront Roland Ballencoa.

Her intent had been clear in her mind. If no one was going to help her, if no one was going to do anything about him, if he was never going to give up the truth of what he had done to Leslie, then she was going to have to help herself, do something about him herself, get the truth out of him any way she could.

She had somehow managed to embrace that intent and believe that her actions would be somehow separate from her life with her daughter. Like they could live in a bubble from which she could come and go with her gun and her dark intentions, and none of that would touch Leah.

What a mess.

She felt mired in it now. Any decision she could make would be wrong because only wrong decisions had brought her to this place.

Was she supposed to be a mother to the daughter she had or the avenger for the daughter she had lost? Everything in her fought against the idea of letting Leslie go. She could never release the idea of what if? What if Leslie wasn’t dead? What if she gave up on her child one day too soon? She couldn’t do it. Then what did that make her to Leah?

The conundrums spun around in her brain like hornets trapped in a box. The one overriding thought she kept having was: Leah would be better off with no mother than with the mother that she was.

She and Leah had had their cry together. She had said all the right and motherly things. She had promised to do better, drink less, eat more, put Daddy’s gun away. Lies and lies and more lies.

They had gone through the motions of a family breakfast. Lauren had choked down the scrambled eggs Leah had made for her. She had allowed Leah to drive them into Oak Knoll because Leah’s birthday was coming and she would turn sixteen and want to get her driver’s license.

She had managed to seem like a sane person while meeting Wendy’s mother. The girls had decided to take the daylong art course Sara Morgan was teaching at the women’s center. Later in the day Wendy had a tennis lesson and had invited Leah to play. Sara would take them and Lauren would come back into town at the end of the day, and they would all go to dinner like normal human beings.

Lauren wasn’t sure how she would manage to pull that off, but she would try for Leah’s sake.

And yet no sooner did she pledge to do something for her daughter’s sake than she found herself driving away from the Thomas Center to Roland Ballencoa’s neighborhood. She parked under a tree on a side street and sat there staring at his house while the tug of war pulled and twisted and turned inside of her.

Did you miss me?

Even if she wanted to be rid of him, she couldn’t stop him from touching her life. He would always be part of her life.

Did you miss me?

She took the note out of her purse and looked at it.

At the heart of all her anguish, all her anger, all her guilt and despair stood Roland Ballencoa. The hate that burned through her thinking about him literally made her see red. The note turned as red as blood before her eyes.

Did you miss me?

She took a pen from her purse and wrote beneath the neatly typed line: I would sooner see you in hell than see you at all.

She put the note back in the envelope and sat there. Funny how calm she seemed, she thought. All the conflicting emotions screaming in her head had gone to white noise. Now she didn’t think, she acted.

As if her body was not her own, she got out of her car, walked across the street, up Roland Ballencoa’s sidewalk onto his front porch.

What if he saw her? What if he came to the door? What would he say to her? What would she say to him? What if he tried to grab her?

What if my daughter is in his house? What if she’s in a box under his bed? What if I pull a gun on him? What if I’m tired of being his victim?

There was, at the core of her obsession, an almost giddy excitement at the idea of confronting him. There was a part of her that wanted him to come to the door.

The Walther was tucked inside the waistband of her jeans, hidden by the tails of the shirt she wore—a shirt that belonged to the husband she had lost because of Roland Ballencoa.

What if she rang the doorbell? What if he came to the door and she shot him in the face and killed him like she had in her dream?

She could see it in her head. She had imagined it over and over. There was a part of her that wanted that confrontation to put an end to this nightmare once and for all. And there was a part of her that knew she should turn around and run away.

What about me?! Leah had cried. Lauren had spent the last hours berating herself for not caring enough, for not being a good mother to the one daughter she had.

Yet here I am.

God help me.

Why she bothered with a prayer was beyond her. None of the thousands she had made in the past four years had been answered. Why would this one be any different?

She put the note in Ballencoa’s mailbox next to the front door, turned around, and walked away, not bothering to look back to see if he was watching her.

The drive home was made without thought. Lauren wasn’t aware of traffic or scenery or the faces of the people on the streets as she drove across town. She didn’t hear anything. The internal cacophony had gone silent.

She didn’t think about whether what she had just done was right or wrong, smart or stupid. She was tired of thinking. It was just so much easier not to think at all. Maybe she would go home and lie down and spend the rest of the day not thinking. And while she wasn’t thinking, she was going to not feel anything either. The sharp edges of hard emotions could crumble to dust and let her alone to feel nothing.

The idea of that was like a vision to her, like a mirage shimmering at the end of Old Mission Road. She was so focused on it that she almost didn’t notice the car parked off to the side at the end of the street. She didn’t want to notice it, and she certainly didn’t want to notice the man who stepped out of the car as she neared the gate to the property.

Without fully looking at him, she recognized him by the breadth of his shoulders in his chambray shirt, the narrowness of his hips in his jeans, the tousled sandy hair, the mirrored aviator sunglasses he wore. But she pretended not to see him at all as she ran her window down and punched in the gate code. She stared straight out through the windshield, willing the gate to open instantly—which it did not.

He leaned down and looked in the passenger’s window, knocked on the glass, and said her name.

“Lauren.”

The gate had barely opened wide enough to fit the BMW through when she pressed on the gas. But even though she was through the gate, she couldn’t make it close more quickly behind her. She couldn’t stop him from walking through.

So much for feeling nothing. A host of emotions descended on her: annoyance, embarrassment, anxiety . . .

“Lauren,” he said, coming up alongside the car, smiling as if he thought she would be glad to see him.

He was an attractive man, tall and masculine, with a square jaw and a day’s worth of five o’clock shadow à la Don Johnson, but she told herself she was not attracted to him. She imagined that many women would have found him charming, but she told herself she was not charmed.

She put the car in park and sat there for a moment, still refusing to turn and look at him. He opened the door for her, as if he was a gentleman.

Lauren heaved a sigh and got out.

“Why are you here?” she asked bluntly.

His mouth twisted with a small, sarcastic smile. “It’s nice to know you’re glad to see me.”

“I’m not glad to see you, Greg,” she said. “There’s no reason for you to be here.”

“Since you don’t return phone calls, I thought I should check on you. All things considered.”

He had a way of standing just the slightest bit too close, pressing in at the very edge of her personal space. The male animal subtly making the female aware of him, of his size and strength, and sexuality. She shifted her weight back a fraction of a step.

“So now you have,” she said. “Thank you.”

“Is everything all right?”

“Perfect. My life is perfect.”

He frowned. “I know that’s not true.”

“Then why did you ask? You’re the private detective. You should have all the answers.”

“Why are you so angry with me, Lauren?” he asked. “I gave you exactly what you wanted.”

Heat rose in her cheeks at the double entendre. She wanted to slap him, but thought better of it. All she really wanted was for him to be gone. A fight would only prolong his stay.

“And I paid for it,” she returned. “I didn’t ask for the extended warranty.”

He was getting frustrated with her now. Even with his sunglasses on, she could tell. His jaw shifted a little to the left, then a little to the right.

“Have you seen him?” he asked. “Does he know you’re here?”

“No,” she lied.

He didn’t believe her, but he didn’t call her on it. He looked toward the now-closed gate. “Do you really think that’s going to keep him out?”

“No,” Lauren said. She pulled the Walther out from under her shirt and held it up for him to see. “I think this will.”

His eyebrows lifted above the frames of his glasses. “Are you really going to use it?”

“Now or later?”

“If you want to shoot every guy you sleep with, that’s going to cut into your prospects for a second husband,” he pointed out.

“I don’t want a second husband,” Lauren managed to say around the hard knot of anger lodged in her throat. It made her angry that he would say such a thing. It made her angry that she had given him the chance to have occasion to say it. It made her angry that he didn’t seem to be intimidated or impressed by the fact that she had just pulled a gun on him.

“I guess not,” he said evenly. “You were the one with the balls in your family anyway. You’re the one still fighting for your daughter. I admire you for that, Lauren. I’m not the enemy. I came to you, remember?”

He had, though she had questioned his altruism. He had come to her to offer his services. He had read a recent article about her, about her continued determination to find her missing daughter despite the lack of movement from the Santa Barbara Police Department.

He was a private investigator. He could go places the police couldn’t go, do things the police couldn’t do. He was willing to help her—for a small fee, of course, to cover his expenses. If he found Leslie or found evidence connecting Roland Ballencoa to her disappearance, he would be able to claim the $50,000 reward—which was probably a far greater incentive than his admiration of her.

“Yes, I remember,” she said at last. “And now it’s time for you to go, Greg. I no longer require your services.”

“I don’t think this has anything to do with my professional services,” he said, stepping closer again. “I think you’re embarrassed for fucking the hired help.”

She did slap him for that. She backhanded him with her left hand, the gun still in her right. Her knuckles grazed the edge of his teeth, slicing the skin.

“Get off this property,” she ordered, seething, wishing now she had hit him in the mouth with the Walther so he would be the one bleeding instead of her. “Get out of my sight before I do something worse than hit you.”

He shrugged as if it didn’t bother him as much as the edge in his voice told her it did. “That’s all right. I get it. You want to tell yourself you didn’t enjoy it. We both know that isn’t true. That’s your conscience to wrestle with, Lauren. I don’t have any regrets.”

“Good for you,” she said. She had enough regret for both of them.

“I’m still willing to help you,” he said. “I can watch Ballencoa for you, make sure he doesn’t bother you or your daughter.”

For a price, or a fee, neither of which she was willing to pay, but Lauren hesitated at the mention of Leah. She was increasingly certain she didn’t need or want Greg Hewitt or anyone else standing between herself and Ballencoa, but Leah was another matter. She needed to keep her daughter safe.

At the same time, she hesitated to say Greg Hewitt was the man for that job. If she felt the need to have someone watch over Leah, she would call Mendez. If he couldn’t help her directly, he would know someone who could—and his choice wouldn’t be someone Lauren had defiled herself with.

“I don’t want you around my daughter,” she said.

“Jesus Christ, Lauren,” he snapped. “What do you take me for? I’m not the child molester in this scenario. I’m attracted to you. I don’t deny that. That doesn’t make me a criminal or a pervert. I’m not angling for a mother-daughter threesome, for Christ’s sake.”

Lauren looked away from him, sighing beneath the weight of a new layer of guilt for offending him. She might have apologized, but she wouldn’t. She could feel him watching her, waiting for her to blink. She didn’t.

“I’m not exactly sure why you came here,” he said at last. “I’m not exactly sure I want to know. I don’t have a good feeling about it. You’re walking around with a gun, for God’s sake.”

He tried to wait her out through another silence. She didn’t speak. He lifted his hands, ready to push away from her figuratively if not literally.

“I just want to help.”

“No, thank you,” Lauren said in the coolest, most businesslike tone she could manage. “I think it’s best if we don’t continue . . . in any way.”

He wasn’t a good loser. He made that little signature move with his jaw, like he was trying to chew a piece of leather with his back teeth, chewing back his temper. “Suit yourself,” he said. “But know that I’m available if you need me. . . . For anything.”

He walked away from her, found the button on the post to open the gate, and let himself out.