No Road Home by John Fram

Author:John Fram
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2024-07-23T00:00:00+00:00

4:7

THE EZEKIEL SUITE WAS empty. Toby cranked up the heat of the shower in Luca’s little bathroom, grabbed the boy fresh clothes and dry socks, and helped him unpeel his soaked shorts. When he was down to his underwear, Luca gave Toby a long, level look that seemed to age him by a decade. “I can handle it from here,” he said.

“You want to be alone?”

“Just when I’m naked.”

Toby left without a word. When had his baby boy learned modesty?

Was this family rubbing off on him already?

Every time Toby thought he was getting a handle on the situation here, some new detail emerged to throw it all into chaos again: a defaced photograph, the strange details of Jerome’s fall, the spots of dry red paint Luca told him he’d discovered on the hem of Sarah Nella’s robe. Toby remembered the way the woman, earlier this afternoon, had jerked back her duvet with her twitching hand, all but daring him to look at her bare chest: at the bruises she’d gotten in her fall on the roof, at the spots of red Toby had at first mistaken for scabbed blood.

I left her by herself for ywo minutes at lunch and found her choking in the shower when I got back, Kassandra had said.

There was more, something Toby couldn’t see but knew was there, like the shape of a memory someone had sealed away. That awful certainty from downstairs, the creeping dread that something very bad was on its way, still hummed between the hairs of Toby’s arms.

Jesus hates a doubter, Tobias.

Toby decided it was time for a new game plan. If the storm really was dying, then he would be ready to bolt the moment it was safe to cross the creek. Richard had warned Toby he wouldn’t make it across the county line, but Toby would take his chances. He just needed three things: a warm bath to purge this lingering chill, a change of clothes, and the keys to Alyssa’s Mercedes.

As Toby stepped into his bedroom, his eye caught on a square of paper resting by the lamp on Alyssa’s bedside table. He thought for a moment it might be that wire transfer, undestroyed after all, but no: it was the folded note from Jerome that bore Alyssa’s name, the one Julian had served on a silver tray yesterday afternoon when Toby and his family had first arrived at Ramorah.

Out of curiosity, Toby unfolded the note and found that it contained almost the exact message Alyssa had read aloud in the foyer: My apologies, but I will be unable to see you until dinner. Welcome home, J.

Under this, however, Jerome had added two curious words that hadn’t appeared in the note the old man had written to Toby. Was it strange that Alyssa hadn’t bothered to read them aloud yesterday in front of her family?

The two words were: Good luck.

Five minutes later, Toby was standing in the shower when he felt Alyssa herself slip into their bedroom, his wife’s presence a weight he felt more than a sound he heard.

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