The sweet, suffocating embrace of nostalgia didn't really hit Alex until he left the highway behind and eased onto the old dirt road. Nothing about Dallas, Texas, triggered any memories in him—his foster parents had rarely taken him or his current sibs to the big city, even though it was less than half-an-hour from their rural route—but this dirt road had carried his life's blood for two magnificent years, the very point at which he became a teenager.
There, right there, the mailbox still stood. And in the unseen distance, two miles over the most winding, hilly dirt road in existence, he would soon arrive at the old farm house and its sixty-acre spread. Alex knew intimately every pond, cliff, tree and twig across that two-mile walk, and thousands of other trees and twigs for miles around.
"It's smaller," said Dennis, the nineteen-year-old in the passenger's seat. He looked younger, in his white wife-beater and low-riding baggy jeans. Straight outta Compton, although California was one of the few places they had never visited.
"Yeah, it is," Alex responded.
Dennis's iPod was plugged into the car's tape deck, currently blaring "Rock the House" by Gorillaz, a surreal counterpoint to the antique surroundings. Not that hip-hop had been a foreign idea during those childhood days, just not Gorillaz. Alex remembered walking to the hidden spring with Jenny, often all seven days of the week, listening to the local radio station on Jenny's Walkman, strolling side-by-side so each of them could have an earbud. Back then they'd shaken booties to the Fugees, Tupac, and sometimes Fiona Apple when Jen was in the mood to hold hands.
Eight houses, six states, two coasts, two knife wounds, one broken wrist and a college degree later, it was still the memory of Jenny's hand that soothed the savage beast. There, right there, the roadside ditch where all the kids smashed bugs against the big cement boulder, while Alex and Jenny looked on and shook their heads, saying they were too old for such nonsense. They were both 13. The moment was frozen in amber and had been waiting ten years for him to drive by and reclaim it. Even "Devil's Haircut" by Beck, which had been playing on Jenny's Walkman at that very hour, was trapped in the amber.
"I gotta pee," Dennis said.
"Shoulda thought of that two Mountain Dews ago."
"Pull over."
"Stop it."
"Hey, pull over!"
"I'm not pulling over so you can pee on the side of the road. We'll be there in ninety seconds."
"Come on, man! You don't even know if the water's turned on at the house."
"If it's not, then you can go outside and pee."
"So it's okay to do there but not here?"
Alex shot Dennis a look. "YES."
"Shit."
"You can do that, too."
Then they arrived at the gate. Only sarcastically could the place be called a farm; nothing had ever grown on this land except weeds, and state-entrusted children who grew like weeds. The grass on either side of the gravel road had once been ragged and neglected, but now it stood as high as the car window, wild like wheat though it was nothing more than rye. Alex had expected no less. He drove through the barbed-wire gate, which was already open.
A touch of panic grabbed hold as he slowly pulled the car over the first hill and saw the farmhouse. He sensed Dennis panicking as well. Good times had been had in these fields, but nights and mornings in the farmhouse were not so pleasant. Mr. and Mrs. Cormick had been, to wear out the cliché, evil. Alex had Mr. Cormick to thank for his second knife wound.
"We cool?" Alex asked Dennis.
"Yeah," Dennis said softly.
Alex was expecting a brattier response from his foster brother, but for just a moment, all his posturing fell aside, leaving only the eleven-year-old boy who had once been purposely thrown into the barbed-wire fence after he accidentally tipped over a coffee can filled with nails into the tall grass. If Dennis had been standing there, he would have dropped the old man who called himself Dad right onto his ass. But he hadn't been standing there.
Two cars were parked in front of the old barn, across the yard from the house. Alex parked next to the silver Lexus and got out of his rented Taurus. After Dennis shut his door, Alex locked the car. He laughed at himself for thinking anyone would rip off his car in the middle of such thinly populated prairie land, but he had spent as much time growing up in Detroit, Atlanta and Seattle as he had in dumps like this and would always lock the doors, no matter what, for the rest of his life.
Dennis asked, "We bringing in our stuff?"
"Not yet." Alex had told Dennis they should plan on sleeping at the farmhouse for the night—neither of them had cash to waste on a hotel room—but a wise voice inside prepared him for the possibility that an extended stay would not be, psychologically speaking, a good idea. Now he was here, he was glad to have a fall-back plan. No building ever felt less inviting, although objectively, nothing that happened in the past was the house's fault.
Walking on uneasy feet, Alex followed the paved path, through the overgrown garden, to the front porch. Despite the ratty conditions of the fields, the house seemed to have been fairly well kept. Had the door frame always been beige? Alex couldn't remember, but it did seem to have been painted within the last few years. Apparently, Mother Cormick had done what she could to keep the place tidy right up until her demise.
Alex pulled the screen door open. "Hello?" he called through the open front door.
"Alexander Ponti?" said a voice from the kitchen.
"Yeah," Alex answered. "It's me and Dennis Hernandez."
The lawyer, Bill Kayhill, stepped into the hall, wearing a sharp-looking business suit and tie. "Come in, come in," he said. "After all, it's your house. Good to finally meet you." He shook both boys' hands.
"Thanks," Alex said. He felt woefully underdressed in jeans, a red t-shirt and sneakers. Dress for the job you want and not the job you have, they told him in college, and apparently he wanted to be a cashier.
"Thank you," Dennis said.
They moved through the kitchen to the dining room. Two thick stacks of papers, a few folders and other loose sheets were sprawled across the old, smooth table.
"Are you here alone, Mr. Kayhill?" Alex asked, wondering about that second car.
"At the moment, yes. Jennifer and Becky Josephson are walking around the grounds somewhere."
Dennis snapped his head up. "Becky? She's here?"
"We didn't know they were coming today," Dennis said, finding it hard to swallow.
"Oh, I didn't mention it? Anyway, yeah, they said they wanted to see you. Jennifer already signed her paperwork, but I had some more questions for her. The junk cars in the southwest corner were left specifically to her." He grinned. "Is there a problem?"
Dennis could barely contain himself. "Did they say which way they were walking when they left?"
"Afraid not. They should be back shortly. I apologize, Alex, but I've got to be in court in south Dallas at 2:30. Can we go over the papers right away?"
"Sure, of course."
