It was a beautiful winter morning-cold and crisp with a cloudless blue sky. Tom walked out of the service department at the Jeep/Chrysler auto mall, spotted his beloved vehicle parked on the other side of the lot and walked briskly toward it.
After he slid into the driver’s seat and fired up the engine, memories of the longest dream in history returned with a vengeance. It dawned on Tom that he hadn’t been in this car since the day that the paramedics had pulled him out and rushed him to the hospital. The familiar feel of the soft leather seats and his grip on the steering wheel triggered the vibe like taking hold of a live electric wire. He glanced over at the passenger seat, half expecting to see Erin Myers telling him about her grim, unhappy life as an orphan. But the seat was of course unoccupied.
Tom dismissed his disappointment and focused on getting out of the tight parking space. He pulled out onto the street and checked the fuel gauge, elated to see that he had a full tank. He turned on the CD player, selected the third disk and pressed ‘play.’ Steely Dan’s Hey Nineteen shot out of the speakers and into his head like a jolt of strong coffee.
Tom’s thoughts were a mishmash of hurtling fragments. In the back of his mind was the huge lie he was living by driving to Smithtown. He had never been comfortable with lying and for that reason was a notoriously lousy liar. But the present situation forced him to go against his better judgment and spin an incredibly lame alibi to cover what could only be considered a compulsive, irrational shot in the dark-or just plain madness.
Here he was, a grown adult with a fairly intact grip on reality, embarking on a two-hour road trip in order to track down a woman he had only seen once in his life nearly twenty years ago. And why was he undertaking this ill-conceived mission? Because he had finally decided after all this time to find out what had ever happened to the child this woman had told him was his.
Maybe not exactly grounds for institutionalization, but certainly a valid argument for OCD.
Because in the midst of all of this deceit and irrationality, Tom was still asking himself the same thing over and over: Why?
Why was he doing this in the first place? What did he expect would come from all of this in the unlikely event that he did locate Mindy Conkel and she in turn granted him what he sought? The peace of mind in knowing once and for all that he had an illegitimate kid running around somewhere? A kid who would be a young adult by now and probably didn’t give two shits who his or her father was-the father who had not only abandoned him or her but hadn’t even been willing to admit paternity?
What good could possibly come from this?
Tom couldn’t think of any, really.
But he could certainly think of plenty of bad things that could come from this-one being that if Peg were to catch him sneaking around like this, he might as well pack his bags and leave town. There was no doubt that she would throw him out of the house-he was certain of that. He and his wife had based their entire marriage on mutual trust and honesty. Not only had he failed to mention this “blemish” in this former life, he had gone a step further and lied to her about this whole ridiculous mission.
Peg would ream him a new asshole and file for divorce all in the same breath.
Tom considered calling the whole thing off as he drove west toward I-71 south. He could call Frank on his cell phone and catch him before he drove all the way to Cleveland by himself. Then he could either join him or they could both simply go back to their respective homes and tell the wives they had changed their minds about going to the Rock and Roll Museum.
But Tom knew he wouldn’t do this. Because something deep inside was telling him that he must follow through this. It was the same thing that had told him to track down Erin Landry.
He needed to know the truth.
He pulled onto the I-71 south ramp, cranked up the volume on the CD player and sat back comfortably in his seat. In a couple of hours, he would get to the bottom of what this was all about.