Chapter 8 - The Shadow on the Turnpike
Two weeks later, on the second Tuesday of December, a small grey Honda with a dented rear fender pulled off Route 128 onto the narrow, gravel shoulder near the Milton exit.
The car’s engine was idling with a rough, metallic knock that suggested a loose rod or a broken water pump.
Inside, Travis Mercer sat behind the wheel, his coat collar turned up around his red, frostbitten ears, his hands shoved deep into his pockets to keep them from shaking.
Beside him on the passenger seat lay a small white envelope containing three hundred dollars in cash—his last week’s wages from a snowplow crew in Framingham that hadn't asked for his tax papers—and a crumpled notice from the Cook County Probate Court in Illinois regarding his father’s long-forgotten life insurance policy.
His mother sat in the back seat, wrapped in an old brown faux-fur coat that smelled of stale menthol cigarettes and wet wool.
"Is this the gate?" Colleen asked, her voice dry as a cobweb as she pressed her face against the cold rear window. "Travis, look through the trees. Is that the slate roof?"
"I don't know, Ma," Travis said, his voice flat and hoarse from four days of cold wind and cheap coffee. "The fence goes on for half a mile. You can't see the house from the road."
"Drive up to the bell," she demanded, her sharp fingernails tapping against the plastic headrest. "Just push the button. Tell them we’re here to see the child. They can't legally keep a grandmother from seeing her own blood. I talked to a lawyer in Weymouth—"
"The lawyer in Weymouth took your fifty dollars and told you to go home, Ma!" Travis yelled, his head snapping around, his dark eyes bloodshot under his greasy hair. "Nobody’s getting through that gate! Do you see that black car sitting by the stone pillar? That’s been following us since we left the gas station in Canton!"
Colleen looked through the rear window.
Fifty yards behind them, parked double on the snowy shoulder with its parking lights glowing low through the winter dusk, sat a dark grey Mercedes.
Inside, two men in black coats sat motionless, their faces obscured by the blue glare of a small dashboard screen.
"They can't touch us on a public road," Colleen muttered, though her voice lacked its old, sharp confidence. She pulled her fake fur tighter around her shoulders, her chin trembling slightly as a cold draft came through the rusted door panel.
"They already touched us, Ma," Travis said, turning back to the wheel and staring at the wrought-iron gate fifty yards ahead. "They took the apartment. They took the trucks. Paige won't even take my calls from her mother’s house. I have seventy-four dollars left in my checking account."
He reached out, his hand hovering over the gear shift, his knuckles white with the cold.
"She was carrying my baby," he whispered into the dark interior of the car. "She was standing right there in the hall with that broken bag, and I let you throw her stuff into the gutter."
"She was a nobody!" Colleen spat, her voice rising into a thin, desperate shrillness. "She was a waitress from Southbridge who didn't have twenty dollars to her name! How was I supposed to know her father had three ships in Charlestown?"
"Because you didn't look at her, Ma," Travis said, his voice dropping into a dull, flat line that sounded like water hitting a stone. "You just looked at her clothes."
He put the car into gear. The transmission groaned, the gears grinding twice before catching, and the small grey Honda pulled slowly off the shoulder, its exhaust spitting a dark cloud of blue smoke into the freezing evening air as it turned back toward the highway ramp.
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Behind them, the black Mercedes didn't follow.
It remained parked by the stone pillar, its lights glowing low in the gathering dark, its engine humming with a deep, silent rhythm that had nothing to do with the winter cold.
