And then they were turning into Thornhill, and she saw something that snatched the train of words right out of her mouth. She let out a low hum of curiosity. “What?” Darren said. “What is it?” It was killing him that he couldn’t sit up and see for himself.
“It’s just a lot of cars out here, that’s all,” Bell said.
“What kind of cars?”
“I’m behind one at the security gate, a black SUV. But it’s some other ones on up ahead too. Look like they heading to the high-rise over here. Company offices, I guess.”
Darren remembered Rey’s description of black SUVs coming around Thornhill lately. The kid had reached for context and come up with rappers and NBA players and CEOs. He remembered Rey’s story of people frequently touring the homes in Thornhill, and he wondered if these moneyed types were potential investors in the company.
“Ma’am?” Darren heard a male voice say as Bell rolled down her window.
They hadn’t gone over a cover story. Not being with Darren Mathews had seemed like half the battle of getting back inside the town with no trouble. But when Bell started talking to the guard, she lied with such ease and finesse of execution that Darren felt something close to awe. For the first time in his life, he was thankful for not having a normal mother, one whose pastimes might have included knitting rather than artful dodging. He heard the cheer in her voice as she reached into her purse for her identification. Could picture which of her smiles she had on display: the one that favored her left side, a half smile that was coy and maybe the tiniest bit flirtatious. “Here to see the Fuller people,” Bell said. “They my cousins — well, she is. Me and him, we don’t always get along, not since he brought chitlins to my house last Easter and dumped ’em in my sink to clean. You might already see my name in the system,” she said. “I come through a couple of months ago for a preliminary interview. I don’t suppose you know anything about my application?” It was a foolish and tacky question but all the more believable for the eager and hopeful way that she delivered it. Because there was truth in it, her naked desperation, her faith in a place like Thornhill.
Throwing off the paint-splattered sheets and dirty clothes brought back the smell of the town, the rot beneath the scent of damp pine and cedar. A hundred yards past the security kiosk at the entrance to the town, Bell had told him he was in the clear, and he’d come up gulping for air, nearly gagging when he smelled the sickly sweet-and-sour smell of decay, edged with a whiff of something burning, all of it puffing out of the smokestacks up ahead. From the back seat, he finally witnessed what Bell had been talking about. There were indeed quite a number of black SUVs with windows tinted a shade that would be illegal on a Texas highway, something that for Darren brought to mind not the cars of CEOs or potential investors but rather government-issued security vehicles. Several were turning onto the street that led to the company headquarters. Were these the outside visitors to Thornhill that Rey had spoken of?
It was another question to ask Rey when they saw him.
From the back seat, he told his mother, “Keep driving.”
Darren directed her to Rey’s house, which was next door to the Fullers’, while he tried to think of how they could steal away the young man without drawing any undue attention, since Rey wasn’t even supposed to be in Thornhill anymore. But as soon as they turned onto Juniper Lane, something else stole his attention entirely.
It was the hair he noticed first.
A shock of silver that Darren realized, as the car drew closer, was as much ash blond, almost white, as it was gray. It was cut in a bob that curled softly toward her chin. He stared at the wholly unexpected sight of Thornhill’s corporate matriarch, Carey-Ann Thorn, sitting on the Fullers’ front porch, the centerpiece of a scene that seemed a re-creation of the one on Thornhill’s website, as if they’d stumbled into a commercial. It was an odd sensation, and Darren wondered what in the world they had come across. A set of farmhouse patio furniture had materialized since yesterday, arranged exactly like the advertised images of al fresco family dining, down to the pitcher of lemonade on the table. Darren told Bell to park at the curb between the Fuller house and Rey’s, where a black Mercedes sedan was idling. The same darkly tinted windows, the appearance of executive import. On the Fullers’ porch, Joseph was sitting beside Carey-Ann at the head of the barn-style table. He wore an ill-fitting suit that was a strange brownish-green color. To his left was a man Darren recognized as E. J. Hill, and beside him sat a jowly older man in a dark gray suit and a red tie that had tiny sailboats on it. He looked up as Iris came out of the house carrying a tray of chicken-salad sandwiches. She set a plate in front of her husband and then each of their guests.
Darren noticed Carey-Ann didn’t touch hers.
He got out of the car and started toward the Fullers’ front porch.
Behind him, he heard Bell hiss, “Thought we was talking to the boy.” She nodded to the house he’d told her was Rey’s. But Darren’s attention had been diverted to whatever was going on at the Fuller house: the CEO of Thornhill in front of him, talking to Sera’s parents. He told his mother, “Stay in the car.” Bell ignored him, of course, following behind him as he approached the Fullers’ front porch, where Darren could hear Carey-Ann holding court, speaking with company pride about the Fullers.
“They are one of our success stories, a model family.”
She looked over at Joseph, and as if on cue, he nodded to the man in the red sailboat tie. “We’ve been really happy here,” Joseph said. “We’re living proof that most folks want to work, want to earn their keep, know that a man expecting a handout will never earn the world’s respect. You put us on that stage at your fundraiser thing, and we will preach the gospel of Thornhill. I’m ready to tell our story.”
He looked across the porch to his wife. “Very happy here,” he said. “Huh, Iris?” Then he patted his thigh, an affectionate call or a quiet command: Come.
Iris dutifully set down her tray, walked to the end of the table where her husband was sitting, and perched herself on his lap. He wrapped his arms around her and smiled. She smiled too, Darren noticed as he walked up the porch steps, but hers never made it up to her eyes. They were as full of quiet woe as when he’d first met her.
Darren mounted the porch steps. “Well, what do we have here?”
Every head turned in his direction.
E. J. Hill glanced across the table at his wife, whose eyes narrowed ever so slightly before she held up a hand to him, suggesting that whatever this was, she had it under control. She turned and gave Darren a smile that could cut glass.
The man with the red sailboat tie was perspiring at his hairline. He dabbed it with a handkerchief, waiting for his hosts to explain this new presence. “Carey-Ann?”
“This is Darren Mathews,” she said, leveling her eyes on him.
She wanted Darren to know there were no surprises in her town. It had the intended effect. Despite himself, Darren was momentarily caught off guard by hearing his name out of her mouth. Carey-Ann Thorn knew who he was. “And yet,” he said, “we’ve never had the pleasure of meeting.” He held out a hand in greeting.
Like the food, she refused to touch it.
The two locked eyes across the porch, and Darren sensed her making quick calculations, deciding how to play this intrusion, what it would cost her to reveal that his presence was not a part of whatever script was playing out here. There was a courtship going on, Darren concluded from the way she sat tall and tautly attuned to the man in the sailboat tie. An investor? Darren wondered again, though instinct told him something else was afoot. Carey-Ann seemed to decide it was not in her best interest to make a fuss over this interruption. She smiled broadly, as if welcoming a late but invited guest. She wore a pantsuit of an expensive bouclé fabric that rode the line between business and leisure wear. She might have just come from a boardroom or a high tea. “Would you like to have a seat, Mr. Mathews?” she asked.
Bell, in her Cheery Clean Maids smock, crested the top step of the porch too.
Carey-Ann blinked a few times, reworking her earlier calculations. How the hell was she going to spin this? Darren saw her poise briefly falter. The man in the sailboat tie was clearly flummoxed by the new arrivals in Wranglers and working-class garb.
“I’m sorry, who is this?” he said.
“He’s a Texas Ranger,” Sera’s younger brother, Benny, said. Darren hadn’t seen the boy in a back corner of the porch, playing a game on his Thornhill-issued phone.
“Former, I understand,” Carey-Ann said.
Again, she cut her eyes at Darren. She wanted him to know he had no power here, would continue to move freely through Thornhill only on her say-so. It chilled him a little that news of his presence in the town had made it all the way to the top of the Thornhill corporation, that they’d done their due diligence, asking questions about him.
“I’m a concerned citizen, that’s all,” he said. “How is your daughter, Mr. Fuller?”
“Fine.”
“You keep saying that, but no one can seem to find where she —”
“She’s a sophomore up at Stephen F. Austin,” Joseph said to the man in the red sailboat tie, jumping back into what sounded like a sales pitch. “That’s all Thornhill, Miss Carey-Ann’s doing. Sera’s been real happy up at the university —”
“Except she wasn’t, was she?” Darren said. “At least not about being forced to join a sorority she didn’t want to be a part of. Isn’t that right, Mr. Fuller?”
“I made the call to get Sera a coveted spot in a prestigious sorority,” Carey-Ann broke in. “It is well understood that women in institutions of higher learning fare better with a support system of a chosen family of sisters. I wanted that for Sera. I found it enormously helpful when I was an undergraduate at SMU. It is a part of my success story. And when Joseph raised the idea of Sera being in the Rho Beta sisterhood, I was flattered and readily agreed. Because Thornhill is invested in Sera’s success.”
