Page 39 of The Roads We Follow

“No.”

His admission hurts far more than it should.

Much too aware of our proximity to my sleeping family, I demand my rickety legs to move and take the exit stairs in bare feet. I push out the bus door and into the thick night air, knowing Micah will catch the door before it has the chance to slam. At least I’m right about something when it comes to him.

At first, I have no plan as I march past the picnic table and toward the tree line, I just know I’m not ready to face him yet. Not like this. The deeper I venture down the dusty trail, the less cloudy my thoughts become and the less wounded my pride feels. It’s then I do what I do best: plug the facts I have into the blank novel outline stored in my brain, the one currently crafting a backstory and matching scenes in real time until a surprising revelation nearly causes me to stumble.

What if Lynn put Micah up to this on her deathbed? What if Micah is as unwilling a participant in this twisted game of revenge as I am? I remember how sorrowful his face looked today at the pools when Mama spoke about his mother. He’s grieving, I’m quick to remind myself.And grief does strange things to people. Even therapists, I’d reckon.

Finally, I stop and rotate to face the spy we’ve been harboring on our bus for days. “I’m not going to ask you why or even how this all came about—God gave me a good enough imagination to fill in those blanks myself. But I do very much care about what happens from this point on. I know you’re grieving, Micah. But you must know there’s a better way to find closure than this.”

“Raegan.” Everything about him appears unnervingly steady. “Please believe me when I say I never intended to hurt you or anyone else in your family. I only ever wanted to find the truth—”

“The truth?” I shake my head, completely bewildered by how deceived he must be to believe a stunt like this could lead him to truth. “Micah, this isn’t the way. Please, I’m begging you, no matter how deep your mother’s issues went with my mama, please break this contract with Willow House and whatever other commitment you made to her ghostwriter regarding this trip.” The pinpricksof hives have begun on my forearms, but I don’t care. I don’t care about anything but the here and now. “I’ll help you however I can, I promise. We can do it together.” Fat tears climb my throat as I press a hand to my chest. “I know my family is a total mess, but not even the messiest of us deserves to be exposed like this. Let our mother’s offenses stay in the past.”

For what feels like a year, Micah stares at me, unblinking, and for the first time, I doubt my negotiation skills. Was he expecting me to yell? Fight? Carry on like a lunatic until I alerted the entire campground of his transgressions and betrayal against my family? Maybe he expected me to pull Adele out of bed.

I guarantee she wouldn’t have offered him the same deal.

But then he raises his palms as his voice cuts through the silence. “I want to help you, Raegan, but I’m no longer certain of what you’re accusing me of. I can say with confidence that other than the nondisclosure agreements I signed for Adele prior to the trip, I’ve signed nothing else. I’ve never heard of Willow House, and I’m not even sure what a ghostwriter is, much less why I’d be working with one. I do value honesty, but I also value discernment, which is why I didn’t disclose my primary motive for being on this trip with your family because the secret I’m carrying affects more than just me.”

The moon is bright overhead, lightly illuminating Micah’s features in a silvery blue halo. He appears sincere, earnest. Yet I feel completely ungrounded. If he’s lying, then he’s an even better liar than Peter San Marco. But if he’s not, how can he possibly explain the timeline and sketches and names—

“Raegan, I need you to keep breathing, alright? Nice and slow.” He catches my eye and demonstrates the movement of breath with his hand. I wonder if this is how a therapist works their magic on patients, by casting spells that trick them into believing they’re calm when really they’re a boiling pot of injustice.

“May I continue?” he asks.

Somehow, I nod.

He inhales what appears to be a cleansing breath of his own.“After Luella sent my mom the award for Song of the Year, my mom reached out to her and told her about her prognosis. As you know, she invited Luella to come while she was in hospice—she was weak but coherent. None of us were in the room with them, but whatever happened in there gave my mom peace, which in turn, gave my family peace. She declined rapidly after that night and died just five days later.” He clears his throat. “Unfortunately, the peace we found during her passing didn’t last for me. I found something else instead.”

Even though it’s nearly midnight and the summer air is warm and thick and full of cicadas trying to match the whir of the bus’s AC unit, nothing would have kept me from hearing Micah’s next words. My gaze is fixed on his mouth, my ears tuned to his voice.

“Frank Davenport is not my father.” Other than the clench of his fists, his body is rigid as he speaks. “My brother read me the official paternity test results the day I answered your mom’s voicemail about a box of travel journals she found during the bus renovation. It felt like ... like an answer to a prayer I didn’t even know how to pray. And believe me, that’s a commodity I don’t have much of at the moment.” He takes another breath. “I came on this trip with the intention of searching for leads that might ultimately help me discover the identity of my biological father.”

The pulse beat in my ears that had been so strong only moments ago seems to sputter out entirely.

“Oh, Micah.” It’s all I can utter in light of the compounding grief he’s faced in such a short period of time. First the loss of his mom, followed by a loss I can’t even begin to fathom. “I can’t ... I don’t even know what to say.” I step toward him. “Did you tell Frank you know?”

“No.” Micah shakes his head solemnly. “My brother and I are positive he doesn’t know about this. He wouldn’t have kept this kind of a secret from me. We’re too close. It would have broken his heart.”

“So you agreed to drive for us because you think my mama might be able to help in your search? Is that why you’ve been asking about their last tour in ’94?” Pieces are clicking into place. “That’s why you were drawing a timeline tonight.”

He’s slower to answer this one, and there’s an expression on his face I don’t dare try to interpret. “When I determined that I would have been conceived during the end of that summer tour”—he closes his eyes and the moonlight dances over his head, causing his hair to appear nearly copper—“the man who made the most sense at the time, given what I knew, was ... Russell.”

My jaw drops open. “You thought my dad had an affair with your mom?”

“It was only a hypothesis, one that was quickly proven wrong by his detention in Germany.”

My eyes nearly bulge out of my head when I realize the other ramifications to such a hypothesis. I squeeze my eyes closed for all of two breaths, surprisingly grateful for Germany.

“I’d hoped my mom’s journals might be a help, too, although that was before I started reading them. My mom was definitely not a traditionalist when it came to keeping a journal.”

His sudden tone shift makes me curious. “What does that mean?”

“They’re half doodle, half words, half scraps of random paper—”

“That’s too many halves.”

---