My Darkest Rose

Chapter 9

Jack goes Home

The next morning he found a note from Fauna on the kitchen counter.

Jack,

I think it might be best if you get a hotel. We can keep Theodore, but I can't handle being in a fight with Gwennie right now on top of everything else. I'll call you from the office.

Love,

Faun

He'd all but decided he was going back to Indiana. He needed to, not just because of what happened in his apartment, or the painting, but also to see what was going on. If Gwennie was right that Jackies planned to descend on Moonwood in a couple months, he needed to make sure the gate was fixed and that Mandy knew what to expect.

He considered turning off his phone and going MIA for a while, not even telling Fauna where he was going, but he knew that was the child in him wanting to prove a point. Making her worry wasn't going to do him any good.

He flipped the note over and wrote:

Going to Moonwood to work on securing the property - seems like a good time to get away for a few days. I'll text you.

P.S. I'm taking Theodore with me. City cat could use a little country.

Jack

He rented an SUV and had it delivered to his sister's house. By the time it arrived, it was past two, and he had a seven hour drive ahead of him.

He texted Andrea just after loading Theodore in the back and said he would be out of town for a few days. She didn't reply.

He wanted to say more, that he was sorry, that he wished he had an explanation but what he knew didn't make sense. He'd been down this road before. When he'd told the police what he saw happen to Rose, they thought he was either insane or high. They doubted his story so utterly he even began to doubt himself.

This time, he wouldn't tell anyone what really happened. He'd rather them think him a jerk or an opportunist, even a liar, than call him insane. He didn't ever want Andrea or Fauna to look at him the way the people of Tacoma did, like he was a pariah.

Memories of that time haunted his drive south as storm clouds darkened the western sky. The closer he got to Tacoma, the more claustrophobic the surroundings, from the wide-open flat fields of the north to the rolling hills and dense forests of the south.

His home town nestled like a tick inside Hoosier National Forest, just south of Lake Patoka. It wasn't the kind of town one drove through on their way to some place else, it was too out-of-the-way for that. The only real reason anyone ever came to Tacoma was to rent a boat or fish, but not on a Wednesday night. The only people there would be locals, and they all knew Jack. The best he could hope for was that he made it through town without being noticed. Word would spread soon enough when he got to Moonwood.

Large, fat drops of rain began to spatter the windshield as he entered Orange County and passed the city sign, WELCOME TO TACOMA, INDIANA'S MOON CITY.

The irony wasn't lost on him. Jack, Tacoma's most notorious resident, owned the very plot of land the town was named after.

Just north of the city limits, he pulled over at a Dollar General Store. He hadn't stopped at his apartment as he left Chicago, and had virtually nothing with him other than the one change of clothes he packed and his phone charger.

He was glad to see only one other car in the lot. If he was lucky, no one inside would recognize him and he could make it all the way to Moonwood without drawing any attention.