Read Online The Darker Side by Cody McFadyen - Free Book Online Page A

people and animals inside, usually. It does here.”
    He’s right. I’ve experienced this before. Between the ages of six and ten, before my mom died of cancer, we used to take family driving trips. Mom and Dad would synchronize their vacation time and we’d spend two weeks trekking halfway across the U.S. and back.
    I remember the hard parts of these trips; the unending sound of the wheels on the road and the world rushing by, the intense, almost painful boredom. I also remember playing car games with my mom. I-spy, counting “pididdles” (cars with only one headlight working). Raucous, off-tune car songs. Most of all, I remember the destinations.
    In a four-year period, I saw great parts of Rocky Mountain National Park, Yellowstone, Mount Rushmore. We crossed the Mississippi in a few places, ate gumbo in New Orleans. We rarely stayed in hotels, preferring to camp instead.
    One year, Dad got especially ambitious and drove us all the way to upstate New York in the fall. He wanted us to see the Catskill Mountains, where Rip Van Winkle was supposed to have snoozed. It was an unbearably long trip and we were worn out and cranky by the time we arrived. We pulled into the campground and I got out of that car as fast as I could.
    The trees were incredible, either evergreen or with leaves on the turn, short and tall, young and old. It was cold, cold like it is here, and I remember the bite of it on my cheeks, my breath in the air.
    “Not only do I have to pee in the woods,” my mother had groused, “but I have to get goose bumps on my ass while I do it.”
    “Isn’t it beautiful, though?” my dad had said, a little bit of awe in his voice, oblivious to her anger.
    That was one of the things I loved about my dad. He was eternally young when it came to viewing the world. My mom was more careful. Like me, she had a cynical edge. Mom kept our feet on the ground, which was important, but Dad kept our heads in the clouds, which had its own value.
    I remember her turning to look at him, ready with some smart quip that died on her lips when she saw the actual joy on his face. She’d pushed her grumbling away and turned to look as well, finally seeing what he was seeing, getting infected with his wonder, stumbling into his dream.
    “It is,” she’d marveled. “It really is.”
    “Can I explore?” I’d asked.
    “Sure, honey,” Dad had replied. “But not too far. Stay close.”
    “Okay, Daddy,” I’d agreed and had bounded off, heading into the trees.
    I’d kept my word and stayed close. I didn’t need to go far; fifty steps and I had found myself alone, more alone than I’d ever been. I’d stopped to take this in, not so much afraid as interested. I’d arrived in a small clearing, surrounded by a number of tall trees with dying leaves that hadn’t given up the ghost just yet. I’d spread my arms and tilted my head all the way back and closed my eyes and listened to the stillness and the silence.
    Years later I’d find the body of a young woman in the woods of Angeles Crest and remember that stillness and silence and wonder what it was like to be killed in the middle of nowhere, to have that solitude as a cathedral for your screams.
    I was ten years old on that trip to New York, and it was the last trip we took before my mom got sick. When I think of my parents, I always think of them then, at that age, just thirty and thirty-one, younger than I am now. When I think of being young, I remember those trips we took, I-spy and pididdle and are-we-there-yet and my mother’s complaints. I remember my father’s wonder, my mother’s love for him, and I remember the leaves and the trees and the time when stillness held beauty instead of the memories of death.
     
    LISA’S CONDO IS NEW CONSTRUCTION, located near the center of Alexandria. The buildings are nice, but don’t really fit their surrounds.
    “Kind of like California in Virginia,” Alan observes, putting voice to my thoughts.
    The condo is brown wood and