Undue Influence Page 3

  A twig snapped, and Mr. Collins went bananas.

  “Shut up,” he said to the mutt, but he pulled out his Remington 700 all the same. There were coyotes in these woods, and Mr. Collins, although his sense of himself was large, was no bigger than a shoebox—not to mention as dumb as one and therefore all the more likely to end up a coyote’s breakfast if Adam wasn’t vigilant.

  “Holy mother of God! Put that thing down! It’s just me!”

  “Rusty.” Adam’s employer—and best friend—stepped into the circle of illumination cast by the work light Adam had set up. Adam set aside the ancient hunting rifle. “Or should I say Lady Merlot?”

  Rusty was in his drag persona, Lady Rusty Merlot, a wine-drinking, ratchet-wielding queen who combined Rusty’s real life callings: fixing cars and drinking wine. Lady Merlot’s most popular number, in fact, was a mash-up of “Red Red Wine” and “Little Red Corvette.”

  “Did you come right from Whine?” The bar Rusty performed in was two doors down from his automotive shop, so it was easy enough to go home and change before continuing to another destination, but Rusty enjoyed raising eyebrows and as such seized any opportunity to wander through the wider world as Lady Merlot.

  “What do you think?” Lady Merlot twirled, making her deep red velvet dress—Rusty and Lady Merlot were nothing if not consistent with their brand—flare up. “When you texted last night that you were leaving the great resurrection to this morning, I thought, I simply cannot miss this.” Lady Merlot held up both hands. In one was a toolbox; in the other, a bottle of wine. “I also thought you might need some help.”

  Adam chuckled. “It’s a little early for me.”

  “No, darling. It’s late. You just need to change your perspective on things—one of these days you’ll actually listen to me when I tell you that.”

  I did listen, though. I listened when it mattered the most.

  But that wasn’t fair, as he was forever reminding himself. He’d been nineteen when he turned his back on Freddy. Old enough to know his own mind.

  “Hello, you ugly beast.” Lady Merlot bent down to pet Mr. Collins. Mr. Collins was so stupid, he didn’t seem to understand that Lady Merlot and Rusty were the same person. The mutt was indifferent to Rusty, which was weird because he liked most people, but he adored Lady Merlot—as evidenced by how enthusiastically he was licking her face.

  “Just give him a gentle shove, and he’ll leave you alone.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Lady Merlot dropped the toolbox she was carrying and gave Mr. Collins a squeeze. “I’m not as young as I used to be. I gotta take it where I can get it.”

  Adam glanced at the toolbox. “I don’t think I’ll need those, either. If this thing doesn’t start, I’m not sure a ratchet and a screwdriver is going to make much of a difference.”

  “Which is why I also called Mikey Barnes in Auburn. He can get a fifty-ton rotator down here by eight and tow you out if need be.”

  And that right there exemplified Rusty. He could be a pain in the ass a lot of the time, but he cared about Adam. He had since the first day they met, when, as a seventeen-year-old closet case, Adam had “happened” into Whine with a fake ID on a night Rusty was performing. Since then, Rusty had been a cross between a father figure and a best friend, training Adam as a mechanic and gently helping him face the fact that unless he worked up some courage, he was going to spend his entire life in the closet.

  And when Adam had come out to his family a little later and his parents had freaked out and kicked him out for a while, it had been Rusty he’d run to. Rusty who’d let him sleep on his sofa. Rusty who’d spackled his frightened, broken heart back together.

  Adam still remembered the visceral terror of those days, of being suddenly and ruthlessly cut loose from everything and everyone he’d known. Of being not just an orphan in the sense of facing the loss of his family, but of being placeless. A person without a place.

  Adam belonged at Kellynch. He was of it. Like it had birthed him. His earliest memories were of lying among the vines, looking at the sky. In those Masterpiece Theatre–type dramas they always said the name of the house after the person, and it felt like that applied to him. Adam Elliot of Kellynch Estates.

  What did you become if you were of a place and you lost that place?

  But Rusty had stabilized him. Dried his tears. Cursed his family. Forced him to keep putting one foot in front of the other. He’d given Adam a part-time job, paying him to keep the shop tidy and gradually teaching him to fix cars.

  The funny thing about Adam’s break with his family was that it seemed to affect Rusty as much as it had Adam. Rusty always used to talk vaguely about “the future” when Adam was no longer in Bishop’s Glen. He’d worked up a notion that Adam was “too good” for the town, and that he’d save up a bit of money working at the shop and then go somewhere else for college. He never listened when Adam protested that he liked Bishop’s Glen and had no desire to leave.

  After all the drama, Adam’s family had actually come around pretty quickly. His siblings, bless them, were of the generation for whom homosexuality didn’t register as a big deal. His parents had eventually…softened. Not apologized exactly, but suggested that Adam should come home. And then they’d never talked about it again, except for the odd reference from his mother to “the gay thing,” which was usually in the context of her listing his faults.

  So Adam had moved back home. It was better to have a family than not have one. It was better to be at Kellynch than not be at Kellynch, even though his dad never let him do anything beyond help with the harvest, which was a time they needed all hands on deck.

  Adam had done other stuff, though—repairing barrels, taking in the dock in the winter, re-graveling the drive when it needed it. After he had moved back home from Rusty’s, he’d been seized with the desire to be good. To do his duty and make himself useful to his family—and the only way he’d really known to do that was with handyman stuff.

  His dad had only been forty-six, and he’d been in good health—they’d thought. Adam had somehow thought he had more time. That maybe he could quietly, incrementally prove himself. That with the passage of time, his dad would come to see that of his three kids, Adam was the one who loved Kellynch the most.

  “Or,” Rusty said, breaking into Adam’s reverie, “We can get Mikey to tow this monster somewhere else entirely. Rochester, maybe.”

  Here they went. Even though Adam had forgiven his family for casting him out—it had been the price of coming home to Kellynch—Rusty never really had. And in some ways, he’d never really forgiven Adam for not leaving town.

  Adam frequently reminded himself that Rusty meant well. Even though Rusty often got it wrong, he was the only person in Bishop’s Glen who knew the real Adam. The only person who advocated for him. Who arranged for a giant-ass tow truck when Adam needed one. And that wasn’t nothing.

  He made a noncommittal noise in response to Rusty’s suggestion that he have the RV towed out of town. As with Adam’s mother, the path of least resistance with Rusty was usually to just let him talk.

  Rusty rose from petting Mr. Collins and eyed the RV. “So when do you have to be out of here, and why didn’t you do this yesterday?”

  Adam sighed and looked at his watch. “Six, and I just…ran out of steam last night.” Packing the library had turned into a surprisingly maudlin exercise. After he’d finished, he’d returned to his pinot and allowed himself, for the first time, really, to wallow. To truly let it sink in that all his father’s work, and his grandmother’s, had come to nothing.

  Unfortunately, the proverbial “life is short” lesson his dad’s death had brought had come too late to really make a difference. Why hadn’t he outright asked his dad for more responsibility? Why had he assumed that with enough time, they’d come around? He should have made his case for what he wanted, clearly and without equivocation.

  Anyway, it was all water under the bridge now. Wine down the drain.

  “Al
l right.” Rusty stood and slapped the side of the RV. “Let’s try and start him.” Rusty, in contrast to probably every other mechanic everywhere, gave cars male pronouns. It still made Adam smile, all these years later.

  Adam got himself settled, stuck the key in the ignition, and turned it.

  Some wheezing occurred.

  “Come on, pretty boy!” Rusty said.

  The engine turned over, and Rusty cheered. “Do you even have a license for this thing?”

  “You don’t need a license for an RV.” You did, however, need a special endorsement on your license to drive one of this size in New York State, but he’d never bothered getting one since he’d always planned on ignoring the mobile part of his mobile home. “Anyway, I’m only going to Mark’s.”

  “Mark’s.” Rusty curled his lip. It was a mannerism of his, one that was amusingly similar to one of Adam’s mother’s. As much as Rusty did not approve of Wilhelmina—and vice-versa—they were both masters of conveying disapproval nonverbally.

  Mark’s place was about as far from “leaving town” as Adam could get. Rusty would view it as a step backward—which on the surface of things, it probably was. Adam was going from living in his RV on the spacious grounds of Kellynch to parking it in his little brother’s backyard.

  “I know you won’t listen to me,” Rusty said, “but you know you can park this at the shop until you decide your next move.”

  “I appreciate it, but I’m good at Mark’s, for now at least.” What Rusty didn’t understand was that, as much as it made Adam sound like a Boy Scout, he needed nature in his life. It was going to be hard enough to leave the protective embrace of the vines at Kellynch. Setting up in the asphalt jungle of the auto shop, which was located on the outskirts of downtown in a strip of light industry, dive bars, and boarded-up buildings, did not appeal at all. Mark at had a small house, but a big backyard.

  “Well,” said Rusty, “you’re going to make quite the splash in Uppercross.”

  “I know, right?” Adam did a jazz-hands gesture. “The gimpy queer brother in the RV is here!”

  Rusty rolled his eyes. “I’m surprised they went for it.”

  “It turns out, as status-conscious as they are, the prospect of free childcare onsite was too much to pass up. They did try to get me to leave the RV and move into their basement, though.”

  “I might not even argue with that. Mark and Chloe’s place isn’t ideal, but at least it doesn’t have wheels.” Rusty did the lip-curling thing again.

  Adam reached out the open driver’s side window and patted the side of the RV. As he got older, it was kind of…fun to defy Rusty. Maybe he was having a belated adolescent rebellious phase—against a drag queen mechanic instead of his actual family. “Hey, I love this place. It’s plenty big enough, and it’s all mine.” All paid for, too. Once the writing was on the wall for Kellynch, Adam had given some thought to buying a small place in town, but he didn’t want to take on a mortgage. He was allergic to debt, basically. So, yeah, he was moving in with his little brother, but it was his best option at the moment, given his priorities.

  “Can I give you a lift?” he asked Rusty.

  “Sure. But only because it’s early enough that no one will see me in this hideous thing.”

  “Walk around and pull the steps up when you close the door, will you?”

  After Rusty got settled in the passenger seat, Adam pressed his foot down slowly on the gas, and the RV eased into motion. He had to swallow a lump in his throat as he maneuvered past the vines.

  “And we’re off,” Rusty said as they pulled onto the road. “On to bigger and better things.”

  Bigger and better things.

  Adam could not agree with that assessment. He was happy to have a short break from his mom and Betsy, but without Kellynch, he was pretty sure life was going to be, well, small and worse.

  He forced himself not to look in the side mirror as he drove away from Kellynch for the last time.

  Chapter Four

  Eight years ago

  “Hey! Adam!”

  Adam stopped and peered into the window of the ancient, rusty Mustang that had pulled up next to him on the deserted road. It was that guy from work—Freddy Wentworth.

  Freddy was twenty-one years old. Worked during the week at the Bee’s Knees and on weekends at Miller’s Inn, where his mom cleaned rooms. Allegedly the son of a migrant worker his mother had hooked up with. Known for his tom-catting ways and his propensity for swearing and smoking and just generally getting into trouble. He’d dropped out of high school when he was a junior, so Adam hadn’t overlapped with him there.

  It was possible that Adam had asked around a bit about Freddy Wentworth.

  What he hadn’t had to ask about, because he could see them with his own eyes, were Freddy’s sunny good looks, which were so at odds with his persona. Freddy put the car in park, leaned across the center console of his car, and speared Adam with an intense look. It was dark, but Adam knew those eyes were an impossibly deep blue, topped by thick, fair eyebrows. His clean-shaven jaw, which was also sort of at odds with his bad-boy image, was lit up by the dashboard lights. It was strong and angular and…hard to stop looking at.

  “You still walking everywhere?” His lips quirked into a grin.

  “Yup.” Adam’s lips did the same thing. It was like Freddy’s face had some kind of magnetic force in it that made Adam’s copy its expressions.

  Freddy had been offering Adam rides home after work the last few weekends, and Adam had been declining, though he wasn’t sure why. Probably out of self-preservation. Freddy Wentworth was gorgeous enough, and compelling enough, to make Adam consider abandoning his commitment to pedestrianism. Which was exactly why he was hesitant. He was crushing pretty hard on Freddy, but he was smart enough to know that no good could ever come of it. Freddy, a full-fledged adult, and a bit of a wild one at that, was out his league.

  “A mechanic who walks everywhere. It’s kind of funny.”

  Adam shrugged. “I like to fix cars more than drive them, I guess.”

  “Why?”

  Adam had always loved to walk, even if he did sometimes pay for it later with pain and the need for more downtime. There was something meditative about walking, especially when his wanderings took him into his beloved woods. It got him away from all the critical voices in his head—including his own. But that would sound dumb to someone as cool as Freddy, so instead of answering the why do you like to walk? part of the question, he decided to address the why do you like to fix cars? part. “Cars are like puzzles.” He thought of his mother ragging him earlier today about getting his freckles bleached and Rusty doing the same yesterday about his leaving town. Speaking of critical voices… He smiled. “Also, cars don’t talk back.”

  Freddy cocked his head, looked like he was going to say something more. Adam held his breath. But why? What mysterious thing could Adam be wanting to hear? Freddy to force him to accept a ride?

  Maybe they could just…chat. That had been happening lately, too. Freddy had been stopping by the valet stand on his way in for his shift, or on smoke breaks, to shoot the breeze. They talked about cars, mostly, once Freddy found out that Adam’s full-time job was working at Anderson Motors.

  In the end, though, Freddy didn’t say anything. After staring at Adam for a few moments, he winked, said “You be careful,” and vroomed away.

  Present day

  “Uhh, Adam. I am so sick.”

  Adam’s brother, Mark, was lying on the sofa with his eyes closed when Adam came into the house. Mark had his phone in one hand, though, and it was open to Facebook.

  Mark’s wife, Chloe, looked up from her own phone and rolled her eyes. “Try hungover.”

  “Adam!” Adam’s niece and nephew greeted him in their customary fashion, hurling themselves at his legs. He’d been living in his RV in the backyard for two weeks now, and the kids were in heaven. They were his biggest fans. Well, they were pretty much his only fans, but they made up for i
t with the extremeness of their devotion.

  “Hi, munchkins.” He picked up four-year-old Mark Jr. and ruffled six-year-old Whitney’s hair.

  Mark sneezed in his face.

  “Mark Jr., on the other hand, is actually sick,” Chloe said. Before Adam could reply, she was on her feet, looking out the living room window at the street. “There’s the Escalade.” She heaved a put-upon sigh that reminded him of his mother’s, which was funny because Chloe and Wilhelmina were related only by marriage.

  “Parking right in front of our house, I suppose.” Even though Mark’s eyes were closed, Adam was pretty sure they were rolling.

  “Where else?” Chloe tapped her fingernails on the window.

  “Are Henry and Lulu ever going to move out?” Mark asked.

  Adam’s brother and sister-in-law had a frenemies sort of relationship with their neighbors across the street, the McGuires. They had all gone to high school with the McGuire kids, Henry and Lulu, who still lived in their parents’ house despite the fact that they were in their late twenties. Lulu and Henry had been popular at school, and they still were among the townspeople. As far as Adam could tell, that popularity was merited. Both siblings were fun-loving and likable—not that Mark and Chloe saw it that way.

  Uppercross was a mixture of modest old bungalows like Mark and Chloe’s and newer McMansions built when their owners bought a bungalow, tore it down, and built a new house in its place. The McGuires fell into the latter category, and Mark and Chloe hated them for it. Not because they hated their house, as Adam did, but because they resented their wealth. To Mark and Chloe, everything was a zero-sum-game. If the McGuires were doing well, it must be at Mark and Chloe’s expense.

  “It’s not enough that they have to have four cars, they have to park them right in front of our house?” The McGuires’ fleet of luxury cars was an evergreen source of suffering for Mark and Chloe.