Story15 Jan 2009 07:31 pm

Rowen is visiting her brother.

Gazing down the long corridor of trees that sheltered the road just barely from the driving rain, Rowen squirmed in her seat and curled into the cold door of the car. The struggle to get comfortable she knew to be vain even as she craned her neck up to look at her roommate.

“If you need a break from driving, I’m not going to be able to get any sleep.”

“I’m good for now,” he said. His voice bore the same hesitation she felt to stop in the hideous weather that had kept them from so much as getting out to stretch their legs for the last 60 miles or so of the trip out to Rook’s remote property. Hitting the air for the frantic Chinese fire drill to switch drivers had resulted, last time, in her knee deep in the slippery mud, straining at the bumper to make sure they’d be able to get the car out of the slurry.

“Ok,” she responded lazily after few moments of wheel-churning silence. “We’re not far out anyway, I don’t think. You’ve never met my brother, have you?”

“Not so far.”

“He’s a good guy.”

“So I hear.”

“…different,” Rowen said with a little bit of an irrepressible smile.

“So I hear,” he repeated, laughing. “So are you.”

“I guess I just come from an unusual family.”

Turning to narrow her eyes at the darkness that blurred by through the rain running down the passenger side window, Rowen tried to read out some glimpse of ancestral history in the wood and storm beyond. Despite not having grown up here, she and her brother had always felt a deep attachment to the Celtic terrain well-footed by her hereditary predecessors. She’d been outspokenly supportive of her brother’s otherwise lunatic decision to purchase land with the last clutch of change in his graduate-student pockets and move out here. Nobody else saw it coming, and while Rook hadn’t discussed it with her prior to, and he called her up in his offhand way to tell her he was moving across the Atlantic with as much cavalier dismissal as one might remark that they were going to stroll down to the market for a pint of milk after work so don’t hold up supper on their account. Despite the lack of warning, she’d smiled knowingly into the phone, feeling as though she’d been aware of his plan all along.

“You’ll come and visit me, won’t you Ro?” she remembered him saying, a rare and private flash of vulnerability in his voice.

“Of course, you ridiculous ass.”

The pair of siblings, just 14 months apart in age with Rook being the senior member of the duo, had never lived very far apart, but any sting said separation would have brought to Rowen was mitigated by the simple sensation of ‘rightness’.

“Watch it!” Her hands struck the dashboard seconds before the vehicle lurched as the car swerved in the protesting mud to avoid a white flash of road sign. Having flickered out of nowhere like some kind of ghostly flame in the deluge, it marked an even fork in the road that Rowen remembered only dimly from the one other time she’d been out to Rook’s house.

She and her roommate sat breathing hard in the vehicle for a moment, both startled from the trance of the long drive by the sudden stop. The growling idle of the engine mingled with the tinny percussion of rain striking the roof and body of the car.

“So,” he began, clearing his throat. “Which way?”

“Fuck,” Rowen hissed, leaning over the dash to peer this way and that out of the windshield. “I’m pretty sure we need to go right.”

“Pretty sure?”

The old sign was worn beyond legibility, but she doubted it had said ‘ROOK’S PAD THAT WAY →’ to begin with. Nonetheless, she squinted at it, and caught sight in the darkness of a flickering shape that swung from the sign, helpless to the gusts of the wind.

“Wait, there’s something out there.” Rowen unbuckled her seatbelt and huddled against the bite of the rain as she jogged up to the sign. The flapping object was a plastic zipper bag with paper folded inside of it, marked in black magic marker with the letter ‘R’ and duct-taped to the sign. Wrenching it off, she crowded herself back into the passenger seat of the sedan and tore into the bag.

‘Dear R,

Take the left fork. I know you feel like you should take the right fork, but take the left one. See you soon.

Love,

R.’

“What is it?”

“A note from my brother. Take a left.”