Black Creek Crossing

Chapter 9

HE ROUNDTREE COUNTRY CLUB WAS SPRAWLED OVER more than two hundred acres on the south side of the town. As Ed Fletcher turned his Mercedes through the gates and started up the long drive that wound through the maple forest toward the clubhouse that generations ago had been the home of his great-great-grandfather, he heard a small sigh of happiness escape his wife’s lips.

“Aren’t they glorious?” she asked, gazing at the trees with the same wonder he’d seen in her eyes the first time he brought her to the club, when they were still teenagers. And it was true — the maples were glorious, their foliage just beginning to take on the blaze of color that would build steadily for the next few weeks. On the day of the annual Maple Cup father-son golf tournament — which Ed and Zack had won last year — the area around the club would shimmer with the golden light reflecting off the leaves of the ancient trees. “It’s just so wonderful that your family never cut them down.”

“They cut enough others down that they could afford to save these,” Ed observed dryly. “And it didn’t hurt that they put the whole thing in a trust for the club either.” He shook his head as he scanned the forest, and though he said nothing, both his wife and son knew exactly what he was thinking: how many houses he could have put on the property, if only his great-grandfather hadn’t been so shortsighted as to turn the property over to what had then been the Roundtree Golf, Croquet, and Lawn Tennis Club. Ed suspected that his great-grandfather had founded the organization not so much out of love for any of those three games, but because he wanted his property preserved in the condition in which he’d inherited it, even though he could no longer afford to maintain it. Thus the trust, allowing what was now the Roundtree Country Club to hold the land and every structure on it in perpetuity, so long as they preserved certain acreage — including the Maple Grove — as wilderness.

Or, at least, his great-grandfather’s definition of wilderness, which wasn’t exactly the kind of untamed forest most people associated with that word. The Maple Grove — which had come to be capitalized at least in the members’ minds, if not in any of the legal documents that pertained to the small forest — was kept free of anything that might distract from the magnificence of the trees themselves. No undergrowth was allowed to sprout from the soil around their roots, no twig or branch was allowed to lie where it fell for more than a day or two. Only the leaves could stay on the ground, for one of old Thaddeus Fletcher’s few pleasures in life had come from scuffling through them in the fall, listening to them rustle around his feet.

Given the hard-eyed, angry scowl that adorned the portrait of Thaddeus that hung over the fireplace in the club’s main dining room, Ed Fletcher suspected it more likely that he liked crushing the leaves under his boots. Still, whatever his great-grandfather’s motivations, the Roundtree Country Club was a magnificent place that was open to everyone in Roundtree, assuming, of course, that they could afford the initiation fee and the annual dues. The irony was not lost on Ed that Thaddeus Fletcher himself probably wouldn’t have been able to afford the fee and dues had he not managed to unload the property onto the club in the first place, but it wasn’t something either he or any of the other members ever talked about.

He pulled the Mercedes up to the front door, turned it over to the valet, and followed Joni and Zack into the clubhouse. At least a hundred people had already gathered there, the men dressed in perfectly pressed khaki pants and Ralph Lauren shirts, the women in the kind of peasant skirts that real peasants never would have been able to afford.

“I’m going to go find Heather Dunne and Chad Jackson,” Zack announced, heading for the French doors that led out to the terrace and the swimming pool beyond.

“You and Heather stay out of the bushes,” his father said with a wink that earned him a warning look from his wife. “Hey, you can’t stop them from growing up,” he said when Zack was gone.

“Why don’t I think that ‘growing up’ and ‘seducing innocent girls in the bushes behind the pool house’ are synonymous?”

“It worked with you,” Ed teased. “Wouldn’t you say you grew up that night?”

Joni lifted an eyebrow. “Me?” she countered. “As I recall, exploring those bushes was my idea, not yours.” Glancing around to see if anyone was watching them, she licked her lips lasciviously. “And I wasn’t any more innocent then than I am now. Myra was always the religious one. Want to go back there again?” She reached out and stroked his chest, slipping her finger between the buttons to touch his bare flesh. “Just for old times’ sake? Let yourself be seduced by the poor girl from the wrong side of the tracks one more time?”

“I think we’d better leave it to the kids,” Ed replied. “Let’s go get a drink and see who’s here.” He’d started toward the bar when Joni put a hand on his arm, stopping him. When he turned back to her, the mischief of a moment ago had vanished.

“I know you didn’t really want to hire Marty,” she said quietly.

Ed shrugged. “Hey, I promised, didn’t I?” His expression clouded. “But if it doesn’t work out, I’m not promising to keep him on.”

“It’ll work out,” Joni said. “Myra’s the only family I have left, and…” Her voice trailed off, then she added, “I just want her closer to me, that’s all. Everything’s going to be perfect — I can just feel it.”

Ed turned away, but not quickly enough to keep his wife from seeing the doubt in his eyes.

Seth Baker saw Zack Fletcher coming out of the clubhouse, and in response he found himself moving toward the shelter of the pool house before he even realized it. Then, his skin prickling with the sensation of someone watching him, he stopped short. But when he turned around, Zack was talking to Heather Dunne and Chad Jackson, and most of the rest of the kids seemed to be gathering around them like iron filings drawn to a magnet. And no one was looking at him.

Then he spotted his father standing on the terrace about thirty yards away. Though he was talking to Mel Dunne, Seth knew that his father was also keeping an eye on him.

If he didn’t at least try to mix into the crowd around Zack and Heather, he didn’t even want to think about what his father might do to him when they got home.

Feeling his father watching every move he made — and feeling the sting on his backside — Seth edged closer to the group of teenagers. There were almost a dozen of them, all of whom he’d known all his life. But even when he was only a few feet away, not one of them spoke to him.

Not one of them even looked at him.

And they certainly didn’t make room for him in the circle around Zack and Heather. In fact, he thought Chad Jackson and Josh Harmon moved closer together so there would be no room for him, and once more he was seized by the urge to disappear into the pool house, where he could just sit by himself until it was time to go home. He stole a glance at the clubhouse, and his father was still there, still watching him. Then, as he saw his father finally turning away, he heard Heather Dunne say something that stopped him from slipping away to the sanctuary of the pool house.

“Get out! Your mom actually sold that awful house? To who?”

“My aunt and uncle,” Zack replied.

“And they’re actually going to live in it?” Heather asked, shaking her head when Zack nodded. “Oh, God — I could never do that! It creeps me out just thinking about it. I mean, isn’t there blood all over the place?”

“Jeez, Heather,” someone groaned. “They didn’t just leave it there.”

Heather Dunne shot the groaner a dirty look. “Well, even if they didn’t, it’s still too gross!” Then, abruptly, she changed the subject. “So what’s your cousin like?” she asked.

Zack rolled his eyes. “You won’t believe. She’s—” He hesitated a moment, and as he searched for the right words to describe Angel Sullivan, his eyes fell on Seth Baker and his lips twisted into a smirk. “She’s the kind of girl who’d go out with Seth,” he said.

Seth felt his face burning as the rest of the kids burst into laughter, and then, with his father mercifully gone from the terrace, he turned and fled into the pool house.

He was still there an hour later when his father came to find him.

“What the hell kind of kid are you?” Blake Baker demanded. “You think you’re going to get anywhere in this world by hiding?” Seth bit his lip, knowing better than to say anything. “You think I didn’t see what was going on earlier? You think I didn’t know what you were doing, pussy-footing around the rest of the kids? It was just a show, Seth. I knew it, and they knew it. You know why they didn’t let you into their little group? Because you didn’t make them, that’s why! And guess what? Your little show didn’t impress me any more than it did them. So here’s what’s going to happen: You and I are going to enter the father-son golf tournament, and we’re going to win.”

“I don’t even know how—” Seth began, but his father cut him off with a look so icy it made Seth’s blood run cold.

“You’re going to learn,” he said. “You’re going to play golf, or I’m going to know the reason why. Understand?”

Seth nodded, afraid to utter even a single syllable.

“Good,” Blake Baker said. “Now let’s go home.”

Seth could tell by both the tone of his father’s voice and the look in his eyes that when they got home he was going to be hurt even more by his father than Zack Fletcher’s words and Zack’s friends’ laughter had hurt.