Orphans of Wonderland Read Online Free PDF Page B

be dead. Whenever Joel thought of them—or even himself in that context—they were frozen in time, forever young, not middle-aged men of fifty, some with children as old as they’d been when they were friends, and certainly not murder victims. Why hadn’t he stayed in touch? Sure, he’d had his dark times—they all had to one extent or another—but was it really so hard to pick up a phone every once in a while and check in, or to fire off a quick email? Then again, he didn’t even know Lonnie’s number, much less his email address. In fact, he’d lost his contact info for the other guys too.
    Shame on me , Joel thought. Shame on all of us.
    In a way, his separation from them was not only inevitable, it was also necessary; another casualty of what he’d been through, collateral damage from walking away from that life, that time and those memories. Lonnie and the others were irrevocably tied to Joel’s past, and in order to recover, he’d needed to start fresh elsewhere. His healing depended on acquiring an entirely new life, and that’s exactly what he and Taylor had built after leaving Massachusetts and reestablishing themselves in Maine. But how long had he been all right now? A long time—several years—so there was no excuse for not getting back in touch, or at least making an effort, and he knew it.
    Still, they’d been through an ordeal together when they were younger, something no one outside their circle knew about because they’d never told.
    The black car…
    Joel’s hands began to shake. He hadn’t thought about that in a very long time, but it was always there, in the shadows and fog, in his dreams and nightmares.
    He pushed that aside and refocused on Lonnie. He wondered if the others knew, and if they’d attended Lonnie’s funeral. Had they wondered where he was, why he wasn’t there? Far as he knew, they all still lived in Massachusetts. Joel was the only one who’d left the state. But then, he’d always been the pioneer of their group. He was the one who went to college, who made that first step away from the group and out of town. He was the one who broke free, became something more than a townie with a nowhere job and a house full of kids. But it had cost him, and cost him dearly. It had worked out in the end though, hadn’t it? He’d been through hell and survived. And he had Taylor—always Taylor—the great love of his life. She saved him, and with the sheer power of her love and dedication, prevented him from forever burning in those horrible flames.
    With a plethora of emotions throttling him, Joel took a shower, got dressed, then wandered back downstairs to the living room. Standing over the coffee table, he stared at the disk for several minutes, trying to convince himself he could take a quick look, then put it aside. But he knew the truth. Once he looked, there’d be no turning back. Not for him. He simply wasn’t wired that way. He could already feel it rising in him, this need to investigate and get to the bottom of what happened to Lonnie. Maybe there could be a redemptive quality to looking into this and possibly even solving it. Last time he’d been buried, drowned in the madness, but maybe this time could be different. Or maybe it would end him, finish the job once and for all and send him plunging off the edge of the cliff he’d been hanging from for so long.
    A memory of Lonnie came to him, one from just after high school. He was laughing that big, booming laugh of his, eyes alive and mischievous as ever. Could that rambunctious kid really be the same person who would later father Katelyn Burrows? How could Joel have ever imagined that in some bizarre and distant future, Lonnie’s child would seek him out to help solve his murder? Like so many other things from Joel’s past, it all seemed impossibly beyond belief.
    But there it was.
    â€œFuck it.”