PROLOGUE
Born unsettlingly quiet on 1987’s very last October day, William Josiah Robertson IV had to be forced to scream. His mother used to tell the story when he was a boy, always a note of chiding about her tone—“After all that trouble to have you, it would’ve thrown a real wrench in things if you’d bailed out on us”—but he’d found it in himself to wail in the end. This was, by all accounts, quite a relief to everyone, because in addition to arriving a little short on breath, William Josiah Robertson IV was brought into the world intended for a very specific destiny.
The previous William Josiah Robertsons, all three of them, had each scrapped and scraped their way through a rugged, outdoor childhood, and been forged, one by one, into Bill Robertson, the owner and proprietor of Robertson Family Farms. The first Bill Robertson had founded the place more than a hundred years ago, using the money he made fighting in WWI to purchase the land; he’d planted acres and acres of apple trees, and huge fields of other crops besides. The second Bill Robertson, his son, had taken over operations in the late 1940s, and turned the place into the gem of Glenriver, Ohio.Situated a few hours south of Lake Erie on the eastern side of the state, Robertson Family Farms was able to draw tourist traffic from neighboring cities like Columbus and Cleveland, especially in the autumn. Bill Jr. opened a market, which became a sort of general store, and leaned into the beauty of Ohio’s breathtaking fall foliage by creating a whole calendar of events to encourage visitors.
Eventually, Robertson Family Farms was covering most of their annual expenses on their autumn seasonal traffic. Between hot mulled apple cider handmade on the property, a pick-your-own-apples operation, hayrides, a corn maze, a bakery, a petting zoo, and a huge selection of pumpkins to choose from, people were coming in from all over by the time thethirdBill Robertson was handed the reins in 1979. He looked the part, certainly, tall and broad-shouldered and quintessentially masculine, just like the Bill Robertsons who came before him. But his business sense was limited, and his temper legendary, and under his stewardship, little problems seemed to become big ones in the blink of an eye.
William Josiah Robertson IV was supposed to be the answer to those problems. He was supposed to grow up a little rough and tumble, with a big laugh and an easy charisma and a deep well of natural leadership and courage; he was supposed to face the world with the cheerful, boyish audacity that would, in time, yield a proper Bill Robertson, of the sort who was meant to inherit the farm.
But from the first, the youngest William Robertson was a Will, not a Bill. Where he was supposed to be rugged and stalwart, he was sensitive and soft; where he was supposed to be strong and hale, he was scrawny and weak, easily injured, often ill. Hewassmart, that much was true, but smarter than anyone wanted him to be, or knew what to do with. “Toosmart,” as his father had commented whenever Will made a suggestion thathe particularly didn’t like. His parents had hoped for a Bill Robertson with charisma and panache, a head for numbers and business and the bottom line; instead, Will was awkward and offbeat, with a head more suited for charting the meadow plants visited by various species of butterfly.
He tried, though. Will tried. He did his best to grow into the man his family needed him to be. But the older he got, the more obvious it became to everyone that there simply wasn’t a Bill Robertson within him.
When Will left Glenriver at eighteen, in the middle of a night he’d spend the next sixteen years attempting to forget, he’d known two things for certain. The first was that he’dneverbe Bill Robertson, not if he spent his whole life trying. A Bill Robertson, after all, was meant to find himself a nice June, or Jessica, or Jillian, with an eye towards settling down and producing the Bill Robertson to come; no matter what else happened, that wouldneverbe Will. He’d known that about as long as he’d known anything, and while he’d done his best to do his familial duty and look away from it, he didn’t figure there was any point in pretending anymore.
The second thing Will knew, as he walked down the farm’s long gravel driveway for the last time, was that itwouldbe the last time. Eighteen years was enough to spend trying and failing to bloom in the wrong sort of earth; he wouldn’t ask an apple tree to grow in soil that couldn’t drain, that left it so drowned by what it was meant to draw in, to live on, that its fruit rotted on the branch. Will left it all behind—the town, the farm, the weight of his family’s expectations. The ways in which it had all gone wrong.
But no matter how far he got from that long, gravel driveway, from the ancient outbuildings half-rotted with decay, from the old farmhouse and the long, neat lines of gnarled apple trees, he could never quite outrun the looming specter of BillRobertson. Even decades later, long since settled into a life more suited to the person he is, some nights Will can almost feel the man that he was supposed to be hovering behind him, breath harsh against the back of his neck, waiting with dwindling patience for Will to turn around and face him.
ONE
“William,” Selma says, her voice crackling through the car’s speakers from the less-than-stellar phone connection, “why in God’s name you are driving to, of all places,Ohio?”
“I was actually born and raised there,” Will says. He changes lanes, and in spite of using the turn signal, his rental car’s dodgy lane-detection feature beeps angrily at him before it shuts off again. “You don’t have to say it like it’s a curse word. And don’t call me William; nobody calls me William.”
He can practically hear Selma rolling her eyes as she says, “That’s because you don’tknowanyone but me. And you didn’t answer my question.”
“I know people,” Will mutters, sullen. “Lots of people. People I work with; people who live in my building;you, unfortunately. A whole collection of exes?—”
“You know what I mean,” Selma says. He can hear the faint tapping of her nails—always long, always painted a different color—against the polished oak surface of her desk. “You’d think you lived in the middle of nowhere instead of Chicago. Youneverleave that stupid lab, you haven’t been to a single oneof my networking events?—”
“Which are for lawyers,” Will points out. “Because you are a lawyer. But I, Selma, am not a lawyer—I’ve never been a lawyer—I’ll neverbea lawyer—so I don’t see why I should network with them.”
“Because you couldmeet one.” Selma groans, but Will, knowing where she’s going, also groans; the effect has a brief choral quality, like they’re complaining in harmony. “A niceresponsibleman, you know, with agoodjob and acleanapartment and absolutelynolizards?—”
“Seriously, why can’t you just have a couple of kids?” Will demands, nearly missing his exit in annoyance. He’s reached the part of this drive where healmostremembers where he’s going, but not quite, and he barely makes it onto the correct state route. A truly unsettling billboard that was definitelynotthere sixteen years ago—a single, contextless green eye, ringed with half of a pair of cat-eye glasses—stares bone-chillingly down at him as he continues, “That’s who you’re supposed to be like this with, you know: your own children. Notyour middle-aged friends who are older than you?—”
“You’re not middle-aged,” Selma says, clucking. “Don’t say that; I’m only three years younger, so if you’re middle-aged that basically meansI’mmiddle-aged, and if that’s what you’re saying, I’m sending someone to have you killed.”
Will rolls his eyes, glad she can’t see the amused smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sel—you’re twenty-nine. You’ve been twenty-nine for years now. But I, I’m sorry to tell you, will turn thirty-five on Halloween night?—”
“Ahhhh!” Selma’s fake scream is nothing to write home about, but Will can’t quite suppress a chuckle, anyway. “The horror! The ancient, wretched horror! I can’t bear it!” Her voice drops into a more serious tone as she adds, “I know that, and it’s part of my point. You’re toooldto be going out with guys who steal your wallet?—”
“That was one time?—”
“Or leave you stranded at a rest stop in Lake Forest?—”
“There were extenuating circumstances?—”
“Orlet his iguana loose in your bedroom while you’re sleeping?—”
“Well, okay, he…” Will starts, and pauses. That had been Anthony, Will’s most recent ex; he doesn’t, honestly, have much in the way of excuses to make for Anthony. Weakly, he has no choice but to go with: “I mean, she was a pretty laid-back iguana, at least?”
Selma sighs. “Why are you driving to Ohio, Will? When I met you in that bar—what was it, ten thousand years ago now?”
“Couldn’t be more than five or six,” Will lies. He falters, briefly, as he drives past another strange billboard, with what seems to be: “Good Lord, is that theother eye?”
“What?” Selma sounds more put-out than worried when she adds, “If you’re hallucinating eyeballs, okay, you’rewaypast the point where you should have pulled off to the shoulder?—”
