Scott Wittenburg - See Tom Run

Should he invite her and the kids along? No, that wouldn’t work at all. There would be no way he could track down Mindy Conkel with his family there with him.

Whatever he schemed to do, he knew that Peg was going to be suspicious. After all, he no longer had any family in Smithtown since his parents had migrated south to bask in the Florida sun. So what on god’s green earth could prompt him to suddenly have to make the two-hour drive to his former hometown?

All of a sudden, he had an idea.

Frank!

Instead of making up an excuse for driving to Smithtown, he would pretend to be going somewhere with Frank for the day. He would ask his friend to cover for him so that he could take a very important out of town trip. Frank would no doubt assume that this had something to do the secret affair he had alluded to, which would be fine-he had almost seemed to think it was cool that Tom had played around on his wife.

So what could he tell Peg that he and Frank were going to do for an entire day? Then he remembered Frank suggesting that they drive up to Cleveland sometime and check out the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.

Perfect.

Later on tonight, he would call Frank to see if he would be game for this scheme. The hardest part would be how to deal with Frank’s wife, Julie. Frank would have to make himself scarce for the day in case Julie and Peg touched base with each other-there was no way he could have him tagging along while he looked for Mindy Conkel in Smithtown. Maybe Frank would be willing to go to Cleveland by himself.

Tom realized that this would be asking an awful lot of his friend. Frank was as true-blue a friend as could be, but this just might be a bit more than he’d be willing to do. Lying was one thing; having to find a way to spend an entire day incognito was really pushing it.

But luckily for Tom, Frank Warren owed him a favor. A big favor. Earlier that year, Frank had run into some financial problems and covertly asked Tom to loan him a fairly large sum of money. Frank had a weakness for gambling and had lost a bundle in a real estate investment scheme that his wife didn’t know about. One day, the Warrens needed money for an emergency situation but Frank had all but drained their savings account dry. So Tom had saved the day, and Frank’s ass, by loaning him the money under the table.

Frank had only paid a fraction of the loan off so far. He had promised Tom that he would pay off the balance before the year’s end.

And the year was all but over.

Tom smiled to himself. If Frank was hesitant about helping him out with his plot, he would simply remind him of the debt he still owed him.

When Tom pulled into his driveway, more than the wheels on Peg’s car were spinning.

It was a beautiful winter morning-cold and crisp with a cloudless blue sky. Tom walked out of the service department at the Jeep/Chrysler auto mall, spotted his beloved vehicle parked on the other side of the lot and walked briskly toward it.

After he slid into the driver’s seat and fired up the engine, memories of the longest dream in history returned with a vengeance. It dawned on Tom that he hadn’t been in this car since the day that the paramedics had pulled him out and rushed him to the hospital. The familiar feel of the soft leather seats and his grip on the steering wheel triggered the vibe like taking hold of a live electric wire. He glanced over at the passenger seat, half expecting to see Erin Myers telling him about her grim, unhappy life as an orphan. But the seat was of course unoccupied.

Tom dismissed his disappointment and focused on getting out of the tight parking space. He pulled out onto the street and checked the fuel gauge, elated to see that he had a full tank. He turned on the CD player, selected the third disk and pressed ‘play.’ Steely Dan’s Hey Nineteen shot out of the speakers and into his head like a jolt of strong coffee.

Tom’s thoughts were a mishmash of hurtling fragments. In the back of his mind was the huge lie he was living by driving to Smithtown. He had never been comfortable with lying and for that reason was a notoriously lousy liar. But the present situation forced him to go against his better judgment and spin an incredibly lame alibi to cover what could only be considered a compulsive, irrational shot in the dark-or just plain madness.

Here he was, a grown adult with a fairly intact grip on reality, embarking on a two-hour road trip in order to track down a woman he had only seen once in his life nearly twenty years ago. And why was he undertaking this ill-conceived mission? Because he had finally decided after all this time to find out what had ever happened to the child this woman had told him was his.

Maybe not exactly grounds for institutionalization, but certainly a valid argument for OCD.

Because in the midst of all of this deceit and irrationality, Tom was still asking himself the same thing over and over: Why?

Why was he doing this in the first place? What did he expect would come from all of this in the unlikely event that he did locate Mindy Conkel and she in turn granted him what he sought? The peace of mind in knowing once and for all that he had an illegitimate kid running around somewhere? A kid who would be a young adult by now and probably didn’t give two shits who his or her father was-the father who had not only abandoned him or her but hadn’t even been willing to admit paternity?

What good could possibly come from this?

Tom couldn’t think of any, really.

But he could certainly think of plenty of bad things that could come from this-one being that if Peg were to catch him sneaking around like this, he might as well pack his bags and leave town. There was no doubt that she would throw him out of the house-he was certain of that. He and his wife had based their entire marriage on mutual trust and honesty. Not only had he failed to mention this “blemish” in this former life, he had gone a step further and lied to her about this whole ridiculous mission.

Peg would ream him a new asshole and file for divorce all in the same breath.

Tom considered calling the whole thing off as he drove west toward I-71 south. He could call Frank on his cell phone and catch him before he drove all the way to Cleveland by himself. Then he could either join him or they could both simply go back to their respective homes and tell the wives they had changed their minds about going to the Rock and Roll Museum.

But Tom knew he wouldn’t do this. Because something deep inside was telling him that he must follow through this. It was the same thing that had told him to track down Erin Landry.

He needed to know the truth.

He pulled onto the I-71 south ramp, cranked up the volume on the CD player and sat back comfortably in his seat. In a couple of hours, he would get to the bottom of what this was all about.

As he neared the Smithtown city limits, Tom was barraged with childhood memories. It had been nearly six years since he’d visited his hometown and he wondered how much of the small southern Ohio burg had changed. He didn’t expect much since the town of 20,000 always seemed to be standing still in the grand scheme of things. Smithtown had been under economical duress for as long as he could remember and suffered from the same ills as the other small towns in Appalachia: high unemployment rates, low wages, sub-par health care and an alarming rate of poverty. The few friends he knew of that still lived in the area were either doctors or drunks-there seemed to be little else in between.

He passed by the several gas stations that greeted him and continued south until he spotted a phone booth in a small strip mall. He pulled into the parking lot, went into the booth and began thumbing through the white pages.