City of Echoes by Robert Ellis

memory that came to Matt when he couldn’t sleep and floated in the blur—his father walking out the front door with his suitcase and driving away. Forever away.
    It was all about a single question.
    Why?
    Matt thought that he deserved an answer. And after his return from Afghanistan to New Jersey, he called his father at his office in New York City. When the woman who answered the phone claimed that Mr. Jones didn’t have a son by the name of Matthew Trevor Jones and hung up on him, Matt laughed at her bitchy attitude, went on the Internet, and found a home address. As it turned out, his destitute asshole father—dear old Dad— lived in Greenwich, Connecticut, off Indian Field Road. From the satellite photos Matt pulled off the search engine on his computer, the man was slumming it in a palatial mansion on Long Island Sound. A large yacht, more than seventy feet long, was anchored just offshore.
    Matt chewed it over for several days, then decided to make what amounted to an hour’s drive north into Connecticut. Dizzy with curiosity, he had no real plan and no guarantee that his father would even be home. The road was desolate, the walls and gates sparse. As he neared the water and his father’s mansion came into view, he pulled over and got out of the car. He was beginning to feel nervous and wondered if confronting the man might be a bad idea. Maybe he should have written his father a letter or made a second attempt to reach him on the phone.
    He looked past the ten-foot wall and through the gate. Although there was an entrance for show on the side of the house, he could tell that the place faced the sound. He could also tell at a glance that this was no mini-mansion. Instead, the building was big and loud and had the appearance of being way overdone. But what struck Matt most about the place was how cold it felt—more like a hotel than a home, more public than private, almost institutional but almost Vegas as well.
    How could anyone build something so cheap and tasteless on such a magnificent piece of land?
    A woman in a chef’s uniform walked outside and lit a cigarette. Matt saw her and stepped back but wasn’t sure that he’d been quick enough. Easing forward, he peeked through the gate. Her back was turned. She’d missed him. She didn’t know that he was here.
    He glanced back at his car, debating whether or not he should leave. He could remember seeing a dirt road on the satellite photos that wandered through the woods encircling the house and provided public access to the water. It took a few moments to find it. Tall reeds and dune grass covered the entrance. By all appearances, the way had been deliberately obscured by the people living on Indian Field Road, who didn’t want strangers around.
    Matt parted the reeds, climbed over the gate, and started down the road. It was a summer evening, about an hour before sunset. He could see the rear of the mansion over the wall and, through the thick foliage, six cars parked in a lot that could easily fit ten more. As he passed what he thought was the kitchen door, he looked for the woman smoking the cigarette, but she must have gone back inside.
    He kept moving, thinking. As he started around the bend, he began to hear voices coming from the other side of the wall. After another twenty-five yards, they became more clear and he stopped. They were close. Too close to be seen over a ten-foot wall. Matt took a step forward, his eyes dancing from tree to tree until he found the right one. All he needed was another five, maybe six, feet.
    He grabbed hold of the first branch and started climbing. Once he had the height, he found a space within the leaves and inched his head upward until his eyes finally rose above the wall. There were three people sitting on the other side of the pool on the main terrace. It was a safe bet that the woman was his father’s second wife. The two men looked to be about five years younger than Matt and no doubt were their sons. They were