The Association Read online

  THE

  ASSOCIATION

  A. K. CAGGIANO

  Acknowledgements

  Ally Beaton

  Maddie D

  Andrew DiCesare

  The guy who drives around my neighborhood, smoking cigars and keeping an eye on all the houses

  Copyright © 2020 A. K. Caggiano

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  The Association is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental, and would, frankly, be pretty damn wild, don’t you think?

  Cover Art by Eerilyfair Design

  First printing 2020 by A. K. Caggiano

  For more, please visit:

  http://www.akcaggiano.com

  No chickens were harmed in the writing of this book.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 1

  Look presentable. Presentable? When had Ivy Sylvan ever not looked presentable? The thought screamed through her mind, her grip tightening on the steering wheel. Where the hell did her brother get off suggesting that she would show up to his house—and that was another thing, not his basement lair at their parents’ place, not his shitty studio apartment, but his fucking house—and look anything less than exceptional? The fact that she was going to prove the necessity of his reminder by appearing to be, in no uncertain terms, a hot mess when she pulled up was purely coincidental and frankly total bullshit. She planned to tell him off for that comment—what did he know about being presentable anyway—right after she finished thanking him, of course.

  But Ivy’s anger was doused as her hatchback rolled to a stop outside the gates of Avalon Estates. How she’d found the community at all was mostly dumb luck. Her GPS had gone all wonky in the historic downtown of Ogden Bluffs a few miles up the road, and she had to get guidance from a local, wandering into a cutesy holistic shop along the village’s main street. She would have chosen the bakery next door on smell alone, but it already boasted a line that ran out onto the sidewalk. A lady with feathers braided into her hair and a far-off look gave Ivy spotty directions after a long, thoughtful, or perhaps thoughtless, pause. She also offered her a protection crystal that she had personally blessed for $29.95. Ivy insisted the directions were all she needed.

  An elaborate gate reached up and over where Ivy could see through her windshield, massive with detailed scrolling work in the wrought iron, a fanciful “A” worked into its center suggesting she was in the right place despite that this was not at all what she expected. The gate connected to a sturdy brick wall the height of which made her feel she’d somehow been wrong about fences her whole life. It sprawled out in either direction and disappeared beyond where she could see. Ivy took in a deep gulp of the stale air circulating in the car, her skin prickling as she peered through the bars to the community beyond.

  There was a hard tap on her window, and she yelped. A man stood with his face pressed up against the glass, and Ivy sighed, eyeing the guard booth just off the winding drive. She scrambled with the wrong buttons, first unlocking then relocking the car twice and unrolling the back, passenger window. She plastered on a wide smile when her fingers finally got it right and offered him a salutation at least two octaves higher than her normal voice.

  Wearing a thick mustache and mirrored aviators, he slung an arm up on the roof of her car, leaning down. “Miss? How can I help?”

  “Oh, right, sorry.” Ivy grabbed her ID from the center console—her brother had warned her about the security though she hadn’t really bought it—and held it up for the guard. “I’m here to see Oakley Sylvan at 210 Ironwood Place.”

  “Are you?” He took her license and examined it, his brow crooked over the sunglasses frame. “You must be Mr. Sylvan’s sister then.”

  Mr. Sylvan? She wrinkled her nose. Who calls him that? “That’d be me.”

  He held the ID up next to her face. “I suppose I see the resemblance.”

  Ivy frowned. She actually liked her license photo. She’d woken early the day of the renewal, applied a subtle contour to straighten out her nose, the perfect her-lips-but-better nude to accentuate her Cupid’s bow, donned a lavender top that complimented the hazel of her eyes, and was first in line at the DMV with a green tea latte in hand. She wasn’t nearly as put together now, but the reflection she caught of herself in the guard’s sunglasses was a lot worse than she’d expected. God, she looked rough.

  She managed another smile as she plucked her license back. “I did the big chop a little while ago.” Her photo had full-bodied curls with blonde highlights, but today she was sporting shoulder-length hair with significantly grown out roots. She’d missed wiping off some of her day-old, flaking makeup by the shoddy lights of a gas station bathroom hours ago, and the deep circles under her eyes that no concealer would deign to cover had gone a bruisey sort of purple. No, she didn’t look like her license picture, but it hadn’t been taken 24 hours after the worst series of events she’d ever endured either, so it wasn’t exactly a fair comparison.

  But it was close enough, apparently. His mustache bristled in the direction of the gate. “All the way up the road, take the bend to the left, then another left, and you’ll find Ironwood Place.” He stuck his finger over the threshold of the window, pressing on Ivy’s personal space bubble. “No detours.”

  He swaggered back to the brick station beside the fence, his almost-official blue polo tucked into pants a bit too tight, hitching them up a tick as he gave her one last look before flicking a switch for the gate. Huge and ornate, it swung open with a long, low creak that pierced her ear and made her shiver. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, willing it to go faster so she could finally get to her brother’s house.

  Her brother’s house. There was that fact again, eating at her like mosquitoes at twilight. The same brother who, up until only a couple months earlier, had been living with their parents for his twenty fourth year straight. This was what dreaming felt like, she thought. Not the good, fuzzy-feeling kind, but the weird, something’s-not-right-but-I-can’t-figure-out-what kind. She glanced quickly down to her lap, but no, she had on pants; this wasn’t a nightmare. Yet she still felt under dressed.

  Despite its name, Avalon Estates didn’t appear to have any estates. There were plenty of trees though, and if it weren’t for the paved road and the high walls, she would have thought she had gotten lost. Thick branches reached overhead, blocking out the ear
ly-morning sun, and her car wound down a shadowy road until she crested a hill and saw it all laid out on the other side.

  Nestled into a hollow below, a neighborhood sprawled out along a web of streets. The homes were placed far apart, sitting indiscriminately around the loop that made up the neighborhood’s middle and then along the many legs that jutted off of that, not one particularly similar to another.

  Ivy was taken aback by the incongruity, slowing a moment to take a longer look at the top of the hill. From the gate and the community name, she’d expected nearly identical McMansions with beige siding and faux stone and tiny lawns all mowed and edged every Tuesday by some guy named Cliff who definitely couldn’t afford to live there, but these were markedly unique. Her eyes pinged from a cherry log cabin to a fanciful Victorian to a set of boxes all configured atop one another like a piece of abstract art. And then they were gone as the road dipped down and curved around a bend carved into slick, black rocks.

  She surfaced surrounded by more trees and finally came to the first crossroad where she slowed, but before she could veer left, a sound rumbled up the street and was upon her from the right, loud and thunderous. A pickup truck, gargantuan, bright red, and streaming smoke from its chrome stacks blew out ahead of her, taking the turn and rumbling up the way she’d come. Ivy couldn’t see the driver as it passed, the truck was too tall, but she got a good whiff of exhaust with her window down, coughing as the sound disappeared behind her.

  Catching her breath and checking both ways, she proceeded on, finally breaking out of the thickest part of the forest and seeing her first house up close. It had a long, twisty drive, sat up on a manicured hill, and was bubblegum pink. “The HOA can’t possibly allow that,” she muttered, remembering the time her parents railed against their own homeowners’ association for fining them for leaving the trash bins on the curb a day longer than allowed. But then she came to the next house, set off far enough from the first that neither could see the other, a standard ranch except for the four story tower built into its center like a lighthouse in a sea of trees.

  Ivy looked back to the road just in time to slam on the breaks. A creature darted in front of the car, and as it scurried away into the shadow of the trees on the other side of the street, she rubbed her eyes, sure that whatever it had been couldn’t have actually been that brilliantly green. Great, now she was hallucinating too.

  Ivy blinked and pulled her eyes back onto the road staring straight ahead until she got to the next stop sign at Ginkgo Loop. Here, the road leveled out and a sidewalk began. The houses were a bit closer together, but just as distracting in their styles with sprawling lawns, set back from the main road.

  A young man clad in gym shorts and a sweat-soaked shirt jogged up to the stop sign that Ivy had just reached. She waved him across, and he picked up speed. When he grinned and waved a thank you, her face went all hot, and she looked away. After a quick breath, she popped her head back up, hoping to catch a last glimpse of him as he jogged off, but he seemed to have completely disappeared. Just poof, gone, magically, the sidewalk running either way empty.

  Then she heard a groan and stuck her head out the window. “Oh, my god, are you all right?”

  “Fine!” he called back, hopping up onto his feet from the spot on the asphalt he’d just slammed into. He wiped at his brow and took off at double speed.

  “At least I didn’t run him over,” she mumbled, turning carefully down Ironwood Lane. “The last thing I need today is a dead body to deal with.”

  Chapter 2

  Number 210 was not what Ivy had pictured. Of course, she had no idea what she should have been picturing—never had she imagined Oakley buying a house at all, especially not in an exclusive, gated community—but the German-inspired cottage with its dainty wooden shutters and charming cobbled stone walk was an odd choice for her brother who was decidedly neither dainty nor charming. He wasn’t even German.

  Ivy pulled all the way up the winding driveway and slumped out of the car, the heft of the previous twenty-four hours sitting squarely on her shoulders. It was less than a day ago she’d shown up at her parents’ place in almost the exact same way. The worst of the wreckage had hit her the day before, but losing your job, your apartment, and your boyfriend all within a single evening will do that to a human. Of course, it will do that to any being, really, human or otherwise, but that was Ivy’s current plight.

  Ivy didn’t think she was special, but she did know she was supposed to be a certain way, and right now she definitely was not that way which had made facing her parents even worse than normal. She expected disappointment—heaps of it, really—but when she’d finally mustered up the courage to ask if she could stay with them, her eyes rimmed red and snot bubbling at her nose as she stood with a backpack full of what was left of her worldly possessions on their front step, she never would have guessed the answer would be a resounding “no.” She also never would have guessed sadness could harden into despondent anger so instantaneously.

  Even though they wanted to help, they said, they just couldn’t. It wouldn’t be good for her, not for Ivy who’d always gotten straight As (”Way back in high school, Dad”), and who was always so responsible and tidy (”Because a hair out of place was a sin, Mom”), and who always just seemed to have it all together (”We haven’t really talked in a while, have we?”).

  But Ivy had been out of the house for seven years, gone right after high school graduation and had only been back for holidays. They insisted she’d have a much easier time of it if she just found her feet again instead of relying on them. In fact, she’d thank them for this in a week’s time! Oh, and not that it had any bearing on the decision at all, but Oakley had only just moved out a month prior, and, you know, being empty nesters was really suiting them!

  So after sitting in her car for a few hours and wondering if she really was going to do it, she did, in fact, call her baby brother who’d gone from deadbeat to homeowner in the span of thirty days. Oakley had been quick to invite her to stay, and he hadn’t even needled her about what got her into this homeless, jobless mess, not that Ivy wouldn’t have been willing to rage about what a complete and total fucking asshole Travis had turned out to be. But then Oakley wasn’t the biggest fan of details.

  Ivy took a breath, pushing those thoughts from her mind, and raised a finger to the doorbell with a squint. It wasn’t just a button, but a little golden bee. She depressed its butt and heard a muffled, old-schooly buzzer sound from somewhere inside. The place was huge, she realized, leaning back on her heels and glancing upward. Living rent-free for so long really paid off.

  “Ivy League!” With arms outstretched, he burst from the door and pulled her into an embrace that lifted her off her feet. She caught the smallest glimpse inside the house, a long, shadowy corridor, before the door was promptly shut. “I can’t believe you’re here!”

  “Don’t call me that,” she said, the breath knocked out of her.

  Oakley gave her a big shake, her feet dangling above the ground. He was a tall, lanky guy despite always stuffing something in his face, and he still had that scruffy beard she remembered, though now he’d managed to even it out. He looked back at her with eyes the exact same hazel as her own, but she was surprised they weren’t their usual bloodshot. “You’re here!”

  Ivy slapped at his arms to be put down. When he did, she inhaled sharply and gestured to everything. “What the hell?”

  “I know, right?” With a crooked smile, he punched her arm and she stumbled in place. She’d stopped being bigger than him ten years ago, but he never seemed to remember that.

  “So?” She stared at him, her eyes wide, waiting. “How?”

  “How?” His face which already seemed to be in a perpetual state of confusion, twisted that much more, then relaxed. “Oh, ha, it’s a…well? It’s not a long story, just a weird one. But we don’t have time for that, we have to go to the clubhouse.”

  “The what?”

  Oakley pointed behind her. “Saf
’s going to take us.”

  “Good morning!”

  There was a woman standing directly behind Ivy that she was sure hadn’t been there a moment earlier. She was tall, at least Oakley’s height, and slender, hugging a stack of paperwork to her chest with spindly arms. Her bulbous eyes were enhanced by the round lenses of her glasses, slightly crooked bangs brushing over the black frames. Ivy spied the car parked down at the street, still running.

  “Safiya Hakim.” She extended a hand of knobby-knuckled fingers and nibbled nails, gave her a curt shake, and quickly pulled her hand back when a buzzing sounded from somewhere on her person. Safiya blinked big, dark eyes, felt her pockets, almost dropped her papers, and finally retrieved her phone. Mumbling an apology, she took a step back. “Yes, Rufus?…Oh, all right…No, no problem…Okay, see you then.” Rolling her eyes, she pocketed the phone then put on a thin smile. “Shall we?”

  Ivy looked to Oakley. “Right now?”

  Her brother shrugged. “They’re, like, real picky about who comes in and out here.”

  “Meeting the board is just a formality.” Safiya pushed her glasses up the bridge of her long nose. “Everyone will be more than pleased to have another Sylvan living in Avalon.” The woman turned and strode quickly down the drive, her hair, thick and dark, swinging behind her.

  “Oakley!” Ivy looked down at her shirt, stained with an unfortunate dribble of ketchup from a guilty fast food stop. “I didn’t realize you meant I’d literally meet these people immediately.”

  He shrugged again in that way that only he could as if to say everything’s fine and actually meaning it. “Don’t worry. Saf said it’s just a formality.”

  Ivy sat in the front seat of Safiya’s compact, running her hands through her hair as she pulled it from its tieback. She flipped it over to one side and then the other, trying to figure out which half of her face was less greasy. Oakley had advised her she’d be under the scrutiny of the HOA board which she thought was a little silly: he owned his house, so what right did anyone else have to tell him who he could or couldn’t have in it? But then she wasn’t exactly in a position to argue.