Blind Faith (6 page)

JD Dolan pedaled his Diamondback furiously, straining to gain the momentum necessary to conquer the last hill standing between him and Main Street. Doc Hedeger's purple Victorian became a fuzzy blur on his left side as he rounded the corner. Brakes squealed, a horn honked, but JD didn't care. He sped past the squat orange brick post office—a building so ugly, its existence had almost caused a civil war between the inhabitants of Hopewell.

JD had covered the protests for the Hopewell school newspaper. Mrs. Durandt, the faculty adviser, submitted one of his stories to a statewide competition and it had won second place. Mrs. Durandt had been so impressed she agreed to help JD apply for an internship at a TV station in DC. If the documentary he produced this summer was good enough, then he might get paid to go to DC and learn all about journalism next summer instead of delivering appliances with his dad.

"Slow down you hooligan, you!" Victoria, the Colonel's wife, shouted as JD's bike skidded through the post office's gravel drive, spraying her freshly swept sidewalk with stones. "I'll call Chief Waverly on you, I will!"

JD's only response was a smile as he leaned further over his handlebars. Almost to the top, a new world speed record about to be broken, Lance Armstrong eat your heart out! He wasn't afraid of Hal Waverly. He knew damn well the Chief would be out on patrol, probably helping lost tourists change a flat tire. Hal was always helping someone somewhere, spent even less time at home than he did at his new office.

That was the thing about growing up in a small town in the middle of nowhere. JD knew everything about everyone—and they knew everything about him as well.

Or at least they thought they did. His smile widened into a grin as he crested the hill and raised his hands in victory. He coasted down the other side, along Main Street, passing houses where he could name every inhabitant including dogs, cats, canaries and assorted gerbils and hamsters. He dodged the bakery's van just as Mr. Harris jumped out, right on time as St. Andrew's bell chimed the hour.

Predictable. Boring. That was Hopewell.

This was JD's last summer of freedom. Next year he'd be sixteen and would spend the rest of his summers working. Hopefully he'd make enough to be able to go to college. And after college, more work. But the next seventy-two days were his.

Summer of freedom. He tasted the words. They felt good. He wasn't about to waste a second, he was going to do more living this one summer than he had the rest of his life, cram everything he could into it.

A familiar figure leaned against the lamppost outside of the Rockslide. JD sucked his breath in, felt his head rush, and jammed on his brakes. He screeched to a stop, feigning nonchalance despite the fact that he was huffing, finding it hard to breathe.

"Hi, JD," Julia Petrino said with a smile that made his chest tighten. She was dressed in cut off jean shorts, two spaghetti strap camisoles over lapping, one red and one purple but somehow they didn't clash—not clinging to Julia's perfect body. Her long, blonde-brown hair stirred in the breeze, and he watched as her nipples rose beneath the spandex.

Oh yeah. This was going to be a summer to remember. For the rest of his life.

"I thought maybe you'd forgotten our date," Julia went on, oblivious to his inability to force his gaze away from her breasts. She swung her leg over her own bike, offering him an even more mesmerizing sight of her rear, pale strings of frayed denim brushing the back of her smooth, tanned thighs.

"Uh, no." The words emerged in a croak. JD cleared his throat and tried again, gripping the handlebars tighter to disguise his sweaty palms. "Where did you want to start?"

She shrugged, an elegant motion that set her hair swaying and made JD's mouth go dry. "We've got all day. I picked up some fried chicken from the Rockslide." He noticed the daypack she had strapped to the bike's rear fender. "Want to go up the eastern face? Maybe to the Lower Falls?"

He arched an eyebrow at her, balancing on both pedals of his bike. "That's a mighty steep trail. Sure you can make it all the way?"

Her smile radiated confidence. "I can if you can. Race you."

She pushed off, standing on her pedals, gliding along the short downhill stretch. Then she began to pump hard as she turned right, heading up Rattlesnake Pike. He let her get a head start, admiring the view and certain he could catch up.

JD licked his lips and followed after her, inhaling the intoxicating perfume of his last summer of freedom.

A short time after Hal left, Sarah hoisted her pack on her shoulder and let the backdoor slam shut behind her. No need to lock it—she had nothing left for anyone to steal.

She craned her neck to look up at the mountain towering above her. The summit wasn't visible, not from here. A crowd of trees, just coming into their foliage, waved in the wind as if inviting her to join them. Two hawks spiraled overhead, high enough to appear as small black dots against the afternoon sun.

She shrugged her pack into place and began hiking up the trail. It would be a longer trip up, but this felt better than driving. As if she truly was following the footsteps her heart heard every night—at least on the nights when she could sleep.

The trail curved along the side of Snakehead, coming to a clearing where the Lower Falls could be seen in the distance. Sarah forced herself to stop even though she'd come less than a mile from her house. She looked out over the edge of the gorge down to the dam, the reservoir, up river to the falls. Then she turned to stare downstream at Hopewell: a hodgepodge of whitewashed siding, asphalt shingles, and brick poking through the trees. The only distinct landmark was St. Andrew's bell tower reaching heavenward.

Her heart sped up as the clearing closed around her. Trees and brush crowded together as if preparing for an ambush. This was it. This was where Wright had caught up with them.

Silence reigned here. The buzz of gnats and mosquitoes vanished, soft evergreen needles muffled her footsteps and filled the air with the damp, sweet scent of pine. All she could hear was the sound of her own breathing; even the roar of the distant waterfall was subdued. As if this was a holy place, a sacred place.

She turned in a full circle, her mind filling in physical details two years had erased. The clump of mountain laurel that had been splattered by Sam's blood, the dirt beneath the red oak that had turned into a small lake of crimson after he fell, the churned up leaves where he'd tried to fight Wright, spilling a small amount of the killer's blood, the hemlock tree where the camera card had been found....

She blinked and the sun-dappled clearing transformed into crime scene photos. Blinked again and reality returned. Sarah swallowed hard, found herself breathing through her mouth as if trying to avoid the scent of death.

Her hands gripped her pack straps so tightly the nylon webbing bit into her skin. Many times, swaddled in the mountain's mist, she'd fled here in the middle of the night, trying her best to cross over, commune with the shadows. One night last year, she'd almost made it. The night she'd given up, when she'd decided to break with this world and surrender to the next.

Sarah waved her hand in front of her face as if chasing cobwebs away. She hitched her pack, settling it into a comfortable position, and marched through the clearing without looking back.

August 30, 2006

This will probably be my last entry—who needs words when we'll be together soon? Sorry if it's hard to read, I'm sitting under an oak in the clearing above the dam. You know the place. You died here.

At least that's what the experts finally decided. The rain came too soon for them to do a complete analysis, but based on the photos Hal and his men took, they figured you tried to save Josh, fought Damian Wright, managed to hurt him a little before he killed you. They found a few tracks from a man moving slowly, possibly carrying a heavy object and decided that, for whatever reason, Wright carried you away before returning to take Josh.

Hal doesn't know that I've read the forensic reports. He keeps his copies locked up, refuses to let me see them. But Alan was finally able to get a copy of the FBI report—Freedom of Information Act, they call it.

It sure as hell freed me. Even if Damian won't talk to me, won't look me in the eyes or give you and Josh back to me, even so....now I know.

One year today. 365 days—and nights, god, how I've come to despise those wretched lonely nights, crawling between cold sheets, my feet sliding across to your side of the bed, searching for warmth and never finding any.

Nights that stretch out to infinity, too long and too empty for any human heart to bear. Nights that too soon give way to a new day, to waking up with my stomach tight and the house too silent, too quiet, knowing that I have to face one more day pretending to be alive when really I feel already dead.

It was easier when school was in session. I stayed late, volunteered to advise any extracurricular activity I could, avoided the hallway where the kindergarten and preschool classrooms are at all costs. And this summer has been spent in and out of hot cars, too-cold courtrooms, moldy motel rooms. For awhile I thought I might find you down there in that Texas heat, I spent every moment searching for the courage to face Damian.

But I failed. Now here I am. Buried in the nighttime mist Snakehead is famous for, fog so thick you need a machete to cut through it—that's what you used to say. Now I embrace the fog. If I can't see clearly what's moving beyond it, who's to say it can't bring me you and Josh?

That's the wine talking. You know me—one glass and I'm whistling Dixie. Tonight I've almost finished an entire bottle, saving just enough to take my medicine with.

One year. That's how long mourning is meant to last. One year is all they give you. I seemed to have squandered my year with little to show for it. Instead of completing my journey via Kubler-Ross, I seemed to have taken a detour into despair. It hurts just as much today as it did that first night—maybe more. Then I was numb, in denial, shock. Now I'm awake, aware, alone.

Even Alan seems to think I'm over losing you and Josh. I feel like a secret addict, hiding my drug of choice. Melancholia they called it when the great writers, Poe, Joyce, Hemingway, Browning, Faulkner, suffered it. They used their despair to create art. What have I created?

Worse, if I give it up, if I give you up, allow myself to "move on"—what do I have left?

You wouldn't believe how popular I was today. Everyone in town asking me how I was doing, did I have plans for tonight? Even the Colonel's wife invited me over to dinner, her face all screwed up in a fake smile filled with pity. I told them all that I had plans with Alan. Told Alan I had plans with the Colonel.

When really, I have plans with you and Josh.

That's the last of the pills. See you soon, my loves....

Wednesday, June 19, 2007: Snakehead Mountain

Brilliant shafts of sunlight lanced through the trees, dancing on the path before her. Sarah allowed them to lull her into a mindless rhythm. This area had already been searched multiple times, she knew she wouldn't find anything new around here.

The last time she'd been up here, she had awoken in the back of an ambulance, shivering, her clothes cut open, wet with vomit, an oxygen mask smelling like an old rubber tire secured around her face, a needle pinching her as the EMT started an IV. Alan sat beside her, holding her hand. Flashing lights filled the rear of the ambulance from the GMC that carried Hal and the Colonel, following close behind.

Alan had squeezed her hand, his face tight with pain, skin pale in the bright lights. He told her how he'd called the Colonel and they drove to her house, found it empty and got Hal out of bed to help them search. That when he'd found her she'd been cold, barely breathing but had apparently had thrown up most of the pills she'd taken.

His words passed through her like the mountain mist, without her comprehending anything except she wasn't with Sam and Josh. She had failed.

The next two days were a blur of IV's, charcoal being forced down her only to be thrown up in a black slurry all over her hospital sheets; social workers and counselors and the Colonel—but not the Colonel's wife, thank God for small favors—and Dr. Hedeger, Hal, Alan, and more people poking and prodding her body and her psyche.

The third day she'd been transferred to the psych ward. The psychiatrist who met with her seemed too young to know anything about the secrets of the human soul. He sat back, fingers absently stroking his fashionably narrow stripe of hair on his chin, and smiled at her.

"You won't be here long," he said with confidence, before she said a word to him. "I've read your file. This wasn't really a suicide attempt at all, was it Sarah? It was what we call a gesture. A symbolic cry for help. For attention."

She curled herself up tighter in her chair, her knees drawn up under her chin, and stared at him. He was in his late twenties, only a few years younger than her, yet she felt ancient in comparison. He must have been fresh out of residency, still full of book learning and the unique form of paternalism fostered by the medical training system.

The room was small, silent, all noise deadened by the soundproofing tile that covered the walls and ceiling. He sat in a tweed chair meant to be comfortable yet too heavy to use as a weapon—a twin to the one she was curled up in, her hand stroking the scratchy upholstery as she tried to remember why she was still alive and why it mattered at all.

She breathed in re-conditioned air scrubbed clean of anything living and artificially flavored with vanilla and stared at the man who was so eager to heal her, to send her back out into the world. He knew nothing of her, nothing of the real world.

"After all," he continued when she didn't respond. "A smart young lady such as yourself would have researched the drugs she was taking—if she really wanted to kill herself. She would have known that drinking that much alcohol on an empty stomach would induce emesis before any of the medication could take effect. And she would realize that the clearing where her husband and son died would be the first place any would-be rescuers would look for her."