Wanderlust (17 page)

How had this happened? I’d agreed to
stay the night in their camp. They were hiking back to the nearest
town in the morning and they’d take me with them. Oh God, oh God.
Had it been a lie to keep me there? Or I’d just been too
convenient.

The world was exactly as awful as my
mother had said it was, but I didn’t even wish to be home. Like the
girl in the story, the true story, I wanted to take a canoe onto
the river, to let it slip over the waterfall and never have to
worry again.

This time, Hunter wasn’t here to catch
me. No god of thunder to keep me safe.

I was alone, though I’d lost something
precious, something important along my harrowing trip through the
trees. I’d lost fear. So let me die, let me hurt. I didn’t care,
and the detachment lent me strength.

With a force unknown, I snapped my
head forward. My forehead cracked against the man on top of me. I
shoved him off me and started to get up. Other hands dragged me
down, but I kicked and screamed. I bit down on fingers until I
tasted blood and felt my teeth grind against bone.

Blows rained down on my head, my
stomach. I fell to the ground, gasping for air but taking in sand.
Pain blossomed all over my body as they closed in on me. They
huddled around me and kicked, and I stared up at the sky, my body
jostled about by their currents, tipping over the edge of the
waterfalls and falling, tumbling to a welcomed
conclusion.

A crack rang out and one of the men
fell over my body. There was shuffling and shouting, then another
crack and a thud beside me.

Hunter
,
Hunter, is that you?

Someone came to stand over
me, blocking the stars. Not Hunter, I realized. Never Hunter
because I’d left him. Just an ordinary man, and I understood what
had sent the girl out into the canoe.
Why
did you catch me from falling?
I wanted to
die.

CHAPTER
THIRTEEN

At the current rate of
erosion, scientists predict the Niagara Falls will be gone in
around 50,000 years.

I woke up bound to a bed,
my arms held immobile beside me, my whole body weighted down and
sweating.
No, not again.
I fought, kicking and punching my way out of the
restraints. A man appeared over me and held me down, shouting
something I couldn’t make out.

“
Hunter!” I screamed his
name, though I didn’t know whether it was in anger or a call for
help. My heart beat against my chest like a drum. God, he’d made me
this way. If he was going to domesticate me, he had to damn
well
keep
me from
running away
.

Resigned, I slumped down on the bed,
sobbing quietly. I was the crazy one.

“
It’s okay, you’re okay,”
a voice said.

He sounded relieved, I
thought.

I opened my eyes to see an older man
blink at me with worried eyes. “It’s going to be okay.”

With a sigh, I said, “Just do what
you’re going to do.”

“
I’m not going to hurt
you.”

Oh sure, like I’d believe that. Then
again, Hunter had never really lied about his intentions. That was
just the warped way he saw the world.

This man didn’t seem like he would
hurt me. I had to doubt my ability to read people considering my
lack of experience and my general state of confusion where Hunter
was concerned, but I didn’t feel threatened.

He was old, with wrinkles falling over
rheumy gray eyes and more hair in his eyebrows than on his head.
His plaid shirt was faded and worn but clean, buttoned all the way
up.

“
Who are you?” I
croaked.

“
You don’t
remember?”

I closed my eyes. The memories were
slowly coming back, even though I didn’t really want them to.
Running through the woods, meeting those boys. Fighting them
off.

I met his gaze. “You shot
them.”

He nodded. “They brought it on
themselves.”

I looked down and saw that the sheets
had been tucked around me—not tying me down but keeping me warm. My
skin was clammy. I struggled to sit, and the old man kept his
distance, probably having learned his lesson after struggling with
me earlier.

“
You asked me not to call
the police, so I brought you back here to heal. The fever broke
last night, I think.”

“
How long?”

He looked up, a little uncertain. “Oh,
maybe three days. Sorry, not entirely sure. Time passes a little
different when you’re used to being alone.”

Yeah, I could sympathize with
that.

I finally glanced around the cabin,
taking in the small bookcase with pulp thriller novels, the open
shelf with blackened pots and pans, the small, ancient-looking
television.

And only one bed.

He caught my line of thought. “I slept
on a roll in the corner.”

I’d put him out of his bed. “I’m
sorry.”

“
Don’t you worry. It was
just like camping again. But now that you’re awake, maybe you want
to reconsider calling the police. Or at least let me take you to a
hospital. They can check you out better than I can.”

I shook my head. “No cops.”

My heart had gone from twisted to torn
right in half when I’d run from Hunter. But however much I might
rage against him on the inside, I didn’t want him behind
bars.

Unfortunately, waking up didn’t mean I
was fully healed. Though I had no broken bones that we could tell,
there were enough bruises that my body wanted to rest all day long.
The man’s name turned out to be Jeremiah, and he was generous with
his space, his food, and his stories.

True to his word, he never laid a
finger on me. In fact, he was exceedingly careful of my personal
space in such cramped quarters. He knew what had happened to me
from how he’d found me. He told me the first day I woke up that
“those boys” wouldn’t bother me again, and I couldn’t summon enough
compassion to ask if they had lived or died.

Instead Jeremiah shared with me
stories of a young man in the Wyoming wilderness, tales of hunting
bear and running from geese that I wasn’t sure whether to believe
but I enjoyed all the same.

Three days after I’d arrived, I was
sitting at his kitchen table eating scrambled eggs and hotcakes for
breakfast. He began telling me a story of how he and his friends
had gone up to “the falls” for a buddy’s bachelor party. There was
something about smuggling a stripper over the Canadian border, but
I had to interrupt.

“
Niagara
Falls?”

“
One in the same, darlin’.
You ever been?”

“
No, but I want
to.”

“
Oh, it’ll blow you away.
Right beautiful it is. ’Course nothing’s as beautiful as what Candy
had to show us—”

“
How far away is
it?”

He scratched his forehead. “About five
hours or thereabouts.”

My spirits sank. That was a long way
away for someone with no transportation. Or money. I toyed with my
eggs, but I could feel Jeremiah’s curious gaze on me.

“
You know,” he said.
“There was a time I had dreams about those falls, even if I knew
they wouldn’t come to nothing.”

“
Really?”

I figured he was just saying that to
make me feel better. How many other people hung their hopes on a
waterfall? But I appreciated the gesture.

“
Well, if you haven’t
noticed, I’m a bit of a hermit. But even us hermits, we have people
we look up to. Something to work toward. And ain’t no hermit better
than the Niagara Falls hermit.”

I made a face. “You’re pulling my
leg.”

“
Nuh-uh. He was a real guy
back in the eighteen hundreds. Francis something-or-other. He lived
on an island right in the falls. He’d climb over some wooden planks
and sit on the end like he was on a dock somewhere. People would
scream, thinking he was going to fall.”

Despite myself, I was intrigued. This
hadn’t been in my book.

“
Did he fall?”

“
Nope. Lived there happy
as you please for years. Then one day he was gone into a shallow
portion to take a bath like he always did. Went under and never
came back up. Just goes to show.”

“
Uh. What does it go to
show?”

“
Goes to show people think
what they want to think. The man was highly-educated,
well-traveled. Been to all these countries. Famous for his music.
But he goes to live in the falls and everyone assumed he was
crazy.”

“
But you don’t think
so.”

“
Nah, he just knew a good
thing when he found it. The falls is beautiful, so why should he
leave?”

I couldn’t stop thinking about that
man. The hermit. He knew a good thing when he found it. Was that
Hunter, living isolated in his truck? Or was I trying to
romanticize something so it would sit easier with me? It didn’t
really matter. In the end, Hunter did what he did. And like
Jeremiah said, people would think what they wanted to
think.

In two more days I was strong enough
to go outside. I took short walks but kept close to the cabin. I’d
need to leave here soon, and that meant I needed money.

I asked Jeremiah about it when he came
to stand on the porch to smoke his pipe.

“
I know this is a long
shot, but you wouldn’t know anyone around here who needs graphic
design work, would you?” I sighed. “That’s pretty much the only
marketable skill I have.”

He seemed thoughtful. “Nope, can’t say
that I do. I barely know what to do with those computer things, but
I have one if you want to look around for a job or
something.”

I raised my eyebrow, doubtful. “You
have a computer?”

He grinned, showing off his missing
tooth in the front. “Bet you thought I was just an old stupid
hillbilly, didn’t you? Well, I am. But my daughter keeps trying to
get me hooked into that stuff, so she got me set up. It’s in the
kitchen cabinet underneath the sink.”

Excited, I ran to the door. On a whim,
I stopped and gave him a kiss on his cheek.

“
You’re not old or
stupid.”

His eyes danced. “But I am a
hillbilly.”

I laughed on my way inside. “And I
love you for it.”

I pulled out the laptop and cables,
which were pretty new as far as I could tell, and thankfully not
messed up from being in a damp, enclosed space for so long. There
was a little router that pulled up a signal, though it was slow all
the way out in the woods.

The cursor waited patiently for me to
type some search terms about a job nearby. Or maybe there would be
some kind of assistance program for homeless people—which I
basically was at this point. Or if I were really desperate, I could
try to get in touch with my mother.

Instead I typed in Hunter’s full name.
Apparently there was a B-list actor of the same name so I had to
scroll through a few pages of search results until I found the one
I was looking for. A news site reporting on a conviction for
aggravated assault.

Nineteen year old
parishioner…

Spiritual advisor and close
friend of the family…

Abused his position of
authority…

Guilty and sentenced to
five years in a medium security prison…

A priest?

Jesus Christ, Hunter had
been a
priest
. No
wonder Laura had been so sure of him. And yet, what I’d told her
had been true. How had he come to this? Why had he done
it?

I went back to the search results and
found a new article dated one year later.

U.S. Federal Appeals court
tossed out the conviction on Friday…

New evidence brought
forward by the victim’s friend…

Had fabricated the story
over a series of emails…

Released on bond pending
official exoneration…

The conviction was
overturned.

My palms felt sweaty on the keyboard.
A girl had lied about him. Lied to get attention or for whatever
reasons, and he’d gone to jail for that. Where Hunter had gotten
raped. The article didn’t say but I knew it with a certainty
bone-deep. A priest who had raped a teenage girl would be exactly
the kind of person targeted for assault by the other inmates. He
wouldn’t have stood a chance against those men.

The first article had a picture of
him. I returned and studied it.

The same features. The same
man.

But the younger Hunter had a smooth
face and guileless eyes whereas the Hunter I knew always wore a
certain level of scruff. And his eyes were haunted. The pain he
held was more marked now that I had seen him before.

Even though the picture had been taken
from the shoulders up, I could see the changes in his whole body.
His cheeks were more gaunt now, his shoulders broader and thicker.
He’d gotten leaner while bulking up on muscle. He even held himself
differently, more proud before, now defiant.