Chapter 17
Epilogue
Justin and Laura were married at the end of the summer, soon after Laura, with her father’s help, located Chad and received a no fault divorce, and earned her high school diploma. Justin’s mother, father, and a sister he’d never met, attended the wedding in Ann and Henry’s cabin, content to have found their son and eager to resume a relationship with him and his new family. Justin and his parents made peace with each other. In fact, they turned out to be nice people and Henry and Ann ended up liking them much more than they’d thought. Apparently, time had wrought some changes in all of them, not only Justin.
Henry had observed his new son-in-law with his parents. Justin’s father had beamed with pride over what Justin had become and over his heroism at Crater Lake. And Justin, happier than he’d ever seen him, ate it up. Ann said the shadow she’d seen lurking over the boy was gone.
After the wedding, Justin and Laura remained in the park because Justin was working at the dig and busy writing a scientific paper on it and the fantastic discoveries they were uncovering. Later, if Justin had to travel for his job, Laura and Phoebe would go with him. But for now, they were happy where they were and Justin expected them to stay in their cozy new little cabin in the woods for a long time. The dig was turning out to be even more important than anyone had expected. There was lots of work to do.
Laura had liked school so much she’d decided to keep going at a community college.
Justin encouraged her and both of them seemed happy.
Laura considered her father and Justin heroes. They’d rid the park and the world of a terrible monster and had come out alive. And all the surrounding towns thought they were heroes, too, since Ann’s prize-winning series of stories on the “Summer of the Monster”, had run, though some crucial parts of the story had been left out. Ann had hinted between the lines enough for most people to glean what really happened in the cave, without incriminating her husband and jeopardizing his job. Everyone was a winner.
And the infamous video had become a phenomenon. The monster, in vivid living color lived and breathed on it for the world to see and exclaim in horror over. The five minute tape had been run on every station for weeks. It was everywhere. Photographic stills had been captured and had been printed in every newspaper in the world. All over the web. Even The National Inquirer. The residuals had been huge. Ann had taken the money and stashed it in the bank, for Laura’s college and for their retirement someday. The amount was still growing.
The video, the stories and the fossil site made Crater Lake Park even more famous world-wide. The tourists flocked to see where the adventure had taken place, to see where the only known living dinosaur had lived and died. Someone was even dedicating a museum to the dead prehistoric beast in the park. Next spring the park would boast a life-size replica of the dinosaur in its own building complex along with movies and a written history recreating the legend. Crater Lake Park had become Dinosaur Park. Crater Lake, Dinosaur Lake. Everyone wanted Henry to give daily oral recounts of his fateful trip into the fiery bowels of the underwater cavern as they’d tracked down the fiendish predator. They’d offered him a lot of money.
Ha, Henry had put his foot down, leave me out of all that. That memorial was one place he wouldn’t be wandering in too soon. Who needed to see a fake? He’d seen too much of the real thing when it’d been alive.
Now that the voracious beast was dead, they were making a damn money-making legend out of it. People!
At least Ann’s articles had taken the heat off Henry and his men when the army had rolled in the day after Dr. Harris had pressured his politician friend to deploy them, unwilling to accept that the creature was truly dead. The soldiers had swarmed over the lake area and park for days searching for the monster. Of course they never found it. Eventually, that and the printed stories convinced the army the creature had expired in the great earthquake and they moved out, after they’d helped clean up and rebuild the destruction from the earthquake. In fact, the army helped a great deal, even Henry had to admit, and he’d been grateful, as had been the nearby towns.
Dr. Harris had wanted Henry fired, suspecting he’d been the cause of the creature’s death all along, but Sorrelson and the park authorities had refused to prosecute a national media hero and Henry kept his job.
No one else except Justin, a recovered Francis, and Henry, would ever know about the destroyed dinosaur eggs or that other amazing wall of frozen dinosaurs inside the caves. Justin joked that Dr. Harris would have a heart attack if he knew about either of them. So no one would ever tell him.
The weeks went by and the horror of that fateful expedition faded a little in Henry’s mind. The nightmares stopped after a while. But he often thought of the four of them in their awkward cave gear bravely stumbling through those hot caves and fighting the good fight. Slowly, he even grew to cherish some of the memories. Justin had been right. It’d been an adventure of a lifetime. Nothing, Henry was sure, would ever top it. Not that he wanted anything to, he was ready for the quiet life with Ann in his beloved park, for as long as he had left.
The summer had been a nightmare and he was grateful to have it behind him.
He and Ann were happy. She never forgot she’d almost lost him forever. Or that she herself was lucky to be alive. It’d made their lives more precious.
He was getting ready to go on duty; had been heading out the door one fall morning when the phone rang. In uniform and grinning, he felt like the old Henry. Ann said he was the old Henry and she was glad to see him back, too.
“The kids are coming over for supper tonight,” Ann said.
“Again?” Henry teased. “Isn’t that the third time this week?”
“Well, yes. But Justin loves my cooking.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“Laura wants to talk about her new college classes. Justin says he has some more pages of the book he’s thinking of writing on the dinosaur to show you. You don’t mind do you, honey?”
Henry stood by the table, his hand on the back of his recently vacated chair. He leaned over and gave his wife a soft kiss on the lips. “No, you know I don’t mind. I love having them over. You know that. Anytime.” He was also thinking about challenging Justin to another chess game. That kid was always beating him and Henry was sure this time he’d figured out the strategy that would give him the match for once.
“Good. They’ll be here at seven. Don’t be late, sweetheart.”
“What are we having?”
“Fried chicken. Justin loves my chicken.”
Henry laughed. He loved Ann’s chicken, too, and gave his wife a goodbye hug and a lingering kiss. “I’d better get going. I have an early meeting with Sorrelson. He’s letting me hire four new rangers. Isn’t that great? The increase in tourists are running us ragged. We need the extra help. He says we’ve got the funds, no sweat. We’re getting the new bigger ranger headquarters and anything else we want, as well. He’ll approve any budget I put in front of him.”
“That’s great, honey. The summer wasn’t for nothing, then, was it?” Ann’s voice was gentle, though.
“No,” Henry answered, but couldn’t keep the touch of melancholy out of his voice. Every time his thoughts touched on the summer, he remembered George, Lassen, Greer, and the other deaths. It’d always made him sad.
“See you tonight, honey,” he said. “Have a good day at the paper.”
And he knew she would.
Dinosaur Lake Page 38