An ink arrow was scrawled next to the item, pointing to an old and faded photo held onto the fridge by a magnet next to the yellow sheet.
In the photo a tiny Crystal was grinning from ear to ear, standing waist-deep in a river.
In the background, snow was on the ground.
And all around her steam was rising from the river water.
Firehole River in January.
Suddenly the photo was ripped from the refrigerator and held in front of David’s rather sizable nose.
“This… this is where I want to go this weekend.”
“But honey, that’s in Yellowstone National Park.”
“So?”
“So… you haven’t been watching the news lately? You haven’t heard Yellowstone’s getting ready to erupt?”
“Not yet, silly. The scientists are saying that’s a couple of years away.”
“Yes, and every time they say that they qualify it by saying it’s all an estimate and that no one can say for sure.”
“That’s precisely my point, David. Nobody knows when it’s gonna erupt. So this might be our very last chance to go see it.
“I’ve always wanted to go back. You know that. That’s why it’s so high on my bucket list.”
“I’d rather just get the heck out of here. I mean, we’re only three hundred miles from Yellowstone. We’re in the inner zone. The zone that’s supposed to be wiped completely off the map.
“Why don’t we spend the weekend to go to Indiana, to my folks’ house? We can do some house hunting while we’re there.”
“I don’t want to wait any longer. You’ve been telling me for months we need to scratch something off our bucket list. Now’s our chance.”
“But…”
“But nothing. You’ll give in to me because you always do. And because you love me so much. And because you know I’ll go without you if you refuse me.”
“Will you really?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.
“Look, honey. I have my heart set on this. And you always said you’d do whatever it takes to make me happy.
“Going to Firehole River this weekend will make me happy. We can see the park and take lots of pictures so we can show our kids someday what it used to look like. That’s the only way they’ll ever get to see it.”
“And you think I’m going to give into you just because you’re cute?”
“And kinda hot. Admit it.”
“And kinda hot too…”
“And kinda sweet.”
“And kinda sweet…”
He rolled his eyes.
“And the best cook in the world…”
“I can’t say that.”
“Why not?”
“Because a lightning bolt will come out of the sky and strike me dead.”
“Hey, hey…”
He smiled.
She won, and they both knew it.
“So we’ll go this weekend?”
“Yes. On one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“The very next weekend we’re both off work we’re going to Indianapolis to do some house hunting. This whole Yellowstone Event thing scares me, and I want to move out of here.
“And sooner instead of later.”
“Deal.”
Two days later the weekend arrived, and a now-excited David couldn’t wait to get on the road.
Unlike Crystal, he’d never been to Yellowstone, and though apprehensive about the whole super-volcano-beneath-the-park thing he was looking forward to the trip.
They pulled into the park and paid a token sum to rent a camp site. David struggled with their tent for almost an hour before creating a lopsided mess of it.
Crystal tried to help by pointing out that it did come with instructions.
“Ha! Real men don’t need instructions. It’s a matter of common sense, really.”
“Why don’t you go collect some firewood? I’ll see if I can fix the tent.”
David did what all young husbands do when their wives suggest they do something.
He did it.
And it was a good thing he did.
For while he was gone Crystal determined why the poor pathetic tent looked the way it did.
Her genius husband switched the two collapsable tent poles.
That wouldn’t have been a problem, except that one was considerably longer than the other, meant for the highest part of the tent.
It took her less than five minutes to fix the thing and make it look like the regal tent pictured on the box.
But she wouldn’t rub it in.
Not much.
David dropped a pile of wood into the burn ring, where it would be easy to light once the sun went down.
But they had a couple of hours to kill first.
“Let’s go for a swim in Firehole River,” she suggested.
He had no objections. He’d been looking forward to seeing her face light up when she finally fulfilled her wish to relive her childhood memory.
Twenty minutes later they were splashing each other and frolicking in the warm river, having the grandest of times.
And the oddest thing happened.
The river exploded.
Chapter 45
Marilyn’s car was overheating as she drove through central Florida toward Orlando.
She spent the last twenty miles watching the temperature gauge creep toward the red zone. She could smell the pungent and very distinctive smell of coolant as it leeched into the car’s cabin through the air conditioner vents.
She remembered something her dad taught her years before and switched off the air conditioner, turning on the heater instead.
“Running the air conditioner on an overheating engine puts even more stress on the motor and makes it run even hotter,” he’d said.
“Turning on the heater will deflect some of the engine’s heat into the car and help you get a few more miles before the radiator boils over.”
She was a sight, barreling down the interstate, her car windows completely down and sweat pouring down her face.
She had no idea whether her father knew what he was talking about. He’d been a terrible alcoholic and a know-it-all, even though he actually knew very little.
But the temperature gauge seemed to take a pause when she switched on the heater, so maybe there was something to it.
If she could just make it to Christie’s house twenty miles up the road she’d be okay.
Christie had promised to get her a job as a maid at one of the big theme park’s resorts.
Christie lived on the bus route which took her directly to and from the resort. And she offered to put her up for a few weeks until Marilyn’s paychecks started rolling in.
Thank God for good friends.
Christie also said she had a neighbor she was pretty close to, an older lady, who loved children and would watch her baby for a reasonable fee.
As long as the car made it to Christie’s, she figured, she could park it until she could get it repaired.
Marilyn had a lot of things on her mind. Her new home, her new job. Getting enough money set aside to pay for the bogus birth certificate.
The last thing on her mind was her sister Shelly.
But she was definitely on Shelly’s mind.
In fact, at that very moment back in Grand Rapids, Shelly was spilling her guts to a couple of men who’d flashed FBI badges and threatened to lock her up for kidnapping and transporting a child across state lines without parental consent.
The second charge wasn’t actually a crime in itself, they explained, but rather an aggravating offense.
An aggravating offense, they pointed out, which changed the kidnapping charge from a ten-to-forty year sentence to forty-to-life.
That got Shelly’s attention, and she was explaining to the agents she was not involved in any kidnapping, and knew something wasn’t quite right about her sister’s new baby.
The men weren’t really FBI agents. They worked for Rebecca.<
br />
But DHS agents weren’t above playing fast and loose with the truth.
And they knew that in the world of insidious government acronyms, some carried much more weight and wielded much more power than others.
And none carried more weight and loosened more tongues that the feared “FBI.”
“Where did she go?”
“She didn’t tell me, I swear.”
“Bullshit.”
“No. It isn’t, I swear. We argued. I told her I knew the baby wasn’t hers. That she was too skinny to have a newborn. She cussed me out and packed her bag and left. I swear.”
“When was this?”
“Five nights ago, on Tuesday.”
One agent looked at the other and said, “I’m not buying a word of this. Go ahead and cuff her and throw her in the car.”
It was at that point the suspects usually break. When they realize they’re going to jail for something they didn’t do.
It was at that point suspects usually stopped playing games and realized it was time to start singing like canaries.
But Shelly remained steadfast.
She stuck to her story.
Because she was telling the truth.
“Where do you think she went? And before you send us on some wild goose chase, remember you’re not off the hook yet.”
“She probably went to Toledo. That’s where she usually runs to when she’s short of cash and needs to make some money.”
“How does she make her money?”
“I’m not sure. All she says is she hustles, whatever that means. I think she cons people. She told me once that on the streets there’s a thousand different ways to take a fool’s money, and she’s done them all.”
“Who does she stay with in Toledo?”
“I don’t know. She’s mentioned a guy. A parole officer, she said. He lets her stay with him and loans her money sometimes.”
“He got a name?”
“Bill. Or Bob. I think. I’m not sure.”
The first agent had been examining Shelly’s cell phone and had discovered a voicemail from Marilyn dated three days before.
He put it on speaker and played it.
“I just wanted to let you know it’s gonna be a cold day in hell before I let my baby see his Aunt Shelly again. You need to learn some damn manners and start treating me better or you’ll never see me again!”
He took out a small pad and wrote down both phone numbers.
Later in the day the cell phone company would be presented an emergency court order, signed by a DHS-friendly judge in Cleveland.
It would verify that the call did indeed ping on a cell tower in downtown Toledo.
But by that time they’d already be working the streets of “T-Town,” looking for a parole officer named Bill.
Or Bob.
Chapter 46
Hannah was, by now, an emotional wreck.
She was even worse than she was when she was in the plywood box they’d called a “cell.”
At least then she was sure her baby was alive and well and being cared for, and that she’d eventually get him back.
Now her mind was playing tricks on her and she was swinging back and forth between believing Rebecca was being truthful and was quite capable of finding her son and bringing him home.
And thinking that Rebecca was just playing a cruel hoax on her in retaliation for her not giving up Gwen.
She went back and forth between periods of great hope and happiness.
And prolonged bouts of crying and hysteria.
She hadn’t been able to walk into the nursery since she’d been home.
Not since she’d awakened at three in the morning the night after she made it back to Little Rock.
Awakened by a nightmare which didn’t really make any sense.
But then again, many nightmares don’t.
In the horrific dream she’d walked into the baby’s room to find her baby’s decaying corpse lying in his crib.
And Rebecca standing in the corner, laughing hysterically and pointing at Hannah with an evil witch’s claw.
“Did you really think I’d give him back to you alive, Hannah? Seriously? Why on earth would you think such a silly thing?”
Tony, bless his heart, was a better than average husband.
And he loved Hannah with all his heart and soul.
But he, like most men, often failed to see what was glaring him in the face.
He’d gone into Samson’s room several times himself before he left for Washington with Bud.
To meditate, to straighten the pictures on the wall.
To place into the crib a cute teddy bear he’d picked up at the local market.
He hadn’t asked why Hannah steered clear of the room herself. Hadn’t even noticed it.
Gwen did. She noticed it right away, when she saw that Tony was in the baby’s room and left the door open.
And Hannah hid her face and skirted right past it, as though it were a chamber of horrors.
For her, it was.
Hannah went straightaway to the front porch, with Gwen not far behind her.
She told Gwen of the nightmare, and said she needed some time to build up the courage to walk into the room.
That time, almost a week later, still hadn’t come.
On this day, all alone in the house, Hannah was having a particularly rough time of it.
It didn’t help when she went for a walk that she saw not one, not two, but three other mothers pushing baby strollers around the neighborhood.
When the doorbell rang in late morning she let her imagination run wild.
She fairly ran to the door, hoping to find Rebecca on the other side, holding her baby.
It was the girl who delivered their newspaper, collecting for the month.
She napped on the couch, hoping to make the day pass a bit faster, when she was awakened in mid-afternoon.
This time the doorbell was followed by a knock on the door.
This time she was a bit slower to respond.
And a lot more hesitant to getting her hopes up.
It wasn’t the newspaper girl saying she’d forgotten to give Hannah her receipt.
And it wasn’t, unfortunately, Rebecca returning her baby.
It was an older couple she’d never seen before.
They introduced themselves as Darrell and Rocki, traveling writers who were researching a story on the Yellowstone Event.
And they asked for a few minutes of her time.
They seemed friendly enough. And they weren’t pushy at all.
But Hannah was tired of granting interviews to the press. And she considered writers part of the same group.
She tried to be nice, yet firm, in telling them she wasn’t really in the mood to give another interview.
Then they mentioned an old gypsy fortune teller named Madame Cervelli.
Chapter 47
She invited them in and seated them on her couch, then offered them each something to drink.
They thanked her for her graciousness and for taking time from her day, but passed on the drinks.
They didn’t want to burden her any more than they had to. They had children her age and grandchildren not much older than Samson.
And they knew she was going through a trying period.
Still, they had the sense she wanted someone to talk to.
Perhaps to help take her mind off the whole situation.
“So you do remember Madame Cervelli, then? And the reading she gave you all those years ago at the carnival?”
Hannah was a bit reticent. She was deep in thought.
“I’m… I’m not quite sure. Yes, I remember the reading. I mean, how on earth could I forget such a thing?
“And the name… it sounds familiar. But I’m not quite sure that was her name. It’s been so very long ago, and so much has happened since then…”
“We understand.”
“Wait.”
The request caught the writers off
guard.
Hannah elaborated, “Can you wait here a minute? I mean, are you in a hurry to be anywhere?”
Rocki, a bit puzzled, said, “No, not at all. We’ve got all the time in the world.”
“I haven’t looked at my diaries in years. But I remember coming home that night and writing extensively about the reading. I’m pretty sure I put the gypsy’s name in there.
“If you’ll wait here I’ll go dig them out of the back of my closet.”
“Sure. If that’s no problem.”
“Are you kidding? If we don’t resolve this it’s going to drive me nuts.”
Hannah disappeared and was gone for several minutes.
She returned carrying three diaries from her youth.
“I’m not sure which one it’s in,” she explained. “But all the entries are dated, so it won’t take me long to find it.
“I remember it was in the fall, I think my junior year…”
As she flipped pages she pondered, “I suppose you think it silly of me that I kept diaries back then.”
Rocki said, “Oh, no. Not at all. A lot of girls did. And still do, I suspect. I did when I was a girl. Although I never had anything as exciting as that happen to me. Meeting a fortune teller who foretold of a great disaster, I mean.”
“Oh, trust me. Most of it wasn’t that exciting.
“Most of it was just romance and stuff. None of my girlfriends kept diaries, and sometimes they’d make fun of me.
“But everything is in here. The first time Tony kissed me.
“The first time he tried to cop a feel.”
She smiled slyly and blushed just a tad.
“The first time I let him cop a feel.
“The first time we… well, you know…”
Rocki smiled and asked, “Have you ever shared the diaries with Tony?”
“He asked me once if there were any other boys in there besides him. And I said yes. All the other boys I ever dated, or had crushes on. He said he wasn’t interested in reading about my other boyfriends or crushes.
“And to be honest, that’s fine with me. I think it would be sort of… an invasion of my privacy, for him to read my words. You know?”
“Yes. I feel the same way.”
“Oh, here it is, September twentieth of my senior year in high school.”
The Yellowstone Event (Book 3): A Nation Gone Crazy Page 15