Sacred Ground

by Barbara Wood

  “Maybe she came home, maybe she’s here,” he said, turning his eyes to the glass-and-stucco structure set like an architect’s model among perfect trees and shrubs.

  They were stopped at the front door by the butler. “Please, it’s urgent,” Erica said to the man. “Tell Mrs. Dockstader that we’ve come regarding her daughter.”

  They were shown into an entryway painted in soft desert tones with a limestone floor that shone like glass and a skylight exposed to the flawless desert sky. They were kept waiting for nearly thirty minutes, during which daylight faded and muted house lights came on.

  The woman who finally appeared was neither kindly nor grandmotherly. “I am Kathleen Dockstader,” she stated abruptly to Jared. “What is this about my daughter?”

  Erica was rendered momentarily speechless. Deeply tanned and wearing pink Bermuda shorts and a white golf shirt, with blond hair caught up behind a visor that read Dinah Shore Golf Classic, Kathleen Dock stader, fit and athletic, looked years younger than her actual age.

  Erica found her voice. “My name is Erica Tyler, Mrs. Dockstader, and I have reason to believe I am your granddaughter.”

  The woman looked at Erica for the first time. Her face froze. She blinked. Then she said, “Why?” Her voice was cold.

  Wishing they could go inside and sit down, wishing she would be offered frosty iced tea to help her lips and tongue form the proper words, Erica told Mrs. Dockstader her story, ending with finding the missing persons report and news article at the office of archives.

  “Miss Tyler,” Kathleen said impatiently, “I am getting ready to embark on a world golf tour. My plane leaves tonight. I do not have time for speculation. Show me proof.” She held out a hand which, with weathered skin and ropy veins, was the only evidence of her real age. “Birth certificate? Letters? Photographs?”

  “I have nothing.”

  The woman pursed her lips. “Just a story. That I’m supposed to buy.” She turned to go. “You are wasting my time.”

  “Mrs. Dockstader,” Erica said hurriedly, desperation in her voice. “I have memories of living in the woods with a lot of people. I think it was a hippie commune. I remember a ride in a car from the woods into the city, and the man who was driving, who had long hair and a beard, took me and a woman to a hospital. He didn’t stay long. He said he wasn’t the woman’s husband and I wasn’t his kid and he didn’t know her real name. I vaguely remember a nice lady, a social worker, asking me questions. My name and my birthday, things like that. I told her I was Erica but that I had never had a last name. But I knew how old I was and my date of birth, so they made up a birth certificate for me. They investigated the commune. I overheard a man reporting that my mother, who called herself Moonbeam, had ridden off with a biker, leaving me with the hippies. That was when I was made a ward of the state. That’s all I know. That’s all I can tell you.”

  Kathleen’s lips curled in a dry smile. “Do you think I don’t know what you are after? I know your type, preying upon rich old widows.”

  “Pardon me, ma’am,” Jared said, “but I’d hardly call you old.”

  She shot him a look. “Don’t patronize me. I am old and rich and without heirs, which makes me a target for con artists and gold diggers. You aren’t the first to claim to be my granddaughter. Anastasia Romanov didn’t have as many impersonators! The story of my daughter’s disappearance in 1965 is well-known, as well as the fact that she was pregnant. I put ads in papers all over the country. I offered rewards. You would be surprised how many ‘granddaughters’ came out of the woodwork. I must say, your story of being raised in a hippie commune is new, if a bit melodramatic. Now if you will excuse me.”

  “I don’t want money. I am not here to lay claim to anything. All I want is to find out where I came from, who my family is. Who I am.”

  “Young woman, my hopes have been raised and dashed so many times that I’ve gone beyond the point of caring. Whatever your scam, it won’t work here.”

  “But… don’t I resemble your daughter? A moment ago, when you came in, the look on your face—”

  “You are not the first to notice your resemblance to an heiress and try to cash in on it. And my daughter did not have distinctive features. She was merely pretty, as you are.”

  “Who was my father?”

  Aristocratic eyebrows arched. “How should I know who your father was?”

  “I mean, who got your daughter pregnant?”

  Kathleen made an impatient sound. “I have to insist you leave now.”

  “Mrs. Dockstader, did my mother ever suffer from severe headaches, like migraines, that made her see things, hear voices? Do you, perhaps?”

  Kathleen went to the wall and pressed a button on an intercom panel. “Security, will you come in here please? We have visitors who need to be escorted off the grounds.” She walked out of the room.

  “Mrs. Dockstader,” Erica said, following her. “Believe me, everything I have told you is true—” She stopped.

  Across a living room filled with white carpeting and white statuary, above a pale limestone fireplace, hung an enormous canvas painting of two suns, one blazing red, the other glowing yellow.

  Jared caught Erica’s arm, and said quietly, “We’d better leave or she’ll have us arrested.” And then he, too, stopped and stared at the canvas. “Good God,” he said. “It’s the painting from the cave!”

  Erica looked around for Kathleen Dockstader, but the woman had disappeared, and in the next moment a large man wearing a blazer and a badge that said Dockstader Farms Security appeared in the doorway. Erica and Jared left wordlessly, jumping into the Porsche and speeding back down the lane.

  As they joined the traffic on the foothill highway, Jared took his eyes off the road to glance at Erica. Staring straight ahead through the windshield, she presented a tight profile to him, and eyes sparkling with tears. He wanted to stop the car and take her into his arms and kiss her the way he had when he had pulled her from the cave. He wanted to turn the car around and go back to Mrs. Dockstader and outline to her precisely what a heartless bitch she was. He wanted to find dragons to slay.

  “Are you okay?” he said instead.

  She nodded wordlessly, her lips pressed together.

  When they stopped at a red light, Jared looked to the right— where golf courses and exclusive resort hotels were bathed in expensive illumination as if to defy the stars that were beginning to appear— and then ahead where traffic streamed through blocks of restaurants, shops, and gas stations, brake lights flashing red. Then he looked to the left, where a road climbed steeply into foothills covered in scrub, boulders, and wildflowers. When the signal changed to green he turned left. Erica did not protest.

  The stars were out and the moon starting to rise when they reached a summit thick with pine trees and forest silence. Erica hadn’t spoken a word since leaving the Dockstader house, and she continued to sit mutely when Jared finally pulled the Porsche to a stop at the edge of a forest and killed the headlights. At once, the stars seemed brighter, the heavens closer. The air was chill with a bite in it.

  Jared turned in his seat and looked at Erica, waiting.

  “She’s my grandmother,” Erica said softly after a moment. “And she knows it.” She turned to face him. She was shockingly pale. “Did you see the look on her face when she first saw me? It was a look of recognition. Why, after spending so much money and effort to find me did she turn me away?” Erica looked down at her hands. “In the missing persons report it said that Monica was four months pregnant, which means her baby was due in November 1965. I was born in November 1965. Why is my grandmother rejecting me?”

  “You can’t see into another’s heart.” Jared stretched his arm along the back of the seat so that his fingertips touched her hair. The forest darkness seemed to close in around the car, as if to give the occupants privacy. Or perhaps to listen, to hear what they had to say. “When Netsuya died,” Jared said quietly, “I ran away to hide from the world. I was found by mar
ine biologists. All my father could say to me when I was brought home was how I had embarrassed the family. He later apologized and tried to take back his words, but words once spoken are hard to take back. Things haven’t been the same between us since.”

  He touched a curl at the nape of her neck. She trembled. The night grew darker, the stars brighter. Golden eyes blinked in the brush. A night bird called nearby— a lonely, mournful sound. “When I was growing up,” Jared continued, “I dreamed of being an architect, but my father wanted me to be a lawyer, so I became a lawyer. I’ve always admired and respected him, but in that instant, when he said I had embarrassed the family, I saw a complete stranger, a man I didn’t like. And I thought I could never forgive him. But now…” He sighed and looked ahead through the trees. “Hearing your story and seeing Mrs. Dockstader’s reaction is making me think that parents and grandparents, sisters and brothers are really just people and they can’t be perfect. Give her time, Erica. You know she’s thinking about it.”

  She finally looked at him with amber eyes like those of the forest dwellers watching them. “But the painting. Jared, that has to be where I saw the vision that has been haunting my dreams ever since I was a child.”

  He frowned. “Vision? What are you talking about?”

  She opened the car door and got out. Jared followed. From this high point they could see below, the Coachella Valley stretched to the horizon like a black sea glittering with starry reflection. They stood for a moment breathing in the cold mountain air, inhaling the scent of pines and loamy soil. Then Erica set foot upon a wilderness trail illuminated in the moonlight.

  Jared fell into step beside her as she explained: “The painting in the cave— I have had a recurring dream about it ever since I was little. That was why I asked Sam to assign me to the project, when I saw it on the news. I allowed Sam to believe I was desperate for the assignment because of the Chadwick shipwreck fiasco, that I wanted to restore my reputation. But that wasn’t the reason. It was because I have been dreaming of that painting all my life and I thought I could find answers in the cave. Instead, there is only more mystery.”

  They came upon a stream, gurgling, whispering, as if telling secrets. When Erica shivered, Jared removed his jacket and placed it around her shoulders. “You asked Mrs. Dockstader about headaches, why?”

  “I’ve suffered from them ever since I can remember— not just normal headaches, but something like migraines. Powerful, strong. My teachers always thought I was faking them. They said I did it for attention or to get out of a test. One school nurse believed me and had me looked at by a doctor. But I was a welfare case, so I didn’t get much more of a work-up than the doctor looking in my ears and telling me to say Ah. It was when I collapsed on the college campus that someone finally took me seriously. I’ve been through all kinds of tests and programs, seeing headache specialists, neurologists, even psychologists. No one knows what causes the headaches, but what really baffles them is the auditory and visual phenomena that sometimes accompany them.”

  The glade through which the stream ran stood in moonglow, with boulders and catkins and the trickling water looking silver and mercurial. It was as if all color had been washed from the world, leaving only the hues of ghosts. “What kind of phenomena?” Jared asked, noticing how the moonlight had turned Erica’s tanned skin ivory.

  “I see things. Sometimes I hear things.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about the dreams?”

  “Because I thought you would laugh.”

  “I’m not laughing.”

  Their eyes met in moonlight. “I know.”

  “What are the visions like?”

  She rubbed her arms. “The first time I had a spell, that I can recall, it started with a blinding headache. I don’t know if I fell asleep or phased out, but I suddenly saw thousands of butterflies in the classroom. Beautiful, dazzling, flying all over. And when I came to I was in the nurse’s office. My first words were, ‘Where did the butterflies go?’ And the nurse said, ‘What butterflies?’ That’s why I was never adopted. It was because of the headaches. No one wants to adopt a sick child.”

  Erica ran her gaze over the nearby mountain peaks that blotted out the stars. Her eyes were searching, as if she expected to see someone standing there, high up. “I went through a phase of being always packed and ready to go for when my parents came for me. Whenever I was transferred to another foster home, I called the social worker to make sure they would give my mother the new address. Sometimes I would call social services and ask if my mother had called. But she never did.” Erica’s voice went hard. “She just didn’t want me.”

  Jared touched her elbow. “You don’t know that.”

  “Then what about the biker she ran off with?” Challenge in her tone.

  “That was something you overheard from a man who was quoting hearsay. Maybe she meant to go away for only a weekend. Maybe she had planned to come back for you but something happened. Erica, you might never know what really happened to your mother.”

  She shook her head, bitterness in the gesture. Then she knelt by the stream and dipped her hand into the water. Jared surveyed their surroundings, trying to recall what he had read about mountain lions in this area, and then realized that even though they had come only a short distance from the car, it couldn’t be seen through the trees, nor could the lights of Palm Springs. He watched Erica take a sip of the crisp alpine water, and when she stood and ran her hands down her skirt, he said, “There’s more, isn’t there? Something you aren’t telling me?”

  She shook her head, avoiding his eyes.

  “Erica, I nearly went out of my mind when you were trapped in the cave. I didn’t know if you were dead or alive. For the first time since Netsuya died, I realized I cared about someone else. I think it started when I saw you confronting Charlie Braddock with that tomahawk. There you stood in your high heels and cocktail dress, brandishing an ax at this towering giant. And then at Sam’s secret meeting in Century City, the way you stood up to him and the others, how you fought for the rights of a woman who died two thousand years ago. You’re such a fighter, Erica. And seeing you like that reminded me that I was once a fighter, too, before Netsuya died.”

  She turned away and walked a few steps until she saw in the moonlight petroglyphs carved on a boulder: human stick figures with bows and arrows hunting large animals. She traced them with her fingertips, and said, “These are so old.” She turned tear-filled eyes to him. “Everything I deal with is old and dead. I want life, Jared.”

  He took her by the shoulders. “Then let me in. Tell me what you haven’t told me.”

  She started to cry. “Jared, did my mother leave me because of my sickness?”

  He stared at her. “Good God, is that what you think?”

  “Because I was having the headaches, I was difficult to take care of! That’s why I was never adopted! One family tried to keep me— the Gordons. They were very sweet and tried hard, but Mrs. Gordon just couldn’t cope with my spells that could happen anywhere. So they gave me back to child welfare services.”

  “Erica, you can’t blame yourself for your mother leaving you. You were just a baby. My God, is this why you never married, why you aren’t in a relationship? Because of the headaches and fainting spells? In the weeks we have been working at Topanga I haven’t seen it.”

  “I’m very careful,” she said as the tears flowed down her cheeks. “I know the signs. When I feel a certain tension in my neck or hear a roaring sound, I know I am about to have one of my spells, so I quickly go to my tent and be by myself until it passes. I can’t burden another human being with that responsibility of taking care of me. And I am terrified of having children because I think it might be hereditary.”

  “I would take care of you.” He pulled her to him suddenly and kissed her hard. Erica’s arms went around his neck. She clung to him for a long, breathless moment.

  Then he drew back, and said, “Erica, I’ve just been going through the motions of life. M
y heart hasn’t been in the fight for the Emerald Hills cave. You’re the one who’s been putting up the real fight. I admired you four years ago when we squared off on the Reddman case. And I admired you last year, too, during the whole Chadwick incident. It wasn’t your fault that the shipwreck was a hoax. Chadwick managed to fool the world’s top underwater archaeology experts. You were just one part of a whole team. Your job was to authenticate the Chinese pottery, and that you did admirably because the pottery was not fake. And the way you stood up for your side of it, and your public apology for your part in it, that, too, was very admirable. But I’ve done nothing since Netsuya died. I’ve hidden behind a mask and mouthed empty words. You make me remember what it’s like to be alive and fight for causes again.”

  He took her face in his hands. “I never thought I would fall in love again and here you are, warrior-woman, good and strong and wise.”

  He kissed her again, more slowly and tenderly this time, until the kiss grew urgent, and passion and need overwhelmed them. Jared lowered Erica to the cool sweet grass and high overhead, the stars so old suddenly looked brand-new.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Angela

  1866 C.E.

  Ghosts haunted her.

  Not just people-ghosts but the ghosts of memories and years past; the ghosts of trees and sunsets, of love and sadness, of words spoken in anger and in the dark. Even Angela herself was one of the ghosts who haunted her on this morning of her ninetieth birthday, following her, whispering about remembrances of times long past.

  Throughout the day, as she had gone through this hacienda that had survived eight decades of floods, fire, and earthquakes, making it the oldest house in Los Angeles, Angela was remembering things for the first time in eighty-five years. The lost years, she had always thought of them, for she had no memory before her sixth birthday in this house. Her hair was white now, as white as the snow that capped the San Gabriel Mountains in winter, but her back was still straight and she walked without aid, and her mind was as sharp as glass. But when she had awakened at the dawn of this ninetieth birthday, it had been to find her mind filled with perplexing, long-forgotten memories.