by M K Dymock
Blake forced a smile. “Oh, I will.”
“If the search and rescue department needs any extra funds or your department—”
“I’ll let you know first thing.”
As Cliff opened the front door and Blake stepped out onto the hand-laid stone porch, he hesitated. “Just one more question.” Cliff’s goodbye smile froze in place. “Did Keen look at the documents on her computer or yours?”
“On mine. I wouldn’t send out town documents to a college student.”
“’Course not.”
Cliff stayed on his front porch until Blake started his engine and waved at him. The moisture of the day produced instant fog on his windshield, and he idled the engine a minute until the windows cleared.
He thought about what his father-in-law said when Blake first ran for sheriff. “Be careful with your actions, son. Secrets in small towns have a way of floating.” He put the engine in gear and pointed it home. He wasn’t the one who needed that advice. Come morning, he’d have a look at Keen’s computer.
Midnight meant the heralding of another day and no Keen. At the store, Elizabeth opened the register drawer and pulled out the credit card receipts from the previous weekend. Blake had requested them, but she wanted to go through them first. She kept the lights off, not wanting people to look for her. It was past midnight.
She’d grown to hate this box. They’d bought the store, realizing that jumping between seasonal jobs was no way to raise a baby. They naively thought this would keep them from turning into the seven-to-eighters their parents were. What a joke that’d turned out to be. Their summers and holidays were all taken over to barely make ends meet each year.
Five years ago, Daniel just gave up, using the excuse that the store could serve as a base for guided trips into the backcountry. And, of course, who else could guide them but him? Since it brought in money, she couldn’t say much and continued running the store mostly on her own. But she’d be damned if Keen would end up chained to it as she was.
A knock sounded at the back door as she was halfway through the register. She stayed sitting behind the counter surrounded by receipts sorted into three piles—people she knew, people she didn’t, and people she didn’t trust. The pile of those she didn’t trust grew larger as she considered reasons why no one was trustworthy. She ignored the knock, but a few minutes later, the door opened a crack.
“Mrs. Dawson?” It was Gauge Ferguson.
She stood up, her knees cracking from sitting in the same position too long. She longed for the gun, but Dale had kept it. “I’m back here.” She grabbed the baseball bat she kept on hand but held it behind the counter, out of sight.
Gauge walked in from the back door, glanced up for a second at Elizabeth’s hello, then back down. “I saw your light on and thought you’d want to know they arrested my brother.”
Elizabeth made a sharp intake of breath. “For Keen?”
“No. He hit the sheriff ’cause he was high. You think he might’ve hurt her?” His eyes were wide with concern. Green, she noticed for the first time.
“I don’t know your brother, Gauge. What do you think?”
His head dropped. “He hits his wife sometimes,” he whispered, “when he’s high.”
“He hit you?”
Gauge shook his head. “No. I guess sometimes, if I move too slow to get out of the way. He don’t usually hit strangers, though. That’s an odd-looking shoe.”
Elizabeth followed his gaze to a bike shoe on a nearby display rack. She sensed he wanted to change the subject and figured if she got him back to his brother, she’d have to do it softly. “It’s a bike shoe.” She came out from behind the counter and took the shoe off the display. She made sure to stay within reach of the bat. “You see this metal piece on the bottom? It snaps your foot into the pedal of a bike.”
“Why?”
“It’s more efficient. You propel on when you push down and up.”
“Do people tip over?”
“Occasionally.” She put the shoe back on the display and retreated. “Did you and your brother do anything fun over Labor Day?”
He pulled the shoe back off the display and examined the sole.
“Gauge.”
His eyes met hers. “Would you ever use them if you didn’t have a bike with you?”
“No, they’re not that great for walking. Why?”
“Can I borrow this shoe?”
“Just the one?”
“Please, I’ll bring it back.”
The shoes cost one hundred and fifty dollars. Elizabeth opened her mouth to protest, then realized she didn’t care. “Sure.”
“I’ll bring it back.” He turned and retreated out the door.
“What was that?” she said to the empty store.
The receipts took another hour but only proved most of the town had at some point come through the store over the weekend. Not a surprise, considering it was their biannual clearance sale, a chance to get rid of everything that didn’t sell at a profit.
Her brain stopped reading names and she knew she had to sleep, if only for a few hours. She went home and lay down on top of the covers, but her body couldn’t convince her mind to shut off. She took a few Tylenol PM to force the issue, reminding herself that she needed some resemblance of a brain to find her child. The act of sleeping was an unforgivable betrayal, a sin she could never confess.
34
Saturday Morning
Walking through the darkness would usually be a foolhardy, if not downright stupid decision in unknown, unmarked country. Especially on a night when the dark clouds blocked out what starlight there could be. Keen wasn’t stupid nor foolhardy, but she did want to live to see the light. Her shivering continued and numbness worked its way through her fingers. She walked in circles, wearing a trail where one had never existed. Circles meant she wouldn’t get farther away from her destination and she wouldn’t fall off a cliff—again.
Slogging through the mud during the day had worn her out, but now, as the temperatures dropped, the ground froze. The rain had stopped falling, but what remained on the ground frosted over, forming white crystals on the sagebrush.
Would she lose a finger or a toe? Was that a toll she would have to pay to survive? As a distraction from the never-arriving morning, she debated which one she could stand to lose.
“The pinky is the obvious choice; not much use beyond typing.” She stared at her splayed fingers as if contemplating a bad manicure. “But it’s just so darn cute. Definitely not the thumb, too useful. Pointer finger and middle finger both have their uses. That leaves the ring fingers.”
She’d spent more time than she would admit contemplating the future ring Jake would slip on her left hand. The thought of him surprised her. At least, not the thought of him so much as the realization she hadn’t thought about him once since the rains had started. She didn’t need him as much as she once did; maybe she never had.
The gray dawn crept over the hills, outlining the cedar trees across the ridges. Keen had lived through the night.
When Elizabeth woke up, Daniel lay beside her, his muddy pants leaving streaks across their white sheets. She stared at this man who shared her pain. His gaunt cheeks smudged with dirt were a mirror of her own. They were so happy once. At the hospital, when they put Keen in her arms and he put his around the both of them, she had what she’d always longed for, a family.
She arose, leaned over without disturbing him, and kissed his dirty, prickly cheek. This would be their secret, she knew. They would never speak of the night they slept while their daughter waited in the darkness.
Would this be the last time they would sleep together? She knew him well enough to know the loss of Keen would end him. There would be no going on; he would walk down a trail in search of her and never return.
She didn’t know herself well enough to know how her end would be. At least there wasn’t a second child who she would have to continue on for.
She’d thought she wanted a house
full of children, told Daniel she did, and he’d full-heartedly agreed. But when Keen was born, everything changed; Elizabeth hadn’t been prepared for the consuming love a baby brought. She would do anything to keep the tiny, fragile thing safe and happy.
Elizabeth remembered being a child, remembered being loved until a son came along. Then another daughter, but one who was far prettier and more personable than Elizabeth. She was five when her parents let her sink into invisibility. They’d missed both her high school and college graduations because of last-minute invites to people’s summer homes. “Your father works so hard,” her mother had explained. “You don’t want to interfere with his vacation, do you?” They’d thrown commencement parties for Elizabeth’s siblings, but missed her wedding because, after all, it wasn’t that big of an affair and way out west.
They spoke of Lost Gorge as if it were the frontier, so far away without even an airport. And, most unforgivably, they did not come see their first grandchild, named Keenley, her family name, in a last attempt to earn the love stolen so long ago.
Elizabeth didn’t understand how scarred she was until Keen was two and Daniel started talking about a second child. No, Elizabeth had wanted to scream at him. She’s enough. She wouldn’t, couldn’t have another. Her child wouldn’t be supplanted. She had an IUD put in.
Daniel had never been one for doctors and didn’t seek an explanation when each month there was no child. He kept his attention on his daughter, who would never have to compete for his love. Elizabeth’s lie became a part of her. She couldn’t have any more children, that was the truth, and even she had trouble remembering the reason some days.
The day dawned, but not brightly. The storm held its grip on the area. Somewhere Keen, wearing a bike shirt and shorts, waited for her mother. Elizabeth left the bed and Daniel. Out of habit, she turned on the stove to heat the black iron skillet that always sat on a back burner. She cracked six eggs into the pan before she realized her error. He would eat four; two were always for Keen.
She threw the pan and all its eggs out the back door into the grass.
When Daniel came into the kitchen, she was sipping a cup of coffee. He took one himself and sat across from her, both waiting for the other to speak.
“Daniel.” Her voice croaked as if she hadn’t spoken in days. “Where is she? We can’t lose—”
“We won’t,” he said with iron. “We will keep looking until …” His voice broke. “Until forever.”
Daniel’s love had caught her off guard more than twenty years ago and almost scared her away. Adoration felt so foreign. He persisted and she gave in. She, who had learned not to feel, was turned upside down by his passion for life. It was safe being with someone who, once in love, loved so completely and so unchanging. His total devotion meant he would never leave her and would never, not ever, abandon his child. He was the only man in this world she trusted enough to have a child with.
But despite both their best efforts, that child had disappeared.
After a moment of silence, Daniel stood and poured what was left of the coffee into the sink. His van pulled out of the drive a few minutes later. Elizabeth understood his need to keep moving. He would keep to the river, a place he knew. She would search the people, whom she didn’t know.
35
The church parking lot filled up fast in the morning. Gone were the horses, ATVs, and jeeps of the previous mornings. Today’s search would be a scour of the town and its environs—every yard, field, and ditch. The only store left open in town was Bateman’s for food and the gas station for fuel. Nobody said it out loud, but come Monday everyone would return to their lives. The search would be left to the professionals, and if no new evidence presented itself, eventually only the family would really look.
Vehicles lined the streets and people milled around in the breaking sun, trying to get warm. Gone were the shorts and T-shirts of the first few days of searching. Snow would be falling in the higher mountains; frost coated everything in the valleys. Blake stood under the eaves of the church in an attempt to stay dry as William gave his most rousing speech. Charlie ducked under the roof with him. “Should we yell ‘Go Team’ when he’s done talking?” he said, gesturing to the mayor.
Blake cast an eye at his father-in-law. “He’d just find it encouraging. Colt offer anything helpful?”
Charlie had spent the night at the office. “No. Once he came down off his high, he yelled himself hoarse and curled up on the cot to sleep.”
Grace stood next to her father and caught Blake’s glance. He winked at her. She kept up the appropriate serious face but managed a slight wink back. She retreated from the mayor’s side and came down to stand beside Blake, offering him the shelter of her bright red umbrella. He took the umbrella from her as she slid her arm around his waist and leaned against him, oblivious to his rain-soaked coat.
“Charlie, thanks so much for spending the night at the jail and giving my man a night’s sleep. He needed it. And I needed him.”
Charlie blushed and ducked his head. “Figured he earned it since he’s been working almost nonstop since Monday.”
“Anything to bring her home,” Grace said. “I remember at the county fair one year, Elizabeth was busy talking to someone and Keenley wandered off. She saw me and came running up and wrapped herself in my skirt and just shook. So afraid of being lost.” Grace’s voice broke at lost.
Back at the front of the crowd, William finished his speech to scattered applause. Mina took his place with the megaphone to instruct people where they would be searching.
Mina waved a roll of construction ribbon. Everyone would be assigned a color that coordinated with a search leader and an assigned square mile. They’d go through every field, ditch, and under every rock in this mountain valley.
Elizabeth, her face a study in pain and exhaustion, stood next to Mina. Blake kept his eye on Elizabeth, not wanting to lose her in the crowd. He needed to speak with her.
Once Mina finished his instructions and the crowd moved, Blake relinquished Grace’s warmth and hurried toward Elizabeth, but people moved in between them.
“I’ll see you at lunch,” Grace called out as he walked away, and he waved.
By the time he found Elizabeth, she was climbing into a truck with the Ferguson father at the wheel. Blake stood openmouthed as they drove away.
Before Blake could chase her down, William grabbed his arm. “I thought it would be good for me to ride around with you.”
Blake knew he really meant it would be good for the mayor to ride around with the sheriff. He sent a quick text to Elizabeth to meet him at her house while walking William to his Range Rover.
“How’s the campaign coming?” he asked, wanting to land on a subject the mayor felt comfortable talking about. And he always loved to talk about his campaign for governor.
“It’s an uphill battle, but one worth fighting.”
That was the third time Blake had heard those words from the mayor. They’d been previously said to a reporter and at a campaign speech. In the ten years Blake had known him, he’d only had one conversation with the man that didn’t feel like a list of sound bites.
When Grace had brought him home to meet her parents for the first time, he already had an engagement ring in his pocket. She’d hinted that her dad was traditional, and Blake intended to seek his blessing before asking Grace. The family had been welcoming, putting him up in the guest suite of the house and showing him a life Blake never knew existed.
The mayor, or at least back then state senator, sat him down in front of a fireplace large enough the men could stand in it, and asked why he had the right to marry Grace. Blake didn’t orate the speech he’d so carefully prepared about how he loved her. He sensed the man didn’t care about that.
“I’ve been working as a patrolman while I’ve been taking law school classes at night. I will finish, but I have no intention of practicing law; it’s easier to find a job as a yoga instructor right now than a lawyer. Once I graduate, I’
ll get a job in this town as a deputy.”
“Deputies don’t make very much.”
“No, but I hear your sheriff is getting on in years.”
William chewed on an imaginary piece of gum as he leaned back in the chair and contemplated the man in front of him. “Sheriff Winslow is a good man, but you’re right, he might see about retiring in the next few years. That would give you time to learn the town and its people. It is, after all, an elected position. A sheriff in the family might work out.” He smiled. “Then you intend to make Lost Gorge your home?”
“Grace wouldn’t have it otherwise. She prefers living where … where people are friendly, know who she is.”
William put his arm around him as they made their way back to where the women waited. “I know this town seems small, Blake, but give it ten years and you won’t recognize it. We’re on the cusp of making something big here.”
That was ten years ago, and as far Blake was concerned, the town was still recognizable. But just as you could feel the vibration along Main Street as crews widened it to put in curbs and sidewalks lined with trees, you could feel the undercurrent of change.
Six months ago, another change happened when William announced his run for governor. Nobody thought he’d win the election, not even him. The plan was to create name recognition, meet the right people, and land a role in the governor’s office, something like attorney general. Then, in four years, it wouldn’t be such an uphill battle.
There would be a vacancy in the mayor’s office, and while William and Blake never spoke of it, there was an understanding. Enough that when Grace planned the house on Skyline Road, she planned an extra-large living room for hosting “events.”
Blake was a good sheriff but still an ambitious man, and in this town ambition didn’t have much place to run. The more distance he built between his family and the world he’d grown up in, the better.