by M K Dymock
The city had grown out and up. Very little looked familiar, and what did strike a chord felt like a memory of a memory.
The exit to the hospital where her mother worked went by, and Jen craned her neck to see every bit of it until it disappeared. When Charlotte had been immersed in her residency and its unpredictable hours, she and her dad would drive down and have dinner with her in the cafeteria. A few times the loud intercom would announce some sort of emergency and her mother would stride out. “Mommy saves lives; Daddy pushes buttons,” was her reply when people asked what her parents did.
A few police officers once stopped by to compliment Charlotte on saving a patient they’d brought in that morning. The younger one, a handsome blond, knelt down in front of her. “Your mom saved a kid not much older than you. Remember to wear a helmet.” She’d nodded in complete earnestness and would go on to insist her parents buy her a helmet—even though she was the only neighborhood kid with one.
She would see that cop occasionally and always assure him she’d follow his advice.
Their family lived in a suburb north of the city where most of the dads drove a long way to work and the moms did the heavy lifting at home. Their family stood out as an oddity she’d only started to recognize on the cusp of junior high.
The bus slowed, and Jennifer wasn’t ready when the recorded voice called her stop. With some trepidation—was she sure she remembered the streets right—she got off. She flinched as the doors slammed behind her.
The town had been a place filled with kids and bikes. Since then roads had been widened and traffic increased. The constant noise assaulted her silent mind. The bus was the last of the public transportation, and she would make the rest of the trek on foot. Usually five miles wasn’t a distance that would bother her, but each step was a slow slough back to her past.
The neighborhood of modest houses with forest growing in between each home had been replaced with big homes and manicured yards. Jen stood at the edge of her old neighborhood staring in like the interloper she was. A few black SUVs passed her, and despite the tinted windows, she could feel their glares. You are not a child anymore, she reminded herself, and you are not going home.
From the day they moved in, her family had bonded tightly with their closest neighbors, the Tangs. Back then, the Tangs had recently moved from Cambodia and were experiencing their own fish-out-of-water sensations—but to a far greater extent.
Despite their differences—Sela Tang managed seven children and three large meals a day, while Charlotte occasionally warmed up mac and cheese between performing CPR—the matriarchs became close friends. While Jen couldn’t recall why, she did remember both women as being strong and uncrossable.
Both of her parents were only children born in their parents’ later years. After Charlotte’s death, there were no next-of-kin to notify. Like all kids, Jen marked time in school years. In fifth grade, a year before everything went wrong, a lawyer came to the house to have her parents sign a stack of papers. She was supposed to be in the basement with Link watching a movie, but curiosity kept her at the top of the stairs.
Her parents assigned the Tangs to be the executors of their will. If they’d left any paperwork or belongings, Jen figured, Sela Tang would know about it.
The Tang’s house, once surrounded by pines, was now dwarfed by, of all things, a pink-stuccoed monstrosity. Jen wondered if that had been the intended color or some horrible mistake.
As she walked up the sidewalk, sucking in deep breaths, she reminded herself of her cover story. “I’m a second cousin of Charlotte’s doing family history,” she whispered as she knocked on the door.
A rush of footsteps cascaded to the door as if no years had passed since she’d played there as a child. A small black-haired girl of about ten opened it. Jen’s knees almost buckled as, for a moment, she stared at the face of her childhood best friend. The sound of rushing air ran through her ears as the small voice called out. “Grandma, there’s a strange woman here.”
Forcing herself to keep it together, Jen stood tall. “Hello.”
A now gray-haired Sela came into the hallway. “Yes?” Her eyes widened.
For a moment, they stared at each other, and Jen forgot everything she’d come for and wanted nothing more than to be hugged by this mother. “Mrs. Tang.”
“Hylia. You are alive.” It was the older woman’s turn to buckle.
17
The girl once called Hylia and her brother, Link, were supposed to be at Sela's house the day of their mother’s murder. She often wondered how her life would’ve turned out had she not lied her way out of that.
She’d been petitioning her mother to let her and Link come home by themselves after school ever since she turned twelve. Charlotte was home after all—if only asleep after her night shift. Her mom had refused each request. Fed up with being treated like a child when she was very clearly growing up, Hylia told a lie that day.
“Mrs. Tang,” she explained as Sela drove six kids home from school, “my mom said we can stay home as long as we are quiet.” As if to emphasize the opposite of quiet, the youngest Tang screamed from the backseat.
“I better call.” Sela handed a bottle over the seat to the third youngest.
“She’ll still be asleep.” Everyone who knew Charlotte knew better than to risk waking her up.
The baby threw the bottle on the ground and then threw up. Sela responded with no more than a sigh. “Looks like sickness has reached our family.” A stomach bug was running through the neighborhood. “Perhaps it’s for the best.”
Much of that day, especially the moments after seeing her mother’s body, had faded into a forgotten oblivion Jen couldn’t break through, but then she hadn’t tried. She didn’t want to know how much of the blame she should carry. But she would never forget her mother’s vacant eyes and the shadowed figure standing next to her with a gun. She ran down the hall, and a gunshot blew through the once peaceful afternoon.
Link had parked himself in front of the TV playing The Legend of Zelda with the volume all the way up no matter how many times he’d been told to turn it down. The game and its music held his attention—making him oblivious until she grabbed his arm and yanked him up. The console clattered to the ground as she pulled him out their front door and down the street.
“You’re hurting me,” the six-year-old sobbed.
She leaned down and picked him up like she used to when he was a baby, before his solid heft had closed the gap between them. After only ten feet, she dumped him back on the ground. Sela lived a quarter-mile away, and they’d never make it. She wanted to sob along with him.
She didn’t have the words to explain what lay behind them but needed some reason to get her stubborn brother to move. “I’ll race you,” she said, “to the hut.” He took off past her—competition was the stubborn boy’s best motivation.
The “hut” as they called it was a culvert under the main road between their house and the rest of the neighborhood. The local kids used it as a gathering place. Most of the time, a trickle of water ran through it. Only during the rainiest of seasons did it fill with any sort of force.
He stopped at the edge of the pavement. The trees along the road grew high and thick with moss covering almost every speck of brown. With the hut being completely invisible from the road, the kids could escape any attempt by their mothers to call them home for dinner. With one glance behind them, she pulled him into the trees. Only a few feet in, the road disappeared completely.
The recent rain had left the slope slick, and their gym shoes slipped out. Link fell. “Help,” he cried out.
She yanked him up and hissed at him. “Quiet. Slide on your butt if you have to.” He ignored her suggestion; the boy hated mud. After one more fall, he heeded her and slid the rest of the way to the bottom of the ravine. The concrete culvert was about ten feet in diameter and two feet off the ground. She lifted her brother into its depths. Cold water dripped from cracks in the concrete onto their bare arms. Link
whimpered in the dim light.
They sat down on a couple of mossy rocks kids had dragged in for chairs. She pressed her face against his and whispered. “We have to be quiet. A bad guy was in the house.” She was twelve; she didn’t know what to say to get her brother to do his homework, let alone keep still and quiet.
“What bad guy?”
“A really bad guy who wants to hurt us, so we have to be–” A dog barked in the distance, and they both flinched. She wrapped her arms around him, desperate to steady his shaking body along with her own.
A door slammed shut, an engine roared to life, and someone yelled from far away. All normal sounds, but that day all threatening. The water seeped through her jeans as she knelt next to Link. She tried to control her ragged breaths and shaking as the tunnel’s shadows grew darker. The late spring day was cooling fast, and a mist moved over the woods.
Her mom needed help. Should they leave, maybe run to a neighbor’s house? They could call–. A branch broke, the soft sound as jarring as a crack of thunder. Link gasped, and she pressed his face into her shoulder. Another step.
Don’t let him see us. Don’t let him hear us.
The footsteps moved closer. She squeezed her eyes closed and tried to hold as still as possible. A tear forced its way out while her brother soaked her shirt with his quiet sobs. She pictured her mother lying in her own blood and wondered if what was coming would hurt.
“Kids,” a frantic voice called out.
It took a moment for her to find her voice, but Link jumped up. “We’re here, Dad,” he shouted.
“Keep your voice down,” came his terse response as they climbed out of the culvert.
Link leapt into their father’s arms as she wrapped herself around him. He was safe; they were safe.
“Dad,” she sputtered. “Mom.” It was all the words she could manage. Her brain couldn’t yet process what she’d seen as the bullet had fired.
He put his hand on her cheek and knelt down, his eyes wide with fear. “We have to keep going, and you have to be very quiet. Not a word out of either of you.”
For the first time she noticed one of his eyes was swollen shut and had started to bruise. Who had hurt her parents? Were they still coming?
“Where we going?” she asked, trying really hard not to cry.
“A friend’s house, where we’ll be safe.” Her dad picked Link back up and grabbed her hand. They didn’t stop, not when she slipped and fell and not when the sirens echoed through the trees.
All the buried memories of that day surfaced as she gazed at the woman she should’ve stayed with.
Sela’s hair had streaks of gray, but her face did not hold the depth of wrinkles Jen would’ve expected. What would her own mother look like now?
“Hylia, is that you?”
The urge to flee at the forbidden name forced Jennifer back a few steps, but she cemented herself in place. She couldn’t run anymore; she wouldn’t run anymore. “You remember me?” she sputtered.
Sela stood, open-mouthed but silent. She took a step forward as if to embrace Jen, but the little girl with her said, “Grandma, you okay?”
“Yes.” Her mouth moved as if vacillating between speaking and smiling before settling on speaking. “You go take your sister and play in the backyard.” The child, as if waiting for that command all day, immediately took off down the hallway at a run. Jennifer remembered the backyard having swings, forts, and a slide.
“Come in out of the chill,” Sela said. “I can warm you up some tea or anything you want.”
Despite the years of avoiding contact, or maybe because of them, she really wanted a hug. Sela ushered her into the kitchen, and within five minutes, they sat around the island with a mug warming Jennifer’s hand. “Mrs. Tang–”
“Call me Sela.” A baby fussed from the living room. “She’s fine. She jabbers in her sleep a bit, much like her mom. Do you remember Chenda? These are her kids.”
Jen could only nod. Chenda had been a best friend brought together by proximity and first names other kids made fun of. Now Chenda had children of her own. The ways life had left Jen behind could not be counted.
They sat in silence while Jen processed the right words. Years of living amongst the public still hadn’t made up for all the years alone. Something simmered on the stove and filled the kitchen with the smell of ginger and lemon, a smell that took her back to so many dinners here.
Sela gave up on waiting and took her hand. “It’s so good to see you. We were so sure your father killed you.”
18
The doctors couldn’t do much with Sol’s bruised ribs other than hand him some painkillers and tell him to go easy.
He’d never been more grateful to crawl into his bed after knocking back a few pills. He closed his eyes and fell into a restless sleep where the walls constantly closed in. By dawn he gave up and pulled out the few notes he had in his possession about the case and the woman.
They didn’t bring his mind any peace. On day two of the search came the first evidence Hylia wasn’t the scared mother she claimed. But it wasn’t from his investigation skills. According to his notes, Clint had suggested a background check. Sol shifted uncomfortably as he remembered that his response hadn’t been the most encouraging. “Focus on the search,” he’d told his subordinate. “We only have a small window to save this kid, and we can’t allow for distractions.”
That day, though, Sol began to ask her more pointed question. Where was the girl’s father? Where were they staying? Why only the single picture?
When Sol arrived at the office on day three, Clint had already run a background check on the mother without the knowledge of his boss. He set the printout down in front of Sol as he sat in his office chair. “She lied.”
“About what?”
“About everything. First of all, her name. I found a death certificate with that name—Hylia Hayes.”
“Sure it was her? Could be more than one person with the same name.”
“Not a common first name, and only one matched her age range.”
Sol lifted the paper. The girl had been twelve when she died. He scanned for the cause of death that had taken someone so young. It was listed as “unknown.”
“She stole the identity of a twelve-year-old, Sol. She’s probably on the run.”
Sol stared back into the increasingly angry eyes of his deputy. “So why call us then? Why draw attention to herself?”
“Whoever she is, maybe she did have a child and something happened to her in those woods.”
“We would’ve found the body.”
“We don’t always.”
Sol jumped to his feet. “I would’ve found a body.”
“Then maybe she wants the attention, like those people who fake cancer. She comes to town, gets a bunch of free meals and sympathy, then leaves, her identity safe. Or she’s just completely crazy.”
Whatever the reason and whatever her name, their Jane Doe was gone by the time they arrived at the hotel, where the owner had put her up for free out of sympathy. The desk manager couldn’t recall seeing her with a car or leaving with someone else. The owner showed up later at the sheriff’s office, an invoice in hand for two nights, and slammed it on Sol’s desk.
Most of the town shared that sentiment. For three days, businesses had been shut down while everyone volunteered to find a missing child. Sol had quit less than a month later, taking the blame. He took to the mountains for two weeks without contact, not unlike when his wife, Daisy, died.
Clint had also warned him against Daisy. “She thinks she’s in love with the small-town life. Wait a year, and she’ll be bored and on her way out. You don’t have to marry her.” Sol ignored the advice as Clint, at the time, didn’t have the happiest of marriages. It didn’t help that he’d turned out to be right.
Everyone still looked at him differently since he’d lost Daisy. After the Hylia fiasco, it was easier to fade into the background and only surface when he had a good chance at saving someone
who actually existed.
They issued a warrant for the woman’s arrest, but nobody saw her again. Catching someone who had merely filed a false police report wasn’t a high priority for any agency, and she fell off the radar. Sol assumed she’d picked up another identity and left the area. Clint assumed they’d see her again, certain a person so desperate for attention would resurface.
The case had come to a pause, and Sol put the girl’s picture up on his door with the other missing people.
Sol set aside his notes and abandoned his bed to find no food in the fridge—a fairly common occurrence. He gingerly climbed into the old red and white pick-up truck he drove when he wasn’t heading to some place that required major off-roading. Within twenty minutes, he pulled into Beth’s, a café that had outlasted Beth by a good fifty years. Before he could kill the engine, he thought better of his decision and drove down the road. The presence of one cousin at Beth’s, on a day he wanted to be left alone, meant he would be going to Mountain Brew.
A few blocks away, an old house surrounded by fruit trees had been repurposed into a little coffee and sandwich shop. Mountain Brewer Café had been around for ten or so years, yet everyone still called it the new place.
Forget religion, money, and politics, this town fell into two groups: the tree huggers and the gas guzzlers. At least, that’s what each side called the other. The tree huggers were newer to the town and were drawn in by the mountains. They hiked, biked, and snowshoed everywhere their Subarus couldn’t get to. The gas guzzlers came from the farming and ranching community, descended from the pioneer stock, who had looked down on the miners. They four-wheeled, snowmobiled, and drove their way through everything. The only thing the two sides agreed on was skiing.
Sol came from miners who were too foolhardy to find a better life somewhere else when the mines went dry. His siblings’ families cobbled together work where they could—as handymen, ranch hands, or serving in the restaurant. Like most of the town, they required a few jobs that changed from season to season to make ends meet.