Everywhere around her was memory of a life she no longer had. She still lived in the house she’d lived in all her life; she hadn’t even changed bedrooms. Everything about the house was as it had always been, except that she was alone in it.
When she’d gotten out of the hospital, her whole family dead except the man who’d killed them, she’d had nowhere else to go, and she simply hadn’t cared enough about anything to dredge up the will to change the situation. At the hospital, she’d told the cab driver her address, and when he’d brought her there, she’d walked up onto the only porch she’d known, into the only front door she’d known, and had begun the motions of the life she’d had.
Her parents’ landlord was a decent guy, and he’d let her keep renting. She’d been the beneficiary of her grandparents’ life insurance, and, although after the funerals and her medical bills it hadn’t exactly been a huge amount of money, she’d been able to live on it. Not for much longer, though.
She’d had friends, but they’d been part of the life she’d lost, and they hadn’t known how to be with her in this new, numb place, so she’d let them fade away. It hadn’t taken long.
She’d dropped out of school—she’d only been going to community college anyway and hadn’t figured out why yet—and she’d hunkered down to the one thing she’d yet cared about. She’d devoted her days to her father’s trial.
And now that was over.
And she had no life.
But she was surrounded by the life she’d had—her parents’ furniture, her mother’s crucifix and generic painting of Jesus hanging on the wall near the kitchen door, the braided rugs her Nana had made, the neatly aligned, cheaply framed eight-by-ten school photos chronicling her advancement through public school, kindergarten to high school graduation.
The bed in the room that had been her parents’, and then only her mother’s, still made by her mother on the last day of her life, the purple chenille tucked neatly under the pillows, the vibrant throw pillows arranged just so.
Her own room, last decorated by a nineteen-year-old whose life had known no greater stress than her parents’ separation. She still slept in that room every night, but she couldn’t remember the last time she’d really noticed anything in it.
Gabby stared down at the cup in her hand, at that cheap pink rose, and knew with a flash of clarity that she could not spend another day in this non-life, walking like a ghost through her own past.
A sound beyond the window caught her ear, and she looked up to see another news van pull in behind the first.
Enough. There was nothing for her in Santa Fe now but broken history.
It was time to go. It didn’t matter where—just somewhere. A new place. A new life.
Looking around the room again, Gabby understood that there was truly nothing for her, not even in this house.
One thing. There was one thing she wanted.
And one thing she would take because it seemed fitting that she should.
*****
An hour later, she propped an envelope addressed to the landlord against the cookie jar on the kitchen counter, set her house key in front of it, and dug a ring of keys out of the junk drawer. She picked up her old duffel bag, packed with nothing but a few changes of clothes, and walked out the back door, locking the knob behind her. She crossed the small yard to the garage and heaved up the overhead door.
Her father’s 1970 Chevy pickup sat quietly. He loved that truck like a child. In the last months of her life, her mother had tried and tried to get him to take it away, but he’d procrastinated and refused and delayed. Gabby had known then that he believed that if the truck stayed, he might have a chance to come back home to stay as well.
She climbed up into the lifted truck and pushed her duffel to the passenger side. Before she turned the ignition, she picked up her mother’s gold crucifix from her chest and pressed her lips to it.
Gabby wasn’t particularly religious, especially not these days, but her mother had been devout. She’d worn this crucifix every day. She’d been wearing it on that last day; Gabby had had to clean old blood from around the body of Christ before she’d put it on.
It was the one thing Gabby wanted from the house as a memory to keep close.
She wanted the truck because it felt right to get away from her father in the thing he loved best. To take that from him as well.
She tucked the cross back under her t-shirt and turned the ignition. The truck had sat for more than two years; by all rights the battery should have been dead, but it caught, and the engine tried to turn over. Tried. For a few minutes, Gabby thought it wouldn’t start. As she tried without success to prime the old engine and nurse it to life, she began to feel deep panic, as if this big beast of a Chevy were her only chance for salvation.
Just as tears threatened to overtop her eyes, the engine caught and coughed, then roared to life. Gabby goosed the gas pedal until the truck settled into a fairly smooth idle. Then she put it into Reverse and backed down the long, narrow driveway.
She waved at the news teams as she shifted to Drive and left Santa Fe in her rearview mirror.
*****
She had no idea where she was headed; she’d never in her life been farther from Santa Fe than Albuquerque—which was where she headed first, because in her mind, you couldn’t get anywhere from Santa Fe unless you started at Albuquerque. Once in that city, though, the farthest reaches of what she knew, she had to pull over and think for a minute.
All she had to do was figure out which direction to point the truck.
South felt backward. She supposed she had family in Mexico—she knew she did—but she’d never met any of them, and she barely spoke any Spanish. Besides, she wanted to own her memories of her mother and grandparents, and she could only do that if no one else shared them.
West was more of the same and then California, basically, and all she knew about California was what movies and television said about it. Fake and bright and loud. Not even a chance to see the ocean could draw her through that.
East, from all she knew of it, was just crowded. People everywhere.
So she went north. Maybe she’d end up in Canada. Maybe she’d go so far as Alaska. She didn’t know, but the thought of going somewhere green and lush, getting away from the desert scrub of the southwest, made her feel calm.
So she went north, and she decided she’d know where she was supposed to stop when she got there.
Chapter Two
She came awake with a start, her side aching, and the dream reached from her sleep into waking. She would have screamed, except that she thought she was choking on blood.
The cold dark that greeted her opening eyes seemed to her sluggish brain the first sight of her own death. And then she understood that she could see a steering wheel, and the diffuse light of the moon through fogged glass.
She’d fallen off the bench seat of the Chevy. The ache in her side was the sole of one of her boots digging in near her scar; she’d toed them off in an anemic attempt to get comfortable for the night.
Struggling up from the floor of the cab, she sat on the passenger side and yanked her boots back on, breathing deeply and steadily until her head cleared. The dream was always the same when it came: that night relived, every sense memory at full power.
Once her mind was back in reality, she began to shiver—subtly at first, but with increasing violence. She was freezing. Digging into her duffel, she found a hoodie and pulled it on over her leather jacket.
It was early spring, but the weather had been unusually warm, and when she’d stopped in this national park in Utah, she’d been wearing a t-shirt and had both windows down in the cab.
She’d stopped too early in the day; she’d only been on the road about seven hours. But once she’d cleared the New Mexico state line, she’d started to think of more than escape, and she’d realized a few things—first among them: she was scared. Fear wrung her stomach like an old dishrag. She was singularly unprepared for this journey. She
didn’t even have a map.
On her way out of town, she’d stopped at the bank and emptied what was left of her savings and checking accounts, and now she had twenty-three hundred dollars in an envelope in her duffel, tucked into a pocket with a passport she’d never used. In her wallet, she had her driver’s license, her Santa Fe Public Library card, her old high school ID, and a JCPenney Portrait Studio photo of her and her parents.
She had about four changes of clothes in the duffel, a pair of sneakers, and two hoodies.
Everything else, she’d left behind. Even her cell phone. At the time, she’d been leaving behind her ghosts and starting off fresh. A few hours later, it had dawned on her that if somebody came on her and meant her harm, she would be in real trouble.
So she’d stopped in the next town—Moab, Utah—determining right then that she should not drive at night, and that she should find and buy a disposable cell phone. But there was some kind of festival going on in the funky little town, and she hadn’t been able to find a room, or a store that sold cheap cell phones.
She’d driven to Arches National Park, just outside Moab, thinking she could take a campsite, but they were all booked, too. Not knowing what else to do, she’d driven back to town and just gone in circles, crying, until she realized she was burning gasoline she needed.
How stupid she’d been to think she could just strike out and find a new life. How naïve. How childish.
Finally, after a fast-food dinner, she’d driven back to the park, parked in the visitor center lot, locked the doors and rolled up the windows, and hoped everyone would leave her alone.
So far, they had. She checked her watch, which had an old-fashioned glowing dial. Almost four o’clock. Only a couple of hours until sunrise, and she could turn around and go back home. The landlord wouldn’t have seen her letter yet, and she could get the spare key out of the fake rock in the yard.
She buried her nose into the neck of her hoodie and hunkered down to wait for dawn.
*****
Again, she woke with a start, this time into bright sunshine. She jumped again when she saw the park ranger standing outside the window. He smiled and made the ‘roll down your window’ gesture. With a deep breath, she obliged.
“Good morning, miss.”
“Morning.”
“Did you spend the night here?”
She blushed. “Yes, I’m sorry. I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
The ranger was about her father’s age, with the same kind of wrinkles on his face that meant he’d lived most of his life outdoors. The edge of tightly-trimmed hair under his ranger’s hat was blond, though, and his eyes were blue. He was thick and tall, unlike her short, wiry father.
He studied her for a second or two, then nodded as if he’d just won an argument with himself. “Well, why don’t you come on in. I’ll put the coffee on, and it’s Lori’s turn to bring the doughnuts.”
“Yeah?” She blushed again at the sharp way surprise had turned the word. “I mean…thank you. You’re sure?”
“Sure. If the best place you had to be was a parking lot on a thirty-degree night, then I’d say you could use some coffee and carbs to get your day started.” He smiled again, and she could almost feel the warmth of the expression. “And a friend, if you want one. I’m Chuck.”
He opened the door and held out his hand, and she took it and let him help her down from the truck.
*****
The other ranger, Lori, came in while Chuck was making the coffee. She was short and skinny. Like Chuck, she seemed to be about her dad’s age. Late forties or early fifties. Her eyebrows went up when she saw that Chuck wasn’t alone, but then she smiled and set the pink bakery box down. “Hi there.”
Before she could answer, Chuck turned and did it for her. “This here is Gabriela. She’s just passin’ through, but she needs a little help before she gets on her way.”
“Well, hi, Gabriela. I’m Lori.” Lori opened the box. “Help yourself, but save a bear claw for Chuck, or we’ll all be in trouble.”
“Thanks.” She felt guilty, taking their charity when she’d brought all this on herself. She was neither truly homeless nor entirely broke, and these nice people were taking care of her like she was a desperate case. “I…I can pay. I’m not homeless or anything.” The words sounded flat and pathetic once they were in the air.
Chuck and Lori gave each other a look loaded with some kind of meaning, and then Chuck came over with a cup of coffee for Lori, and they both sat down at the rickety table in this staff room.
“Why’d you sleep out there in your truck last night, then?” Chuck asked.
She felt a blush warm her cheeks. “I panicked, I guess. I couldn’t find a room, and the campsites were all full, and I was worried about driving at night. This seemed like the safest place I could think of.”
Chuck smiled that kind smile, and Lori nodded. “Where’re you headed, Gabriela?” she asked.
Alone in the dark before dawn, she had decided to go back to Santa Fe. Here, now, in the bright morning, sitting around a table with kind people, eating a chocolate-frosted doughnut and drinking a good cup of strong coffee, she said, “North.”
Chuck laughed lightly. “Just ‘north’?”
She shrugged. “For now, yeah. Just north. Somewhere. I’ll know when I get there.”
“How old are you, honey?” Lori asked, leaning forward.
“Twenty-one.”
“Can you prove that?”
“Lori,” Chuck muttered. “Come on.”
“No, it’s okay.” She reached down to her duffel, unzipped it, and dug out her wallet. She pulled her driver’s license out and pushed it across the table. “I get why you’d ask.”
Until she saw Lori’s expression, it hadn’t occurred to her that anyone would know her story outside of New Mexico. But it was brilliantly obvious that Lori recognized her name. She looked up. “Oh, honey.”
“What?” Chuck asked and reached for the ID. He didn’t make the connection, though, and he looked back up. “What?”
“I think Lori just figured out that my dad killed all my family and almost killed me, too. The Cantina Killings in New Mexico a couple of years ago.”
“Oh? Oh.” Chuck’s penny finally dropped. “Oh. God.”
“The sentencing was a couple of days ago. It was on the news,” Lori added. “And now you’re going away.”
She nodded.
“Oh, honey,” Lori said again. “I’m sorry. What can we do?”
“I’m okay. I just…I should probably buy a cell phone. And maybe a map.”
That made Chuck laugh, and she turned to him, surprised. “I’d say those are bare minimums,” he said. “You really just took off, didn’t you?”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she ate the last bite of doughnut and finished her coffee.
Lori sat straight, like she knew the conversation was coming to an end and it was time for business. “We can give you a few maps—we have boxes of ‘em, but nobody wants paper maps anymore. As for a cell phone, I guess you want one of those no-plan deals?”
She nodded.
“Well, I think you’re probably out of luck there until Provo or Salt Lake, but they’re only about three hours off. Then you’ll be able to find just about any store you want.” Lori’s eyes narrowed. “You sure that’s all you need?”
“Yep. You’ve been really nice, and sitting here with you made a bad night worth it. But I’m okay. Honest.”
*****
They sent her off with a paper sack filled with two more doughnuts, a new travel mug imprinted with the National Parks logo and filled with coffee, three different road maps, and their business cards, with the personal cell numbers scrawled on the back. Lori even gave her a hug. Chuck touched his finger to the brim of his ranger hat.
When she pulled out of the parking lot, she felt a pang of loss far stronger than anything she’d felt as she’d rolled down the street she’d always lived on.
That loss had been t
oo old, the scar too thick, to have caused her pain beyond the steady beat she’d learned to live with.
She’d meant to drive right out of the park, but now, without the panic of finding a place to sleep, now, when she’d had a chance to get used to the weight of the vast uncertainty before her, she noticed the park itself.
Mere minutes after she’d said goodbye to her ranger friends, she pulled off at a scenic viewpoint. What a place this was. Without realizing it, she meandered forward on a trail until she was deep among the arches.
The geography around the visitor center had been striking, but in a way more or less familiar to her. The Southwest was beautiful, in its stark, scrubby, brownness, but it was bleak, too. She’d been to Taos once or twice, where there were real mountains and a dark, severe kind of green beauty.
But the Arches. It was hard not to see the hand of God shaping a place like this. Actually, as she sat on a round, red boulder and basked like a lizard in the sun, taking in the epic magnificence of the landscape, she decided it was even more magical to think of the world shaping itself. It was almost romantic—the caress of great waters and the kiss of fierce winds, the embrace of eons, each day, each moment adding or taking its share. Some days left gentle, nearly imperceptible marks; others broke boulders and tore trees from their roots. Everything changed everything.
Even as she sat, even as the hikers around her moved through, they were all making tiny changes that would reshape the landscape.
That was how life was. Every day, every choice, every word, every gesture, every breath. Each moment in the present shaped a future it didn’t know.
Somewhere (Sawtooth Mountains Stories Book 1) Page 2
