by Lily Levi
There was something about running, about darting between things, about scrambling up rocky outcrops, and about weaving between the trees. It felt familiar, like she was reentering a dream that she couldn’t quite remember. It was déjà vu all over again, but something about it felt right this time.
She lowered her head to watch her steps. Her hair whipped down into her face and she tripped.
“Damn,” she breathed, picking herself back up.
Something gnawed at the back of her heart and she hurried forward again. Time was running out, but she didn’t know why or what for. All she knew was that she needed to hurry.
The trees surrounded her and she found herself eyeing the dark spaces between them, searching for the figure of the man in her dreams. He was someone to her. He’d called her ‘Jo-Jo’. Maybe her name really was ‘Jolene’ and she’d remembered it. The pet name felt more than right. It felt real. He might be her father, her brother, maybe a boyfriend or even just a friend, but he was someone and she was going to find him.
The distant hum of a motor reached out to her and she pushed herself faster between the black pines. She hadn’t imagined it. The road was near.
The broken frame whipped mercilessly against her leg and she tore it from her belt loop. It was her last reminder of Laurie and she didn’t want it anymore.
She threw it behind her and hoped that one day, and one day soon, she would be able to forget all about him. She pictured herself falling into another unexplained coma and letting the warm white noise of an amnesiac episode bury him like it had buried everything else. It would be like he never happened; like none of it had ever happened.
She stepped carefully down a slope covered with pine needles, using the tree trunks to steady herself.
The trees thinned and opened out. Her heart soared with warm relief.
The road was closer than he’d made it seem. He hadn’t wanted her to leave.
She slid down into a gravel-filled ditch and knelt for a moment to catch her breath. She’d made it. She was going to be okay.
She stepped up onto the road and brushed the dirt from the front of her clothes.
She walked quickly at first and then slower. She had no idea how she was going to find the man in her dreams. She’d wait for him, maybe, but where? And what if he never came?
She didn’t get far before a faded red Pontiac, flashing its lights, pulled over onto the shoulder of the road beside her.
Chapter Thirty-Five
The dirty window rolled itself down.
Jolene eyed the large woman inside.
“Tell me you aren’t walking alone out here, honey,” she said, sticking one fat elbow on top of the car door.
Jolene looked behind her.
“That’s right.” The woman’s voice was dark and husky, inviting and warm. “Ain’t no one else back there. Where are you headed?”
“Town,” said Jolene, finding her voice. “I’m going into town.”
The woman laughed and Jolene thought she would’ve liked her immediately under different circumstances.
“You mean Neverpine, is that it?”
Jolene searched the name for some kind of memory inside of it, but came away empty-handed. “I think so,” she said.
The woman pointed to the passenger seat beside her. “It’s the only town for an hour both ways. Get in, I’m going there anyhow. Besides, you’re walking the wrong way.”
Jolene said nothing and walked silently around the front of the car. The bay was to her left, she knew that. She’d been walking north instead of south. Had Laurie ever said which way it was? She was tired and confused.
The headlights blared against her bare legs and she felt exposed, like a lost dog in the middle of nowhere.
“Thank you,” she said quietly, shutting the car door beside her.
“Name’s Darla,” said the woman. “And you’re bleeding.”
Jolene looked down at her leg and saw that the gash was longer than she’d thought it was, but blood no longer trickled down her skin. “I’m okay,” she said.
“Okay, honey.” Darla pulled back onto the road. “Funny thing is, I butcher up some mean pigs and can’t stand the sight of blood. Can you believe that? My dad was a butcher and so were my brothers, even one sister, all butchers. Family of butchers, all of us. Well, except for my little mother, bless her heart. But still, here comes old Darla, not liking blood one bit, but I do it anyway.” She looked over at her. “Too hot over there?”
“No,” said Jolene, but Darla reached over her and rolled the passenger window down anyway.
The night air filled the inside of the car.
“Love the night,” said Darla, “but can’t stand the hours.”
“What?” Jolene asked, absentmindedly. She was only paying half attention to what the woman was saying. It was strange to be away from Laurie and the house she’d come to think of as home.
But the whole thing had been a lie.
“Working nights,” said Darla. “Most people will tell you to kill the pigs right before sunrise, but that’s cruel. You don’t go showing a pig the light of the next beautiful day just to take it away like that.”
“Oh,” she said.
“You okay, darling?” Darla check the rearview mirror. “Something get you spooked out there? Don’t imagine you’re walking in the dark to get your jollies.”
“No,” she said. “Nothing like that. Just trying to go home, that’s all.”
“Okay, honey.”
Jolene watched the passing trees on the side of the road. “Do you know of a Jolene?” she asked, suddenly hopeful, but the question sounded strange when said aloud.
Darla glanced at her and then back to the road. “Can’t say that I do. I’d remember a nice name like that.”
Jolene nodded and quietly wondered how many people she’d end up asking the same question to.
Excuse me, but do I look familiar to you? Do you know a Jolene?
“Is there a police station in town?” she asked. “In Neverpine?”
Darla laughed, but it was not unkind. “Not anymore,” she said. “Never been a real need for one, at least not as long as I been around and that’s a long time. We still got our fire department though, no sense in skimping on that, not out here, and especially not during fire season. No, you’ll want to go down to Fields Landing for something like that.” Darla eyed her again. “You’re not okay, are you?”
“I guess not,” she said, unsure how much she should share with the woman. “I mean, no. Not at all. This is going to sound crazy, but I think I have some kind of amnesia. I can’t remember very much, anyway.” She clenched her fists in her lap. “How far is Fields Landing?”
“No more than an hour on a good day, and if you can stand to wait, I’ll take you myself and get you sorted out. I can’t leave the pigs waiting, sadly. I’m the only one they’ve got.”
Jolene nodded.
“Amnesia,” said Darla, as though the word were brand new.
She parked behind the first tin-walled building on the side of the road. “Why don’t you come on inside and make yourself at home,” she said. “This won’t take long.”
“Oh,” said Jolene. She thought of the pigs that waited inside. “That’s all right. I can wait out here.”
“Okay, honey.” Darla exited the car. “And don’t you worry. I just need to take care of a couple things in there and I’ll be right out.”
Jolene waited until Darla disappeared into the dark hollow of the building. She’d gotten lucky, running into her like that.
The happy squeal of a pig peeled out from inside and Jolene moved down the wooden walkway.
The storefronts sat dark and empty. Bright construction paper cutouts were posted in the windows, advertising end-of-summer sales, fifty to seventy-five percent off.
Further down the street, a dim streetlamp highlighted a mural painted on the brick side of a saltwater taffy store. She paused to look at it.
Peter Pan flew over a dark g
rouping of islands and a handful lost boys in their pajamas pointed up to the night sky. A little fairy seemed to dive off into the corner of the building.
None of it was to scale and only served to remind her of Laurie.
She kept walking.
An old banner hung lifelessly overhead. “Neverpine, Home of Peter Pan,” she said to no one, but the words meant nothing to her.
When she reached the end of the street and the end of the small town, she turned around to face the way she’d come. The Peter Pan imagery was vaguely familiar, but that was all. She felt sure that it was only because Laurie had told her the made-up story about the islands and for no other reason.
With a heavy heart, she sat down at the end of the street. She pulled her legs up to her chest and rested her forehead against her knees. She didn’t know what she’d expected to find. A welcome home party? But there was no one, only empty stores and a quiet street beneath a dark sky.
She’d go to Fields Landing with Darla, but then what? What if she couldn’t find anyone and no one knew who she was? What if she had no one else in the world and the shadowed man in her dreams was just someone she’d made up, someone to hold on to?
And so she cried because there was nothing else to do.
Nothing was right and everything was wrong. The world was a mess. She was a mess. Everything was broken, like a scattered puzzle, and there was nothing she could do to make any sense of it.
She listened to the heavy footfalls step down the wooden planks.
She listened to their approach and, embarrassed, she lifted her head to wipe her eyes.
“Jolene?” said a man’s voice, soft with surprise. “Is that you?”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Laurie stepped into the moonlit carport and stared at the back of the Duesenberg. If it was wrong to hold onto Jolene, he couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t let her go, at least not without a fight. He was wrong to have let her walk out.
He moved to the side of the car and eyed the tin box sitting in the passenger seat.
He would show her the photos of himself beneath the half-built skeleton of the Eiffel Tower at the World’s Fair; beside the Statue of Liberty’s head, sitting on the ground; and with his arms outspread in front of the unsinkable Titanic. He’d show her all of these and then let her decide for herself how to feel about him. He’d tell her everything he knew, if only she would listen.
But what of her family and anyone else she’d left behind in her previous life? Could he take her away from her chance to find them and spend whatever time left she had with them? Could he force his own version of a strange life on her?
He moved into the car and sat for a quiet moment. There was no right thing to do, but if there was anything to take away from three centuries, it’s that there was never a right thing to do, only what felt right, and very often that was wrong.
He listened to how the waves lapped up against the legs of the dock down the shore. He cursed himself for the gallery and for not destroying the dark portrait of her. If he kept his own, that was one thing. But to let her see herself in that way, dead as she’d been, he could never forgive himself for it.
He searched between the overgrown ivy and found Maman’s bedroom window.
A gas lamp flickered through the dirty panes. The shadow of her bent frame stared out over the bay. Despite the terrible things she’d done in life, maybe it was possible that he’d done a more terrible thing to her in death.
A low howl brought him back to where he was. Riley had followed him out from the house and now, she padded away towards the shore. Curated over the centuries, the dog had impeccable instincts. She’d found something.
Laurie sat in the car and listened to her intermittent calls in the night that came from further and further away. Finally, unable to ignore her, he grabbed the tin of photographs, climbed out from the Duesenberg and followed the howls down to the dark, rocky beach.
He walked along the edge of the bay with only the moon and his beating heart to light the way. He decided that Jolene would’ve went one of two ways – the thin, hidden roadway between the pines, or down along the beach – and he’d never shown her the road that led up from the back of the house. He growled at himself for it. She would’ve been safer. Still, she wouldn’t have ventured into the forest and rolling hills, at least not at first, and surely not at night.
She might still be wandering down the long beach and he would find her.
Riley waited for him and he stopped beside her. Together, they examined the sandy cliff where he’d once played as a boy and she, still a puppy, had joined him. But that time was gone.
When Riley took off once more, he followed.
They paused at the top and she sniffed gingerly at a white rock, dotted with red.
Laurie bent to examine it. It was blood, already drying, but still new enough that it could’ve been Jolene’s. He never should’ve let her go.
“Find her,” he said and Riley bounded through the yellow grass. He followed and noted, even in the dark, the specks of blood where he found them.
It took everything he had not to call out her name. He was afraid she’d hide from him and he’d given her every reason to, but he set his jaw and adjusted the tin box in the crook of his arm. If the photographs weren’t proof enough, he would find another way and then another until he exhausted all avenues of truth.
Caring for her, he’d come to feel a soft kind of love when he believed he was no longer capable. Losing Elise to the ocean depths had destroyed him. She’d been his last love. Only now, he believed his heart had the strength to try again. He wouldn’t let the rare chance slip away so easily.
He followed Riley through the dark pines and up and down the steep hills. He would find her.
Jolene. She’d been so easy to fall in love with. Merely sitting in her presence had somehow been enough. He’d felt content. He’d felt at home. Even though she was dead in so many ways, her soul was still warm and it reminded him that his was, too.
They came out onto the thin, winding road and Riley padded north along the tarmac.
Laurie followed closely behind. If she’d gone north, she was going away from Neverpine and would likely keep to the road until she realized her mistake.
With every small turn in the road, he felt sure that he would come upon her, walking just ahead. He practiced what he would say to her to make her believe, but the words were impossible. He would give her the tin box and let her decide what the photographs meant; let her ask questions if she had them, and he was sure that she did.
Riley stopped in the middle of the road, jarring him from his thoughts. She whined, took a few steps forward, and then stopped again.
He walked forward to the next bend in the road, but she wouldn’t follow, so he came back.
He scanned the dark trees and rising hills on either side. He didn’t think there was any reason for Jolene to leave the road and if she had, he was sure Riley would’ve picked up her trail into the pine needles.
But she only stood there, staring back into the night.
“Jolene!” he called out, unable to help himself.
She didn’t answer, of course. Even if she’d heard him, why should she answer?
He turned his face up to the sky and steadied himself beneath the stars. He’d wronged her beyond measure. He’d brought her back to life. Now, when her time came to die again, she would die without explanation. She’d have no idea what was happening to her and neither would anyone else.
He looked over his shoulder at the road going south. If she didn’t move back through the forest and she didn’t disappear into thin air, then she’d either been picked up by a car going or she’d turned back around.
Or, perhaps, they were never following her to begin with.
She was lost.
He turned back on the road and Riley followed at his heel. He would return to the house. It was the only place she’d know where to find him, but he walked with a resolution that he couldn’t fee
l.
“Jolene!” he yelled, suddenly, fiercely.
But there was nothing.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
He opened the green motel door for her and she stepped gingerly into the cold room. The AC was set to full blast and her bare skin tightened with goosebumps.
Brown beer bottles and greasy bags littered the floor. White sheets twisted around a floral comforter at the end of the bed. The lampshades sat askew on either side.
“Sorry,” he said.
She stood in the middle of the room on the faded green carpet and waited for her heart to settle, but it refused. “Were we on vacation?” she asked quietly, taking in the mess.
The man stared at her. “No,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “This a game you’re playing?”
“No,” she said, surprised at his gruff tone. “No.”
She sat in the room’s only chair and folded her hands into her lap. She watched him move around the room and push the trash into the corner near the dented bin. He felt familiar and then he felt like no one at all, but his voice was so much like the voice she’d heard in her dreams that she couldn’t help but believe they’d known each other. Besides, he’d known her name.
She shouldn’t have felt disappointed, but she couldn’t help it.
He wiped his palms down the front of his stained jeans and straightened himself. “Where’d you go?” he asked.
“I don’t really remember,” she said. There was something about him that told her she’d already made a mistake coming back to the motel alone with him. She thought it might be better to keep her mouth shut about everything that had happened, at least until she figured out who he was to her and vice versa.
He shrugged at her. “You think it’s okay to lie to me and that’s all right, that’s fine.” He pulled a clear bottle from his back pocket and unscrewed the gold cap. “We’re leaving this dump after you show me where you put it.”
She stared at him and he stared back.
