Let There Be Life

by Melissa Storm

  Gone. No more trails to follow. No truths left to find.

  Did this mean he had given up on reaching her?

  Her heart fell as she contemplated this strange loss, equal parts good and bad.

  Liz simply didn’t know what to believe anymore, didn’t know if she’d ever be able to turn back despite reaching the end of the road.

  She texted Lauren to let her know she and the dogs would be by earlier than expected. At least the visit with her friend would help distract her reeling mind.

  On the road to Puffin Ridge, she placed a call to Dorian on her Bluetooth, but it rang several times before finally clicking over to voicemail. Had he left, too?

  When the robotic voice prompted her to leave a message at the tone, she did, hoping it would give her some measure of closure.

  “Dorian Whitley,” she said with an exhausted laugh. “You told me not to hate you, but guess what? I do. I hate you with every fiber of my being, Dorian. You brought chaos and lies into my life. You told me to talk to my father if I wanted to know the truth. But surprise, surprise, he wouldn’t say a thing. I tried to talk to Warwick, and he’s gone without a trace.”

  The GPS interrupted her with instruction to “Take exit on right to Glenn Highway, then keep straight for eighty miles to Puffin Ridge.” Liz pressed hard until the device turned off. She already knew the way and didn’t need that robotic voice irritating her.

  She huffed and quickly finished her message to Dorian. “Maybe you’re gone, too. I don’t know. But what I do know is I hate you for ruining my life, then not even having the decency to pick up the phone.”

  She hung up before she could tear into him more and hit the steering wheel in frustration. The car swerved from the motion, forcing her to focus on her driving once again.

  Liz shook. She was so, so angry, but was it really because of Dorian? He seemed the easiest target since he’d been the one to first introduce her to this mystery, since he wasn’t answering his phone now when she desperately needed someone to tell her what was going on.

  She tried listening to the radio as she drove along the lonely stretch of highway to Puffin Ridge, but every lyric just set her further on edge. It all seemed to taunt her, to remind her that she’d never know the truth about her own life, that she’d reached a dead end on the journey into her past.

  Just as Liz had pulled into Lauren and Shane’s driveway, her phone rang through the speakers. Her father calling to apologize? Dorian? Either would have been welcome at this point.

  But, no, of course, it couldn’t be that simple.

  “Hey, girl,” Sofia said casually, but her voice shook with uncertainty. “Where are you?”

  “Puffin Ridge. Do you need me to come cover a shift?” The front door of the cabin opened, and Lauren waved from the doorway. Naturally, all three dogs in the backseat of her car went crazy with joyous barking.

  “No, no. Don’t do that.” Sofia said something more, but her voice cut out.

  “Sofia? I can hardly hear you over the dogs. What’s going on?” Liz waved Lauren over and pointed toward the back seat. Luckily, her friend knew just what she was trying to say, and let the dogs out to play in the yard.

  “Liz? Are you still there?” The rustling of fabrics hinted that Sofia had gone to hide in the back of the store where they kept overstock garments.

  “Yeah. Sorry about that. The dogs were—”

  “It’s fine. Listen,” Sofia’s voice dropped to a whisper. “There was some creepy dude here looking for you. He waited for almost an hour before I threatened to call the cops and made him go away. I think he’s somewhere nearby still.”

  Liz’s heart sped. She should have waited longer, shouldn’t have left Anchorage so easily. She asked the question even though she already knew the answer somewhere deep within. “Was it the same creepy guy as last week? Dorian?”

  “The cute one? No. This dude was old—gray hair in his beard and all that. I managed to sneak a picture. Just a sec, I’ll send it to you.”

  A moment later Liz’s phone buzzed with a message and sure enough, the image of Mr. Warwick stared back at her. She didn’t understand. Hadn’t he left? Why was he still looking for her?

  “Did you get his number?” Liz asked, equal parts hope and dread filling her chest.

  “What? No! Liz, trust me, this guy was not here for altruistic reasons. You know it takes a lot to weird me out. Heck, I’m the queen of weird, but this guy scared the bejeezus out of me. I wanted you to know so you could be on the lookout, not so you could return his visit.”

  Sofia clearly meant the words, but she also knew so little of what was really going on. She didn’t know how desperately Liz needed to talk to somebody—anybody—who could give her answers.

  A sigh escaped before she could suck it back. “Thanks for sending the picture. I’ve got to go.”

  This set her boss further on edge. “Liz? Stay away from him, okay? I don’t often play the employer card, but seriously, boss’s orders.”

  She simply didn’t have enough energy left to fight off her friends. “Okay,” Liz answered, then hung up the phone.

  Everyone in her life had lied to her, so what would one more lie hurt?

  Liz stepped out of the car and into Lauren’s waiting arms. How long would she have to stay before she could return to her hunt in Anchorage? She felt bad already looking to form an escape plan, especially since Lauren seemed so happy to see here.

  “I’m so excited you’re here!” her friend squealed. “It just hasn’t been the same since Scarlett moved back to the city. It’s so lonely, Shane and I are even talking about starting a family.”

  Well, this was unexpected, and something easy to latch onto. Lauren didn’t have to know about the call from Sofia or Liz’s plan to return to the city by tomorrow morning. While she was here, she could play the part of the good friend. Normally, she wouldn’t have to pretend. She liked Lauren, but she just didn’t have any more pieces of herself left to give.

  “Oh my gosh! Are you?” Liz let her hand fall to Lauren’s belly, but her friend batted it away with a laugh.

  “No, and I better not look it, either!”

  “So tell me everything. Have you…?” Liz’s enthusiasm was waning already. She felt terrible about not being here fully for her friend. Why couldn’t she enjoy anything anymore? Would she ever be able to enjoy her life again?

  Lauren kept on talking. “Not yet. I want to get through at least one more Iditarod before having to take a year off. Pregnancy and extreme sports don’t exactly mix, you know?”

  Liz nodded. “Well, yeah, of course, but that’s so exciting.” She tried to make her voice go up at the end, but her words and the way she said them clashed terribly.

  Still, Lauren smiled, a woman content with her life and place in the world—a woman very much unlike Liz. “Anyway, that’s enough about me,” her friend said, her voice taking on a more serious tone, telling Liz exactly what would come next. “What was that all about? Some creepy guy?”

  Here it was, an easy out. “Were you eavesdropping?”

  “No, but you asked me to take the dogs and I overheard. Besides, Scarlett may have called and told me everything.”

  “What? I’ll kill her.” Scarlett had found a way to ruin her plans all the way from Texas. There was no way Lauren would let Liz slip away now, and the last thing she needed was a friend following her into a possibly dangerous situation.

  Lauren frowned as if maybe she regretted making this revelation. “She just wants you to be safe and, based on what I’ve heard, she’s right to worry.”

  “Well, I’m out here now. Safe and sound in Puffin Ridge where no one can ever hurt me.” Or tell me the truths about my own life, she mentally added, trying so hard not to scowl.

  “Are they trying to hurt you back in Anchorage? What was that call about? New information?”

  “Let’s just go inside and have some cocoa or something,” Liz suggested, heading toward the door, but Lauren stepped into he
r path, cutting her off.

  “You can talk to me, Liz. I know we’re both closer to Scarlett than to each other, but I’d love for us to be like sisters, too. And besides.” She let out a wry smile. “I can relate to what you’re going through in a way Scar can’t. I’m a member of the fathers with secret pasts club, too. Remember?”

  How could Liz forget? It was Lauren’s own mystery that had brought her up from the lower forty-eight and led her straight to her now husband, Shane. Liz only wished her mystery could wrap up so neatly, leaving everyone happy and fulfilled the way Lauren’s had—but she already knew that wouldn’t be the case. How could it be with all the willful deceit that had already spanned years?

  “Tell me,” Lauren goaded, bouncing up and down at her knees. “Tell me. Tell me, tell me!”

  “Okay, okay.” Liz laughed, but it didn’t lighten her stress at all. “This guy, Warwick, he came looking for me at the store and stuck around for quite a while apparently. My boss, Sofia, she grabbed a picture of him.”

  “May I?” Lauren asked as she reached for the phone Liz still held clutched in her fist.

  “Yeah, sure. I guess.”

  Lauren made a face as she opened the text message. “This him?” She shifted the phone toward Liz.

  “Yeah, that’s him, all right.” She still felt funny whenever she saw this man who was a stranger but also wasn’t. What was she supposed to feel? Love? Fear? Something else entirely?

  Lauren began typing furiously on Liz’s phone.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” Liz asked, trying to look over the taller woman’s shoulder, but Lauren used her body as a shield until she’d finished typing.

  “Bingo,” she said with a triumphant smile as she handed the phone back to Liz.

  “I don’t get it. What are you doing?”

  “Look.” Lauren’s eyes widened as she waited for Liz to glance down at the phone.

  “You did a reverse image search. Don’t you think I already searched for him?”

  “But by his name, right? What if he’s using an alias? And that’s not just an image search—it’s facial recognition, baby.”

  Liz was afraid to look. All she had done was seek answers these past couple weeks. What if they were finally here and all she needed to do was glance down to learn everything?

  “Look at the results,” Lauren urged. “Do any of those look like your guy?”

  Liz shivered as she scrolled through the images as the cold began to seep into her bones.

  Lauren watched at her side while the dogs ran back and forth in the front yard—thankfully fenced off from the kennels out back so they couldn’t rile up Lauren and Shane’s sled dogs.

  “Wait, go back!” Lauren shouted all of a sudden. “That could be him without the beard and like thirty years younger, right?”

  Liz scrolled back up and clicked on the grainy black and white image. The screen opened up to a newspaper archive for Charleston’s Daily Register.

  She zoomed in on the face. It definitely belonged to a younger Warwick, and beside him stood a little girl who couldn’t have been more than two or three years old.

  She wore her hair in high pigtails and clutched on to a stuffed horse.

  Liz remembered that horse.

  Its name was Mr. Hooves, and it had once belonged to her.

  Mr. Hooves. Dad. Me.

  The picture had come from another life, one Liz was only just beginning to recognize.

  Lauren pointed to the screen with a shaky finger. “Is that you?”

  “I think so,” Liz answered, gulping down the bile that had threatened to spill.

  Lauren clicked on the photo again to bring up the attached webpage. The caption beneath the photo read: John’s Island Girl Still Missing 2 Weeks Later.

  “Scroll down,” Liz urged. “What does it say?”

  Lauren frowned. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? It has to say something. What’s her name? What’s his? How did she go missing?”

  Lauren’s fingers trembled. “I don’t know. The page is blank. It’s an archived listing.”

  “What does that mean?” Liz yelled in desperation. “I need to read the rest.”

  Lauren clicked around on the mobile website until she found a page with more information and read aloud, “The Daily Register is in the process of digitizing archives to make content publicly available for local researchers and family historians. Please bear with us, as this is a lengthy and time-consuming process.”

  “So what now?” Liz asked, angry at the newspaper, angry at Lauren, angry at the whole wide world a million times around. “Do we just wait for God knows how long until the Register’s done doing its thing?”

  “I have an idea,” Lauren said, giving Liz her phone back and then extracting her own from her front pocket.

  “Lauren, hey!” Scarlett’s voice rang out over the speaker. “Is Liz there?”

  “Yeah, she just arrived.” Lauren turned her back to Liz as she spoke. “Listen, I know you’re on vacation and all, but mind doing a little digging for us while you’re there? We could use your librarian superpowers right about now.”

  “Well, I’m not technically a librarian anymore, but I’d still love to help. What did you find? Is it…?” Scarlett continued to speak, but Liz didn’t catch the words. Even though Lauren had put the call on speaker phone, her posture made it hard to discern Scarlett’s side of the conversation.

  Lauren recited the caption, the name of the paper, and described the photo.

  “No date, huh?” Scarlett responded with a loud sigh.

  “Not that I’m seeing, but my guess is it’s from the early nineties. Think you could find it for us?” Lauren turned back toward Liz and gave her a big thumbs up.

  Now Scarlett’s words came across loud and clear. “I know I can. If they’re undergoing a digitization process right now, their archives may be a bit out of whack.”

  Liz raised her voice. “What does that mean?”

  Lauren handed her the phone.

  “It means it may take longer than usual to find the exact article we’re looking for, but we’ll find it,” Scarlett said. “I’ll find it. I promise.”

  “Thank you, Scarlett,” Lauren said, taking the phone back while Liz tried her best not to cry, not to think about the implications of that photo.

  Lauren took the phone off speaker and she, and Scarlett exchanged a few more mumbled words before she hung up the phone and tromped around the car to grab Liz’s luggage.

  “That was kind of a massive bombshell. What am I supposed to do now?” Liz asked as she followed Lauren toward the cabin.

  “We are going to have some fun. Get your mind off things,” Lauren answered as she worked the suitcase up the porch steps. “We both know Scarlett well enough to know she’ll drop everything until she finds the answers hidden within that article. Until then, we just need to pass the time.”

  “How so?” Liz wanted to know.

  Lauren turned, a dull twinkle in her eyes. “Let’s go for a sled ride.”

  Even though her father officiated the races and her two closest friends had both run the Iditarod, Liz had never found dog sledding all that interesting.

  Right now, though, it seemed to be exactly what she needed.

  After a brief visit with Shane, Liz followed Lauren to the she-shed that served as both her office and his storage room. Part of the reason she’d never liked the sport was that it required so much technical expertise. To her, that took the fun out of just being with the dogs. She also hated bossing them around, even though the dogs enjoyed it.

  That much was obvious as Lauren hooked them onto the line.

  “So, where’s the sled?” Liz asked as she helped double-check each harness.

  “With the snow.” Lauren chuckled. “As in, not here. Not today. We only use the sleds when we’re racing—not so much when training—and this is training season.”

  Liz stared at the strange setup—a large four-wheeler hooked up with a huge dog line
. Twenty dogs pulled the line taut and were jumping and barking for joy. She’d never ridden like this before, but maybe the strangeness of it would help keep her mind occupied. Maybe the dogs would pull them so fast it would feel like she was flying away from her problems, leaving them all behind.

  Lauren raised an eyebrow before coming back around to Liz’s side. “You know, with as long as you’ve been around the sport, you haven’t learned much, have you?”

  “I know a bit. But not that mush,” Liz answered reflexively, using one of her dad’s old jokes about mushing.

  “Wow, that’s awful,” Lauren said, but laughed all the same.

  Liz shrugged. She hadn’t meant to joke just then, but it was what she said whenever a well-intentioned racer asked her when she was going to get behind the sled and run her own team. It was far nicer than answering with a frown and saying “never.”

  “Never mind all that,” Lauren chided, waving her hand in front of her face to clear away a small cloud of mosquitos. “Hop on, and hold tight. You’re about to experience something that most people never do.”

  They sat together on the large ATV, Lauren already beaming with joy. She unlocked the handbrake and held it closed. “Would you like to do the honors?”

  “Umm, sure.” Liz let off the brake, but nothing happened. Not yet.

  “Hike, hike, hike!” Lauren cried since Liz had forgotten that part, and with a jolt, the four-wheeler quickly picked up speed. In no time, they were cruising through the woods around Puffin Ridge faster than she could run on her own.

  Perhaps if she just focused on all the sensations, on all the steps needed to keep the sled moving along, Liz could put Warwick out of her mind. At least until she could find a way to get to him in the city—or until Scarlett called with news.

  They took another turn, and Lauren launched into a story, her voice practically booming in the otherwise quiet woods. It seemed she, too, understood how much Liz needed to clear her mind. To just be.

  “When I first started,” Lauren said, “I had no idea how strong these dogs are. And—this stays out here—the first time we switched from ATV to sled, I kept the same amount of dogs on the line. I knew I must’ve been doing something wrong, because Shane just looked at me with that twinkle he gets in his eyes whenever I’m about to make one of his famous mistakes.”