A glint of sunlight on metal flashed nearby. Someone else was here, too, passing along the opposite sidewall.
Stewart stopped pacing, froze and studied me, then swiveled to look over his shoulder.
“Stewart,” I said, trying to draw his attention. “Where? Where could we go? I mean, is there a plan? Someplace people won’t bother us? Where my family can’t find us? Because . . . b-because all they care about is turning me into an unpaid nanny.” I realized now how untrue that was, how broken my mother, my siblings, and even Lloyd would be if a police cruiser came to the house, disturbing a perfectly ordinary day with the most unthinkable news. Whatever differences we had with each other, we were still a family. I still wanted to see them—to be part of their lives and have them be part of mine. There were worse things than having a family that didn’t understand you. So many worse things.
Stewart rotated slowly toward me again, looking confused, pulling his hair away from his eyes, nodding frenetically. “I know places.” He stopped, leaned in, his face jutting close to mine, his breath thick and foul. “But I don’t think you can do it. You see, while your milquetoast parents were raising you on Starbucks and lobster tails, mine were teaching me how to survive in the woods. You don’t kill your food, you don’t eat. Isn’t that the natural order of things? Kill it before it kills you? A thing that can’t survive on its own is worthless, isn’t it, Stewart?” The last sentence came in an eerie, high-pitched voice, an imitation of someone else. His mother? His father? I couldn’t imagine what had been hiding all this time inside the shy, withdrawn college student next door.
“I can do it. I can.” I forced as much volume as I could, not only to command his attention, but to cover any noise behind him. “The trainers taught me. I’ve learned everything in Wildwood. How to get by without electricity, what kinds of food we can gather, how to purify water, how to make a fire. It’s perfect, Stewart. They gave us everything we need to know. We can go somewhere where no one, not even my parents, will find us.”
He let his hair fall, his shoulders drooping forward. “Do you think I’m stupid, Allie? Do you know, really, where they’ve estimated my IQ? Do you have any idea? Look around you. How many years have people been trying to figure out the mysteries of Wildwood? Yet . . . here we are. It didn’t even take me all that long. A little research, some trips up here exploring. I knew it had to be someplace where the entrance was covered with water when the lake was filled. Someplace . . . inaccessible, even before that. They were meeting here, you know. To make secret plans. To plot against him. To betray him. He gave them everything, yet they turned on him.”
Stewart stepped toward me, taking something from his pocket, pointing it my way. A gun? A knife? “Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?”
“No, Stewart . . .” My hands flew up to stop whatever was coming. Behind him, Andy had moved into the light now. The second figure came out of the shadows. Blake. I couldn’t see his face, but his careful stride across the floor was unmistakable.
“Stewart, listen,” I pleaded. “I never meant to hurt you. You didn’t tell me how you felt. I didn’t know. I want to hear more about where we can go. The place you know about. How do we get there?” I forced myself to focus on Stewart, not to glance toward Andy and Blake. They were less than ten feet away now, almost within reach. “Tell me more about it. Is it in the mountains? I’ve always liked the mountains. A place with snow. Not like Texas. It’s so hot here. I’m sick of the heat.” For once, my ability to babble was a life-saving skill.
Stewart tipped his head to one side, seeming almost mesmerized by the picture.
“Is there a cabin? A lake, maybe? I’ve always had that in mind. A place to get away from everything. No Internet, no phone calls, no TV . . . just quiet. Doesn’t that seem almost perfect? Just quiet and . . .”
A rock crunched against the floor, and suddenly everything was happening at once. Blake lunged forward, Stewart whirled, the gun exploded, I screamed. I felt myself falling, a stabbing pain, and then darkness.
Grandma Rita was there as the light faded. You did a good job, darlin’. You did all you could do. She stroked my hair. You’re a Kirkland, and our people pioneered this country. We don’t take guff off nobody.
Then even she was gone, and there was nothing.
Overhead, a patch of blue shone through a void in the clouds, the color perfect and brilliant, the edges outlined in radiant streams of golden light.
Heaven?
An airplane flew across the open space, drawing a vaporous line. Did they have airplanes in heaven? Was I still here?
Movement at the edges of my vision came into focus. I recognized faces. The fishermen from the Waterbird, Burt and Nester. Mallory from Wildwood. Birdie’s grandpa, Len. Andy stood above him, and strangely enough, Rav Singh and Tova.
Tender concern etched their expressions.
“Move back, give her some room,” a sheriff’s deputy in uniform commanded.
No one retreated.
Blake was sitting over me, his face near mine. “Welcome back to the world.” His hand moved my hair from my forehead.
Somewhere nearby, water stroked the shore, soft, rhythmic. Far in the distance, thunder purred, the sound receding now, harmless as a contented cat settling in for an afternoon nap in a sunny window. We were near the lake, but I was lying on something soft.
I tried to reach for Blake, but my hands were strapped down.
“Just stay still. They’re getting ready to take you in the ambulance.”
Panic flickered. “W-was I . . . was I . . . d-did he . . . shoot?” My voice was barely a whisper. Blake leaned closer to hear.
What if I was dying, right here? Now. The life seeping out of me?
Please, God, no. There’s so much I need to do. So many things I want to change. So much I need to fix. I’d lived my life as if I had all the time in the world—time to think about relationships, time to understand why I was put on the planet, time to make my life count for something, time to make a difference. I’d never really understood that at any moment, time could run out.
“It’s not that bad,” Blake promised. “You tripped and fell. You hit your head.”
My lips trembled upward, my body filling with relief, with gratitude, with determination toward all the things I had left untended.
I had time. A future.
“Fig . . . figures.” Laughter pressed, bubbled out with the word, ended in a groan. I hurt all over. “I c-can’t even . . . do . . . k-kidnapping right.”
Blake gave me a stern look, not appreciating the joke. “You did it just right, Allie. Falling when you did probably saved your life.”
“K-kim?” I whispered.
“They’re with her now,” one of the sheriff’s deputies reported, grabbing his radio for a status update. “They should be bringing her out soon. You girls are darn lucky. We’ve been combing these hills looking for you for two days. It’s a good thing these old-timers know Chinquapin Peaks and that they’d noticed a guy camping nearby this past week. The entrance to that cave is just big enough to get through, and almost impossible to see. If Len hadn’t spotted where this jerk’s camp was and helped track him to the cave, we never would’ve found you in time.”
The information landed in a jumble, like bits of a newspaper shredded to confetti. I struggled to put it together into a story that made sense. “Stewart’s been here a week? He was planning . . . ?”
I looked at Blake, and his face took on a hard expression. “He’s been fixated on you for months, Allie. He had a bunch of your things packed in a duffel bag at his camp. His fingerprints were all over your apartment in Austin and all over your room in Wildwood—even at the Berman. He had a Razor Point Productions crew shirt in his backpack, maps of the Wildwood set, architectural renderings of the Berman. His computer was full of hacked messages from your cell phone and your email. He’s been monitoring you, telling his co-workers you were his girlfriend—that the two of you were getting married. The text that brought
Kim down to the river was from Stewart, not Jake. Kim’s boyfriend left town on a business trip three days ago.”
“From Stewart?” Even now, it was still almost impossible to assimilate those things with the quiet, seemingly harmless guy next door.
“You don’t know how close you probably came,” the sheriff’s deputy added. “We picked up a report that he was investigated in Mississippi. A co-ed he tutored there disappeared ten months ago, and they haven’t found any trace of her yet.”
I tried to rise again, but the straps held me in place. I was angry now. Angry and terrified.
“Shhh . . .” Blake soothed. “That’s enough information. Just rest.” He leaned down, his lips touching my forehead and lingering there, his hand finding mine. “You’re safe now, Allie.”
“Don’t leave me,” I whispered.
He rose and looked into my eyes. “I’m right here, Allie. I’m not going anywhere.”
Chapter 26
ALLIE KIRKLAND
AUGUST 1, PRESENT DAY
The wedding dress was beautiful. The costuming crew had spent hours searching through patterns of the time period, looking for just the right ivory fabrics and French and Belgian laces. They’d poured over the designing, measuring, cutting, basting, and building of the final dress.
The women of the village had even created a sewing circle at the Delevan house and begun to bond while doing the fine handwork on the dress. In reality, having a special wedding outfit devoted to only one day of wear would’ve been unlikely for a bride of modest estate in 1861, but the fact is that every bride dreams of her wedding day and imagines that special dress.
Sometimes, allowances must be made, even in re-creating history. After everything the cast of Wildwood Creek had been through so far this summer, it seemed only right that this celebration of the glorious bonding of man and wife be nothing less than a perfect moment.
A real preacher had even moved into the room behind the schoolhouse. The impending nuptials and the trauma surrounding the kidnappings had evidenced the need for any society, even a temporary one, to have a strong moral compass. Reverend Hay, the small-town minister from Moses Lake, and his wife were excited to be filling the position of Wildwood’s pastorate for the next few weeks until the production reached its closing point.
“Oh, don’t you just look pretty as a museum painting?” Netta cooed, handing me a bouquet of antique roses as she stepped into our impromptu bride’s room, the downstairs parlor of the Delevan house. “These are for the bride.”
I took the roses and felt the slightest hint of their thorns through the blue embroidered hanky that had been used to wrap them. Their scent danced upward, and I thought about the history of the plants brought long ago across seas and prairies by hardy pioneers. Even as Wildwood had faded into dust, the roses had rooted and survived for generations, growing untamed and untended where human lives had come and gone. They would stay here after we moved on, too, their lacy blooms greeting the schoolkids who would come to visit this place to learn about life in a frontier town and to study the tragic history of Wildwood.
“They’re beautiful.” I glanced toward the bedroom, where Kim was getting dressed with the help of Mallory, who’d been documenting the addition of each piece of clothing, bit by bit, for her Frontier Woman blog. “I’ll give them to the bride, if she ever comes out.”
“I’m coming! I’m coming!” Kim yelled. “Perfection takes time!” At this point, she was somewhere between a giddy girl and bridezilla. In any given moment, there was no telling which one would gain control. I couldn’t blame her. The stress of a wedding in front of the cameras, in full period dress, with the entire village and her friends and family decked out in rented costuming, was a lot to handle—even for a girl about to marry a wealthy banker who’d come west to propose to his true love, marry her, and set up shop in Wildwood.
At least until the end of the production.
It’s not every day a girl gets the whole fairy tale, and the thing about fairy tales is, there’s a need for everything to be perfect. Throughout the whirlwind planning of the wedding, Netta and Genie had been reminding both Kim and me that some of the unexpected moments in life are the ones you remember the most.
When Kim squeezed through the bedroom door in her hoop, corset, pantaloons, petticoats, and new silk chemise, delicately hand-embroidered for the wedding night by Netta, she looked beautiful enough to be a bride already.
Tears stung my eyes, but they were happy tears. When you love someone—really love someone—that person’s happiness becomes your own happiness. I had finally figured that out. Life isn’t about protecting yourself, it’s about tearing the box wide open and letting other people in. The people you meet come with lessons to teach. Kim had taught me to be bold. To take risks. To jump in with both feet instead of always standing on the shore worrying about getting my shoes wet.
Jake was a great guy, and if I hadn’t believed in love at first sight before, I did after watching the two of them at the hospital. Jake loved my best friend in the way of fairy tales and happily-ever-afters. Some of us are a little slower to recognize it than others, but when the right person steps into your life, you know it.
So now Jake was entering the world of Wildwood Creek . . . a concession made by Rav and the producers after all Kim had been through. An unconventional wedding and honeymoon, but it seemed to fit the couple just fine.
“Oh, look at you, Allie. You look so pretty.” Kim pressed her hands over her mouth, then fanned her face, holding back tears.
“I put on my Sunday best for you.” I did a quick twirl, being sure to show her the roses Netta had woven into my hair that morning.
“You’re so skinny,” Kim lamented, then grinned at me.
“What about you?” Between all the hard work in the bathhouse and the time in the hospital, Kim looked like a model getting ready for a shoot in an extremely retro bridal magazine.
Bracing her hands on her hips, she twirled her shoulders side-to-side and sashayed into the room. “My goal is not putting all the weight back on, now that I’m gonna be a lady of leisure.”
We giggled like little girls, and Mallory reminded us that we were already late for the wagon ride to the cliffs above the river, where the camera crew, the cast of Wildwood, and invited guests were already gathering for a sunset wedding that had been kept top secret to prevent the interference of paparazzi. With the breaking of the story about Stewart, the production had drawn national attention. Now that the commotion was finally starting to die down, no one wanted to get it started again, including me. One thing a near-disaster will do is bring families together, and after days of hovering over me in the hospital, it’d practically taken an act of Congress to keep my mother from following me home to Wildwood. She’d even flown back here for the wedding and brought Lloyd and the younger kids along. Who knows when they’ll ever be able to participate in something like this again, she’d said. It’s a fabulous opportunity they shouldn’t miss.
It’s strange how just a few new words can chip away old walls. Nothing I’d ever done had been classified in the realm of fabulous opportunity. It felt really . . . good. For the first time we all seemed to be looking forward to an experience together, even if it was just for a few hours during the wedding. After that, Wildwood would be locked down again, the village drifting back to its normal routines for the final four weeks of production.
The door opened, and Wren poked her head in, her face flushed from marshaling the kids in the wedding party. Perhaps due to the mature hairdo, she had managed to assume control of the group. I’d probably never get my snood back now. “We need to go. The little twirps are getting restless. Mallory, Nick says he’s not walking up the aisle with the ring pillow in front of all those people. You’re gonna have to talk to him.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Mallory flashed a look my way, and I lifted both palms as she headed for the door. With Wren, the social skills were slow in coming, but even when you’re eleven-going-on-thirty,
it is possible to grow and change. Maybe that was the deepest lesson I’d learned in Wildwood: that life should never be a stagnant thing. That just like the rivers, we thrive when the water flows in and washes away the silt of the past. All the debris we cling to doesn’t keep us afloat, it kills the life within us.
If I had learned one overriding lesson from Bonnie Rose, whose eventual fate it seemed I would continue to wonder about forever, it was that I had a little more pioneer blood in me than I thought.
“There’s someone out here for you too, Allie.” Wren’s berry-tinted lips pursed into a smug smile. “Lover boy wants to see you. Isn’t that, like, bad luck before a wedding?”
“Not if you’re just the maid of honor.” I hurried from the room and out the door, suddenly as giddy as Kim. Blake was waiting on the porch, leaning casually against one of the pillars.
My heart did the little flip-flop it always did when I saw him.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at the wedding already, doing crowd control, chasing away nosy photographers in helicopters, or shooting laser beams at boaters on the river who’re trying to get a peek?” I intertwined my hands behind my back, feeling coy and cute. Something about being in love made foolishness seem normal.
“When you’re the law in town, you can get away with a few things.” He smiled that sweet, slightly careless smile that I’d come to anticipate and adore. “I thought the prettiest girl in Wildwood shouldn’t just ride to the big event with the rest of the wedding party.” He stepped aside and motioned down the hill, indicating a black horse hitched to a two-person surrey.
“Why, sah, I just don’ know if that would be prop-ah . . .” The Scarlett in me emerged at the strangest times. “Travelin’ all the way to the rivahside with a handsome gentleman such as yourself.”
“Oh, but I come bearing gifts.” From behind his back, he produced a small bouquet of wildflowers. “Beauty for a beauty.” Even though he overdramatized the sappy line, it made me blush as I accepted the gift. Reaching into his breast pocket, he pulled out a manila envelope. “There’s a little something else too. But keep it mum for now—and you didn’t get it from me. It came from the DA’s file on Stewart’s case.”
Wildwood Creek Page 32
