45

I was going to die.

The realization hit me about thirty seconds after the rain started. I couldn’t see. Rain pelted my face and filled my eyes every time I tried to look up. I couldn’t find the ledge. It was up there, I was sure of it, but no matter how many times I reached for it with my free hand, I found nothing but smooth (and now wet) rock. And to top it all off, I felt my fingers slipping from the small divot.

As the rain intensified, thunder boomed through the gorge, seemingly shaking the whole bluff. My fingers ached with the kind of pain that would have normally caused me let go instantly. But I still hung on. I had too.

One more time, I decided, forcing my eyes open against the onslaught of hard rain. I kept them open, searching the rock wall for the ledge I’d spotted earlier. Once I had it in my sights, I understood the problem. I’d been reaching high enough, but I needed to reach farther to the right.

With this new understanding, I swung my free arm up again, hoping to grab it and at least relieve some of the pressure on my right hand. I never found the ledge. Before I could grab it, the toe of my boot slipped down the wet rock, and the sudden shift in my weight was too much for my tired fingers.

I let go.

The inevitability of gravity hit me immediately. There was nothing I could do. I was going to fall.

I was already falling.

The only thing I had left was the ability to control how I fell. I pushed my body backward, as if doing the backstroke through water, and closed my eyes, bracing for impact.

Or worse—the lack of impact, which would mean I’d missed the ledge.

The impact came, this time on my side, and I rolled with it, coming to a stop on my stomach. A piece of the ledge broke, falling away into the expanse below. I watched it—my eyes finally clear from the rain now as I looked down—as it fell for a long time before landing on a rock and bouncing off into the river. It disappeared.

I pushed myself away from the side again, toward the safety of the wall. Once there, I huddled against it, wrapping myself in a tight ball, and didn’t move for a long time.

*   *   *

The storm grew worse. Thunder rolled through the gorge, a continuous drone. Lightning decorated the dark canvas of the sky, and the sound of wood exploding from above filled my ears as trees splintered and broke. At one point, I glimpsed a tree light up with a pale fire before splitting into thick shards and falling into the river. It floated away on the fast-moving water.

The rain soon flooded the gorge. I watched in amazement as the river spilled out onto the rocks, eventually erasing them beneath murky waves. Still, the rain continued. I forgot what it was to feel dry, to not hear water and taste it, to not shiver under its constant assault. The afternoon washed itself into oblivion.

With the darkness came clear skies at last. It wasn’t cold, but the storm had sucked up all the day’s heat, leaving the temperature tepid enough to make me feel a chill in my wet clothes. I stripped out of all of them except my underwear and laid them out carefully on the ledge to dry.

At some point, I drifted off to sleep, only to be jolted awake by the sound of a wildcat screaming in the night.

It sounded as desperate as I felt, a lost soul betrayed by its very surroundings, its home, its kin. I lay there, listening for it again, hoping I’d hear its lonesome sound, because it was a comfort to know I wasn’t alone in the world. But it didn’t come. The night passed, its long hours stretching out painfully, relentlessly. I felt helpless, too tired to move, too alone to go to sleep.

But sleep came anyway, creeping up on me like the master thief it was.

When I heard the voices, I believed them to be a dream at first. There was laughing and murmured good cheer. Then an outburst of amazement, the boys’ voices tenuous and in awe of the night.

I turned over, saw the glow of a flashlight from the other bluff. It drifted lazily skyward. I followed the beam, losing it among the stars.

Sitting up, I squinted into the darkness. I could just make out two human shapes standing on the very rock I’d fallen from. They seemed engaged in some intimate conversation, but try as I might, I couldn’t hear what they were saying. The tone of the conversation seemed gentle and good-natured, wild and new, and I let the sounds wash over me so I could be a teenager again, a teenager on the pulse of a forbidden moment, filtered through with a kind of innocence a person can only know once.

Or maybe that wasn’t true. I felt it again now, at least a little piece of it.

Eventually, one of them shone their light toward me. Not at me, but in my general direction. They seemed to be discussing something slightly above me, trying to pinpoint it with their light.

It crossed my mind to shout at them, beg them to go get me help, but I couldn’t imagine them doing that without alerting Harden or Blevins. And once they were alerted, I might as well go ahead and take a leap from this ledge and hope for the best.

No, I wasn’t about to call out to them. But I did slide out toward the edge of the outcropping for a better look at the place where they’d aimed the flashlight.

It wasn’t too far above the ledge I’d been trying to reach earlier. What could it be? Some esoteric marking on the gorge wall or even a secret cave, an aperture that would lead me out of this trap at last? I had to hope it was; otherwise, what did I have left?

One of the boys laughed again, and I turned to see their silhouettes moving closer together. They embraced, and I felt a keen sense of joy, seeing evidence for myself that whatever nefarious techniques Blevins and Harden had inflicted on the boys, they had not worked. The boys—despite all efforts to change them, to make them be who they weren’t meant to be—had been able to retain their identities. Daddy had always claimed the trick to redemption had been to be reborn, to change, but I could see now how wrong he was. Not changing—or at least not letting the world change you—was the real trick. It was more than a trick, though. It was the truth.

I lay back down and looked at the stars, feeling a strange peace I had not felt since I was a small boy, small enough to be oblivious to the way the world pushed a man places he did not want—or need—to go.

*   *   *

The boys left and the gorge fell silent, save for the constant drone of the falls, but that was so unceasing it barely registered anymore. I thought of Mary and wondered what she was doing. Did she think of me with any regret? Was there any small part of her that wished she hadn’t acted so rashly?

I couldn’t help but hope there was, even while realizing she owed me nothing. She’d never owed me anything but instead had simply loved me. I’d always seen her love as some sort of spectacular gift, salvation from myself, but maybe that had been the wrong way of looking at it. Maybe she’d just loved me and I’d loved her. Why was that so hard for me to accept, to understand, to believe?

I scooted out toward the edge of the outcropping and picked up my still-wet blue jeans. I dug my phone from the pocket and pressed the home button, sure it would be dead.

It wasn’t. The battery indicator revealed I still had five percent battery life. I checked the reception bars, saw there were two, and decided it would have to be enough.

It was two AM, so eleven or midnight out in Nevada, I couldn’t remember which. Either way, hopefully not too late for a call. I found her name and hovered my thumb over the call button. She could always ignore the call, right?

My thumb dropped and the call connected. I listened as her phone rang three times and she answered.

“Earl?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s late out there. Are you all right?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, well, I don’t think I want to talk to you.”

“I understand.”

“Then I’m going to hang—”

“Don’t. Please? This won’t take long.”

She said nothing. I took that as permission. Maybe it wasn’t, but at least she was still on the line.

“I love you,” I said. “I want you to hear that first. But I also want you to hear something else.”

“Okay …”

“I screwed up our relationship a long time before I slept with Daphne. That was just … I don’t know, my way of exploding the bomb I’d already set.”

I waited for a response. There was none.

“So, I just wanted to tell you, I understand something now. About myself. I wanted you to save me. I thought you were so perfect, so good, so … Jesus, so beautiful, that being with you would be enough to make myself better. It wasn’t, and it will never be. I think you understood that all along.” I swallowed, feeling some doubt creep in. She was being so quiet. “Didn’t you?”

“Yeah. I think maybe I did.”

“Why did you stay with me then?”

“Because I loved you, Earl. I knew I couldn’t save you, but that didn’t mean I ever stopped believing you might save yourself.”

“I’m going to do it,” I said.

“Save yourself?”

“Going to try.”

“Good. I just wish you hadn’t done what you did to figure all this out.”

“I know.”

“Earl?”

“What?”

“What’s that noise?”

“Noise?”

“In the background. It sounds like a waterfall.”

I laughed. “Yeah. I’m in this gorge, on a little outcropping of rock, two hundred feet above the river. The waterfall is so close I can almost feel it. But I’m going to climb out. I see that now. I’m going to climb out.”

“Earl, is that some kind of metaphor or something?”

I grinned. “I don’t think so. Maybe.”

“Well, good luck, and do me a favor.”

I waited, sure she was going to ask me to call her when I found my way out, but like so many things I’d been so sure of, I was wrong.

“Don’t call me again, okay?”

I moved the phone away from my face so she wouldn’t hear me begin to sob. I let the first one out, then sucked all my pain in long enough to speak into the phone again. “Okay,” I said. “I won’t.”

*   *   *

I got one more call out of my phone before it died.

It was from Chip Thompkins.

“Mr. Marcus, I apologize for calling so late.”

“It’s fine. I’m happy to hear from you.”

“I’ve been up thinking.”

“Yeah, me too. I’m glad you called. I hope it was to tell me something good.”

“Good? You really think anything good can come from this situation?”

I paused and looked up at the dark sky. Now that the clouds had cleared, there were so many stars. I couldn’t remember the last time the sky had been so full of them. It seemed like a good omen, but I didn’t tell him that.

“Mr. Marcus?”

“Sorry. I was thinking. I guess I’d answer your question like this: will it be a net good? Maybe. Who knows for sure? But we might be able to even the score a little. Maybe not all the way, but isn’t even a little bit worth it?”

Now it was his turn to be quiet.

“Redemption,” I said. “Even a little bit goes a long way.”

Despite the lack of context for what I’d said, he murmured something that sounded like assent.

“Is that a yes?”

“I’ll look at your information.”

“You’ll write the story?”

“I’ll look at your information. You said there was someone I could talk to?”

“Definitely. I’ve got several—”

“I’ll give you until Friday.”

“Okay. Great. Wait, what’s today?”

He was silent.

“Don’t hang up. I’m not crazy. I just …” I took a deep breath. “I’m actually working on the case right now, and I’ve sort of gotten myself stranded at the waterfall …”

“Maybe this was a mistake. I’m not sure I feel good about this after all.”

“No, wait! I’ve got something for you. Start by calling Claire Bishop at Ghost Mountain Books in downtown Riley. Tell her I said you need to read the newspaper article she showed me. You’re going to want that for the backstory. So you’ll know about Harriet.”

“Harriet?”

“Yes. Harriet Duncan. And also call Mindy Hanks. She works at the Harden School. Just call the school. She’ll answer the phone. She’s like the secretary there. She’s got a story about Jeb Walsh. And Lyda Duncan. Get in touch with her too. She lives outside of Brethren. Are you getting this down?”

“Yeah, I’m getting it. What’s this about Walsh? Did he rape her or something?”

“Yeah, something like that. Just talk to her. Get that stuff down. I’ll get back to you before …” Damn it, what had he said?

“Friday. That’s in two days, Mr. Marcus. Either put up or shut up. And I need something substantial. Not innuendos and rumors. I need evidence. Otherwise, I’m going to think you’re playing some sort of cruel game with me.”

“I’m not. I promise.”

“I don’t know if I believe you. Furthermore, I’m not sure any of this will work.”

I didn’t know what else to say. Hell, there was no way to convince him without something more concrete. I actually understood exactly why he didn’t trust me. What I didn’t understand was why he was even willing to give me a chance.

So I asked him.

“There’s only one reason. And the second I don’t have it anymore, we’re done.”

“What is it?”

“The possibility that you’re telling the truth and can help me find Joe.”

“I am,” I said, wincing at yet another lie. But what choice did I have? Telling him that I’d hidden his boyfriend’s body wasn’t going to get me anywhere.