Twenty-four

From the top, Mount Lithia feels like an island, floating in a sea of clouds.

I feel as though I’m on the highest peak of the island, as I stand on a makeshift podium, overlooking the other two hundred runners along with their families and friends. The winner’s podium.

Somehow I did it—I won the women’s race. I still don’t know how. Maybe I was helped along by the spirits Alex believes in. Maybe my emotions are a stronger fuel than I ever knew.

Or maybe I am just good at running.

I should be happy, grateful. I know I should muster a smile for the crowds. But I’ve done this for Stacey, and when I think about her, all I can think about is the person standing next to me. The winner of the men’s race.

Roman.

It is a Cloudline tradition for the winners to present the first-place medals to each other. And I don’t know how I will be able to look at Roman now that I know what I know.

It all makes sense now. The secrets he kept alluding to. The haunted look in his eyes. I know that, deep down, he feels guilty about the wrongs he has committed, but my sympathy is spent. I think of how he kept trying to put me in the same category he is in—as if our secrets are the same. But they are not. Even through the haze of my own guilt I can see that our crimes are different.

Roman is holding my medal in his hand, dangling from a shimmering blue ribbon. He turns toward me, and I avoid making eye contact as I lean my head forward so that he can slip it around my neck. As he does, he whispers in my ear.

“Congratulations, Katherine. I knew you could do it.”

I say nothing. Someone hands me Roman’s medal, and it’s my turn to reciprocate. I hear applause, and I turn back to Roman, still trying to avoid looking at him. I can’t bear to see his face.

He lowers his head, and I place the medal around his neck. And I whisper into his ear.

“I know it was you.”

He pulls his head back, and finally I meet his eyes. He is still smiling, basking in the attention. So I try again.

“Stacey,” I say. “I know it was you who killed her.”

His face swivels toward mine, revealing a flash of shock. Then the actor in him takes over, and his face goes blank. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not,” I say. “But you will be.”

I turn away and step down from the podium. I push my way through the crowd and begin walking back down the hill. I hear someone shouting my name through the sounds of the crowd, but I keep walking.

When I feel a hand on my shoulder, I whirl around, expecting Roman. But it’s David.

“What’s your hurry?” he says, smiling. “Don’t you want to stick around and enjoy the moment?”

“I—I’m just exhausted, that’s all.”

David is beaming, the happiest I’ve seen him since I first arrived in town. He reaches over and examines the medal hanging from around my neck.

“Stacey would be proud,” he says. “You did great.”

I lean into him, tears mixing with perspiration.

“It’s okay,” he says, and I lose track of time again, of how long I cry on his shoulder. This time it’s not the forest but David taking care of me—and I’m grateful for him, for all, human and otherwise, who have sheltered me since I’ve arrived in Lithia. Whether I’m deserving of their care or not.

David offers me a ride back to town, but I tell him I need to walk it off. It’s true that I’m exhausted, but it’s not what he thinks—it’s a mental weariness, one that can only be overcome by driving the body to the point of collapse.

It’s a long, long walk down, back through the cloud. But at this point the lack of visibility suits me just fine. Because I don’t know what I’ll do when I get to the bottom of this mountain.

I walk down the trail, passing volunteers who are cleaning up discarded water cups, taking down trail markers. By the time I get down to the road, the traffic cones are gone, the streets open again.

A car pulls over ahead of me. An old beat-up Subaru covered with bumper stickers. Alex.

He steps out of the car, watching me. “We have to stop meeting this way,” he says.

“Don’t worry,” I say. “I’m not leaving town this time.”

“Good,” he says. “Does that mean I can give you a ride?”

Suddenly my legs feel as worn out as my brain, and they begin to shake. “I would like that.”

He seems to sense how unsteady I am; he comes over, puts his arm around my waist, and begins leading me to the car. I notice that he, too, is still wearing his running clothes, and suddenly realize that I hadn’t seen him at the finish. I’d been so upset about Stacey, so obsessed with Roman. “How’d you do?” I ask. “In the race?”

He grins. “I let Roman win. Again.”

“Clearly. I wish you hadn’t.”

He shrugs. “I don’t run to win,” he says. “Never have.”

“Why didn’t I see you at the finish?”

We reach the car, and he opens the door for me. “Because I was behind you.”

“What?” I’m confused. Alex had started running with me, then pulled ahead. I’d assumed he’d finished way up with the elite male runners. “How—”

“Shhh,” he says, and puts a warm hand against my cold, tired face. “I sensed something happening to you out there. I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”

“But—” I think of that ghostly form that had sent me back into the race, right back to where I needed to be. “But I didn’t see you. I didn’t see you anywhere.”

“Doesn’t mean I wasn’t there,” he says.

I wrap my arms around Alex’s neck. I see now that I don’t need to see everything, that sometimes the most important things are, like the mountain shrouded in clouds, hidden from ordinary view.

And then he kisses me, and I forget all about my tired legs and weary mind. I forget everything but Alex and me, together, the medal I’ve won pressed between our bodies as we stand by the side of the road.

~

When we get back to town, I ask Alex to drop me off at the cemetery. He offers to stay, but I tell him I need to be alone. That I will see him later. He promises to take me out to dinner, to celebrate.

On my way to my mother’s grave, I pass the headstone marked Roman, and I wonder how many others he has taken from their loved ones, and how long he has been at it. Hundreds of years? Thousands?

I arrive at my mother’s grave and feel the ground slipping beneath me. I fall to my knees and begin to talk to her. I hope she is listening, somewhere, as I tell her all about the race. About Stacey. About Roman and Alex and how little I know about men. About how much I wish she were here to guide me.

And I also tell her that I feel she is guiding me, somehow—that as alone as I have felt over the years, she must be with me in some way because I have landed on my feet. I’ve made it back to Lithia, and I’ve finally chosen the right man, and I’m starting my life over again. It’s still too hard to believe I’ve done it all on my own.

I reach out and touch her headstone, running my hands along the letters that make up her name. The name that we share—Healy—my name, which I’ve hidden for too long. Maybe this investigator showing up was a good thing. Maybe it’s time that I stop hiding. Time to be who I am, who I really am. To start over, here in Lithia where it all began. This time, I can dare to hope for a happier ending.

Hearing footsteps, I wipe the tears from my eyes and stand up. When I look over to see who it is, I feel fury rise within my tired body. It’s Roman.

I know that I could find it within me to run—anger being the strongest fuel of all—but I am finished running. Especially from him.

So I stand as tall as I can. “How dare you come here,” I say. “I don’t want you anywhere near me.”

“I came to apologize.”

“There is nothing you can say to make me forgive you.”

“Please,” he says. “Give me a chance.”

“For what?”

“Let me try to change,” he says. “I know I can be that person you want me to be.”

“I don’t believe you can, Roman. I thought at first that you could, that I could help. But you’re beyond help.”

“Katherine, there will be no more secrets between us anymore. I promise.”

I’m staring at him, and that’s when I realize that he’s looking at my mother’s grave. My heart skips as I make the connection.

“Oh, no,” I say. “You didn’t—”

He cuts me off. “No.”

“You killed her, too,” I say, “didn’t you?”

“No,” he repeats. “I—”

“First my mother, then Stacey. Who else are you going to take from me, Roman?”

“Katherine—”

“Don’t keep telling me you can change,” I say. “You’ve been here forever, preying on humans. That’s why I looked familiar to you when you first met me, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he says. “Yes, I knew your mother—but I did not hurt your mother.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“I swear. I swear on my grave, or what used to be my grave.”

“That means nothing.”

“She didn’t die of a bear attack,” he says. “That much is true.”

“Then what happened?”

But he is already turning, walking away. I shout after him, “What happened, Roman?”

He doesn’t answer. And it doesn’t matter. She is gone. Just like Stacey. And nothing will bring her back.

There is still one more thing I came here to do.

I remember that at my mother’s burial, my grandmother had given me a shiny blue pebble to place on her headstone. She told me that flowers die, but a stone—a piece of the earth—will last forever.

My grandmother is gone now, too, and I am not sure whether she knew that I never put that little pebble on my mother’s headstone. I had taken it eagerly, but I had been so distracted that day that I must’ve forgotten—I discovered it in my pocket a week later, in the car as my dad drove us to Houston. By then it was a different memory, a memory of everything else that would soon disappear.

But I held onto that stone, and now, I pull it out of the little inner pocket of my running shorts, where I’d put it for luck. I place it on her headstone. From now on, it belongs here. From now on, I will make my own luck.

Then I make my way to Stacey’s grave. The ground is still soft; the sod laid down above her has not yet taken root. I take the medal from around my neck, and I lay it across Stacey’s headstone.

The sky is clearing as I slowly walk back into town. Back to my little cottage. To David and my job. To Alex. And into a future of unknowns.