CHAPTER 39

Starved Rock, Illinois, November 5, 2019

IT WAS APPROACHING 2:00 A.M. WHEN RORY TOOK THE HIGHWAY EXIT. I-80 had been empty, but for the rare set of isolated headlights, and now she found herself truly alone as she took the sleepy country roads that led toward Starved Rock State Park and the cabin that waited in the woods. She’d driven the route twice before, and this third outing came from memory. She didn’t hesitate at the forks, didn’t contemplate the T’s. She knew the way. The route had burned itself into her memory the way everything else did. The same way all the details of her life were stored and categorized.

Rory wasn’t always aware of the things her mind noticed or picked up on, and could not readily comprehend the enormous volume of material her memory logged. But since her dream, since finding Camille Byrd’s spirit nestled in the grassy knoll in Grant Park, all the cryptic elements of her childhood and the farmhouse—of Aunt Greta and her parents, of her visits to the nursing home and the dolls she restored, of Greta’s seemingly random mutterings, of the mysterious pull that had once drawn her to the back property of the farmhouse as a young child, of the instant attraction she felt toward Angela Mitchell, and of the nearly identical symptoms they shared of social anxiety and obsessive compulsion—all came to her with vivid clarity. She knew what it all meant. She had finally grasped that elusive element of her existence that had been out of reach for so long, and it had taken nothing more than a push from the spirit of a dead girl who waited for her help.

“The truth is easy to miss, even when it’s right in front of us.”

Rory’s epiphany had brought her to this place tonight. She was at the precipice of darkness, and her soul felt tainted by it. She was unsure if it was possible to correct this mutation at the core of her existence, but anger drove her to try. She made the final turn of her journey. Her headlamps were the only source of light in the otherwise-black night. Until she turned them off. Then only the moon was present, and it offered little guidance. She pulled her car to the side of the road, crunched over the gravel, and turned off the engine. Two hundred yards ahead was the canopied driveway that led to Thomas Mitchell’s cabin.

She picked up her phone for the hundredth time, stared at the lit display. She’d had Lane’s number plugged in and ready to connect multiple times throughout the drive to Starved Rock, but had stopped herself from calling. The same for Ron Davidson’s number, which she had also pulled up during the hour drive. To call either of the men in her life would have prevented her from doing what she was about to do. Rory decided that only one man would be part of her life tonight—the one who had played a silent and unknown role in her existence. The man who had, perhaps, formed her character. The one who had taken from her more than she could reclaim tonight.

As she climbed from her car and eased the door closed, she wondered if extinguishing the source of a fire could stifle the flames that blazed in adjacent structures? The silence of the night overwhelmed her ability to answer her own question as she headed toward the canopied drive. Halfway between her parked car and the cabin’s driveway, Rory found a path that led into the forest. She clicked to life the flashlight on her cell phone and followed the trail. Two hundred yards later, she heard the gentle gurgling of water and knew the river was up ahead. When she came to the clearing, the river bled to either side and reflected the moon off its surface like a mystical snake slithering through the night. She followed the riverbank for another two hundred yards until she found the dock she had seen during her first visit to the cabin with the parole officer, Ezra Parker, and the social worker, Naomi Brown. There was a long stretch of neglected stairs that led from the water’s edge up the steep embankment. She took them cautiously, one at a time, as her sternum began to throb and her head became flush with blood.

At the top of the stairs, she saw the cabin sitting in the middle of five acres. The square clearing was surrounded by forest. As she slowly set off for the structure, the moon cast a faint shadow next to her. It was her only companion.