But how could she believe that, really? At fourteen, she might not know much, but she knew this: kids in the system were returnable, like old soda bottles and shoes that pinched your toes. She wanted to think that her life would be different there. Bears probably crept through the quiet subdivisions at night, looking for places that not long ago had been theirs.
She pictured eagles perched on telephone poles and night skies filled with stars. There was a vaguely magical air about the place names they hinted at a landscape she could hardly imagine, of snow draped mountains that came right down to the water’s edge, of trees as tall and straight as church steeples, of an endless, smogless blue sky. Lexi Baill had studied a Washington State map until the tiny red geographical markings shimmied in front of her tired eyes. Like her, they’ll remember that night, so long ago, when the rain turned to ash….įor the straightforward pathway had been lost.” If anyone sees her here, just standing on this lonely roadside in a gathering mist, it will all come up again. They think a few columns in a newspaper give them the facts they need. They sit on barstools and in porch swings and spout opinions, half truths, making judgments that aren’t theirs to make. People on the island still talk about what happened in the summer of ’04. Just the thought of it had been enough to make her turn the steering wheel too sharply better to go off the road than to find herself here. Her mind had been on other things back then, on the miniutae of everyday life.
Once, it had been the quickest way home and she’d taken it easily, turning onto its potholed surface without a second thought, rarely noticing how the earth dropped away on either edge. This road is like her life knee deep in shadow. Even now, in midday, this stubbled, winding ribbon of asphalt holds the morning mist close. On either side of her, giant evergreens grow clustered together, rising high into the blue summer sky. She stands at the hairpin turn on Night Road.
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