Set Me Free (31 page)

W
lLLA

Day Four
Salina, Kansas, to Boulder, Colorado
Saturday, May 10, 1997

W
hen you enter Colorado on Interstate 70, heading west, it is impossible to believe the Rockies are right there, lying just
out of sight a few miles ahead of you. You’ve been driving for hours through one of the flattest, broadest plains on the face
of the earth. As far as you can tell, this flat land will go on forever. Nothing but bunch grass and scrub and a few far-off
sheeplike clouds that race quickly across the sky. These cotton-candy clouds sometimes cast the car in shadow, but that is
the most exciting thing to happen for miles. The simplicity of this life becomes comforting. In Willa’s case, it was just
what she needed. Nothing in sight challenged her steady grip on the steering wheel.

Then comes a moment when you realize that all those dark thunderheads that haven’t budged in miles—those grayish splotches
hovering stationary above the horizon—are really mountain peaks bathed in snow and shadow and light. It dawns on you, as it
dawned on Willa, that the first white settlers who thought the scariest thing they were going to encounter was Indians hadn’t
yet caught sight of these ruthless, monstrous mountains lying in wait,
ready to swallow horses, splinter wagon wheels, and dash spirits without a second’s hesitation.

Willa glanced at her father. He smiled at her. He’d been smiling at her for two days. She hadn’t been giving him the silent
treatment, but she’d been keeping talk to a minimum. This morning, lying in bed in Salina, listening to him showering, she
allowed herself the realization that it must have been difficult for Nat to tell her these secrets he’d been carrying. She
was still upset that he’d kept them from her all this time. But she knew there had to be a reason that he’d kept them to himself,
even if she didn’t want to admit it. This was how it always was. He was too good to her to stay mad at for long.

“You can drive,” she offered.

“But you’re doing such a good job,” he said. “Unless you’re tired. I’m happy to take over if you want a break.”

“Nah.”

“You’ve never seen the Rockies before.”

She shook her head.

“They’re something, aren’t they?” They were. They reared up out of nowhere. He paused, then added, “Take the turnoff for Boulder.”

“But we have to keep going,” said Willa, keeping to herself the words “even though you won’t tell me why going matters.”

“I want to show you something,” Nat replied. So Willa followed the signs that fed them onto highways careening around Denver
and up to Boulder. All the while, the mountains soared redder and more jagged against the sky.

The town of Boulder was exquisite—a sturdy downtown with all sorts of gift shops, cafés, restaurants; wooden cottages with
wide yards and dogs lazing in the sunlight; tall trees everywhere. Willa felt as if she were on a movie set. Boys on skateboards
whizzed past as Nat directed her through town. “Did you guys stop here? When you drove across the country?” she asked.

“We did,” he said. “Your mother loved this place.”

The conversation was safe like that, skirting the edge of the issue, as they made their way out of Boulder and toward a mountain
road that wound its way up through a national park. Willa leaned forward to get a better purchase on things. She could see
what was ahead. She’d never driven at such an incline, with such a drop-off just at the edge of the car and no guardrail.
In the past, Nat already would have offered to drive. Willa was scared to steer up what seemed like a sheer cliff.

“I don’t think the car’s gonna make it, Dad,” she said hopefully.

“It’ll be fine.”

She shook her head and looked at him again. “Could you… ?”

“You can do it,” he said.

“I don’t
want
to do it, I think.” And she laughed a little at herself. “Please?”

“You sure?”

She nodded and relinquished the driver’s seat at the next tiny shoulder. She was glad as he directed the groaning car carefully
around the curves of the alpine road. She locked her door and tried not to look down. She found she was happy to have something
real to fear, something tangible. The car could go off the cliff and they could die.

She relaxed her tense hold on the car door as Nat angled in to a turn-off and parked. They had been climbing for twenty minutes,
but it was as if they were already in another world. “You’re going to want your camera,” Nat said, reaching his long arm into
the backseat and gathering up her equipment. The car shuddered in a gust of wind.

Willa gasped as she stepped onto the lookout and gazed down at the world below them. She had never been in an airplane, but
she thought this was what it must be like. The fields of Colorado were far below, like squares of an old, never-ending quilt
sewn in tones of beige and brown, with tufts of white snow as batting. Denver was a distant flash of glass and steel. Willa
glanced back at the cold mountain behind them, a solid white column that rose
into the sky. “Don’t let Ariel out of the car!” she called. One misstep and any of them would be gone.

“You came up here with Mom?” she asked when they’d brushed the snow off a boulder and huddled there together. Willa was shooting,
but lazily. She wanted to stay where she was, see what pictures she could make from one vantage point. In her viewfinder,
she caught a family of four sharing a sunny picnic on the other side of the lookout. She snapped the long hair of the little
girl, blond like spun gold, tossing about in the wind. She clicked the shutter as dozens of chipmunks skirted the edge of
the human activity, greedy but ready to run at any sudden movements.

“This is where we watched the fireworks.”

“There were fireworks?”

“It was the Fourth of July. We timed it so we could spend two nights in town and I’d still get back east in time for my apprenticeship.
We told this woman at a diner that we were newlyweds, even though we weren’t. She told us the most romantic place she could
think of to watch the fireworks was up here. So we came up here expecting, you know, the usual kind of thing—you lie on your
back, the fireworks are above you. What we didn’t know was how high we were. When they started, we realized we were not only
above the fireworks but above dozens of displays going off across the plains.” Nat’s hand swept the scene in front of them.
Willa snapped the world below. “Denver’s fireworks, sure, but also ones from the small towns, and ones that teenagers were
setting off in backyards. We tried to count them but couldn’t keep track. I’m telling you, Wills, there were lights all over
the place. Your mom got the giggles. We stayed up here even after the fireworks were over, looking up at how huge the stars
were. And then I asked your mom to marry me. I didn’t have a ring or anything, and we’d already talked about it, so it wasn’t
a total surprise. But I wanted to ask her for real. This seemed like the right place to get down on one knee. She said yes.
She said she didn’t need a ring. All she needed was my promise.” He felt Willa nestle against him.“I’ve wanted to take you
here for a long
time. It got so cold after I asked her that we had to drive right back down to town and take hot showers. We got back on the
road the next day.”

Willa’s sigh was heavy against Nat’s arm. She let her camera come to rest in her lap. She said without a trace of indictment,
“You don’t have to pretend anymore, Dad.”

“Pretend what?”

“Pretend that everything was so great. That you guys… I mean, I guess you always let me believe that my mom was this really
great person. You know? But she was horrible. You don’t have to make her sound so fantastic anymore.”

“I’m not pretending.”

“I can’t believe she did those things, Dad. Those things you said. Bombs. What happened to that man. If she, you know… murdered
him. Like you said.”

“I know,” he said. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry, Daddy.” Willa turned to look at him, and he saw that her face was glossy with grief. “It’s
her
fault.
She’s
the one to blame. Right? She just fucking left us. I hope I’m nothing like her. I wish I didn’t look like her at all.”

“Your mom loved you. She loved you so much. You can’t forget that.”

“I hate her,” Willa said. “I hate what she did to us. I hate that you kept it all a secret. I wish I had known what a terrible
person she was so I didn’t have to—” Willa’s expression splintered as she began to weep.

Nat gathered his daughter to him as he had a million times before. She was always like ice at first, but he melted her rigid
stance. This was how she had cried as an infant: inconsolable, angry and alone. Grief presenting like a tidal wave. Minutes
passed. He felt her begin to drift to the blessed calm after the storm, felt her grip loosen against him. She started to speak
into his chest, and he tried to hold her tight. He didn’t want her to be met with another wave of reality. But she was strong
now. She pulled herself away from
him and asked, “Why would you do this? Why would you give her what she wanted? After what she did to you?”

“What do you mean?” Nat had gotten so good at playing the innocent that he forgot he didn’t have to anymore. He offered her
his shirtsleeve for wiping her nose, but she shook her head. The family at the other end of the lookout was packing up their
car and shooting indiscreet looks in Willa’s direction.

“That guy. That Elliot Barrow guy.”

“You mean why are we going to see Elliot Barrow?”

“Yeah. Why would you try to find him? Who is he?”

Willa looked exactly like she had at four. At seven. At nine and a half. Determined. Her eyes were big and blinking. Her breathing
was shallow. She bit her lip once, the only gesture to belie her apprehension. She wanted to know who Elliot Barrow was.

Nat took a deep breath. “Elliot Barrow was your mom’s lover. She had an affair with him. And then she chose him. Instead of
me.”

Willa imagined, for a fraction of a second, pushing her father over the cliff. There would be no more terrible things to know.
No more truth.

H
ELEN

Stolen, Oregon
Saturday, October 26, 1996

Helen was drunk enough after our evening out that she ignored her newly stocked woodstove and the glow of the kerosene lamp.
Perhaps I do not mean “ignored,” perhaps what I mean was that things had become so surreal in the last few hours that this
oddness seemed in place with everything else. Had she really almost invited me in for a night of sex, and was it solely her
lame attempt at reason that had kept me from coming in? Had she really pressed herself against me on the dance floor like
a schoolgirl? Her body was angry at her mind for turning me down. She hoped she’d said the right thing. That she hadn’t been
insulting, only clear. Ferdinand
nuzzled her as she dizzily sat down on the bed and giggled against the comforter. And then the comforter sat up.

Helen screamed so loudly that night crawlers of every variety scurried away from her as fast as their little legs could carry
them. In the seconds after her screaming, the land around her cabin was as bug-free as it had been in centuries. She was about
to race off into the night herself when the comforter disentangled itself from the tear-soaked face of one Amelia Barrow,
equally terrified and terribly apologetic.

“Oh my God, Helen, I’m so sorry, I must have fallen asleep and—”

Helen was gripping her chest, looking as though she might never recover.

“Here,” said Amelia, getting up from the bed, bringing the cabin’s only chair to Helen, and helping her sit down.

Helen didn’t say a word.

“I should go,” Amelia said lamely, and began to sniffle again. The sound of her tears brought Helen back to herself, because
they were the ragged tears of someone who had been crying for hours and could not stop. Amelia was bending over the bed, gathering
things into her backpack, when Helen found her words again.

“No, no, stay.”

“It’s okay.”