Set Me Free (43 page)

Amelia waited until Helen’s breathing slowed. Then she opened her eyes. She was good at the pretending-to-sleep trick. Her
father called it “playing possum.” He was the only one who knew when she was faking. She moved slowly off the bed, grabbing
her backpack as she went. In the kitchen, she took the can opener and the canned corn and chili that had been in the top cupboard
for years. She took a bag of bread and the newly opened peanut butter out of the fridge. She wished they were the kind of
family who had beef
jerky. She found two water bottles and filled them. Before she tiptoed out the door, she grabbed the afghan off the back of
the couch.

It wasn’t that she wanted to scare anyone. And it wasn’t that she thought it was all her fault. Both things had crossed her
mind. She knew that had she not gone into the barn one way and out another, her father would be fine. But she was a rational
girl, even in the deepest pit of grief she’d ever known.

Mostly, she went into the wilderness because she wanted to be alone. She wanted to think it all through before everyone told
her what to believe. It had already begun. She had heard it in our voices, Helen’s, mine, the policemen’s: “Your father is
a hero.” But she knew it wasn’t over; she knew the world had to be healed. All she wanted was to be alone.

W
ILLA

Day Seven
Boise, Idaho, to Bend, Oregon
Tuesday, May 13, 1997

The seventh day bloomed sunny.

He was going to tell her.

He had believed he would tell her at the Mississippi River. But she had looked at him in such a way in that instant when he
told her what her mother was. She had looked at him, and he had been cowed. Too much truth would have spelled disaster.

While packing up the car a week before, he had thought, “Surely I’ll have told her by the time we get to Kansas.” But the
two days after their conversation above the Mississippi had been bound by silence. Willa seemed on the edge of breaking. Telling
her would have been cruel.

Then there was the chance of Boulder. A perfect place. But she had started crying before he could begin to steer the conversation
to where truth could begin.

After that, the Rockies. In the Rockies, he’d realized: it wasn’t because of
her
that he couldn’t tell her. It was because of him. All
these years he’d believed that she was far too delicate for his honesty. Now he could see, in the confident way she sat beside
him, offering up snacks, taking her photographs, singing to keep them both alert, that she wasn’t delicate at all. She was
her mother in her mother’s best ways. She was strong. She was going to be fine.

He was the one who was the coward.

“So we’re going to walk into the hospital? Just like that?” she asked.

“I will.”

“Is he…” Willa put her feet on the dashboard. “Are you sure he’s still alive?”

“I called the hospital in Bend this morning. He’s still in the coma. He’ll surely die. But he’s still alive.”

“Wow.” Willa fiddled with her shoelaces. Nat knew her nervous habits because he was her father. “Dad?”

“Hmm.”

“I’m coming in with you, okay?”

“We’ll see,” he said.

“That’s what parents say when they don’t want to say no. It’s basically lying. Just let me go into the hospital with you.”

“We’ll see,” Nat said. Really, Willa was right. He was lying. He wasn’t going to see. He already knew that he would make her
stay in the car. But in the scale of things, he thought grimly, this tiny lie didn’t matter. There had been so much lying
all these years. He reminded himself: he had told the lies to keep her safe. Then he thought: “Safe from what?” And then he
thought: “Enough. I am going to tell her.”

He was the driver of a car, and his daughter was the passenger. They were vaulting across the eastern Oregon desert as a May
afternoon began. Malheur County, the Stinking Water Mountains, Rattlesnake Creek, the town of Burns, Sage Hen Valley, Silver
Creek, Glass Butte, Harney County, Lake County, Pine Mountain, the Badlands, were each, one by one, left in their wake. The
wake that Nat and Willa made together.

Neither noticed the names of the desert. Neither noticed the greasewood or spiny hopsage spreading out for miles in either
direction. Neither heard the steps of the western whiptail or the leopard lizard, nor those of the white-tailed antelope squirrel,
nor of the marmots as they made their way about the warming day. Instead, Nat’s mind and Willa’s mind worked deftly: his,
on the problem at hand, hers, like a comb, running over her father’s words, trying to find the catch in them. There was something
more. She was smart enough to know that.

“I am a coward,” Nat thought.

In the same instant: “I am going to tell her.”

And then he comforted himself: “Not yet.”

A
MELIA

Stolen, Oregon
Tuesday, May 13, 1997

S
he still swears to it that she had no particular destination in mind. I’ve asked her over and over again, because the chances
of her accidentally ending up where she did unplanned are one in a million. But if she’s lying, she’s the best liar I’ve ever
seen.

She walked out of the house in broad daylight, and no one saw her leave. Helen didn’t awaken for four hours, until the evening,
and it took her another three to track me down, since she assumed I’d picked Amelia up while Helen slumbered. Amelia had a
seven-hour lead. In most parts of the country, we would have been able to drive after her, because a seven-hour lead on foot
doesn’t mean much compared to sixteen cylinders and four wheels. In our part of the world, however, there are no roads after
a certain point. Yes, there was the chance she’d hitchhiked out of here, but I had a feeling she wouldn’t leave her father’s
wounded body that far behind. Other people were worried about her physical well-being: she could be raped, she could fall
into a ravine, she could get dehydrated. I wasn’t worried about Amelia’s body surviving. I was worried about her mind and
her heart. I know where you can go when you let those broken pieces of yourself lead you. I wanted to save her from that.
So we searched. For one night and one day, we
roamed the wild country and called her name. She says she didn’t think about that. That’s the part she’s most embarrassed
about.

She won’t talk about what she did out there. I respect that. I don’t think she’ll ever tell another soul, and I’ve told her
I believe that’s the best way for things to be, because it’s Her Way, and that’s the only way that matters when you’re healing.

What she
will
talk about is how strange it was to find herself behind a trailer and to see Victor Littlefoot emerging. When she saw him
coming out, she realized she’d seen the trailer from the other side. But she didn’t know how she got to be there right when
Victor happened to be making breakfast for his grandmother, just in time for him to glimpse Amelia out the window.

“You don’t want me here,” she remembers saying.

“Yes I do,” he said. His grandmother was behind him, in the doorway. “It’s Amelia,” he said. “You remember Amelia.”

“I called her here,” she said, peering closer. “She’s the one with the broken heart, the broken life. And the one with grass
for hair.”

Victor lifted Amelia in his arms. “Let’s get you safe.” It was the first time Amelia felt like crying.

Victor’s grandmother cooed over her. “You don’t have to cry, girl. Your wholeness is coming for you. You don’t have to cry.”

“Of course she does,” Victor said, bringing Amelia into the house. “Of course she does.” He placed her on the couch. He laid
himself down beside her. His body was warm against her whole length, and she buried her face in his chest, which rose and
fell like that of a sleeping creature. Victor didn’t say another word. He let her cry until she had no tears. He let her cry
until she slept. After that, he carried her to his truck. He brought her home.

H
ELEN

Stolen, Oregon
Tuesday, May 13, 1997

The day after the fire, Helen called Michael at the hospital in Vermont. She was cautious and did so while Amelia was sleeping.
After Amelia ran away, Helen feared she had not been cautious enough. She feared Amelia had overheard her and misinterpreted
what she’d said. She feared the girl thought she too was going to abandon her. She was supposed to be getting on an airplane
in two hours.

Michael was asleep. She left a message with the nurse. “Tell him I hope to be there soon,” she said. “There’s been an accident.
Tell him… tell him I won’t be there tomorrow morning. But I’ll be there soon.”

Seven days later, when Amelia was gone, Helen answered the phone and heard Michael on the other end of the line. His voice
was strained and thin, as if his vocal cords were pressed against something sharp.

She did most of the talking. Michael was horrified to hear about Elliot and squeezed out every medical detail Helen could
remember. “I fancy myself something of a diagnostician these days,” he said.

“It’s just awful, Michael. He’s just—there’s nothing left of him. As if he’s been obliterated. Like in one of those cartoons
where someone’s a pile of ashes. One second he was right there, talking to me, and then he was gone. He’s not even really
alive anymore. And then I think that’s a terrible thing to say.”

“It’s true,” he said. “It’s true.”

“I’m sorry.” She realized how breezily she’d brought death into the conversation. “That was very insensitive—”

“Oh, shut up,” he said. “I may be skin and bones, but at least I
have
skin and bones.” He laughed grimly. “See, now I’m the one who has to apologize. I just reined myself in from making barbecue
jokes.”

Helen laughed grimly. “That’s awful.”

“You spend more than a day in the hospital, and you get a free pass to make jokes like that. Especially if you’re dying.”

“I’m coming to see you,” she said. “But something very strange happened before Elliot’s accident. He asked me to stay. And
even
though he didn’t know that anything was going to happen…” She shivered. “It’s spooky. He told me he was leaving the school.
He told me he needed me to help run it in his absence.” She lowered her voice. “It’s like he
knew!’

“I’ve decided I don’t want you to come at all,” Michael announced.

“What?”

“I said, I don’t want you—”

“I heard you. But I’m coming soon. I promise.”

“I don’t want you here. I’m musty and wizened, and I make the most terrible smells.”

“Please don’t be angry with me.”

“Au contraire, my dear. Au contraire. I’m the furthest thing from angry. Here’s how I see it: you’ve got one dying guy in
a bed in Oregon and one dying guy in a bed in Vermont. So that pretty much evens the scales. Here’s the thing: you’ve got
something more out there than you’ll ever have here. You have a life.”

“That’s silly.”

“Don’t you dare call it silly. I would give anything to have a life. You know I would. Don’t you dare denigrate that gift.
You have Amelia. You have Cal. They need you.”