Page 62 of Last Seen
He returned five years later, alone but for a barely breathing infant son wrapped in his coat, raving, raging with fever and nonsensical stories.
It was a virus that got them, he claimed. In the wilderness, without proper medical care and subzero temperatures, things fell apart quickly. Not many people were like Miles. He’d seen the abyss, gazed into it, and laughed. But it killed lesser people.
That failure was enough to turn people away from his cause. You might wonder if anyone ever thought to charge him with some form of negligent homicide, but they didn’t. Apparently, you aren’t fully responsible for other people’s stupidity.
But our Miles was not deterred. He wanted to go off grid again. He wanted people to be with him in this desire. And this time, he didn’t want to lose his flock. Once was a tragedy. Twice? A disaster, and someone might take umbrage.
So using his own ingenious skills for living in the wild, Miles Brockton took that Columbia-educated mind and put it to work on creating a real self-sustaining community. He scouted a spot in the Blue Ridge Mountains on the border of Tennessee and Virginia that fit all his needs. The cold could kill; the heat, too, but the nearness of a few bigger cities meant no one had to die. It would take money, of course, to buy the land, and not surprisingly, he had very little of it: his parents had left a small inheritance, but much of it had been lost on the years of MaryEmily’s relentless private investigations.
So Miles got creative and got sponsors. Investors. Venture capital. After all, he was living proof the land would give what they needed.
He traveled the world learning more sustainable ways of living off the land, and two years later, when he was ready to try again, when memories were dampened, the money appeared. A lawyer, too, attached to his hip, who claimed that Miles had rights to his own story and was due royalties from both the successful book and movie ventures. And a judge agreed.
Important people love this sort of story. The Buffetts and Templetons and Soroses of the late seventies ate this shit up.
Suddenly, Miles had plenty of income, and he put it to good use. He bought up the ten thousand acres of deserted valley in the Blue Ridge he’d found and created an oasis in the woods. The building of Brockville, so aptly named, was as environmentally friendly as he could manage. As few trees felled as possible, the contours of the land defining the contours of the town. The state forced utilities on him in the early nineties, when it was clear that he would generate a wealth of tax income for them. So he leaned in and decided to define it as a conservation resort town. A biophilic dream. And a decidedly lucrative one. Seems his second foray into the woods also cured him of his desire to be poor. Live off the land, yes, but do it from the lap of luxury.
During all this, he married Sonia Whitley, the young widow of his dear friend and first investor, Carl Whitley. Carl’s death was so perfectly timed. No whispers there. At least none to Miles’s face.
They had a passel of children, and they all worked the land alongside him, learning how to live without access to modern amenities, stores. Hearty boys with strong backs and malleable minds to help a man, feral, free-range children who were educated by the earth and sun in the old ways, and a wife who wanted nothing more than to raise her family well.
And the people came. They flocked to Miles’s side. People who wanted to escape the real world and live in this utopia of their own creation fought for a coveted spot. His investors were the first families of Brockville, of course. They wanted to escape their lives, too, and Miles always had been a visionary.
That was forty years ago.
Now, Miles is staring down the barrel of his last years, and Brockville is a modern mecca to the world of biophilia. Now, people come to Miles for instruction. No one remembers those failed ventures, not in the face of this level of success. No one remembers the nineteen people he lost. Any sort of history can be rewritten. In the face of glory, Miles’s own past was remade, a phoenix from the ashes. Brockville is everything he always dreamed of. He is sharing the earth’s bounty with the followers of sustainable living, and his people are happy. So very happy.
He disappears on occasion, still. Overwhelmed by the people who want and need him, he hauls his aging body into the woods to live in the silence. And it is his sons who make Brockville run. His sons who carry on the legacy of independent spirit.
And other legacies. Darker legacies. But let’s not talk about that yet.
Their mother, well, she wasn’t as enamored of the Brockton family ethos as she should have been. It’s a badly kept secret. Before she died, Sonia didn’t need much vodka to share that she thought her husband was a bit of a maniac. Who goes into the wilderness alone and doesn’t come out a little off? No one can blame him. All geniuses are mad. They have to be. They are the Cassandras, and with such foresight comes a sense of dislocation from reality.
Is this why the woman in the first frame is alone in the forest, possibly dead? Is this one of Miles’s people, lost in the Maine tundra to a virus? Or is she one of the women who clamor to attend the artists’ colony, to come paint and draw and write on the grounds of the Brockville Retreat?
Hmm. Neither? Both? Could she perhaps be someone who has stuck her nose in too deeply, who thought to take advantage of the town’s unique mentality? Or someone who happened along at exactly the wrong time?
Let me get my shovel, and then we’ll find out.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Halley
Halley feels like she’s entered Oz. There are no yellow brick roads or dead witches with striped socks and ruby slippers or Lollipop Guilds to welcome her, sure, but from the moment she crosses into Brockville, the sense that she’s gone somewheredifferentis pervasive. She weaves her way through the woods, carefully following the posted ten-miles-per-hour speed limit, though the traffic-calming bumps are placed perfectly to impede the ability to go any faster without launching the Jeep into the air. She’s glad it’s not totally dark; the woods are as close and imposing as her own at home, and she imagines this place is pretty spooky in the dead of night.
And then she’s in the town center, facing a well-lit lake, a fountain shooting to the sky. The last of the sun shimmers on the water’s glassy surface. A charming path meanders around the water. Dogs play off their leashes; children run screaming around the most intricate playground she’s ever seen.
It’s like a modern Mayberry, but sophisticated, swanky. The buildings probably win awards for their architectural elegance; it’s hard to balance chic and homey, but the white walls and black windows and cedar accents do just that.
People smile and wave from their electric golf carts. Plenty are walking; the wide sidewalks are full. A woman jogs with a high-end double stroller, two identical babies inside goggling at the world. There’s a bookseller to her left, with a crowd; they must be having an event. The sign above the building she’s facing saysGeneral Store. It’s more cedar and black, like the bookstore, with carved posts and gaslights flanking glass double doors. Cottage-style houses with large porches and no visible garages line the streets, flanking the amenities, and people on the porches watch the scene benevolently, happy and content. Every door is a different color: deep blues, pinks, black, purple, and sunshine yellow. Some are glass, and she can see right into the living rooms. This is the heart of the little town, she can tell. What a reception for a stranger.
She finds a place to park—free, happily—and plays a quick game of Eeney, Meeney, Miney, Mo among the storefronts and settles on the General Store to make her first inquiries. The bookseller will be next if she strikes out here.
The store is in a glammed-up cabin. Fairy lights string across the street above her. It’s a rustic ski chalet in Aspen on the outside, but the moment you step in from the stone-and-cedar porch, it’s clear this is the grocery store. There’s a state-of-the-art cooler with drinks and snacks, tables and chairs, and shelves advertising gluten-free and keto food. Bespoke farm-to-table meats and cheese line the cases, plus ready-to-heat-and-eat packages, all made “right here in Brockville.” Racks of fresh vegetables receive audible thunderstorms before they are sprayed with water. Barrels advertise the local honey, and floor-to-ceiling wooden racks showcase a bottle waterfall of the local wines.
A few people browse for their evening meals. And there are four teenagers behind the register, smiling happily at her.
She approaches with her own smile. Kids are easier.
