Page 19 of Cut Off from Sky and Earth
While the ancient desktop wheezes to life, I wander over to the window to peer out into the rapidly falling darkness. I can’t see the cabin from here, so I can only imagine what Emily Rose is doing. Did my poorly concealed freakout rattle her? Or is she one of those artsy types who live in their own heads? Maybe she didn’t even notice.
Her husband did, though. Tristan Rose looked as sick as I felt when she announced we both came from the same Godforsaken town. And that makes me curious. I know why I want to forget Windy Rock exists. Why does he?
I scroll back through the snippets of the conversation that managed to permeate my panic. Tristan said he moved away when he was young. Something about his mother remarrying a man from Arizona. Of course. His last name probably wasn’t Rose when he lived in Maine.
I poke around on the internet for a while, smearing the tart jam on crackers, one by one, and shoving them into my mouth while I search for any reference to the name “Tristan” in connection to “Windy Rock.” Nothing. Bupkis. Zilch.
I try all my tricks—real estate deeds, tax rolls, church directories, and alumni listings. But he was just a kid when they moved away. By the time I reach the end of my very long dead end, I’ve polished off an entire sleeve of crackers, my lap is covered in a fine dusting of crumbs, and my coffee is cold.
I open my email client and send off a quick note to Robert. I’m not sure when he’ll see it—or when he’ll have a chance to respond. But the message is a touchstone or a talisman. A reminder of my new life. My safe life. My normal existence. And the act of sending it calms me, and I’m able to think more clearly.
My frenetic, swirling mind quiets just enough for me to realize that the kids and grandkids of the deceased almost always merit a mention in obituaries. Two minutes and twelve seconds later, I’ve found him in the online obituary archive for the largest of Hancock County, Maine’s three funeral homes. Most of Windy Rock’s residents seemed to prefer Zemansky Brothers, but Tristan’s father was laid out at Timothy Lewis Funeral Home over in Fort Bradford. The obituaries stay up in the funeral home’s guest book forever, but the individual archive results aren’t indexed for internet searches. I guess funeral homes aren’t overly worried about the SEO results seeing as how they have a captive audience.
The death notice was short, not particularly sweet, and dated three days after I was attacked. While I was fighting for my life in the ICU, Tristan’s dad took a header off the cliffs outside town:
Thomas “Tom” Weakes, age 41, of Windy Rock, passed away on Tuesday, March 4, 2003, as the result of a fall from the cliffs into Penobscot Bay. Tom is survived by his wife, Tara (Fulton) Weakes, and his two sons, Tate and Tristan. Visitation will be private.
Tristan Rose’s name didn’t trigger any alarms because he was Tristan Weakes when he lived in Windy Rock, and I was right—he is considerably younger than me. He couldn’t have been any older than eight or nine when Tara packed up and left town with him. She wasted no time after Tom’s death. She and her young son had already moved away by the time I was released from the hospital three weeks after the attack.
Tristan barely registered in my consciousness back then. But I knew Tate. He’d been just a few years behind me in school. He was finishing up his senior year at Windy Rock and didn’t move out with his mother and brother. He stayed behind, ostensibly to graduate, but as far as I knew, all he did was get drunk and pick fights in the parking lot of Nate’s Burgers and Brews.
Not that I paid much attention. I was preoccupied with surgeries, physical therapy, trying to regain my footing in the world of the living. And I didn’t waste any time getting the hell out of Windy Rock, either. By the beginning of May, I’d moved down to Connecticut, where I met Robert. When he was stationed in San Diego, I tagged along without a second thought. The more distance I could put between me and Maine, the better.
I never regretted the decision to leave. But I did wonder sometimes, on rainy nights when I couldn’t sleep, if my departure had led the police to give up on finding my attacker more quickly than if I’d stayed in town as a reminder of what happened. If I hadn’t moved three thousand miles across the country, would they have bothered to run down the rumors that Tom Weakes had attacked me and, then, racked with guilt or fear of being caught, thrown himself to his death in the bay?
I tell myself it might not have mattered if I’d stuck around. Probably wouldn’t have. Because if the police had asked me, I couldn’t have said one way or the other whether he’d done it. I don’t know my attacker’s age, ethnicity, or build. I am sure he was male, but I don’t know why I’m so certain. I lost the hours immediately before, during, and after the attack, and my memory from that period never returned. Not that I’m overly broken up about that. I’m sure I don’t want to remember the details. My mind is probably protecting me, according to the psychiatrists. And I’m happy to let it.
But, sometimes, those blank hours terrify me. My attacker could walk right up to me in the grocery store or rent my cabin, and I’d have no clue. And now Tom Weakes’ son knows where I live.
My hands shake as I drop the crackers and run for the bathroom. As I crouch over the toilet, hurling crackers and blood-red jelly into the bowl, I’m gripped by a cold fear worse than any I’ve ever known.
Twelve
Emily
* * *
The farm is still and silent—as are the woods that abut it. I don’t see another person, a fox, or even a bird during my brisk walk. Of course, it’s technically not yet spring, and I have no idea what—if any—wildlife overwinters here. It’s eerie all the same.
Eerie or not, the sky is vast, the mountains are gorgeous, and the quiet must be good for my blocked writer’s brain. As I hike along the narrow frozen path, part of my mind is focused on stepping carefully so as not to turn an ankle in a rut, but the rest is zooming ahead in my manuscript. The cold air has jarred loose the details of Maleen and Ruth’s confrontation about standing up to the king.
Or, I allow, the unsettling interaction between my husband and my host has inspired a scene. As the late great Nora Ephron famously said, ‘Everything is copy.’ So I’m not inclined to question my muse. I am very much not a writer who follows the ‘write what you know’ edict. If I were, I’d be known for gritty thrillers, not women’s fiction. Even so, I manage to weave parts of my life into my work. And the thick tension between Tristan and Alex has inspired a scene where more is left unsaid than said when Maleen asks Ruth to help her defy her father.
Like Alex, Ruth will attempt to run from the situation. And it will be during this pivotal scene, I decide, that the king will send his guards to take the princess and her friend to the tower to begin their captivity. When they are locked in, the air will be thick with silent incrimination and fear, just as it was in the cabin.
I break into a jog, hurrying back to the cabin and my laptop while the dialogue and the sensory details are fresh in my mind. As I race over the hard earth, a stray thought intrudes on my mental story-building. Not about Tristan and Alex this time, but about me. Maleen and her lady-in-waiting were imprisoned for seven years in a dark tower without light. It’s been almost exactly seven years since Cassie was murdered, and I’ve been trapped in my own sunless tower, a captive of fear.
The idea smacks me in the face. It’s blindingly obvious. And yet, I’ve never considered it before. Am I drawn to Maid Maleen because I identify with her? Or, maybe, with her lady-in-waiting? I stop in my tracks, breathing heavily, and stare at the cabin, wondering. If I’m Maleen, then Cassie was my Ruth—an innocent victim swept up in my mess. It’s what I’ve always believed, what I’ve always known, but somehow it feels viscerally true in this moment.
When I push open the door, I’m shaking and sweating. Capturing the scene is now the furthest thing from my mind. I kick the door closed with a booted foot and turn to engage the lock, then I beeline to the kitchen and the bags of groceries to unearth a bottle of wine.
It takes most of a glass of table red to steady my nerves. I make my way to the big window near the writing desk and peer out into the woods as I finish the drink. The long shadows of the trees encroach on the clearing as if they’re marching toward the cabin. I shiver and turn away from the view.
It’ll be dark soon, I reassure myself, as I grab the wine bottle by its neck and head to the small bathroom. I’m not entirely sure trading shadows for pitch-black night is an improvement, but at least in here, the only window is small and set high in the wall. I eye the old clawfoot tub that barely fits in the space.
A bath. That’s what I need. A hot bath, another glass of vino, and then my mind will be calm and I’ll be able to write. I’ll reheat the lasagna, turn on some music, and let the words flow. But first, a bath.
I pour the wine and set the bottle on the vanity, then lean over to fill the tub. Alex has left a little basket of toiletries on the tray—shampoos, fancy soaps, lotion. There’s a small vial of scented bath oil. While the water runs, I uncap the oil and take a sniff. Lavender tickles my nose. Perfect. I dump the contents into the hot water, place a fluffy white towel within arm’s reach, and strip off my clothes.
