Page 12 of Snow Creek

“Gross,” I say.

“Yeah, I even caught one in the act.”

I put my hand up. “No visuals please. But yeah, weird stuff goes on up there. Strange people. Probably more decent folks than freaks.”

“Not in my book,” he says. “People up there are there because they’ve got something to hide.”

He gets up, his eyes landing on the Taco Bell bag.

“Let’s not mention this to my wife.”

I agree. I know about keeping secrets.

We walk outside. The air is filled with the smell of rain after a warm day. Oil leaks from cars in the parking lot are rainbow-colored. I’m quiet, thinking about those secrets of mine.

“You okay, Megan?” he asks.

“I’m fine. I’ll see you tomorrow after I check out the Mexican orphanage.”

“Mañana,” he replies.

Five

I’m not fine.

Not really.

The thought of the Wheaton siblings and something sinister happening to their parents, stirs something inside of me. I have a gut feeling that something terrible has happened, something beyond a late holiday or time doing good works for some Mexican orphans.

I’ve been there. So, has my brother. One day in a blinding flash our parents were gone. We’d experienced the jagged range of emotions from fear to anger to constant dread—never really knowing what had happened.

My hands are trembling. I grip the steering wheel and turn onto the driveway.

I feel a compulsion that I’ve denied myself for a very long time. I’m not sure if it’s the Wheatons or something else that is driving me to dig into a Pandora’s box that I’ve carried with me from place to place for about a decade.

I rent an old Victorian in historic Port Townsend, though there’s nothing quaint about it. It’s cheap and needs more TLC than the landlady can afford at the moment. It’s a big house, divided into two units. The old maple floors are dangerously uneven. I’ve tripped twice at night on my way to the tiny bathroom down the hall from my bedroom. Set a marble down and it will roll around on its own, desperate to find a level spot on which to rest. At the moment, I’m the sole tenant. The guy who lived in the other unit tired of unreliable heat in the winter and the sweltering that comes with western exposure. I don’t mind. I open the windows and let whatever is outside blow over me.

I drop my purse and keys on the table by the leaded glass door, the only part of the house that has any style from a bygone era. I expect one day the place will be razed and the door will end up in some fancy home in Seattle. I lock my gun in the gun safe in my office look at the blank screen of my laptop.

Ruth and her secrets.

Snow Creek people have theirs.

So do I.

Mine happened a lifetime ago.

I think about the box of tapes, how they have silently waited for me. I think of my psychologist, Karen Albright, and how she brought me back from the precipice that had been my world since I was born. I recollect how Dr. Albright’s blue eyes scared me at first. Almost otherworldly. How her office smelled of microwave popcorn.

How much I grew to trust her.

I was twenty when I first saw her. Defensive. Closed off like a street barricade. I had never let anyone inside, but I was smart enough to know that everything inside of me—from my experiences to the bloodline of my birth—had to be exorcized somehow. I’d been traumatized, and while I couldn’t see it in the mirror, others did. Night terrors are traumatic and uniquely embarrassing. You don’t know what you said, if anything. You don’t know if anyone heard your screams.

My roommate, Maria, did.

“Look, Megan, either you get some help, or you’ll need to find someplace else to live. Your night terrors are turning into a problem for me. I’m sorry. It’s the way it has to be.” Maria took me to a counselor and after one session he referred me to Dr. Albright, a professor of psychology, who maintained a small practice outside of her university duties.

“She can help you better than I,” the bespectacled counselor said. “Don’t be afraid. You can do this.”

---