Chapter 10
Four Days
Initial descent bells chime, signaling that we’re over the north end of Flathead Lake.
The flight from Denver to Kalispell seems fast. Too fast. I want the trip to be longer so I can stay cocooned in the airplane, tucked safely away from the real world, which is ironic considering my cocoon is an object skimming over the steep ranges of the Northern Rockies.
I look at Jess. She works on her laptop beside me. I’ve refused to connect to the airline’s free Wi-Fi. I can’t concentrate anyway.
The flight attendant performs her walk-by to pick up leftover trash from the beverage service.
I smile as I hand her my empty cup, and I’m glad there’s no double take.
Maybe I am not the person, I think for the umpteenth time since yesterday.
And no one really noticed me in Denver on our brief layover, although Jess and I were rushing to grab a coffee.
Plus, people in airports are intent on making their own connections.
The plane lurches over a mountain updraft.
My stomach flutters like a leaf in a breeze. I feel defenseless.
And unsure.
It pays to be on the safe side, though, so I make a to-do list in my mind for when I get home: Hit the shooting range to freshen up my skills since I might need to up my game in the self-protection department. Buy some kind of surveillance system for my home.
If I am the target, the killer doesn’t know I’ve even been away. If it is Ridgeway and his minions, as Jess asked about last night, perhaps they have no idea I’ve left the state.
At the same time, it would be easy to wonder if I was planning to go since I’ve been reposting Jess’s links about talking at the conference all along. And the killer—or killers—is clearly tech-savvy. Otherwise, they’d be tracked down and caught by now.
Past the lake, the Flathead Valley spreads out below us, hemmed in by the mountain ranges to the east and north while the Flathead River cuts sharp turns through farmed fields of rapeseed, wheat, and potatoes.
I close the air vent above me, hug my leather jacket tightly around me, and peer out the thick, oval window at the densely treed Mission Mountains rising to their rocky peaks.
Sublime, yet stark and desolate in their vastness.
Sophie, I think. She so innocently wanted to be part of the big unconquerable wilderness in the beginning.
I love the area, too. It’s the reason I choose to live in Whitefish even though I’m only in my late twenties and might enjoy living somewhere more urban. In a way, my fixation with staying in the state is an attempt to maintain some semblance of closeness to my dad.
He was from a small town near the Canadian border called Fortine.
We lived in that town when we were little.
But then Dad went to Iraq, and when he returned, Mom said he wasn’t the same.
He yelled at her, at us, all the time, and so she took us to her parents in Kalispell, sixty miles south, when we were small. That’s where she met Les.
For three consecutive years, Mom would drive Jess and me to our dad’s each summer and we’d have two months in Fortine with him.
He taught me how to shoot, how to hunt birds and deer.
He showed me which wildflowers, like Indian paintbrush, were safe to eat, and how to find morels and huckleberries.
But he went back for a second tour. After he returned, Mom said it wasn’t a good idea for us to visit him anymore.
When we did get to see him for short stints, he was grumpy—often depressed. His anger triggered easily. But still, he was our father, and I loved him.
Montana too. I felt like each area of the state might unfurl its spaces for me alone, one cluster of cedars, one patch of huckleberry bushes, one chain of glacier-tinged lakes at a time.
When I was in seventh grade and Jess in fourth, our dad passed away.
He died of lung cancer in his early forties even though he never smoked.
Talk of things I didn’t understand, like burn pits and depleted uranium, saturated our lives. Things that sounded faraway and ugly.
Montana offered beauty. I knew he took solace in it, so I clung to the place even more after he passed.
When it was time to apply for colleges, I set my sights on the University of Montana in Missoula because I had no intention of leaving Big Sky country, of leaving the one place I had memories of my dad.
And that’s when I met Sophie and things went from semisimple to complex.
My face must show my worry, or sadness, because Jess turns to me. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say. I want to tell her more.
That I’m not fine. That I feel so guilty I can barely stand myself.
I want to tell her I was thinking of Dad and his PTSD and how that affected both of us.
I want to tell her that I miss him. And Mom.
That I miss Sophie, still, after all these years.
And mostly, that I’m very worried about her and Sam.
But I can’t. Because if I do, I’ll make her fragile state even worse.
A bumpy landing jars me back to the present insanity.
Notifications train-wreck onto my screen when I switch my phone off airplane mode.
More articles about what kind of person could do this and more confessions—some so juicy they draw national attention.
There’s a piece about Jennifer Garner refusing to confess anything, saying that she has nothing weighing on her conscience.
How special.
There’s a woman in Portland, Oregon. She looks like the sketch, but her chin is pointier than mine.
She’s already gone public to reveal she cheated on her husband when they were on a sailing trip around the world.
At port in Aruba, he wasn’t feeling well.
While he stayed in the cabin sleeping off a fever, she met a stranger and followed him to his house.
Back home, she terminated a pregnancy she kept from her husband.
Another confession involves a female schoolteacher from a small town in Indiana who got a student drunk at a party and seduced him.
The boy later dropped out of school and got heavily into drugs.
She’s now confessing that what she did was wrong and inappropriate and that she thinks she might have ruined the student’s life.
I take in a deep breath that hitches with something shaky. With fear. Jess catches it again.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I say. I have to get back to my acting, to hiding whatever crazy shit I’m feeling much better than I am. I can’t keep worrying her, having her check in on me. She doesn’t need that right now.
I deboard the plane with a sour sting in my stomach.
At baggage claim, Jess heads to the restroom while I stand beside lifeless conveyor belts, staring at real estate come-ons for multimillion-dollar estates in the mountains and on the shores of shimmering lakes. Big as it is, Montana—or certain parts of it—is in the process of being overrun.
I rub my gritty eyes and curse myself for allowing Jess to talk me into checking our bags when the attendant announced that the plane would be too full to accommodate everyone’s carry-ons.
Wallace insisted on fetching us, something I cringed at agreeing to because, again, I should be drawing better boundaries with him. But I don’t need the cost of an Uber right now.
I’ve just texted him to let him know we’ll be out soon when someone behind me says, “Well, hey, it’s you.”
I whip around to see a tall bearded man standing much too close. I must appear confused because he says, “From the hotel bar?”
When I take a step back, my calf hits the side of the conveyor. I teeter on the brink of pitching backward.
He grabs my arm to stop my fall. “Sorry,” he says. “Didn’t mean to startle—”
My rusty cop training rocks me free of his attempted grasp. I take a ready stance, feet shoulder-width apart. My hand has even gone to my waist for the ghost of my utility belt, a reflex from a different chapter of my life.
“You were on my flight?” I say, a cold dread settling in my belly.
“News to me, too.”
What are the chances?
“This must be”—he clears his throat into his fist—“a little weird for you, with what’s going on. Truly, I’m sorry for that.”
“You live—where?” I say.
“I write for Rolling Stone. We’re doing a piece on Glacier Park and climate change. You know, shrinking glaciers, less snow, less water, threatened species, bark beetle infestations, megafires . . .”
“So not, what did you call it? Crime advocacy.” My tone is accusatory.
He offers a sheepish, closed-lip smile.
“Usually, another writer has the nature beat, but he broke his femur. I was next in line, and it’s not like I haven’t covered nature before.
I’ve published in Outside Magazine and Nat Geo.
Wolverines in Glacier and on the GNP’s designation as the first transboundary Dark Sky Park in the world.
Plus, I have work on the reservations up here that relates to crime advocacy. ”
He sounds legit, but this so-called coincidence has me on very high alert. I’ll check online to see if his writing credits are real. I’m still trying to get my heart to slow back down and can’t think of how to respond.
“What brings you here?” he asks.
“Sorry, what’s your name?”
“Jeremy Fisher.” He tilts his head, examining me. “You okay?”
I’ve gone pale. I can feel it. And I hate that I might appear vulnerable. “I’m good.”
“Again, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“Look, I’d love to get your name and number to interview you about what it feels like to, you know”—he runs a hand through his longish, wavy hair—“to resemble . . .”
He doesn’t finish, like he doesn’t want to offend me.
“One of the drawings?” I ask.
A half grin says he knows the request is sleazy.
I shake my head. “Not happening.”
“No?”
His eyes are soft brown. Not teasing. “If I was in your shoes, I wouldn’t give out my name, either.”