Chapter 24
ROWAN
Iwas always a bit sensitive when I was younger, and developed phobias easily — like with the storm and the falling tree. My parents handled it well, and I got through it all with their help.
The summer after they died, I had the worst anxiety of my life. Every night, I dreamed about the day they died, the phone call that came after the accident, rushing to the hospital, only to discover they were already gone.
I’ve long since healed from then, gone through my grieving and come to terms with it, but any time I feel anxiety, it brings me back to that time in my life.
I haven’t felt anything like it in a while, and now, as I drive into town, I feel it again, my heart hammering against my chest, my mind going a bit fuzzy.
After Belle left last night, I tried to cling to the man I was when I refused to go to the doctor and told my sister to leave. The same man I was when I got Lola’s things together and forced her to leave.
But I just couldn’t do it. By the time I was crawling into bed, I couldn’t stop thinking about everything — Lola arriving on my doorstep, the pictures and videos on my phone, Belle’s care for me.
Belle’s insistence that I don’t throw my life away when Elliot and Hannah never had to; Lola’s comments about not hiding away forever.
So, this morning, after a night of tossing and turning, I decided I would do a test. Check Lola’s online presence for evidence of me.
If she’d doxed me or posted anything that could be interpreted as revealing my location, I’d return to the mountain and never entertain the thought of coming down again.
But if she hadn’t… I would talk to Belle. Consider venturing down now and again. Consider having my sister in my life again, as long as it would be safe for her.
Talk to Lola. Go to her and beg for forgiveness.
The only problem is that I have no Wi-Fi, no cell service, not even satellite internet up at my cabin. I didn’t want to risk someone coming through it, even with the security measures I could have put in place.
Which means I’m here now, a baseball cap pulled down low over my face, turning onto Main Street. My EV whines softly. I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed driving, taking the turns down the mountain in her.
The downtown area is cuter than I remember in the few times I’d been here, the coffee shop decorated with pumpkins and bats, specials out on the sidewalk advertising Witch’s Brew lattes and pumpkin spice everything.
A couple pushes a stroller down the sidewalk lazily, laughing together. A woman and her dog sit on a bench nearby and Cheese turns, pressing her nose up against the car window.
“You behave,” I say, pointing my finger at her. She licks it, and I turn, grabbing my bag and locking the car, leaving it running. It’s relatively cool outside, but I would never risk leaving her in the car without the air on.
At first, it feels like every single person on the sidewalk and in the passing cars is looking at me. I imagine their heads turning, the whispers starting, a low murmur that’s much louder in my head than it is in reality. That looks like… do you think it is? Oh my God, it’s that guy!
But by the time I reach the front door of the library — the recipient of quite a bit of my money — nobody has approached me.
Life is moving on around me. None of the people on this street have any idea who I am, and this time, the difference in appearance seems to be enough to grant me a whole new life.
I walk inside and head to the new computer lab, provided conveniently by an anonymous donor. It’s nice, with warm lighting and a surprisingly cozy feel for a place filled with technology. The woman at the front signs me in, and I’m able to access the internet relatively easily under Rowan Travis.
Pulling my headphones out of my bag, I plug them into the jack and settle them over my ears, waiting as things load. Perhaps the next donation should be to bring high-speed internet to this little mountain town.
I type her name into the search bar and wait.
Finally, Lola Kennedy shows up on the screen, and my heart stutters when I see her.
That wide smile, her hair much lighter in all these pictures. Her profile picture shows her in a little white tennis dress, standing in front of the Space Needle.
Hiya! I’m Lola, and I love fashion, shopping, and exploring. Come along with me to try the best coffee and have fun times in Seattle.
Her Instagram and TikTok are benign, with not much being posted in the past few weeks. I start to think that her social media might not reflect her time with me at all.
It’s only when I click over to her YouTube that I see it, her most recently uploaded video. I scroll through her history, heart thudding. It doesn’t look like she posts on YouTube that often; her previous video was from two months ago.
There’s a simple thumbnail that shows her sitting criss-cross in the forest, the trees seeming to bend down toward her. The title reads, simply, A Week with my Thoughts.
My heart starts to beat faster. I click on the link and soft music plays. It opens with the soft crunch of the forest floor, an empty shot of the woods that lasts long enough to scratch at my brain, making me beg for action.
Then, Lola walks into the frame, sits down and criss-crosses her legs like in the thumbnail. Not to the camera, but somewhere just behind it, she says, “Maybe nature isn’t about somewhere you go.”
And with that, I’m swept into the video, watching her as she explores the area. Douglas firs, Western Hemlocks, spruces and pine trees shivering in the wind. It cuts to the image of a woodpecker working steadily on the side of a tree, the sound reverberating through the forest around her.
She shows Ospreys and even a few ducks in one of the little reservoirs off the river. Watching the footage is like being in the mountains myself, catching the brown streak of a deer running through the woods, turning your head at each sound and sight.
I see the drone footage, the dead phone. Lola, laughing at herself, acting silly, then asking how we can move forward with technology serving us, rather than the other way around.
She’s bright, levity in human form. Then, serious and reflective.
The video seems to hold the full range of human emotions, and a sort of wavering between maturity and a childlike wonder.
When I finish, emotion is thick in my throat, and I sit back from the computer, looking around like I’ve just come out of the movie theater, having completely forgotten the world around me.
There are thousands of comments, and I read through every one.
They’re all glowing, praising her creativity, her vision, and I see the journalistic touch coming through here.
All at once, I want to read everything she’s ever written, and I’m sure it’s all good.
That the thing she wanted to do before influencing wasn’t a fluke. She could have been a great journalist.
And she is.
More than that, I’m not mentioned at all. There’s nothing about me in this video, even though I see myself everywhere. In the references to hiding and disconnecting. The joy of solitude and the pain of loneliness.
It’s like somehow, Lola has managed to do both. To make a video that doesn’t include me, and yet her growth throughout the progression of the story points to an outside influence — me.
And it was the same for me. Having her there for just a week felt like its own little lifetime. The kind of event that you’ll remember for the rest of your life, an exodus from mundanity.
I’m so caught up in my thoughts about the video — and reading through a Reddit post where people speculate about where this sudden serious content came from — that I don’t hear the approaching footsteps behind me.
“Rowan?”
At first, a trill of anxiety rolls through me at the sound of my name, my paranoia telling me that someone’s recognized me.
But then I recognize the sound of that voice.
“Belle.” I turn and pull the headphones down around my neck.
The first thing I see isn’t my sister, but a little bundle strapped to her chest, staring at me with wide blue eyes. My entire brain goes blank, and I meet my sister’s eyes, opening my mouth to ask who the baby belongs to, until the realization hits me.
“Belle,” I repeat, eyes going wide. I stand up from my chair, which rolls back dramatically, my gaze skipping from my sister to the baby on her chest, who coos and reaches out to me happily. “You are… this is… oh my God, why didn’t you—”
“Well, it’s kind of hard to tell you anything when you disappear off the face of the planet,” she says, rolling her eyes at me. Then, she smiles gently and grabs one of the baby’s soft, waving fists. “Rowan, meet Francesca. Frankie. She’ll be one in just a month.”
Not for the first time this past week, I’m speechless. My sister had a baby — made an entire human, named her, had a baby shower and celebrated with her friends — and I wasn’t around for any of it.
“Well, shit,” I whisper, realizing, for the first time, that Belle is right. I might be doing more harm — to myself and the people I love — by staying away. “I’m…”
“I know,” Belle says, reaching out and touching my arm gently. When I meet her eyes, I see there the patient sister who’s always been there for me. And it hasn’t been easy. “Come on.”
I shut down the computer, and together, the two of us head to a coffee shop across the street. I have to fight the impulse to keep my head down, turn my face away from people.
Once we’re seated, and I get to hold Frankie for the first time, everything comes out.
Being with Lola. The week we spent together. My worry that it was too brief to really mean anything.
“Remember when you came to me about all the stuff at the company? It was months before anything actually came to light, but your instincts were telling you that something was wrong.”
I nod, remembering how Belle had encouraged me to do something about it, and I hadn’t wanted to. Instead, I’d focused on the work, not thinking about how Hannah drifted further and further away from me.
“Well, you ignored your instincts then,” Belle says, before popping a bite of muffin in her mouth.
“And look how that turned out. Nobody is telling you to marry her, but I don’t think you should discount a connection like that.
In fact, there are lots of married couples I know who couldn’t spend a week trapped in the woods and come out that happy on the other side. ”
“I turned her away,” I say, shaking my head. “I forced her to leave and didn’t give her a chance to defend herself.”
“So, you apologize,” Belle says, raising an eyebrow at me. “Just like you’re going to have to do for me. Like, a lot.”
“I am sorry,” I say, running a hand down my face. “Should we talk more? I could come to your place.”
“I’d like that,” Belle says, but she’s shaking her head, her gaze wandering over to my phone screen, where Lola is frozen, mid-smile. “But I think you have something else to take care of first.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
“Duh,” Belle rolls her eyes, gives a little bite of muffin to Frankie, who claps her hands. When Belle glances back up at me, I can see how motherhood has made her glow. “I’m always right.”