“I know.”
She shudders as if in relief. “I know how that looks now. I tell a story about being held captive in a pit back home and then I’m actually held in a hole here. It’s too coincidental. So I must be lying again.” She looks at me. “I’m not. Tell me what I need to do to prove that.”
I say nothing.
She fingers the rash on her arm. “This isn’t enough, is it? Not after…”
“After the last time? When you showed obvious signs of torture—all self-inflicted?”
“I was desperate. The detective in charge of my brother’s case wouldn’t stop digging. He figured out what I’d done. He was coming for me.”
“He kept digging for a whole year? So he could get an accessory charge?” I shake my head. “Never.”
“He didn’t care about charging me. He just wanted leverage against the cartel. He thought I knew more, and if the cartel found out he was trying to use me against them…”
She goes quiet. Then she says, “I didn’t care if I went to jail for Garrett. I deserved that. But I would not become my father. I wouldn’t live his life. I knew about Rockton from when someone suggested it to my father. He gave me the contact information before he died. So I staged my story about being captured and tortured. Then I called that number.”
When I don’t reply, she brings up the very question I cannot answer, the one I keep asking myself.
“Why would I fake it again?” she says. “I had a motive the first time. What would it be now?”
“I don’t know enough about you to answer that.” I glance at the two books she brought back from the cave. “Those are your journals?”
“No, they’re just stories.”
“Stories?”
“Silly, crazy stories to keep me sane.” She walks over and hands them to me. “I almost wish they were journals. That might help. You can still read them. At the very least, maybe they’ll help prove I was down there that long.”
I take the books.
TWENTY
A flip through the books proves they are just stories. But there’s another reason I’ve taken them, and once they’re in hand, I head to the station to examine them further. When Dalton shows up, I hold out the books and say, “What are these?”
“Dunno. Haven’t read them.”
“I mean the books. The actual physical objects.” I put one down and turn the other over in my hands. “I know we sell blank journals at the general store, but these aren’t them.”
Blank books are among the most popular items in Rockton. When electronic forms of entertainment aren’t available, people rediscover childhood hobbies—writing poetry, painting landscapes, playing an instrument. Writing requires only paper and pen, and on almost every supply run, we stop at the dollar store and buy blank journals.
“This is old,” I say. “I smell mildew, and that cave system is dry. But it’s not just thrift-shop old. It’s properly bound, and the pages are yellowing. I wouldn’t be surprised if this”—I tap the cover—“is real leather. And…” I open the book to the first page and run my finger down a jagged edge on the inner spine. “It’s had pages torn out. The first twenty or so. Both of them are like that.”
“Conclusion?”
“That they really were journals. Very old ones. A miner or trapper started writing in them and then stopped. Got bored or just didn’t have that much to say. When Nicole asked for paper, this is what her captor brought her. Is there anything like this in Rockton?”
He shakes his head. “I only buy the kind you’ve seen.”
“And you’ve been doing the supply runs for how long?”
“Six, seven years.”
“Longer than any current residents have been here. Presumably these didn’t come from your place, so the only way a resident would have gotten hold of one would be to find it hidden in his house. Under a floorboard or whatever. Which is not impossible, but you guys do a thorough inspection between occupants.”
“Have to. Floorboards and all. That’s the first excuse people give when they’re found with contraband—must have been the guy who lived here before me.”
He reached for the book I’m holding. I hand it to him. He flips through it, frowning.
“I’ve seen…” He doesn’t finish, just keeps turning pages, his fingers running over them. “I had books to draw in, when I was a kid.”
“You drew?”
He shrugs. “Sketches. Wildlife and whatever.” His fingers move across the writing, as if picking up touch memory from the old, ink-dented paper. “My mother used to hang them in the cabin, and this one time, when we had a fire, she tried going back in, and it turned out all she wanted was my stupid—”
He inhales sharply and slaps the book shut. “My father used to get me books. Old ones. I don’t know where they came from, but they smelled like that. Looked like that. Ledgers or journals, from miners and trappers, like you said.”
I want to backtrack. Hear the rest of his story. Gain insight into a part of his life he slaps as firmly shut as that book.
Tell me about your sketches.
Tell me about your mother.