Endings by Linda Richards (portable ebook reader .TXT) 📗

short, San Pasado is the kind of place people in big cities all over America dream of moving to; raising their families. And some of them do. But mostly they do not. Mostly they dream and wish they could be here or someplace like here. And now the dream is tainted, a rotten core at the gooey center. At the moment, it feels like nothing will ever be the same.

I park my rented car, intending to walk around town, assessing before I settle in somewhere, now not sure what will be available. The level of media circus is a variable I hadn’t counted on before my arrival. At noon, it looks like rush hour in a town that usually has no reason to be anything but sleepy. But now, everything is jammed with media types and their various gear and entourages. I fear there will be no room at the inn.

Despite the emotional calamity currently in San Pasado, the weather is untouched. It is a perfect Central Coast day. Just sweet sun in a clear blue sky and you swim through it like Eve in the garden or a fish in the sea.

It is difficult, with the sun touching your shoulder, to imagine a town like this producing a William Atwater. This is small town America with a Central California kiss. You can’t see the ocean from town, and yet you know the sea is only a half hour run from that bandstand. The little hamlet looks like a place where nothing bad could ever happen. And yet. Here we are.

With no other starting point in mind, I begin at what feels like the beginning and drive my rental to Atwater’s last known address. It is maybe fifteen minutes east of the charming downtown core. And it is light-years away.

My first impression is of gray. Gray house, shutters sagging, paint weeping. A gray cracked driveway, valiant weeds trying to push up between the cracks; reclaiming the ground. A gray chain-link fence, sagging in places. A mangy-looking gray dog, patches of brown. The dog is chained to a sun-damaged Honda. Red. The car is the one spot of color in the scene, and taken all together, what it really looks like is squalor. You can taste the hopelessness and desperation on your tongue. It’s worse than expected somehow. It is worse than should be allowed.

I debate going to the front door, knocking. Questioning whoever answers. Sticking to my authorial cover story. Beyond having already been hung up on by the mother, what stops me are the other watchers. A couple of media trucks, associated with local affiliates of large networks, are encamped not far from the driveway and a small horde of various media types lounge around in front of the house, just out of reach of the dog. They make me feel oddly self-conscious. Like they’ll be able to tell things about me I don’t want to share. I avoid looking directly at them.

The trucks look like maybe they’ve been sent from other planets; high-tech gear perched on roofs, ready to send and receive signals. It’s as though we are in a war zone. As though we are at the front.

I sit for a while and assess. I don’t recall now what I’d been imagining, ensconced and planning from the safety of my house at the edge of a forest. But whatever I was thinking then, it wasn’t this. And now I understand how naive I’ve been. I am surrounded here by expert hunters, attending now in their full stalking regalia, satellite dishes and all. They are bloodhounds. And me? I’m the pampered house pet spaniel who has lost her forever home. We have all the same equipment, those bloodhounds and I, but their tools have been honed with hard use. I feel like a child among them. I feel distressingly ill-prepared.

Still. I bolster myself. I’ve come all this way. There is nothing to deter me from the broad stroke plan I’d come up with back at my cottage and then on the flight out. It might be a naive plan, and half-baked, I concede that. But it’s really all I’ve got and I’m here now, after all. I try to remember the rage; hold it, fan it. I know it will sustain me.

When I leave the car and walk to the front door of what I know to be one of Atwater’s childhood homes, I am aware of my pulse. I don’t know if this is an elevated heart rate or an excessively brisk rushing of my blood. All I know for sure is I feel a little lightheaded. I hunch my shoulders; press on.

As I make my way to the door, I am lightly afraid that the dog will rush out and attack me and I can’t tell who is more scared: me or him. We both keep our distance, eyeing each other warily. He doesn’t take his eyes off me while he backs off his chain, and he doesn’t growl or meet my eyes.

The walk is cracked, and plants grow up through them, stunted weed babies, stretching for light. So much all around me is cliché.

A curtain is drawn over the dirty front window I walk past to reach the door. The doorbell is broken, so I don’t bother pressing it, opting instead to knock, picking up a splinter when I do.

I feel rather than see motion on the other side of the door and, for a heartbeat, I feel like it will open. I brace myself for what I might see then. It doesn’t happen though. Instead, the curtain pulls back, so quickly that later I will ask myself if it was real. I have the impression of a thin, pale face, and wide, alarmed eyes. Then the curtain drops and nothing happens and I question my impression.

I hover there foolishly for a few long minutes then retrace my steps because I can’t think what else to do. I’m still cautious when I pass the dog,