Roberta Byers…
Bobby…
I only recognize her in my dreams because after I learned the truth, I went to the library and searched for any information on her and found several old newspaper articles with her in them from before I was born.
Some where she’s smiling next to my father.
Whatever happened between them, whatever went wrong, either she was very good at hiding it, or they hadn’t reached that point yet because they look happy. And Earl looks normal.
Not like a deranged killer and kidnapper.
Not completely unhinged like he was up on that mountain when Killian finally confronted him.
But the problem is, he doesn’t just look normal in those old photos, he looks like me.
How could no one have noticed it?
The Byers have been here for generations, and even though they lived around the far side of the mountain, well away from town, Earl spent enough time here that people knew him.
So how come no one saw how much I looked like him?
Maybe as I got older, someone put two and two together and figured out I was his missing son and never said anything. Maybe Connie always suspected and never said a word because she knew Bobby and that if she left me on that doorstep, there was a reason for it. Maybe everyone was “in” on keeping this giant secret about my identity from me my entire life…
Just more questions that never will have answers.
Just more agonizing unknowns that will plague me day and night.
I shake my head and throw back the covers, climbing from bed in nothing but my boxers and staggering down the stairs and over to the kitchen to get a glass of water. But as soon as I have the glass in my hand, I know it won’t be enough and instead open the cabinet and pull down a bottle of bourbon, pour myself a shot, then double it.
My hand trembles as I bring the glass to my lips to gulp it down greedily. The burn in my stomach helps wake me up even more, but that feeling still lingers…
That rage that consumed me during the nightmare that wasn’t mine—that was his—hovers like the mist that always covers the mountain.
How the fuck did I know how he felt?
Why do I keep seeing it?
I pour another shot and slam it back, hissing at the sting in my throat and that vision I want to burn from my memory.
It’s just your imagination.
Deep down, I know that.
I know that it isn’t real.
Everything I’m experiencing in these nightmares is really my own brain playing tricks on me, creating the scenario I’ve imagined so many times during waking hours. Turning them into these flashes that play endlessly like horror movies in my head.
But it’s just my imagination.
It. Isn’t. Real.
Because no one knows how he killed my mother, whether he strangled her or shot her or did something else unspeakable to her that snuffed the life from her before he tossed her in the river. And we will never know since her body was never discovered.
I’ll never be able to give her a proper burial.
And I may never be able to get these images out of my head.
I pour myself another drink and down it.
