And it shows that he is—or at least that he was—here.
In the ghost town.
Dad, what are you doing?
It’s the dimming time, the “ether hour,” Henry used to call it, because it feels magical, golden, and yet it signals that darkness is on its way. The road snakes along the flank of the bluff, miles away from the highway and Spring Creek, contouring itself around a base of sandstone buttresses. The few isolated houses along the road are set back, a stark contrast to the glass-windowed, modern buildings dotting the bluffs nearer the town, the second homes of rich people. These are first homes, Caro thinks, with their metal whirligigs standing still out front in the absence of wind, parched gardens, American flags,KEEPEDENWILDsigns.Do they hate us, the visitors?Caro wonders.Do we stand out like a sore thumb, or are we nothing to them?
If we scream, will they hear us?
If they do, will they come?
“Caro?” Ash’s voice is steady, but Caro hears something in it that she doesn’t like. They are fractured, the two of them. Are they broken?
“What?” They must be getting close. Caro thinks she came here once before, as a kid on a field trip. She has a vague memory of old buildings out in the middle of nowhere, hidden from the main road by the undulations of the bluffs. She remembers the teachers and the ghost town docent talking about how the pioneers settled this land. Revisionist history. The land was settled long before that, thousands of years.We have been the worst of caretakers, Caro thinks, considering the glass houses, the new roads, the resort where she herself is staying.
“What’s really going on with your dad?” Ash asks.
“What are you saying?” Caro thinks she sees a sign ahead, maybe the one mentioned in the text. She slows the car. She can’t bear to think about what Ash might mean. She can’t bear to think about the track on which her own mind is racing, spinning. “Isn’t Alzheimer’s and going missing all the time enough?”
“It feels like there’s more,” Ash says. “I feel like you’re keeping something from me.”
There’s a chain hanging across the road, and sure enough, a sign is affixed to it.ROADCLOSED.Yes. This is it.
“Here we are.” Caro turns off the car. She climbs out and slams the door harder than necessary. The sound echoes, ricochets against the bluffs.
Dad, are you here?
Hope?
She starts walking down the dusty road.
64
ASH
“CARO?” ASH ASKS. “YOUdidn’t answer my question. And I have another one for you.” They are walking, almost running, down the gravel road. Ash tastes dust in her mouth.
“What’s the real story about the mom who died in delivery?” Ash asks. “And why is it killing you? Because that happens. It’s horrible, but it happens, and you must have seen it before. And if anyonewereto blame, it would likely be the ob/gyn.” Ash pauses. “Did something go wrong that you’re not telling us about?” And then, one more question, she can’t help herself even though, out of the corner of her eye, she sees unflappable Caro flinch: “Didyoudo something? Did you make a mistake?”
The moment the words are out of her mouth, she wants them back. Next to her, Caro stumbles, puts a fist to her mouth.Who among us could bear all this scrutiny?Ash wonders.What person in all the world doesn’t have something they want to hide, secrets they want to keep?
“We’re all hiding something.” Caro takes a deep, almost-gasping breath. “Ash, you too.” She looks Ash full in the eyes. “You’ve always been obsessed with Hope. You know more about Hope’s disappearance than you’re saying, don’t you?”
“What?”Ash says, but her response is too fast, the answer too at-the-ready.They have stopped walking, they are looking at each other, and Ash has a terrible thought.
“What if there is no lurker?” She can’t believe she’s wondering this, she can’t believe she’s saying it, but as she looks in Caro’s eyes, she sees she’s wondering it, too. “What if it’s one of us?”Us.Hope, Ash, Caro. And with Hope gone, that leaves—
—the two of them.
They’ve arrived at the cemetery up on a knoll away from the rest of the ghost town. It feels like a proverbial tumbleweed could roll across their path. Farther down the road, the cottonwood trees lining it have ancient trunks so twisted and knotted that they look like the wrists of giants, all elevated lines and straining sinews. As the dirt road continues, it falls into ill-repair, and Ash sees the remnants of the town—a church and several houses.
But there are no trees here at the cemetery. And it is not near the church.
Both of these things feel strange to Ash. The pioneer settlers of southern Utah were big on planting trees everywhere else. So why not here? Why not for their dead? Only the dusty hill behind the burial ground offers any measure of shelter from the wind and the sun that burn their way across the land.
And there is no grass, only dirt. The graves are mounded over, as if they are recent. It chills her how they don’t lie flat, how the mounds call to mind a body, something human.
“Why are they aboveground?” Ash asks. “Wouldn’t it be easy enough to dig here?”
