“I have to go to Happy Camp. Today. I didn’t bring food.”
“Emmett can bring you food back from Ashland.”
“I thought you said he wouldn’t be back for a few days. I don’t have anything here. I need to eat. And I don’t have clothes. I only brought what I’m wearing.” I also need to be able to leave the ranch. I need to look for you. I need to ask questions. In spite of what your mother claims, I need to talk to the police.
Her horse weaves and she yanks him back. “I might be able to give you a few things,” she finally allows. “To get you through. And you tell me what Emmett can get for you in town.” All this so she can keep me from Happy Camp—why? And why didn’t the woman at the coffee shop mention this place? What would she say about your mother, about you? And most pressing, how will I leave when your mother is always watching?
My mother, you said. She makes me feel like I’m wrong to ever want to leave. And I don’t. Mostly I like it out here. Or else I don’t think I would work anywhere else. Mostly I don’t want to leave. You sigh. But sometimes I do want to get away from her.
Episode 13:
Off the Grid
Elizabeth Lowe wanted to make a change. She cashed in her retirement. She bought a van and a backpack and an ultralight tent. She wanted to go off the grid. And she went so far, she never came back.
That afternoon your mother stations me in the lodge, where I am tasked with cleaning the floor-to-ceiling windows, the hard way. I have to take them apart: pop out the screens with a carefully applied butter knife because the tabs are broken, then tip and force out the sliding glass and remove the plastic runners. The vacuum your mother gave me doesn’t work—the electricity is out here too, so I have to brush the dead box-elder bugs out of the window frames with a toothbrush. Sometimes when I’m not paying attention, I accidentally flick them in my face.
In spite of this, I find the afternoon oddly peaceful. I have never really performed manual labor, and the physical effort is nourishing. The sun drops low through the windows, so the entire lobby catches the fire of its light. There’s something magical about being (almost) alone, in knowing that I am in the middle of nowhere, that no one can see or hear or judge me.
I think about my past life like it was a show I binge-watched, both pulled in and amused by the character who didn’t know she was on a streaming service, who didn’t know she could escape, see herself at a distance. Will anyone be thinking of me? Will anyone miss me? No, I was no more than background noise. And now I’ve changed the program, and maybe someday, people will tune in to me.
I imagine with a small thrill the moment when I find you. In this vision, I pull you up from an underground bunker, the place they put you because they wanted you to disappear. The place they want to put me. You squint in the light. As you climb up from the ground. Your cheeks are dirty and your hair is gnarled, but you are smiling. You are smiling because I saved us.
I jump when your mother backs into the screen door with a box of food. “That’s it for today; you can finish in here tomorrow.” She drops the box on the counter. “This should do you until Emmett comes back. He’ll be in tomorrow morning.” She goes to leave.
“I need to contact my family. Let them know where I am. Do you have Wi-Fi?”
She crinkles her nose. “We don’t turn the Wi-Fi on until the guests come.” I wonder how you broadcast your podcast without Wi-Fi. Maybe you went into town. Maybe you were working with someone else.
“When do the guests come?”
“Six weeks.”
“Oh.”
“There’s a landline.” She points to the back of the lodge where there is a service window looking into the kitchen. “Right there in the kitchen. You can call from there.”
As soon as I hear the roar of her ATV, I rush to the phone. It’s only when I pick up the receiver that I remember that I don’t have anyone to call. I’ve only seen my friends in flickers. When I start to count back, I realize I haven’t seen my closest friend in close to a year, others in nearly two. How did that happen? I watched a lot of YouTube. I listened to your podcast.
I pick up the phone. The only number I have memorized is my ex-husband’s. I don’t want to call him but someone has to know where I am. On Murder, She Spoke, you advised me to leave information with a trusted person—a close friend or family member—in case I disappeared. You called it an MMC Pack, a Murder, Missing, Conspiracy Pack. An MMC Pack can contain anything that may help in the event of your disappearance: a detailed physical description including any identifying marks, a complete medical history or a list of names of people to contact, people who knew you, people who cared about you, people who might know where you are. It’s the first thing I plan to look for now that I am here and you are not. I don’t have a trusted person, a friend to leave an MMC Pack with, but I have to let someone know where I am, even if it has to be him.
“Hello?” His voice surprises me even though I called him. “Hell-o?” he says when I don’t respond. He probably thinks I’m a telemarketer he can harass.
“It’s Sera.”
“Whoa! What the fuck? I didn’t think I’d hear from you again,” he says like I’m a one-night stand that went wrong, which I might be.
I am unsure how much to tell him. My first impulse is to start with I’m only calling you in case something bad happens to me, but I think that sounds insane, so instead I say, “I just wanted to check in. See how things are going.”
“Yeah, great, Los Angeles, great. The house is good.”
“That’s nice.”
“. . . What have you been up to?”
“I got a job.”
“A job? Who gave you a job?” Thanks.
“It’s at a guest ranch, working with horses and . . . cleaning.”
“I can barely hear you. Are you whispering?”
“I said, I got a job with horses.”
“Oh. I didn’t know you rode horses.” He didn’t know me at all.
“I’m at a place near Happy Camp, in Northern California. It’s called Fountain Creek Ranch.” I want him to remember the names, but I don’t want him to know I want him to remember them. “I haven’t seen a fountain or a creek.”
“Hey, that’s funny.” There is something so brusque and abrasive about him, so LA, and I remember the time we were together like it was a role I once played. A role I played so hard that there is nothing left, and now I am a shell of a person working with horses, cleaning windows like a head case between nervous breakdowns. And I feel like I should tell him that I am here for you, I am looking for you, that I haven’t lost my mind and I haven’t lost my nerve; I am a hero of heroless stories. I am a champion of the forgotten. I am on the cutting edge, of something at least.