He pulled over and stopped.
This was Jack Pine Hill.
He’d find Jenn here.
In his memories.
This was where they’d come when they started dating. When he turned seventeen and borrowed his dad’s truck, they’d come up here to watch the twinkling lights and talk, opening their hearts to each other in ways they’d never done with anyone before.
Looking at the lights, he was pulled across time and was with Jenn again, telling her about that day at Blessed Saints when his world stopped.
He was ten.
Sister Roberta had asked the class to draw and color a map of South America. Greg was coloring Brazil, trying to imagine a place without snow when he saw Sister Roberta meet the principal, Sister Mary, at the door. They talked in low voices, looking at him. Then Sister Roberta came to his desk, touched his arm, and whispered, “You must go now with Sister Mary.”
Not knowing why his principal had summoned him, Greg went to the door. As he walked down the hall with Sister Mary, he heard Sister Roberta tell the class: “Stop your work, please. Now we’re going to pray for Greg...”
Greg didn’t need to keep remembering.
Sitting alone on Jack Pine Hill, looking at the lights, he knew what followed when he got to the principal’s office.
He refused to think about it now, choosing to remember how Jenn had taken his hand when he’d first told her about it, and how she’d understood because of what had happened to her, her mother and father.
Greg could hear Jenn now...
My mom was a cashier at the old Colby Food Mart, working long hours, standing on her feet for each shift. But she still had time to make dresses for me... I remember she’d talk about things she’d learned in life, like how it was important to keep every promise you made to the people you love...
And I remember her smile, but it always seemed to be tinged with sadness... I don’t know why... There were days I’d see her sitting alone in the kitchen, all quiet, like in her mind she had gone somewhere. She’d be drinking, rum and Coke, and sometimes she’d start crying, and if she caught me watching her, she’d pull me close, hug me so tight and say: “I love you more than anything in the whole world, Jenn...”
My dad worked hard, too, always driving his cab, or cleaning it. “Customers expect it to look and smell new, Jenn,” he used to tell me on the days I helped him wash it. I thought it smelled like lilacs. And when he wasn’t driving, he’d work on the doll house he was making for me. Sometimes he’d show me a card trick or other magic tricks. He was such a gentle man. He’d laugh so hard, watching my face light up whenever he’d pull a quarter from my ear then make it disappear into thin air.
Then one night, around Christmas, I woke up to screams... Our house was on fire. I couldn’t get out of my bedroom, the hall was filled with flames, and the screaming... My mom and dad were screaming. I couldn’t get to them... A firefighter smashed my bedroom window and saved me, but they couldn’t save my mom and dad. I don’t know why I survived. Why me? I’ll never forget that night... I had no brothers, no sisters, no other relatives but my grandmother. I went to live with her. I was eight years old...
Jenn’s tragedy broke Greg’s heart.
When she first told him about it that night on Jack Pine Hill, he fell in love with her, wanting to protect her, believing they needed each other.
Now, gazing at the city lights, his heart surged.
I can’t lose Jenn.
But Greg couldn’t extinguish their tragic family history of losing parents, and he thought of Jake.
He needs his mother.
Then Greg’s thoughts shifted to how in the last few months Jenn had grown detached but refused to acknowledge it, even denied it.
Could she have known about me? Is this all somehow related? Am I being punished somehow? I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.
Greg shook his head.
The rising sun had turned the sky to coral.
He sharpened his focus.
In the distant galaxy of the suburbs below, flashing emergency lights sped like a satellite through the streets. He dropped his window; the wailing siren flowed into his truck. Trying to locate where the vehicle was, he saw a second one, lights strobing as it zipped from the opposite end of what Greg realized was Trailside Grove.
He started his truck.
Watching for a moment longer, he saw the two emergency vehicles converge on the area where Bluebird Park bled into Ripplewood Creek.
He slid his transmission into Drive, wheeled the pickup around, and descended the hill.
Something’s happening.
Greg pushed his Ford beyond the posted limit.
In a matter of minutes, he’d left the countryside, returning to the suburbs. Entering the fringes of Trailside Grove, thankful there was little early morning traffic, he blew through a few solid yellow lights.
Maybe it’s a car accident? Maybe that’s the emergency, he thought, rushing westbound on Sentinel Trail. As horrible as a crash would be, it gave him a measure of hope.
Then his phone rang. It was Kat. He grabbed it.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“I’m looking for her.”
“Greg.” She sighed, dropping her voice. “Jake’s up. He’s asking for you.”
Greg adjusted his hold on his phone.
“Have there been any calls to the house in the last few minutes?”
“No. Why?”
“Something’s going on around Trailside Grove and Ripplewood.”
“What?”
A brilliant starburst flared in Greg’s rearview mirror before the squawk of a siren.
“Hang on,” Greg said to Kat, pulling over, slowing down, letting an Erie County Sheriff Deputy’s car roar by, lights wigwagging.
“I heard that,” Kat said. “Greg, what’s going on?”
“Something with police. I have to go.”
Ending the call, Greg accelerated on Sentinel, his eyes locked on the Erie County car as he pursued it. They tore out of Trailside’s commercial strip, barreling along the divide between Trailside Grove and Noble Haven, then Bluebird Park. Greg’s heart skipped as the Erie County car came upon Ripplewood Creek, taking the exit for Ripple Valley Boulevard with Greg following.
They passed St. Bartholomew’s.
Up ahead, he saw a state police SUV, lights strobing, well off the street, alongside the edge of fencing on the isolated curve that bordered Blueripple Woods. It had driven on a short earthen entrance lane, concealed with overgrowth. The state car blocked the entrance at an opened chain-link gate. The Erie County Sheriff Deputy’s car pulled to the shoulder near it, and the deputy got out and hurried into the woods.