was peaceful, quiet. It was a place that slept.
All that was changed now.
It took hours to drive the length of the winding mountain road. Even before they’d entered the city, Ava could see how different it all was. In the fields along the outskirts, Ava could make out tents and vans, RVs and cars, all spaced in a field that had been harvested and sat bare and waiting for the next planting season.
“What do they all want?” Ava asked her father.
Macon grimaced, trying to keep his eyes on the road ahead. The state police had done a decent job of clearing the path into Stone Temple, but they could not remove everyone from the small road. People stood on foot—sometimes on the narrow edge of the road, other times in the oncoming lane, even though doing so meant they would have little place to go if someone came along the road out of Stone Temple.
“Turns out,” Macon finally said when he felt that he could split his attention enough to reply to his daughter, “all of that stuff people used to talk about, all that stuff about wanting to keep the world out, about wanting to keep Stone Temple a secret. Well, it went right out the door when folks started opening up their checkbooks.” He glanced at one of the fields brimming with people as they passed. “Gotta make a living, though, I suppose.”
The closer they got to town, the busier things became. The road leading into Stone Temple was two lanes, climbing and falling through the mountains, full of blind curves and steep drop-offs. It was generally a quiet road, but now it was inundated with vehicles, the traffic thicker than Ava had ever seen it. The police escort slowed to a crawl as they came up behind the wall of cars. Those passing in the opposite direction stared at Ava like rubberneckers watching a horrific accident.
When they finally arrived to Stone Temple proper, there were people gathered in the narrow streets. They had been waiting for Ava to arrive and were filled with a fervor that was typically reserved for presidents and celebrities—though neither a president nor a celebrity had ever come to Stone Temple.
Ava didn’t recognize any of the people standing along the streets, cheering and yelling and holding up their signs. And she couldn’t exactly say why she felt the need to look for familiar faces among the mass of people. Perhaps she simply hoped that if she saw someone she knew, it would help to lower the scope of everything that was happening, everything she did not understand.
“They won’t be at the house, will they?” Ava asked her father. He was concentrating on the road. Thus far the people around them were not encroaching on the car, but he couldn’t help but feel that it was only a matter of time before someone jumped out into the road—maybe even onto the car itself—the way they did on television.
“No, no,” he said. He answered quickly and confidently, as though he had been expecting the question. “They’ve got everything cleared off once we get through the town,” he continued. “I tried to tell these guys that it would have been better to come up from the other side. You know, swing up along Blacksmith Road, through the forest. But it rained pretty hard the other day, so they didn’t want to risk it.” He motioned to a man standing along the street with a sign held above his head that read Help Me, Too.
Ava and Macon stared at the man as they passed.
“Just take it as it is, Ava,” Macon said. “It’ll get better. Things will be strange for a little while, but they’ll calm down. You, this whole thing, it’s just the flavor of the month, you know? People get excited, but eventually the excitement cools and people go back to living the lives they know. These things don’t last.”
“Everything lasts forever,” Ava said quietly as though she were making the statement to herself rather than to her father. “Older people always think that things like this can’t last. But that’s not the way it is anymore. Things can last forever and ever now because of the internet. Everything is saved somewhere. Everything is permanent. Nothing dies anymore.”
“That’s...insightful,” Macon said. He’d wanted to use another adjective, but he had become distracted. They were almost out of town now, almost to the point where the small buildings and few streets that comprised the town would fall away and give rise to the fields and trees surrounding the town. Not long after that, they would take the narrow, winding road up the mountain to their home.
“Wash’ll be at the house when we get home,” Macon said with more than a little playful accusation in his tone.
“Who said I was thinking about Wash?”
“You two have been Bonnie and Clyde since the day you met,” Macon said. “I have no doubt that you’ve been wondering why he wasn’t there at the hospital when I came to pick you up. I know I’d be upset if I were a young girl and my boyfriend wasn’t there to greet me when I came out of the hospital.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Ava said with a flash of embarrassment.
“Do you prefer paramour, then? Is that the language all of the cool kids are using these days? Keeping it a little retro, you know?” He stretched across the front seat and elbowed her playfully. “I mean, you know, I’m old and everything so I can’t really be expected to keep up with all this stuff. You little whippersnappers are so dabgum...” He paused, and then he laughed. “Hell,” he said finally. “I can’t really think of the word I’m looking for to finish that joke.”
“Do you know why?” Ava asked, smiling a little.
“Why?” Macon replied.
“Because you’re old,” she jabbed, and they both smiled.
When they were properly outside the city, the crowds that had been in the streets were gone and there was only the countryside and the mountains and the trees and the sky above transitioning from the bright blue of afternoon into the softer hues of evening, promising a languid sunset.
* * *
“Ava!” Wash called as she stepped out of the car. He, his grandmother, Brenda, and Carmen were standing in the doorway of the house, the light from inside washing over their shoulders. He waved at her as if he had not seen her in months. He seemed to be holding back the urge to run over and hug her.
“Hey, Wash,” she said softly, resisting her own urge to rush to him. Being home, seeing Wash, it was like opening the windows of a house in the wake of a spring rain.
But it was Carmen, Ava’s stepmother, who came out of the doorway and walked over and hugged her first. She was pregnant, very pregnant, and so her walk was a slow, awkward waddle. Carmen was of average height, with sharp, bright features. She smiled often, in spite of the tension between her and Ava that sometimes filled the house and made it seem as though the walls were not strong enough to hold the entirety of their family. She had been born to Cuban parents living in Florida and had grown up bouncing from state to state as her father sought work. Eventually her father settled in the Midwest and opened a garage and, when Carmen was out of high school, she went to college in North Carolina and, after college, decided to stay. She was working as a teacher in Asheville when she met Macon—a dark-skinned widower sheriff with an unrelenting optimism and a smile that made promises she could not ignore.
The two of them became a part of each other’s life quickly, despite Ava’s resentment over the fact that Carmen was not her mother. Now she and Macon were married and all of them were trying to make the best of things.
“It’s so good to have you home,” Carmen said, holding Ava tightly. The swell of her belly was pressed between them. No sooner than Carmen’s arms were around her, Ava broke the hug. “We’ve got such a great night planned,” Carmen said. She had grown accustomed to Ava’s resentment. “Brenda brought pie, and you know she never cooks anything unless you hold a gun to her head.”
“I’m not cooking again unless somebody’s dead,” Brenda said, walking over. She was tall and willowy and with a crown of red hair. She was a strong woman who, in spite of her thin frame, exuded a regal and authoritative air. Macon sometimes called her the “Vengeful Peacock,” though he was smart enough never to call her that while she was within earshot.