Erasing Faith(71)

I was Fae Montgomery, now.

And the greatest surprise of all was that despite the pain of leaving my family and everything I’d ever known behind….

I kind of liked being her.





Chapter Thirty-Nine: WESTON


GHOST STORY



She’d always said it wasn’t a fairy tale.

She’d been right. It was a ghost story.

There was a once a beautiful little girl, who stumbled upon a vicious wolf in the woods. She ignored his sharp teeth and dirty pelt. Her eyes didn’t linger on the bloodstained fur or pile of bones scattered around him. His deepest growl and most menacing glare didn’t send her running.

She only saw how dark the woods were, how lonely the wolf was — alone with only the shadows for company.

She didn’t run away, as everyone who’d come before her had done.

She pulled him out. Tugged on his paws and claws until he’d left the wild behind.

She knew a wolf could never become a pet dog. He was feral, ferocious.

She didn’t seem to mind.

She claimed him as her own, bound him inside the cage of her heart.

She loved the savage creature and tried to teach him how to exist outside the isolation of the forest.

She didn’t see that living in the wilderness wasn’t what made him wild.

The wild was inside him.

So, though the girl wrapped him tight in her embrace, though she bathed him in the warm glow of her soul…

He couldn’t help himself. It was in his nature, in the marrow of his bones, in his very blood.

There was no redemption, for a wolf.

Eventually, as he’d always known he would, he turned on the girl who’d been his salvation.

He killed her.

She became a ghost.

And he went back to the dark.





Chapter Forty: FAITH


CUTTING TIES



I was careful.

I hadn’t seen my parents in more than three years. I hadn’t been home for a visit or spoken to my siblings on the phone. I didn’t check my old email addresses or call my former voicemail boxes.

I tried not to think about California, as I settled into the chilly climate of the northeast. I learned to dress in layers and finally understood the value of a quality pair of waterproof winter boots when the first snows turned to grimy grey slush on city streets. I forgot about kale and kombucha as I learned to like greasy Chinese takeout and massive late-night pieces of New York pizza.

I walked faster, talked faster. Dressed better.

I was a new person, with no ties to my old life…. with one, tiny exception.

Margot.

See, my old roommate wasn’t exactly easy to shake. And, as she was the only person in my life who’d been fed the same bullshit “declassified” government debriefing after Budapest, she knew exactly why I’d had to start over. Why I’d run.

So I did something that broke all my new rules: I opened a P.O. Box and let her send me letters.

She was the one tie from my past I couldn’t quite sever. Maybe it was reckless, but it wasn’t like we were daily pen pals. We’d exchanged a handful of notes over the past three years, mostly when holidays and special occasions rolled around. Often, Margot sent me postcards with no return address, covered in all manner of stamps and seals from her travels across the globe. I’d grin as I read about the Croatian caves she’d spent her Christmas exploring or the sweltering Belizean jungles she’d spent her birthday trekking through. Sometimes, when she settled in one place for long enough, I’d write back and tell her about my new life in New York — but those times were few and far between.

That was the only reason I didn’t worry when three months passed without a note from her.

Then six months.

Then eight months.

The last message I’d received was a homemade Thanksgiving card in the shape of a handprint-turkey, its lopsided envelope bearing an Australian postage stamp. She’d enclosed a picture of herself posing by the Opera House with her blonde pixie cut blowing in the wind and her hands thrown up in the air. She’d sounded happy in her note — she’d loved Sydney and hoped to stay for a few months. She’d promised to write more often.

But then… nothing.

The card I sent at Christmas to her last known address went unanswered. There was no colorful birthday card in my mailbox in August when I turned twenty-four. And this week, it was Thanksgiving again — marking a full year without so much as a word from her.

I reassured myself that she’d gotten restless in one place and set out on a new adventure. She was probably just busy traveling. Maybe she was somewhere remote, like the Sahara desert, where there were no convenient post offices. Maybe she was spending the year at sea, sailing from port to port with no time to disembark and scribe me a few cheery words.

No matter what I told myself, the pit of anxiety burning its way through my stomach lining didn’t go away. I was so concerned about my friend, I’d even called her landlord in Sydney and left a message, hoping he’d know something — anything — that might ease my paranoid thoughts. I’d probably develop an ulcer from the endless worry, by the time I heard back from him.

Unfortunately for me, Margot was the least of my worries. My troubles were only just beginning.

And the careful new life I’d begun to construct in New York was about to implode.