The Rawleys were nowhere to be found.
No house, no barns, no corrals or beautiful, stone-ringed fire pit. No horses, no tack room, no Clark or Marshall, Sean, Quinn, or sweet Wyatt. Each and every one gone. The land formerly occupied by their home, which had belonged to the Rawleys for many generations, was in the process of residential development. A work trailer was parked on the street, adorned by the name of an unfamiliar construction company. There was a small billboard proclaiming that this would be the future site of a condominium complex called Mountain Heights. Earthmoving equipment hunched in the darkness like sleeping beasts. The foundations already excavated loomed like gaping wounds.
This time I was the one shrieking my pain to the star-studded black sky, bending to tear clumps from the ground, the dirt cold and thick against my palms. Inane with grief I repeated the motion again and again, grabbing handfuls of earth and hurtling them like tiny, rage-filled bombs at the work trailer and the small billboard until the offending words were all but obscured by exploded muck. Camille sank to the ground, out of range, and did not attempt to stop me.
“Motherfucker!” I bellowed, addressing Fallon Yancy, wherever the hell he existed at this moment. “I will kill you a thousand times, you fucking bastard, you goddamn piece of shit! You think you’re the puppet master out there, that you can fuck with us like this, but I will find you! I will motherfucking find you!”
I howled and screamed until no additional sound would emerge, my clothing smeared in dirt. I had slipped and fallen too many times to count; my ankles ached, along with my tailbone. Several of my fingernails had torn past the quick and bled with silent reproach. And still no pain rivaled that of Case not knowing me. Case married to Lynnette, Case drunk and miserable, trapped in a life he believed he deserved. A life in which we had never met – whether because the Rawleys were not here, or because Mathias and Camille had not traveled to Montana in 2006, or a hundred other possibilities I could not begin to conjure; I had no idea. Not a notion of where to start.
Death seemed a friendly option as I stood on shifting earth at the edge of a huge, square foundation hole, heaving with uneven breaths, staring at the faintly darker line against the western horizon indicating the peaks of the mountains in the distance. I did not hear Camille until she appeared at my side and wrapped her arms around my upper body.
“What should we do?” I whispered, ragged with exhaustion.
“I don’t know, God help me, Tish. I don’t know.”
Chapter Thirteen
Landon, MN - March, 2014
WE DROVE EAST TOWARD THE SUNRISE, AIMING FOR THE home of our teenaged years and our younger hearts, where we had confirmed before dawn our mother still resided. Unwilling to frighten her, I’d throttled my emotions to a level of manageability in order to make the call. Camille likewise had adopted a resolute, dogged mien; both of us focusing now on what we could do other than give up. Other than let Fallon win. I tried not to notice how my sister’s hands shook, or the way her skin was pale enough to resemble bare bone. I knew the desolation in her eyes was mirrored in mine; I’d been avoiding my own reflection. By tacit agreement, we shied from any discussion of our virtual helplessness to restore our real lives.
“You’re cutting your trip short?” Mom had asked almost immediately and I played along, attempting to learn as much as I could without asking direct questions and arousing her suspicion, mustering all my lawyerly skills.
Clearly our mother belonged to this alternate universe, unwittingly delivering one shocking blow after another as I slumped in the passenger seat while Camille broke the interstate speed limit. We had decided after leaving the Rawleys’ property there was no point remaining in Jalesville where no one knew us. Though I realized he too would consider me a stranger, I planned to call Al for any information he might be able to provide but ultimately we had no place to stay and no real idea what to do; we would return to Montana if it proved to be the right choice after we collected our bearings.
When we crossed the border into North Dakota I watched over my shoulder as the state where Case lived receded into the distance. Then I buried my head in my arms and pressed my fingertips against my eye sockets hard enough to leave bruises; not hard enough to keep from weeping.
Based on my sunrise conversation with Mom, we learned that she and Dad had divorced only a few years back, shortly after my graduation from a Chicago high school. In our original timeline this event had taken place well over a decade ago, in the spring of 2003, and during the course of that fateful summer Mom had met and fallen in love with Blythe Tilson, eventually marrying him and remaining in Landon. In this alternate timeline Mom had never heard of someone named Blythe Tilson and we had returned to Chicago after only a short visit that summer, summarily nullifying every event and memory of our lives in Landon thereafter.
Most stupefying of all was that in this timeline, Ruthann had never been born.
The first clue came when Mom prefaced a
