I wait until my canine friend has made a complete disappearance and then I hike down into the creek.
Jerry said if I follow it, I’ll wind up close to the ranch. So, I set off. One step turns into a hundred—a thousand—until I’ve walked a solid half-mile. I look up every so often, reminded by the incredible amount of light from the stars of just exactly how far I’ve strayed from civilization. I think of Wes for a moment. What he would make of the whole situation. How I could look at him and ask, Is this enough? Is it selfless enough for you?
The image is short-lived as I trip over a depression in the creek bed. I look down and find a series of them. The dinosaur footprints boasted about in the little store back in town. Two centuries ago this would have made me a discoverer and not just a trespasser.
I cling to the thought. Reality, as I know it in the city, seems very distant as I avoid falling in another set of tracks.
A significant bend lies ahead, and I know I’m close to Tom’s property. Or at least I think I am. I hike up out of the creek on the opposite side that I came in on. Huffing for air, I sound more out of shape than I realized I was. After catching my breath, I slip into the cedar trees that look no different than the ones I passed through earlier in the night.
Again, they tug at my clothes, but I’m so intent on coming out on the other side that I don’t realize yet that my shirt has torn, and my cheek is scraped. When I emerge, I see the bluff at the top of the hill. Trash from other journalists litters the path. I follow empty soda cans and candy bar wrappers up the steep side of the hill.
On top, I catch my breath once more. Bent at the waist, I can barely take in the view. I stand up.
I look out over the top of Revelation Ranch. A bonfire glows behind a large structure. People’s faces reflect light like tiny moons, trapped by the gravity of the fire. I wonder if Tom is among them.
My heart quickens in my chest at the thought. The next thought I have is about Birdie: where is she?
I’m probably the last person she wants to see. Funny how insecurity can sneak up with poisonous fangs and bite even in a moment like this. It shouldn’t matter if she wants to see me.
It only matters that I’m here.
IONE
7 YEARS AGO
The last half of the semester seemed to stretch on endlessly. Seeing Tom was excruciating, like picking open a scabbed wound every time I entered his classroom. By the time the Headlights banquet rolled around, though, I had reconciled myself to the new status of our relationship. That night, I was ready to embrace the future. Even if that meant having to work alongside him for the next year. We were adults. We could make this work.
Time would heal us.
My heels declared my arrival on the marble floor of the hallway outside the ballroom. They pounded out a cadence that I wasn’t sure matched that of a woman on her way to meet her destiny. My stomach rolled with butterflies that fought to make their way up my esophagus and out of my throat. I held them down with a swallow and my throat bobbed like an apple chased by a drunken partygoer on Halloween.
The tender tinkle of piano keys drifted like a ghost out into the hallway from the ballroom. Laughter and music coated the room in a shiny new varnish that hid the imperfections of a department steeped in politics and favoritism. Tonight, though, that favoritism would shine a spotlight on one chosen student. A student who would get the opportunity to spend a year writing a novel. Historically, the Headlights Award was given to the student who had shown the most promise over the course of their time in the creative writing program. And historically, the winner of this award was also the recipient of the Gorman Fellowship, which would allow for a year’s time in which to complete a novel and invaluable publishing contacts. And standing between the recipient and those contacts was only one person, the facilitator: Tom.
Inside the ballroom, the low warm glow of artificial candlelight shimmered inside crystal chandeliers. Tables were laid out, their plastic tops dressed up with white cloths and astonishingly balanced centerpieces that involved flowers and a candle inside a lantern on each. I smiled at one of my professors—Eileen Carrigan, narrative non-fiction—who nodded with a wry smile in return, as though she possessed knowledge about the outcome of the evening that I did not. My stomach lurched at the thought that Tom might have whispered in her ear.
The whole evening felt like the Oscars. Though at its core, the ceremony was a small departmental awards banquet, so much more than a gilded piece to adorn my mantle was riding on it. If I was given the Headlights Award, and subsequently the Gorman Fellowship, I would be in the perfect position to publish, to critical acclaim, before I hit thirty. Students in the department shared wet dreams about the prospect. Tom’s discreet relationships with editors in places like New York City and Chicago made all of us salivate like a pack of wolves. The fact that Tom had told me, only two weeks prior, that I would be a shoo-in for the Gorman Fellowship did little as a tonic for my nerves.
I knew that he would keep good on his word, but the waiting was excruciating. Going through the motions of dinner and the other departmental awards seemed unthinkable. I needed that gold-leafed retro Ford statue in my hot little hands. I needed to breathe a
