On the road into town, I pulled to the side, sat on the shoulder and considered the view. I thought about driving Alber’s streets and seeing familiar faces. Many of those I knew, old friends, family, would turn away when they recognized me. Only thoughts of Delilah kept me from turning the Pathfinder around and retracing my route to the Las Vegas airport, or to begin the long drive east back to Dallas.
A semi hauling a load of massive tree trunks rumbled past, dust clouded and the SUV shook. Ahead I saw the truck pull through the gates into my father’s sawmill.
Father.
It had been nearly a decade since I last saw him. That crisp fall afternoon I stopped at the house and visited with him and my mother. The sweet smell of apples filled the air, and we made plans for a gathering the coming weekend. I said nothing about my visit being a goodbye. As I strode away, I’d passed my brothers and sisters hoeing the garden, the younger ones playing tag in the yard, and I’d waved.
How would they react when I walked back into their lives? I pictured the frown on my mother’s face when she first saw me, the judgment in my father’s eyes.
Yet I wanted to see him, and Mother. The years had passed, but they were still my parents. Despite all that had come between us, what my father had done, I loved them.
I considered following the lumber truck into the mill.
Once it parked in the receiving dock, Father would emerge from his office to examine the load. I pictured him in his white dress shirt and black trousers. As a young girl, he let me help measure the logs and check each for splits, fissures that rendered them unusable. How proud I’d been.
At the thought of seeing him again, I felt not only an overwhelming sense of trepidation, but something elsea fleeting pang of remorse.
I should have said goodbye, I thought. But I knew that if I had, Father wouldn’t have let me leave.
Instead of driving directly into town, I put the Pathfinder back in gear and continued down the highway. Thirty minutes later, I entered Pine City, the county seat.
In the center of town, I parked in front of the Smith County Courthouse, an unremarkable, low-slung, cream brick building with a tarnished bronze statue out front—a ten-foot rendering of a battle-weary soldier dedicated to the area’s World War II dead. I showed my badge, walked around the metal detectors, and asked for directions. At a door marked SHERIFF’S OFFICE, I asked for Chief Deputy Max Anderson. A young deputy in uniform buzzed me in.
When I walked up, I found Max reading a report. I noticed framed photos on his desk of a pretty blond woman and a little girl who looked just like her. I waited, watched. I thought about how he didn’t look so terribly different. Back in the day, the sight of him made my heart flutter.
“Uh-hum,” I coughed.
He looked up. “Clara.”
“Hi, Max.”
“Thank you for coming.” Max walked around his desk and raised his hand to shake mine. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”
I took his hand in mine and was close enough to smell his musky aftershave. “I never thought you’d return.” He’d told me how he’d been offered the job, but I still wondered why he’d taken it.
“I decided it was time to come back,” he said. “And I’d heard that the area was changing. Towns like Alber were opening up. I wanted to be part of that.”
Nearly eighteen years older than when we’d parted, Max’s hair had sprinkles of gray at the temples. I thought about touching the familiar dimple in his chin, brushing my hand across the day’s stubble. I remembered when I first noticed he shaved. He was sixteen and I was fifteen. I’d convinced him to hike to the river west of town, to run off for an afternoon. That day I cupped his smooth cheek with my hand and pressed my lips against his, soft and tentative. That was how Father caught us, in the midst of our first kiss. Mother had grown suspicious and sent Father to find me. A year later, Max became one of the lost boys.
I’ve always wondered if he was forced out because of us.
The town leaders, as it would turn out, had other plans for me.
“Alber, changing?” I scoffed. “Max, Alber never changes.”
“Haven’t you been following the headlines?”
I had been reading the newspapers. Over the past years, authorities had moved in on some polygamous towns and arrested the leaders for marrying off young girls to grown men. The raids made headlines and monopolized the news. One day at Dallas PD headquarters, I stood with the others watching a breaking news report on the raid of a polygamous commune in Texas. The detectives around me chuckled, amused by the women in prairie dresses, their long hair falling to their waists, being led away with their children to buses, transported to an area for processing.
“I need the names of their hair stylists,” a woman had said, running her hand over her highlighted bob. “My husband would love that look. Early cavewoman.”
I never volunteered that I once looked like the women they jeered at, that I’d once been one of them. I wasn’t sure why I did, but I turned to the others and said, “In their own way, I think they’re beautiful.”
I’m sure none of them suspected why I’d said what I did. A decade in Dallas, and I’d never confided in anyone, never admitted where I came from. I told no one about my roots. As a child, I grew up in a crowd. As an adult, I lived a solitary life. From the day I entered the
