Darkheart

The Present: Thick & Thin

She'd told her husband it was a trip to attend her high school reunion, and much to Heather's chagrin, he'd insisted on coming, said it'd be nice to see his in-laws again. Where a journey back to Port Killdeer, back to the past, was going to lead, she didn't know, but what Heather did know was that wherever it ended, she didn't want David to be there.

Their marriage being what it was (more of a convenience than a consecration), there was little necessity for its continuation now that the long-awaited return had begun. Heather had escaped Port Killdeer for a while, thought that maybe if she went on to live some sort of normal life with friends and a family and gardens and shopping and interior decorating, the trauma of that one summer would somehow fade. She'd forced herself through that last year of high school after all of it, astonished that while her understanding of reality had been so virulently disrupted, the rest of the world went about its business, innocent of a truth she had touched yet couldn't entirely comprehend. Even now, that truth, though dulled and cowed into the shadows of her mind, haunted her. Until she'd met David, she'd worked her way through college by numbing herself with alcohol, became everyone's favorite party-girl, ever-ready to head out for a good time. And then had come David and the new distractions of setting up house and home, the idea of having a baby and the gardening . . . but the memory of it all would not be suppressed, and as the years had passed, Heather lived with the secret knowledge that the reckoning would come.

How Cris had gotten her number, Heather didn't know. She hadn't kept in touch with anyone. They'd certainly failed one another after that summer. Oh, they'd promised to get through it together, to carry on through thick and thin, to help one another and never let each other grow too afraid or alone. They'd failed. It'd been too much, all of it; that was part of the wrongness of it all, that it forced them into their own prisons. How alone she'd felt, all this time. And yet, something told her that no matter where she'd gone, what she'd done over the last fifteen years, they'd known. Not Crystal and Kevin and Jeremiah but the ones who'd done it to them--those ones, whoever they were. They remained faceless, nameless in her recollection of it all, but they knew her number. They knew where she was. They must have told Cris where all of them were, because Heather had received another message several weeks after the first: Haven't heard from Kevin yet. And along with that, an address for what looked to be a restaurant in Indianapolis.

Heather's initial reaction had been annoyance--Indianapolis was not nearby. She lived within a couple hours' drive of Port Killdeer. Indianapolis, on the other hand, was at least twice the distance and entailed going in the entirely opposite direction. However, when she'd realized that it meant time away from David, she'd recognized Cris's implied mandate as something of a gift.

"I promised to pick up my friend so that we could go up to Port Killdeer together, for the reunion."

Her husband had been angry at first. "It's the opposite direction! I can't take that much time off work. It's enough to ask off for the week of your reunion. Why can't she drive herself? She's grown, right?"

Not bothering to correct the convenient assumptions David had made in his exasperation, Heather had nodded, looked down at her hands, attempted to look meek. "I know, babe. And I--I don't expect you to take more time off. You're being good enough to come as it is. So I thought that maybe . . . if I go get my friend, spend a few days in Indianapolis, then come back and get you and we all go to Port Killdeer--how would that be?"

He'd narrowed his eyes at her, but ultimately, it'd worked. David had turned and pulled open the refrigerator, yanked out a gallon of milk, and, pouring himself a glass, muttered, "Weird time for a reunion as it is. Aren't they usually around homecoming or something? And it's a weird year--when'd you graduate? It's been . . ." He'd done some mental addition. "Fourteen years. You sure that's right?"