Set Me Free (12 page)

Amelia wanted this badly, and she didn’t know exactly why. She and Victor hadn’t talked this whole week back at Ponderosa.
Except for that glance at the first morning assembly, he didn’t seem to notice she existed. Something gnawed at her, something
from that other time, when they had been children together. Something told her he didn’t like her. So why on earth would he
look at her? And why would it make her feel like this? Still, she pressed against
the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of his lean body running after the ball.

A
MELIA AMBLED DOWN
the hill, wishing she’d brought a sweater. She could see them out there, on the flat macadam rectangle, lights on above them.
They were whooping already. The real game had begun. As she got closer, she noticed Lydia jumping up and down on the sidelines,
waiting to sub in. There was a group of girls sitting cross-legged on the grass, drinking in the long swoop of the boys as
they made baskets. They were talking about tonight’s party: who would be there, who was likely to hook up. The conversation
faded when Amelia walked by. She barely noticed. She glanced past them to her father’s office, lit up. He was outlined in
the window, hunched over papers. He wouldn’t get back to the apartment until well after the game ended.

You would think: a Caucasian child raised adjacent to an Indian reservation, going to a school with mostly Indian teachers
serving mostly Indian children, and these same children provide that child’s primary option for friends. You would think:
such a child must know many things. Such a child must feel a part of something. Perhaps it was precisely because Elliot so
vehemently insisted that Amelia was a part of something that she didn’t feel a part of something. Perhaps the other children
saw how Elliot kept her separate, special. Even now that they were old enough, she wasn’t allowed to go to parties, or drive,
or drink a little to have a good time. No one wanted to cross Mr. B. Then there was the easily misinter-pretable fact of Amelia’s
shyness. It made her say strange, awkward, stuck-up things. She was smart. She had read everything. And she played the violin.
Who plays the violin? She was sixteen. As far as her classmates knew, she had never kissed a boy. Some of her classmates already
had babies.

Amelia waved to the gaggle of girls and perched herself on the ground at their edge. A few greeted her when they were resigned
to her company. None of them made any real effort to talk to her,
but once they realized she was staying, their conversation drifted back to tonight’s party. Amelia wondered if they were trying
to make her feel jealous. She pretended not to care and leaned back on her hands. She watched Lydia join the game, shouldering
her way across the court. Amelia made sure to watch Lydia and not hover too long on the other sweaty bodies bounding before
her. So she was surprised by the catch in her throat when she watched as the tallest one among them vaulted into the sky,
his wide hands rising improbably above the rim, bringing the basketball crashing through the hoop. The air seemed to hold
Victor Littlefoot up there a moment longer than was possible. When he came back down to earth, he grinned and high-lived his
teammates. The girls beside Amelia were in a frenzy: clapping, calling, shaking themselves into a dazzle, hoping to be noticed.
Victor turned and smiled, like a movie star, in their direction. Then he turned a fraction of an inch farther, so that not
even those other girls would see his gaze shift in the fading light. For a split second, his smile grazed Amelia. She blushed,
but night was descending, and nobody knew it except her, this secret of blood rushing to skin, which had no content or meaning,
but seemed a secret all the same.

W
lLLA

Day One
New Milford, Connecticut, to Columbus, Ohio
Wednesday, May
7,
1997

T
he rolling hills of Pennsylvania shot by in every shade of new springtime green. Here Willa was with her father, back in the
car, and she felt a giddiness skipping across her knees, through her fingertips, atop her head. She and her father had done
something tremendous. For the first time in her life, Willa let herself feel how fun this could be. Lifting out of your life
and taking off into the world. Not asking permission. Not letting anyone know. Just going.

A part of Willa knew the reason this felt so fine was that the power dynamic had shifted. Nat had been wise to require of
his daughter a desire to accompany him on this journey. He had been wise to give her that choice. But as she chattered freely
at him across the front seat, he allowed himself to think about how this had been accomplished. She had agreed to come, to
let him leave, only after he mentioned Caroline.

All these years he’d kept Caroline out of it. He’d let Willa believe the onus was on him. She needed him to survive. As long
as it kept her safe, he didn’t mind having her hate him. She would never be able to get along without him, so he didn’t mind
risking
her wrath. He was the one who made the decisions about when to move on, the one who sensed danger lurking. By the time she
was five or six and all Nat had to fear was fear itself, he rationalized: Willa hated him just a little, so much less than
most daughters hated most parents. He told himself that all the moving had become easy. She would never have to know how ugly
the world was. Besides, she hated him only when he made her move on. Most days of the year, he didn’t do that. Most days he
took her interests seriously. He respected her mind and her will. He disciplined her fairly when she required it of him. So
let her think he was crazy. Let her think that his life in the construction business involved shady dealings that were best
solved by fleeing. Let her believe he was a thief, a liar, dishonorable, untrustworthy. Never let her know what her mother
had done. Never let her know what he, in turn, had done to save little Willa from a life of something terrible.

He had broken his rule today. He had used Caroline’s name. He knew that today it had been the only way. Willa wasn’t five
anymore. She didn’t need him to clothe and feed her. She needed answers. Dangling the promise of Caroline like a carrot was
the one way to make Willa want to come along. It was also practice for what would come. They were on their way to find Elliot
Barrow, after all. This
had
begun. But Nat hated having to begin this. He hated having to be the one to set it into motion.

“Dad? Dad. Hello?” Willa whistled the sharp whistle she reserved for calling the cat inside.

“Hmm?”

“I hate it when you do that.” She meant his drifting off, going to the place where he kept his memories and secrets, the place
she could not find him. But she did not say that.

“I’m driving,” he said. “I have to concentrate.”

Willa slumped back in her seat and groaned. “I thought we were going to have fun.”

“We are,” he said, and kept driving.

“You have no idea what I was just talking about, do you?”

“Yes I do.”

“Oh yeah? What, then?” Willa challenged him.

“Reach around to the backseat and get the backpack.”

Willa rolled her eyes but did just that. She pulled the backpack onto her lap and unzipped it. Reaching in, she felt the familiar
cold curve of her 35-millimeter camera lens. She smiled wryly and held it up. “So it really was your plan all along to get
me to come with you, wasn’t it?”

“You were talking about your photographs,” he said.

“Dad.” He could hear her smiling through his name. “You planned it, didn’t you?”

“Your beautiful photographs,” he continued. He turned on the blinker and began to slow down and pull right. There was no turnoff
in sight.

“What are we doing?” Willa asked, frowning.

“Time to let Ariel stretch her legs a little, wouldn’t you say?”

Willa laughed at the euphemism they’d always used. When they were driving, they never said they had to go to the bathroom.
She had forgotten. She glanced at the field beside their car. “Hey, look at that cool barn,” she said, pointing. “What’s that
mean?”

The wooden structure was old and crumbling. Painted on its side was a Mail Pouch tobacco advertisement, faded white against
the black of the rotting slats. He’d explained this phenomenon to Willa when she encountered her first at the age of seven.
“Mail Pouch signs were the original billboards,” he said now, to his nearly grown child.

“It’s beautiful.”

“They’re very rare these days. They used to be all over the place, but now they’re dying.”

He pulled the car to a halt in the half-gravel of the shoulder. “Hey, do you think they’d mind if I took some pictures?” Already
Willa was unbuckling her seat belt and reaching for the door handle.

“I’m sure they wouldn’t mind at all,” Nat said, and watched his
daughter striding boldly from the car. As she straddled the fence and made her way through the field, he glanced at Ariel
in the rearview mirror as she stretched herself awake. “Just a minute, girl,” he said. He loved that Willa trusted him. He
loved that he could orchestrate such perfect moments for her and she’d be none the wiser. He loved knowing she would always
believe that this first photograph had been her own idea.

He rehearsed it in his mind. “I have four things to tell her. First I will tell her about her wonderful mother. Then I will
tell her how her mother died, and what she did, and I will try to explain why. Next I will tell her what this meant for us,
for you and me, Willa.” He would look into her eyes and tell her all these truths. He knew how he would say them. He even
knew where.

It was the fourth thing he couldn’t bear to think about. It had no words yet. He had only this morning opened up the place
where he had kept it for the past seventeen years. He knew he would have to make words for it so he could tell her. He knew
when he told her, it was likely she would never trust him again.

For now he watched his daughter starting to shoot, her hands moving quickly over the dials as her vision sharpened. He let
himself admire the ways she resembled him. Yes, he would begin to tell her. But not until tomorrow. He was glad for the drive.
Oregon was a long way away. Tomorrow felt long distant as well.

C
AL

Stolen, Oregon
Saturday, October 5, 1996

My understanding of Helen Bernstein came swiftly. Down by baggage claim. She was good-looking enough, sure, but nothing about
her wardrobe—black slacks, standard-issue middle-aged-academic-woman black linen jacket, silver pendant, clog-type shoes—prepared
me for the two huge black suitcases I had to lift off the conveyer belt. I thought that was all, but no. Helen smiled and
announced, “Great! Now we can pick up my dog.”

Dog? “Elliot didn’t mention a dog.”

“I’ll bet Elliot doesn’t mention a lot of things.” She said this straight, with no apparent irony, so I scuttled our first
opportunity for witty repartee. I followed her.

Forty minutes later, after filling out a pile of forms, we tried to rouse the still-drugged purebred—did I mention
huge?
—golden retriever, Ferdinand. To be honest, at first his size was a comfort. In terms of what it showed about Helen. No yappy
little pooch for her. After walking Ferdinand, feeding him kibble out of a Ziploc bag she carried in her tote, coercing him
to pee on the sidewalk—all this took another hour, at least—we made it to my truck. And that was when size became a concern.

Clearly, Helen was not expecting a pickup to be her means of transportation. Clearly, she did not believe that dogs are dogs.
Dogs always ride in the truck bed. I don’t care if two huge suitcases are rolling around under the tarp; a dog can handle
that. Apparently, Helen didn’t think so. So that’s how I ended up sitting way too close to Elliot’s ex-wife for my liking,
since most of her seat was taken up by the restless if endearing Ferdinand.

I C
OULD TELL
that for Helen, the drive from Portland to the academy passed as a dramatic lesson in geographical distinction. On the Portland
side of the mountains, she saw green. Luscious, moist, verdant. Clouds hanging like batting in the low sky, dangling cobwebs
of fog across the highway. But then we rose, slowly, up and out of the rain. Occasionally, she caught a glimpse of Mount Hood
in front of her, just in the distance, and she gasped. Before she knew it, we were driving on a mountain; the strange experience
of this is that when you’re
on
the mountain, it appears to get smaller and smaller. It was only when we were on the other side, barreling down into the
bright eastern Oregon high desert, that she saw the great immensity of what we had accomplished, there, like a friend, in
our rearview mirror. It was white-faced and rocky. My truck cut like a river through the yellow grasses as we streamed toward
Helen’s future.