1
REMEMBER
After years of outrunning the past, David Young now drove straight toward it.
His Toyota hummed south along the I-5 as the sun melted into the coastal horizon. The lemon trees flanking the road faded into dusk. Most nights, he enjoyed the solitude of driving. He’d roll down the window and disappear in the sound of his tires lapping the asphalt, soothing as a Tibetan chant.
Not this time. California was burning again.
The news blamed the wildfire on a lightning strike in the sequoias. Dried out by the changing climate, the forest went up like a match. Outside the car, the air was toxic. A crimson glow silhouetted the Sierra Nevadas like a mirror sunset.
Red Peak called to him from all that fire and ash.
David turned on the radio to drown out his memories. He’d spent years forgetting. In all that time, he hadn’t kept in touch with the others. He hadn’t even told his wife about the horrors he’d survived. Claire believed he was visiting a client and not on his way to the funeral of an old friend to whom he owed a debt.
He didn’t want to go, but Emily was dead, and he had her letter.
I couldn’t fight it anymore, she’d written in flowing cursive.
All those years ago, five children survived. Now there were four.
He found a parking space at the All Faiths Funeral Home and cut the engine. Cars filled the lot. A sizable crowd had come to attend Emily’s wake, friends and family who wanted to say goodbye.
Whatever happiness she’d found hadn’t been enough for her.
He turned on the overhead light to inspect his appearance in the rearview. People said he had both charisma and looks, a genetic gift from his mother. Under dark, wavy hair, his angular face was sensitive and inspired trust.
Tonight, wild eyes stared back at him, the eyes of a man he didn’t know or had forgotten. The eyes of a scared little boy.
You have children you love more than anything, he told his reflection. You have a job that allows you to help people escape the worst of what you suffered. You’re alive. The past isn’t real. It’s dead and gone.
“I’ll be okay,” he thought aloud and opened the car door.
The warm night air smelled like an old brick fireplace. The mountains burned in the east, bright and close.
David turned his back on the view and lit a cigarette, a crutch he revisited in times of stress. He took a long drag, but it tasted terrible and only made him fidget more. He ground it under his shoe and went into the funeral home.
Black-clad mourners filled the foyer and lobby, mingling in the air-conditioned atmosphere heavily scented with fresh-cut flowers and sharp cleaners and the acrid tinge of wood smoke. Organ music droned over the murmur.
Stomach rolling, David scanned the faces. There was nobody here he recognized. He stood in awkward tension on the thick carpet. He should visit Emily’s body and say goodbye, but he wasn’t ready for that, not yet.
Then he saw her. Emily, still a child, reaching to tuck her long blond hair behind her ear, a frequent gesture he remembered well.
His heart lurched. He was seeing a ghost.
A man sat on the folding chair next to the girl and stroked her hair while she frowned at a tablet resting on her lap. On her other side, a towheaded boy played with his own device.
Her children, he realized. Around the age of his own kids. The girl was about the same age as David when he first met Emily in 2002.
They slouched in their chairs, miserable and bored. They didn’t understand how profoundly their world had changed, not yet. After his mother died, David had taken a long time to process as well. A stabbing pain of homesickness stuck in his chest. He missed his own children back in Fresno, safe in Claire’s care, still naive to how cruel the world could be.
The man caught him staring and rose to his feet with a scowl.
David held out his hand. “You must be Emily’s husband.”
“Nick.” His breath was thick with whiskey. “Who are you?”
“David Young. I’m sorry for your loss, Nick.”
Still protective, distrustful. “How did you know Emily?”
“We grew up together.”
The man’s scowl softened until he wasn’t looking at David at all. Emily’s suicide had broken him. “Where did…?”
David waited until the silence became awkward, then said, “She was a very good friend. In fact, I was just thinking how much your daughter resembles her back when I knew her.”
He and Emily used to talk about how all they had was each other, how they’d spend the rest of their lives protecting each other.
“She never mentioned you.” Nick shambled back to his kids.
David released the breath he’d been holding and retreated as well. He found himself walking without direction among the black-clad mourners, who murmured in small groups and shot him curious glances as he passed. He’d always had a difficult time sitting still, but now he had a purpose for it. As long as he appeared he had somewhere to go, nobody could draw him into conversation, and the mourners would remain raw impressions instead of real people.
He reached into the pocket where he kept his phone. He thought about going outside to call Claire and tell her he’d arrived safe at his hotel. If he did, however, he might not come back inside. Instead, he edged closer to the viewing room.
On the far side, Emily’s white casket lay surrounded by arrangements of lilies, carnations, roses, orchids, and hydrangeas. He glimpsed slender lifeless hands clasped over her breast. At the doorway, a large poster mounted on an easel displayed photos of her life. Emily smiling at the camera, holding a baby, hugging her children, posing with her family.
David found it jarring to see her grown-up. She was still so familiar, but the intervening years had turned her into a stranger. His breath left him in a gasp as nearly fifteen years rushed past in an instant.
Her smile was still the same, however. A smile that lit up the room. He leaned for a closer look at a photo of her on a windy beach at twilight.
How did you fool them all for so long? he thought.
Or maybe she’d fooled herself.
A familiar voice said: “I thought I was gonna find you hiding in a closet.”
Again, a strange sense of vertigo. He wheeled to find a teenage boy wearing a comfortable grin. The boy morphed into a man.
David shook his head and smiled. “You’re still an asshole, Deacon.”
Now in his late twenties, Deacon Price appeared much the same skinny kid with his boyish face and easy smirk. But he’d styled his shaggy hair into an emo swoop that shadowed one eye, and he wore a black T-shirt, leather wristbands, jeans, and Chucks. His shirt advertised he liked HOT WATER MUSIC. An odd choice for a funeral. Then again, Deacon’s outfit struck David as some kind of uniform.
A long time ago, they’d been best friends.
“You dyed your hair black,” David said after a tight hug. He didn’t mention the tattoos that covered his friend’s arms.
“And you got older.”
“Okay, let me guess.” He made a show of studying Deacon. “Stock broker.”
“Nice try.” Deacon chuckled. “Musician. My turn.” He took in David’s black suit, white dress shirt, black tie, and shiny shoes. “Bible salesman?”
David snorted. “Hardly.”
“Then you must be a cult deprogrammer.”