day for the amount he buys. Except Russ is a regular in town, you know?”
Liberty shrugged, sipped her coffee. “Not really getting you.”
“Well, he’s punctual. Like at the post office every day around noon, at the River for his afternoon beer at three. No way he can be going anywhere too far and still make it back for his stops.”
Liberty shook her head. “I still don’t know what you mean.”
It was Becky’s turn to shrug. “Me, either. But doesn’t it seem odd? Like, where’s he driving all the time?”
Liberty knew nothing about cars, so she couldn’t venture a guess.
Becky continued, “Oh, and Victor? Seems he’s a pretty decent worker, according to Lindy’s brother, Matt, who works with him at the mill in Sparta.”
Lindy was Maggie Lindberg’s nickname. She and her husband, Pete, owned the whiskey joint Becky worked at.
Liberty raised her eyebrows. “Does he? Did he say anything about the photo?”
“Not that I know of. I mean, I didn’t mention it, of course. All Lindy knew was that Victor seems shy. He’s only eighteen, so doesn’t converse much with the other guys there.”
“Hmm.” Liberty mulled it over. “Does Victor drive? Maybe his dad is driving him back and forth to work?”
“Even if he is, it’s like twenty miles round trip at the most. Still wouldn’t explain all the gas.”
“So he drives a lot,” Liberty recapped. “And Victor works at the mill. Doesn’t tell us much.”
Becky clicked her tongue. “I’m sorry. I guess I don’t really know what I was hoping to find.” Her shoulders slumped.
Liberty reached across the table to pat her hand. “Hey. It’s okay. This is good news.”
“Yeah?”
“Sure. Like, no news is good news?” Liberty recalled Becky saying that once after a doctor’s appointment, while waiting for test results.
“Oh, yeah. There’s that.”
Liberty didn’t believe it for a minute either.
Chapter Seven
As it turned out, Liberty arrived home moments after Nathaniel went topside to patrol, his nightly routine. She breathed a little easier with the knowledge he would be busy. She didn’t have a clue exactly what she would say to him anyway, or even if she’d tell him what she and Becky had planned. He was open-minded only to a point; he would say chasing ghosts crossed a line.
She passed time in Sage’s room. It was the smallest of the five chambers and had an igloo-shape to it. When Sage was younger, she’d colored on the walls, created rows of penguin families around the base. Here and there, faint chalk lines had survived somehow.
Liberty crossed to the back wall, where stacked bins held her daughter’s belongings. She took out clothes and cosmetics, touched them, held them to her nose and breathed in their scents, then put it all back.
A few decorations still lingered. A purple beanbag chair, which she sat in now. A round black tote filled with every size of ball, a long mirror leaned against the curved rock wall. Next to it was another bin, filled with Sage’s books and lessons.
She pulled it across the chamber floor to where she sat and fished through the papers and notebooks.
She lifted up a couple of binders and found one of the first reports Sage had written as a teenager. She pushed the bin away with her feet, settled back in the beanbag chair, and opened the notebook.
The report was entitled “My Sasquatch History” and below that, simply, “by, Sage Brewster”
She read the first bit of it.
* * *
The sixty men, women, and children, established a camp on the western banks of what would later become known as Roaring Creek. After three months of crossing unforgivable terrain, facing the unknown at every crest and valley, the men and their wives sat around a large fire and counted their blessings.
The children ranged in age from two to twelve years old, and slept nearby, just inside the forest’s edge. They snuggled together for warmth beneath a large rudimentary lean-to constructed of pine boughs, vine, and sod. A couple of the girls developed a sickness the previous week, and deep, mad dog coughs penetrated through the laughter and merriment of the campfire. Nobody got up to check on the sick children, though, not with the spirits and cheer running plentiful.
Two nameless Pequot Indians, refugees of the massacre of 1643, sat together near the fire, but not as participants. They’d been brought along as slaves, to serve as guides to the group, and kept to the fringes of the travelers’ circle. The only possession they carried other than the clothes on their backs, was