Escape To Sunset - Sharon Hamilton Page 0,9
the tall trees, looking down on them, waiting.
She hoped it was still the same today, because those trips with friends were the highlight of her college days. They’d sit in circles, gathered like Native Americans, telling stories by campfire, playing music, and drinking beer while the fire crackled and sent sparks up to the sky. Oregon was always damp. Even on bright summer days and early fall afternoons, there was moisture in the air.
Unlike today, she didn’t worry then about who might be lurking in the forest or around the barn. Not that it had been safer. Her perception of life had totally changed. She recognized it as a form of PTSD, something her editor teased her about.
She rolled on her side and watched the waves in the moonlight, grateful whomever had designed this little bungalow had thought to put a small window at sleeping-eye level in the bedroom.
She pulled the blanket up to her ears and detected the stranger’s manly scent. Kiley remembered the heat of his enormous chest and how his shoulders rose up like mountains of muscle. Nobody looked like that in Oregon, she thought. Not even the football players in college.
She had no idea there were so many evil men and women who preyed on the weak and vulnerable for their own advantage, who had no conscience and would hurt others until someone stopped them. That awareness had taken a long time to fester and grow. It came later, after her parents were both gone, when she experienced what it was like to be truly alone. She was free to go about her life and explore what she wanted to. It was a fair trade to the other darker feelings of loneliness as she pursued her quest for relevance.
It all started one day when Corbin Newman III, her editor, had given a lecture in her English class about writing for the Columbia Passage, Oregon’s largest paper. He told the story of its long history of righting wrongs, speaking the truth, and searching out knowledge that lay buried, either intentionally or unintentionally. His salt and pepper hair, worn a little too long, curled up at the ends. He also wore round, silver glasses like John Lennon. She never saw him in anything but faded blue jeans and a long-sleeved, button-down shirt, usually rolled up to mid forearms. He had delicate, expressive fingers and hands he liked to use when he spoke. But his eyes were as blue as the water in the Gulf. That was the most shocking thing about him.
He mesmerized the entire class with his stories. He wore suede Birqs with striped socks and wore his wristwatch backwards with the clasp on top of his arm, the dial close to his body. Although married, he never wore a wedding ring, which had been the topic of conversation for several days after he spoke.
Like a moth to the flame, it was rumored that he usually picked two or three young Lewis & Clark girls to do his bidding, calling them interns, but they were much more. Everyone knew he cheated on his wife, and everyone wanted to be one of those girls anyway.
That had been off-putting to Kiley. Maybe that’s why Newman fawned so much over her, agreeing to start her out at the paper before she graduated. She talked her way out of impromptu dinners and tried not to be alone with him in the car. Her roommate thought she was completely nuts.
But there was no denying that Corbin Newman III could tell a good story with the reverence and skill of a world-class yarn-teller. He taught them that, if they were going to report the news, they had to make the reader care about the people in the story. Not telling a lie. He wanted them to throw a heavy dose of imagination and fiction, supposition, and mystery into their pieces so someone would look for their byline.
And it worked. Kiley’s byline was elevated to the editorial page. Her research on child abuse and women’s shelters drew lots of comments on the digital version of the Passage. She had a social media following and presence, and she’d been asked to speak at women’s conferences and for graduate studies courses.
Kiley wondered why she was even thinking about her editor this evening as she adjusted her body, lying on her back and staring up at the ceiling. She was as far away from that culture and climate as she could be, except for the fact that