Sorrow Road (Bell Elkins #5) - Julia Keller Page 0,109

the land itself—rugged land that had nourished the people here for hundreds of years. Yet the very things that made that land beautiful were also the things that doomed those same people to poverty and despair. These mountains protected you, but they also isolated you.

The people she’d interviewed knew that—knew it in their bones, because the mountains were their bones, the strong framework that underlay all that they did, all that they might do. And yet when outsiders wrote about Appalachia, they assumed that the people here were oblivious to the tragic ironies of the place, to the fact that its major industries—coal mining, and chemical plants that damaged fragile rivers—provided a living, but not a life. Only a half-life. The shadow of a life. The truth was, of course, that the residents knew that very well. They did not just know it—they lived it.

Those were just a few of the things that Carla had learned in the course of her work thus far. She looked out the windshield at Thornapple Terrace. It was a graveyard for the past. At times today, she’d had to turn away from the specter of blank-eyed residents who seemed to float slightly above the corridors, helpless and hapless, borne aloft by all the memories that had fallen out of their minds but still followed them, murmuring elusive hints about things they used to know. But the interviews with staff members had rescued Carla, reminding her of why she was doing this: So that even if the individual person lost her memory, there would still be a place for those memories to live.

No Travis sighting. That was the single dark spot on the day. She had really, really hoped to come across him. She still did not understand why she was so drawn to the guy, and maybe the mystery was part of it—she did not even know what kind of music he liked or how he took his coffee—but she wanted to talk to him again. See that lean face and its contemplative expression as he thought about what she’d just said. And then he’d say something, too, something wise but not pretentious.

The ding! of an incoming text brought her back to the fact that she was sitting in a freezing car in a quasi-deserted parking lot at dusk. First she turned on the engine, and then she checked her text.

It was from Brad: U sure u got the name right? Travis Womack?

She texted back a thumbs-up emoji.

His next text sort of annoyed her: Double-check name, K?

Her return text started out with a red-faced, frowning emoji, followed by this: Right name. What’s up?

There was a small delay. Brad, she imagined, was staring at his tiny keyboard, thumbs curled protectively around it, before he typed his message:

Only 1 Travis Womack in any database: Dead 2010. Motorcycle crash

Three Boys

1950

Harmon Strayer sat in a booth at the Double-D Diner on the main thoroughfare that ran through Norbitt, West Virginia. He sipped at his coffee, trying to make it last. She was late. He did not want to order another cup—he had hoped to have this over and done with in minutes, and if she came and they talked and he’d ordered a second cup, he would have to wait until it was brought to him before he could leave. If the talk was not going well, if he needed to leave, those extra few minutes might be awkward.

He did not look appreciably different from the way he had looked five years ago, when he came home from the war. He was still handsome. He had not put on weight, the way Vic had. Vic was always pledging to lose it. He’d pat his belly, rub it with a satisfaction that made Harm wonder why he wanted to get rid of it. The belly seemed to bestow on him a certain confidence as he walked through the world. Ballast. And it did not affect his overall looks, either. He was still Vic Plumley, dark and dashing and nonchalant.

“Hi.” A woman’s voice.

He looked up. She stood next to the booth. She’d dressed up for him. She was wearing a white dress with red polka dots—a summer dress, and this was February. But she knew how much he liked her in this dress, because he had told her so; her breasts looked as if they would be spilling out of the top of it any minute. She had put on makeup, fixed herself up. He felt a pang from this