The Burning Island Read online

  Those are the hardest dreams, the ones that leave me powerless to change a brutal outcome.

  My vision of Alex, thankfully, has proven itself to be the good kind. I’ve won this round, solved this puzzle, and my actions have real-world consequences. I’m glad the day has turned out as well as it has, although the boy is in bad shape.

  Concerned by the glazed look in his eyes, I transfer Alex from my arms to Noah’s. The kid needs medical attention, sooner rather than later. I dig out my cell phone, see a stream of texts from my friend Rae and a photo Pam sent of our girls. Grateful for the strong signal and the pure desert air, I dial 911.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE FOREST SERVICE has plenty of questions for us. What were you doing in Sabino Canyon? Don’t you know the park’s closed? There were reports of mountain lions stalking visitors! Why did you veer off the trail?

  With Alex off receiving medical care, I deflect these inquiries with vague answers and questions of my own. “We were just out hiking,” I say, speaking to a point somewhere above the ranger’s left ear. “We found the bike and thought we’d better have a look around. Is the kid going to be okay?”

  Noah says nothing, but I can tell from his shuffling feet and the constipated look he keeps giving me that he disapproves of my attempts at subterfuge. He’s the kind of misguided sweetheart who really believes that honesty is the best policy, that you can look a law enforcement officer in the eye and say, “Alex Rocío came to me in my dreams, sir,” without any ill effects.

  Later, when the Pima County sheriff’s department steps in and we’re asked to provide a statement, I know our situation has taken a more serious turn. This is not my first rodeo when it comes to facing the bureaucratic aftermath of a missing child, but there’s something in the female deputy’s face that I don’t like—an undercurrent of distrust beneath the polite veneer. The small white room she’s got us in, bare except for a metal table and two chairs, looks suspiciously like an interrogation room.

  Her sergeant, a middle-aged fellow with bushy eyebrows, quickly moves to get Noah alone. “You come on with me.” He taps Noah on the shoulder. “We’ll take your statement while your memory’s still fresh.”

  “Can’t I do that here?” Noah glances at me, nervous about answering questions on his own.

  If they’re hoping to tease out the discrepancies in our accounts, they won’t have to try hard. Noah and I should’ve spent more time getting our story straight, eliminating any bizarre psychic elements from the telling. Not that it would save us. The truth is all but burning a hole in Noah’s tongue. In some inexplicable way, he’s proud of me. He wants to tell people about my freakish abilities. He doesn’t understand the damage these dreams would to do my credibility as a journalist.

  The sergeant scratches his head. “Memory’s a funny thing,” he tells us. “People remember different details about the same incident, and you never know which ones are gonna matter.” He leans against the door and regards us with a yawn that feels intentionally casual. “We always keep folks separate when they give their statements. Who knows? Maybe something you give us will help us figure out what happened to that boy you found.”

  I stare at the metal table, only just starting to absorb the full extent of how screwed I am.

  It’s clear this department believes Alex Rocío was abducted and we were somehow involved. And I get it. Our story sounds shady as hell. Who goes for a stroll in a park that’s been closed for mountain lions? They must know we haven’t exactly been paragons of candor. Noah is a god-awful liar, and I’m only slightly better. Any detective worth his or her salt could tell we’re hiding something.

  I should’ve realized what we were getting into. I was so intent on helping Alex, I never stopped to think about the repercussions.

  If the sheriff’s department would just talk to Alex, this whole mess could be cleared up. Whatever happened out there, that kid must know we had nothing to do with it. But Alex is at a hospital now getting medical treatment, only half-conscious. They probably won’t chat with him until tomorrow. And tomorrow is too late. I know Noah. The man’s best and most endearing qualities are also his greatest liabilities. All it would take to elicit the whole truth and nothing but the truth from Noah is a “please.”

  Later, I will kick myself for not demanding a lawyer. I will wonder why we didn’t just insist upon going home. I will learn that legally, we could’ve left at any time. But at this moment, after a long day in the canyon, after all the fear and elation of finding Alex, I have no fight left, no objections I can think to raise.

  When the bushy-eyebrowed sergeant presses a hand to Noah’s back and says, “Let’s get this sorted, huh?,” I say nothing. I press my forehead to the cool metallic table. I think, This will end badly.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE FULL DETAILS of Alex Rocío’s canyon debacle emerge the following afternoon, after the newly restored twelve-year-old gets chatty. We are absolved by the boy’s words, of course. The female deputy comes by our house that afternoon to tell us in person—an indirect apology, I think, for the energetic grilling we received in the early hours of the morning. Noah and I stare at our coffee, bleary-eyed, too exhausted by the whole ordeal to feel any sense of vindication.

  In an account that was sheepish but largely unrepentant, Alex admitted to riding off on his bicycle Tuesday afternoon following a fight with his parents. He was mad, he said. Thought he’d disappear awhile and leave them to sweat it. He didn’t set out for Sabino Canyon at first, just started pedaling, and ended up in that direction. He’d hiked the canyon before with his Boy Scout troop, and the signage announcing the park’s closure and aggressive mountain lions only served to pique his interest.

  “He wanted drama, and he got it,” the deputy observes wryly, but I don’t smile.

  Alex hit the trails on his bike, hoping to see one of the animals for himself and earn some bragging rights with his friends. Even this particular act of foolishness might’ve turned out okay if he’d stayed on the path. But, continuing a pattern of poor decisions, he did not. Pursuing what he thought were mountain lion tracks, he went careening off the trail on an ill-advised hunt, eventually rupturing his front tire and ending up lost, frightened, and very, very thirsty. The kid would almost certainly have died if we hadn’t come along.

  His tale exonerates Noah and me entirely, even casts us as heroes of a sort, but by then it’s too late. By then, Alex’s story is a consolation prize, nothing more, because Noah has already spilled his guts.

  I never do learn which enterprising member of the sheriff’s department first begins digging into my past, but someone does. Someone unearths my name from a case years earlier, another child abduction in Tucson. Someone tracks down a story about my saving a child in Louisiana. Someone contacts Pam and my old friend Detective Remy Minot, seeking answers. By the next day, Alex’s misadventures in the desert are no longer the story.

  The story is me.

  two

  Kneeling on the living room floor, I try to manhandle my daughter out of her soaking clothes. Tasha’s lack of cooperation stems less from rebelliousness and more from her indifference to the fact that she’s covered in milk. Once undressed, she darts out of my arms and makes a lunge for the window, hoping to get a peek at the news truck parked outside.

  “I want to go on TV, Mommy!” she announces. “I want to see the man with the camera, and he can take a video and put it on TV.”

  At three, Tasha is the only member of our household enjoying the sudden media presence in our lives. My phone has been ringing nonstop for a few days now. Strange cars come and go and stop at the foot of our driveway. Reporters knock on the door, seeking sound bites. While I pass briskly from house to car, hands covering my face, Tasha mugs for cameras, reporters, and anyone else who shows an interest in her antics. You’d think the child has been raised on the set of a r
eality TV show with all her grandstanding.

  Despite all the unwelcome attention—thank you, Associated Press, for picking up what could’ve remained a local story—I’m making a play for normalcy tonight. I’ve switched off the ringer on my cell, drawn the curtains so I can’t see the news truck waiting to get footage of me, and planned a pleasant evening indoors. However ridiculous it is, I’m determined to pretend this is just an ordinary Wednesday evening with my family.

  Micky, my nine-year-old, is having none of it. “When will they go away?” she grumbles. “I want to go out.” She sits sulking in the corner of the living room, mouth stitched into an enduring frown. Earlier this week, before the Alex story broke, I’d promised to take her to Tucson Mineral and Gem World so she could purchase some new rocks for her collection. The arrival of the news crew changed all that. Instead of rocks, she gets mandatory Family Night, which I invented mainly as an excuse not to venture out of the house.

  On the coffee table, my phone lights up with a text. I catch Tasha from behind and slide a clean shirt over her head. “Can you check that text, Mick? See if it’s Daddy.”

  “Don’t you know who it is?” Micky asks with a smirk. “You’re psychic, aren’t you?”

  “Michaela. Please check my phone.”

  She rolls her eyes but complies. “It’s Rae,” she informs me. “You’re supposed to call her about Girls’ Weekend.”

  My best friend, Rae, is just another casualty in this humiliating affair. I’ve owed her a call for days now. We’re supposed to hold our annual get-together in nine days, to continue our tradition of a kid-free weekend in whatever city offers the cheapest last-minute airfare. This is it, Rae jokes every year. We’re going to Hawaiʻi. Then we check the ticket prices and end up in Cleveland or some such place—and have a fabulous time.

  Ordinarily, the ritual adds some much-needed spontaneity to my life and marks a rare chance to see Rae, who lives in Connecticut. But I just can’t see it happening this year.

  “I’ll call Rae later,” I say, wrestling with my three-year-old’s left leg, which seems determined to cram itself into the same pant leg as the right. “Tasha, would you stop squirming? You’re making this much harder than it needs to be.”

  Tasha finally relaxes and, with the languid imperiousness of a pre-Revolution French aristocrat, allows me to dress her. When at last I snap her pants and pronounce her done, she looks down at her jeans, as if seeing them for the first time, and lets out a high-pitched wail.

  “They’re boy pants!” she exclaims. “You put me in boy clothes!”

  The statement dismays me on many levels. We’re supposed to be a progressive household, not one that divides the world into boy and girl stuff. Also, jeans? What kind of fashion Nazi am I living with?

  “Mommy’s wearing jeans right now.” I gesture to my own legs in exasperation. “Is Mommy a boy?”

  “No,” Tasha sniffs. “But you wear clothes like one.”

  From her corner, Micky snickers.

  I feel an irrational urge to defend myself, to point out how good my butt looks in these jeans, to inform Tasha that no man could rock a hoodie the way I do, but that probably doesn’t send the right message. And she isn’t altogether wrong. The sweatshirt I’m wearing belongs to Noah. A little behind with the laundry, I lifted it from his closet this morning.

  “Please, Tasha.” I’m reduced to begging. “Daddy’s going to be back from the nursing home any minute. I want you dressed when Great-Grandma gets here.”

  “But I want the stripey pants,” Tasha whines.

  “Your striped pants are dirty, hon,” I explain. “You’re down to jeans and pajamas.”

  Micky, who has mercifully never displayed any interest in clothing whatsoever, casts me a knowing look. “You need to do the laundry,” she says, an observation so obvious and true and infuriating that I almost assign her the task as punishment.

  “I want my stripey pants!” Tasha tugs the jeans down to her ankles, accidentally dragging her underwear along with them. “Wash them, wash them!”

  “Your striped leggings are not a choice, Tash. It’s time for you to—”

  But it’s too late. I hear the front door open, Noah speaking in that courteous, 1950s-boyfriend tone he always uses in the presence of my grandmother. He’s making an awkward joke, something about the paparazzi and my newfound celebrity, but I can’t make out all the words. Tasha senses my distraction and makes a dash for her great-grandmother. Jeans and underwear still bunched around her ankles, she greets the woman with outstretched arms and fresh tears.

  “Great-Grandma!” she cries. “Mommy won’t let me wear my pants!”

  The rest of the evening proceeds in a similar vein. Both girls complain about the dinner I make. Afterward, Noah flips on the television and watches the basketball game on mute. Micky plants herself in the corner with a book. Tasha, having moved past the jeans fiasco, quietly dismantles our couch, stacking all the pillows and cushions in a tower that threatens to collapse onto my ninety-one-year-old grandmother.

  “Tasha!” I snap when I realize what she’s doing. “That’s not safe. Pick that up!”

  “But I’m building,” Tasha says, as indignant as if I’ve halted work on the Great Pyramid. “I’m making a castle, Mommy.”

  My grandmother looks up from her crocheting and smiles. Though she’s still mobile and perfectly lucid, it’s impossible not to observe her age in all her movements now—the hand tremors she battles as she works, her slow and painstaking stitches.

  “Your castle is about to fall on Great-Grandma,” I tell my daughter. “Can you find a better place to build it?”

  “It’s not going to fall,” Tasha insists.

  “Yes, it is,” Micky pipes up from her corner. “And then you’ll mess up Great-Grandma’s knitting.”

  “She’s crocheting today, not knitting,” I correct her, although Micky knows the difference and is probably getting it wrong just to annoy me. “Single hook, remember?”

  “Knitting, crocheting, whatever. Who even cares?” Micky delivers an eye roll quite advanced for her almost ten years. On another day, when my patience wasn’t wearing paper-thin, I’d rejoice in her apparent normalcy, remind myself that an occasionally mouthy tween is a vast improvement from the quiet, traumatized child Noah and I took in three years ago. Today, however, I have few inner reserves to draw upon.

  “Lose the attitude or go to your room,” I say.

  “I choose my room.” She stalks off.

  Noah, completely oblivious to what has just transpired, leans forward in his seat, transfixed by the basketball game. As Tasha goes to place the final pillow on her pile, he lets out a loud and startling cheer. Tasha’s hand jerks back. The pillow tower falls, knocking my grandmother’s glasses from her face.

  “Tasha! I told you to take that down!”

  At the sound of my yelling, Tasha makes a dash for Noah’s arms. “Daddy,” she whimpers.

  “It’s okay, baby,” he murmurs into her hair. “Mommy’s been having a hard day, that’s all.”

  The suggestion that I am somehow at fault is more than I can stand. “Would you stop undermining me?”

  Noah’s glance holds no anger, just mild curiosity. “I’m not undermining you, babe. I think you’re a little stressed, that’s all.” He takes Tasha’s hand and leads her into the kitchen. “Come on, muffin. Let’s give Mommy a few minutes with Great-Grandma.”

  So much for Family Time.

  I drop to my knees, trying to locate my grandmother’s fallen eyeglasses. I lift cushions, peer under chairs before finally discovering them in the lap of Tasha’s stuffed hippo. “I’m so sorry, Grandma.” I hand her the glasses. “I don’t know what’s got into them.”

  Grandma waves off my apology. “It was an accident, Charlotte. Children being children.”

  “Well, they’re driving me crazy, the thr
ee of them. The girls are being so rude. Maybe if Noah could stop drooling over the basketball game for five minutes—”

  “But that’s not what’s bothering you, is it?”

  I don’t reply.

  My grandmother lives in a nursing home, but she doesn’t live under a rock. She saw the situation outside, and I’m sure she saw the article in the Arizona Daily Star, which she’s read nearly every issue of since moving to Tucson a couple of years ago. I’ve already told her what happened in Sabino Canyon, how my dream led us to Alex Rocío. But Grandma must’ve heard other versions of the story as well: TWELVE-YEAR-OLD RESCUED FROM GRUESOME DEATH BY PSYCHIC VISION, and all the other sensationalist headlines floating around.

  Despite my refusal to grant a single interview or offer any statement whatsoever, the articles persist, all identifying me by name, most running a photo of me from a charity event that somehow slipped into widespread circulation. Yesterday, kids at school began asking Micky about me. It’ll be great for your book sales! my editor, Isaac, raved in an email. We need to discuss your next big project! Something with a clairvoyant angle, obviously.

  That was when I knew. There was no hiding from this anymore. I’d been outed.

  I don’t blame the reporters, not really. I’ve been the intrusive journalist myself. It’s a job. You do what you have to do. But this is not the version of Charlotte Cates I wanted the world to see. I’ve always been the woman who deals in facts, who verifies her sources, and now here I am, exposed to everyone as some nutcase who follows her dreams—literally. That my dreams/visions/whatever-you-want-to-call-them have proved eerily accurate on multiple occasions only enhances my reputation as a Grade-A Weirdo.

  I meet my grandmother’s eyes, squirming under their slate-gray gaze, and wonder how much of this she knows, how much she has guessed. In her younger days, my grandmother had premonitions of her own, visions of past and future events just like I do, but she managed to keep them under wraps. Her unusual ability never came to define her, never swallowed her up whole.