The Pages of Her Life Read online

  She went to her den, found her favorite pen, lit a sandalwood candle, then curled up on her overstuffed chair and lifted the journal from the stand next to the chair and onto her lap. A deep sigh. Open the journal. Turn to the second page and begin.

  May 20th

  First, I have to say it feels incredibly strange to be writing in a journal that’s mine but isn’t mine. How honest should I be in these pages? I suppose that’s the point. If I’m not willing to be honest here, then I shouldn’t be writing anything down.

  If God is truly in this, then I need to be fully in it as well. So I will be. And I also know, or feel—how can I know for sure?—that if I do this, if I go all in, life will change. And in this moment I have a choice. To stay safe. Or to jump.

  Allison paused and peered at the rain pattering on her window. Did she really want to jump? She put pen back to paper a few seconds later.

  I’m stalling. What do I want to say?

  That I’m adrift. That a sadness has surrounded me.

  That leaving Kayla and going to work with Derrek—no, right now it’s for Derrek—has been like going from the frying pan into an active volcano. He’s not the man I thought he was. I need to get the partnership finalized. For Mom. And if I’m honest, just as much for me.

  When Derrek called and asked me to partner, it made me feel so good and wanted and valuable. And now, with Linda lording her power over me and Derrek putting me off, I don’t know where I stand.

  And I’m alone. Never expected my marriage to end. Does anyone? So alone. I wasn’t made this way, yet here I am.

  I have no power. I’m not in control. I have few choices. I’m scared. What do I do?

  I’ve never been strong. Not as strong as I want to be. As strong as I need to be. Help me, Lord. I want to believe in myself, believe I can do this.

  God, if this really is you, I want to know it for certain. I want to know you’ll show me. Please?

  Enough for the first entry. She gently closed the journal, wrapped the thin leather strap around it, and tucked it in under itself. The candle flame flickered as if to approve of her writing, and a warmth settled into her mind.

  Allison turned the book over in her hands, then again, then peered at the tree on the thick leather cover. In that moment the journal did feel like hers. Completely.

  The next morning Allison rose early, went for a two-mile run, then went to her den and picked up the journal to read what she’d written the night before. But three quarters of the way through she stopped cold. The words had changed. And some had vanished altogether.

  sixteen

  SHE STARED AT HER ENTRY and took short, quick breaths through her nose. Impossible. But it had happened. The writing had changed. Hadn’t it? Those were her words, most of them, yes—but not all of them. Words had disappeared, a few replaced by new ones, in her handwriting, a few simply gone. How was that possible? Heat washed through her.

  She squinted at the words.

  I have power. I’m in control. I have choices.

  I’ve been strong.

  Help me, Lord. I believe I can do this.

  God, if this really is you and you really are going to speak to me through it, I know you’ll show me.

  This couldn’t be happening, could it? Her heart pounded as if she were running six-minute miles. Allison tried to steady her breathing. As she slowly got herself under control, she peered at the words again. It was impossible. But the professor’s words about Occam’s razor flashed into her mind, and she stopped the wrestling match in her mind.

  “Is this really you, God?”

  Allison shut the journal and glanced at her watch. Six ten. Had to start getting ready for work soon, but also had to talk to someone about the journal. Her mom might be up by now. She went to the guest bedroom and opened the door a crack. Her mom sat in the small chair in the corner of the room, staring at her laptop, wrapped in a shawl.

  Allison knocked and her mom said, “Come in.”

  She eased into the room, journal behind her back.

  Her mom glanced up but didn’t say anything.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Watching a documentary called The History of the Eagles. It’s good.”

  Her mom’s voice was flat.

  “You don’t have to watch it in your room.”

  “I know, but sometimes I want to give you your space. I’m sure you miss the peace and quiet of morning time.”

  Her mom turned up the volume on the laptop.

  “Mom, I want to talk about the journal. Something just happened that’s beyond bizarre, and I’m not sure what to do, but I do know I need to get some answers. Right now.”

  “Did you know Don Henley used to live right above Jackson Browne? And that Jackson Browne gave the song ‘Take It Easy’ to the Eagles?”

  “No, I didn’t.” Allison stepped farther into the room. “Mom, please, you have to listen to me. Something weird just happened with the journal. Like, off the charts.”

  “Okay.” She paused the show and set the laptop aside. “Go ahead.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Sure. Just tired.”

  Allison wiggled the journal. “I wrote in it last night.”

  “Really?” Her mom motioned for Allison to sit down. “How was that for you?”

  “At the time it was good. It felt right. A little strange, but that might have been my imagination. But this morning it turned into more than my imagination.”

  “What happened?”

  “I went back to read what I wrote and the writing had changed.”

  “What?”

  “Not a lot, a few words. Replaced by different words. And some words vanished completely.”

  “I told you,” her mom muttered. “This is God. The hand of God is writing in your journal.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “Yes, you do. I can see it in your eyes. With your heart you’ve already accepted it. Soon you will with your mind as well.”

  The words were right, but the pace of her mom’s voice was at half speed, and her tone had grown more somber.

  “What’s going on, Mom?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I need to send a payment off today, and I don’t have the money.”

  “I know.”

  “You do?”

  “I suspected.” Allison gritted her teeth. “You have to stay on top of this, Mom.”

  “Yes, yes, I know I do.” She sighed. “But right now—”

  “Right now you’re going to relax because I’ve been working on it. I applied for a home equity loan and it should be finalized soon. I couldn’t get a lot. I don’t have much equity in this house, but if the loan comes through we can get this payment and next month’s taken care of, then have some in reserve. And by that time my partnership will be finalized and I’ll be making plenty every month.”

  “But I need to send it today. It has to get to them in five days, and the mail can be slow sometimes.”

  “As soon as the loan comes through, we can transfer the money. We won’t need to mail it. You know how to do that?”

  “Yes.” She glared at Allison. “I’m not a Luddite.”

  “Why don’t you just let me take care of it?”

  “No, this is my debt. I need to handle it.”

  Allison stood and slowly backed out of the room as she watched her mom pick up her laptop to start the show again. But before she did, she turned to Allison and said, “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to work, and then I’m going to call on the loan, and then I’m going to find out what this journal is. And where it came from.”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  Before her mom finished the question, Allison knew exactly what she needed to do.

  “I’m going to go see Parker.”

  She needed to talk to him about the journal. He’d be fascinated by the idea God was writing in it. Didn’t matter that Parker wasn
’t sure God existed. He wouldn’t think she was crazy. Or he might. But if anyone could give her a theory on where the journal came from and what it was, it would be Parker. “A student and scholar of hallowed iniquities,” he called himself.

  “Parker? How would you do that when you don’t know where he is?”

  “I don’t know. But if God is leading this strange dance, then he’s going to have to show me some new moves.”

  The new move arrived within days.

  seventeen

  ALLISON PULLED UP TO HER street’s bank of mailboxes after work Friday afternoon and took out the usual stack of bills and junk mail. But the letter in the middle of the pile was far from usual. Parker’s handwriting. She knew it in an instant. She ripped the envelope open and began to read his nearly illegible scrawl.

  Hey Sis,

  Yeah, of course I’m alive. Tell Mom, okay? She’ll believe you more than she would me. I want to write to her, but I’m not sure how, you know? Her losing Dad and all. Us too, but she’s the one who needs words talking about how because he’s moved on, she needs to move on too, and I don’t know those words. The right words, that is. You’re the writer-type person, not so much me. And tell her I love her and think about her and all that stuff too, all right?

  Doing fine here. Just processing things the way I process them, ya know? You probably want to know where here is, don’t you? I ended up getting off the grid—that’s a big shock, huh?—out in Mazama. Still in Washington, so Mom should be happy about that.

  Do you know where that is? I didn’t till I found it. Hadn’t even heard of it. It’s pretty close to Winthrop, that cowboy-themed town north of Lake Chelan. Built a place for myself here in the middle of nowhere. Didn’t take long because it’s small. But it’s got a couch if you ever want to come visit. I hope you’re well. Hope you and Kayla are killing it with your architecture stuff instead of killing each other. Hope you and Mom aren’t missing me too much. I’m guessing you aren’t, but I might be wrong.

  If you ever want to come visit, I wrote out directions for you. But if you don’t feel like making the drive over here, don’t worry about it. I’ll be coming back to say hi pretty soon. I hope. Don’t ask me to define soon.

  I have my cell, but the coverage is lousy, so it’s shut off most of the time. But you can write to my PO box. It’s on the envelope. I check it every week or so.

  Love to you, Sis, and love to Mom,

  Parker

  Parker Moore stood on the edge of the cliff and stared down into the craggy valley below. Five thousand feet down. Maybe 5,500. He grabbed a loaf-size rock in one hand and held his stopwatch in the other. He tossed the rock over the edge, starting the timer at the same moment the rock left his fingertips.

  He squinted at the stone as it rocketed down the face of the cliff, then shattered against the massive boulders below. Parker peered at the readout on his watch and did a quick calculation. Best guesstimate: just under 5,000 feet. He repeated the exercise twice more. The average of the three tosses came in at 5,100 feet. Plenty of height for a serious rush.

  He’d spotted this peak in the heart of the North Cascade Mountains two years ago, but he’d never had the time to scale it till now. Odds were few had climbed to the top. It had required four hours of hiking through rough trails to reach the base, then another four hours of climbing, several of them in clouds with intermittent rain and less than one hundred feet of visibility.

  Long before he reached the top, the trail had vanished. He’d crossed large open areas with no guidance or direction. Which was fine. It was exactly what his life had become. The unknowing had become his companion, and he sank into the comfort of only having to understand one step in front of himself at a time.

  Now, as he stood on the cliff in the fading twilight, he smiled, knowing the odds were even lower that anyone had ever done what he would do in the morning: leap off the cliff five thousand feet above the ground with a wing suit snugged up tight around his body and a parachute on his back. BASE jump where no one had jumped before. Something about the risk fueled him like nothing else in life, and this would be his most insane jump yet.

  He didn’t sleep well that night—not a surprise, since he never slept well before he tempted fate with one of his “insanity missions,” as Allison called them—but the feeling during and for a time after his jumps made a little insomnia well worth it.

  The light from the east woke him at a few minutes past six thirty. As he munched on his last Mountain Bar, Parker eased over to the edge of the cliff and gazed down. A smattering of clouds moved toward him along the base of the cliff to his left. He needed to hurry. He was crazy, but not crazy enough to jump into a cloud bank that obscured the ground. Parker had found his exit the day before, an old abandoned logging road that ran parallel to the cliff. He could just make out the line as it snaked through the logged-out ground, where new growth had yet to fully reclaim the land.

  He packed up, slipped into his wing suit, and checked his pack once more before strapping in and walking to the edge of the cliff. He stared into the valley with its rock-strewn, thick-treed tapestry sprawling out before him.

  Then, as always, came the best moment. And the worst. Both at the same time. The anticipation, the slam of his heartbeat spiking, the monsoon of fear, the embrace of the fact he could be dead in less than thirty seconds all crashed through his mind. He glanced at the clouds. No more time to savor the prejump rush of emotions. Time to go.

  Eyes closed. Always eyes closed for fifteen seconds before a jump. Enough time to pray to God, if God existed, to tell his mom and Allison he loved them, and tell Joel they might be reunited sooner rather than later. Then open his eyes, no hesitation, and go.

  A quarter second later Parker was no longer the man who’d stepped off into nothing. He was Iron Man, the Human Torch, a sentient comet streaking through the sky going wherever he chose. A bank to the left on a whim, then right, then straight, then right again, the rush of the wind pummeling his face, the rush of the ground coming up to meet him—but not yet, not yet.

  All concerns, worries, inadequacies disappeared. Nothing existed except this moment. His body felt like a fighter jet, able to maneuver with great agility and speed. The shrug of a shoulder, the pointing of his toes, and the suit changed the speed and angle of his glide.

  Parker laughed and dove straight at the ground till he gathered enough speed, then planed out, achieving the sensation of weightlessness.

  Too soon—every time it was too soon—the ground filled his vision and Parker pulled his rip cord. A second later his chute would fill and he’d slow from over a hundred miles an hour to less than ten. He pulled. No chute. And he continued to rocket toward the earth. No!

  Panic yanked on his mind, but Parker refused to give it quarter. Think! Calm. Find your secondary chute. His hand flailed for the ring. He’d practiced it a million times, but never when he was plummeting toward the earth at terminal velocity. No panic. No time for anything but getting hold of the ring and pulling.

  He glanced at the ground. C’mon! Had to release it at least four hundred feet above the road. Any less and the chute wouldn’t open in time. His fingers latched onto . . . No, that wasn’t it. Find it! There! He grabbed, yanked hard. Seconds later his reserve chute popped open and relief flooded him.

  He pulled hard to the left. Only seconds to adjust so he could catch the edge of the road. His boot clipped the branch of a young Douglas fir tree but nothing else. A few seconds later he yanked down on his cords and skidded to a halt on the old logging road.

  Adrenaline pumped through him more powerfully than he’d ever known, and he fumbled to unclip himself from the chute. His breath came in ragged gasps, fear still tightly clenching him. But then a sliver of laughter started deep down and grew till it filled his entire being.

  Parker gazed up at the cliff he’d just launched himself off of, and his fear transformed into the biggest rush of exhilaration he’d ever had. He’d done it. Yet again he’d cheated death
, conquered the fear of jumping off into nothing, not knowing how it would end. And for a moment, more than a moment, he felt like a man.

  When Parker reached Mazama five hours later, he stopped at the gun store in town, strode up to the front counter, and watched the twenty-something clerk behind it. The kid was on a short ladder, pulling two boxes of ammo off a shelf about ten feet high. Parker tapped his foot in double time to the insipid song from Nickelback or a band like them that poured out of the speakers overhead. Molasses. The kid must cover himself in it before work every morning. Would be impossible to move that slow without some kind of assistance.

  Finally the kid came down off the ladder, handed the ammo to the guy in front of Parker, then asked, “Is that all you need, Billy?”

  “Yeah, thanks, Bo.” Billy twirled the toothpick in his mouth.

  “You headed up into the hills this weekend?” the kid asked.

  “Gonna try. I figure we’ll have to head up there on Saturday if we’re gonna go, ’cause I checked the weather, and it’s saying the clouds are going to be spitting pretty good on Sunday.”

  The kid jabbed a finger of each hand in two different directions and grinned. “Which route you thinking of taking?”

  Parker’s foot was now tapping triple time. He squeezed his lips together and moved up next to Billy Joe Hunter, then started rapping his fingers loudly on the glass counter.

  “You mind, pal?” Billy said and turned back to the kid. “I’m thinking we’re gonna head up Cooper Canyon.”

  “Sounds good. I’ve been wanting to get up there for a couple of months now.”

  “Yeah, gonna get up there, get something hopefully, maybe camp up there, maybe not. Just don’t know, you know? We’ll find out when we get up there and see the lay of the land. I’m gonna spend the night. I got a new tent, supposed to be good in the wind, rain, snow, probably earthquakes too!”

  Billy laughed at that, and Bo joined in.

  “Excuse me,” Parker said.