IT WAS A BRIGHT WINTER morning when I arrived on Buck’s Peak. I
remember the crisp smell of frozen earth as I approached the house
and the feel of ice and gravel crunching beneath my boots. The sky was
a shocking blue. I breathed in the welcome scent of pine.
My gaze dropped below the mountain and my breath caught. When
Grandma had been alive, she had, by nagging, shouting and threats,
kept my father’s junkyard contained. Now refuse covered the farm and
was creeping toward the mountain base. The rolling hills, once perfect
lakes of snow, were dotted with mangled trucks and rusted septic
tanks.
Mother was ecstatic when I stepped through the door. I hadn’t told
her I was coming, hoping that, if no one knew, I might avoid Shawn.
She talked rapidly, nervously. “I’m going to make you biscuits and
gravy!” she said, then flew to the kitchen.
“I’ll help in a minute,” I said. “I just need to send an email.”
The family computer was in the old part of the house, what had been
the front room before the renovation. I sat down to write Drew,
because I’d promised, as a kind of compromise between us, that while
on the mountain I would write to him every two hours. I nudged the
mouse and the screen flickered on. The browser was already open;
someone had forgotten to sign out. I moved to open a different browser
but stopped when I saw my name. It was in the message that was open
on the screen, which Mother had sent only moments before. To
Shawn’s ex-girlfriend Erin.
The premise of the message was that Shawn had been reborn,
spiritually cleansed. That the Atonement had healed our family, and
that all had been restored. All except me. The spirit has whispered to
me the truth about my daughter, Mother wrote. My poor child has
given herself over to fear, and that fear has made her desperate to
validate her misperceptions. I do not know if she is a danger to our
family, but I have reasons to think she might be.*
I had known, even before reading the message, that my mother
shared my father’s dark vision, that she believed the devil had a hold of
me, that I was dangerous. But there was something in seeing the words
on the page, in reading them and hearing her voice in them, the voice
of my mother, that turned my body cold.
There was more to the email. In the final paragraph, Mother