Page 26 of Stay Buried

“There’s more to it than that, Sis. You need to have a burningdesire for it, then you need to focus, to really visualize it, to see yourself already in possession of what it is you want, to believe that you already have it.”

Ashley laughed.

“You should try it,” he said. “Think of something you want, something you really, truly want, and see yourself getting it. Focus on it when you first wake up in the morning and when you go to bed each night. Do it for seven days. I guarantee you’ll get results.”

She sighed. “Right now, what I want most is another cup of coffee. Some french fries and a sandwich maybe.” They’d been on the road nearly three hours.

Ten minutes later, Malcolm put on his turn signal. “See, it worked. You manifested a diner,” he said with a smile as he pulled into the parking lot of a place called Three Little Pigs Diner.

Ashley laughed. “Amazing,” she said.

“I’ll make a believer out of you yet,” he promised.

They headed inside, made their way to a booth, and both got the day’s special: a chicken Caesar wrap with hand-cut fries. They drank coffee and each had a slice of pumpkin pie. The pie wasn’t anywhere near as good as Gram’s, and Ashley only finished half of hers, giving the rest to her brother, who scarfed it down.

“You folks out taking in the sights?” the waitress asked them. She was an older woman with freshly permed white hair. “Shame you missed the peak foliage. It was beautiful here a couple weeks back. Storm took most of the leaves down last Friday.”

Malcolm nodded, flashed her a smile. “We’re actually heading up to Boone’s Ferry,” he said. “We’re about an hour away, right?”

She looked at him quizzically, as if she’d never heard of the place. “Not sure how far it is. Can’t say I’ve ever been.”

There was another customer in the place, a man in blue work pants held up with red suspenders. He was working on his coffee and pie at the counter. “Boone’s Ferry? Whaddaya want to go up there for?” he chimed in.

“We actually just inherited a house there,” Malcolm said. “It’s where our family is from.”

The man turned, looked at Malcolm, then Ashley, his eyes small and beady in his round red face. “Is that so?”

Ashley lightly kicked Mal’s leg under the table to signal not to tell this stranger their whole life story, as he was sometimes prone to do. Mal shot her a puzzled look, and the stranger opened his mouth like he was going to say something more, but then spun on his stool and went back to his food.

They paid their check, left a good tip, and headed out.

“Guess Boone’s Ferry isn’t exactly a tourist attraction, huh?” Malcolm said.

“Hell no. It doesn’t even show up on most maps. It’s not even an incorporated town.”

“But peopledolive there, right?”

“Population was two hundred seventeen according to the last census.” Ashley had spent the weekend doing what research she could on the place and taking notes. “There’s one motel, the Deer Run, that’s where we’ll be staying.”

And where Mom must have stayed too, she thought.

“There’s at least one little general store. A post office. There’s a clothespin factory that’s been running since the late eighteen hundreds.”

“Clothespins? For real?” Mal laughed.

“Yeah. The old wooden ones. It’s one of the last manufacturers of wooden clothespins in this country. They started making wooden toys too, back in the late sixties. Guess the clothespin market isn’t what it used to be.”

“Exciting,” he said as he started the truck and pulled out of the parking lot.

“Oh yeah,” she said with a smile. “I bet some of our distant relatives worked in that factory at some point or another.”

They drove on, Ashley confirming their route on her printed map.The old Chevy Silverado climbed up, higher and higher into the mountains. The engine smelled slightly of burning oil and sputtered a little here and there, but Malcolm coaxed the truck onward and upward. There was little traffic; then, as they got farther out, there was no traffic at all. They passed a sign telling them they were entering a state forest. More signs warning of steep descents, of switchback turns. Up and down they went, twisting and turning like a slow-motion roller coaster.

Ash thought of her mother driving these same roads alone, and her heart sank.

She reviewed the timeline and facts she knew in her head: Mom had sent Gram a letter from Boone’s Ferry dated October 14, 2014.

I am in Boone’s Ferry. I came here to find the truth that you’ve worked so hard to hide from me.