Chapter 8
The rain had slowed to a steady, misting drizzle by the time Clara walked out the back service door of the diner. She didn't lock the front entrance; Uncle Ray’s old rusted Ford pickup was parked by the grease bins, its battery dead since last autumn, but her own car—a battered blue sedan with a mismatched passenger door—was parked behind the propane tanks.
She threw her canvas duffel bag onto the passenger seat, right next to the manila envelope and the worn leather logbook. The engine of the sedan cranked twice, coughing a cloud of white smoke into the damp night air before finally catching with a steady, sputtering rhythm.
As she pulled out onto the empty two-lane highway, she glanced in her rearview mirror. The diner’s neon sign flickered one last time before dying out entirely, plunging the gravel parking lot into absolute darkness. For the first time in her life, she wasn't checking the mirror for headlights. She wasn't looking for flashing red-and-blue cruiser lights or scanning the shoulder for a place to ditch a rental car.
The road stretched ahead of her, a narrow black ribbon disappearing into the dense pine forests of the lower Cascades.
She drove for an hour, following the handwritten directions scribbled on the inside cover of her grandfather’s logbook. The highway gave way to county timber roads, narrow and unpaved, winding upward through stands of towering Douglas firs that scraped against the grey night sky. The air smelled different up here—sharper, cleaner, free of the highway exhaust and diner grease that had coated her lungs for a decade.
At milepost fourteen, she spotted the rusted iron gate described in the notes. It hung slightly askew from a stone post covered in thick green moss.
May you like
Clara cut the engine, the sudden silence inside the car ringing in her ears. She pushed the door open and stepped out onto the damp earth. Her boots sank an inch into the pine needles. The forest was entirely silent except for the heavy drip of water sliding from the high branches above.
She walked over to the iron gate, pulled off the rusty chain that held it closed, and pushed it open. The metal hinges groaned in the darkness, a sound that felt less like a warning and more like an invitation.
