Lost Contact (The Bridge Sequence Book One), Nathan Hystad [primary phonics books .TXT] 📗

football field, toward the older part of town. The lots grew larger, and soon we were near the golf course. It was closed for the year, and I continued until the merge for the highway. The road swerved left, and I followed it as it turned to gravel, leading to the cemetery.

Snow started to fall the second we crossed Sleepy Grove Cemetery’s boundary, almost like an omen. A white blanket for a new start, or a reminder of how cold and dark death truly was. I didn’t know which one I preferred.

“You come out here often?” I asked Bev, and she broke her stare through the windshield.

“I did, at the start. But now I feel more of Mom at home than I ever could here. You know how I get with this kind of thing. This is a grave. It’s not Mom… or Dad. It’s a symbol, but they’re not really at this cemetery,” Bev said, and I nodded along, agreeing with the sentiment.

I held nothing against people visiting their loved ones, bringing flowers and talking to gravestones. It just wasn’t how I operated. “I hate that I feel guilty.”

“For what?” Bev asked as I drove to the parking lot. I would never forget where their graves were located. I used to visit Dad’s site every week when I was a little boy.

“I should have been here at the end.”

“Mom knew how much you loved her,” Bev said, as if that one phrase would atone for my sins.

“Sure.” I parked, not quite ready to leave the warmth of the car. I hadn’t added a jacket over my blazer and was quickly regretting my decision.

Bev rested a hand on mine. “Remember how angry she used to get with you?”

“Which time?” I laughed.

“She always told you to stay away from this place, but you’d hop on your bike and come regardless. I used to think you were so brave, going to a cemetery by yourself. I was scared. As stupid as it sounds, I still am, a little.” Bev’s gaze drifted to the falling snow, and I finally built up the nerve to exit the SUV.

“Mom was mad because she never believed Dad was dead,” I told Bev.

“She did at the end,” she replied.

This was news to me. “Is that so?”

“She had some pretty frank conversations with me about him. She admitted there was a time she considered that he’d run off to start a new family somewhere, but that didn’t add up because of Clayton Belvedere’s disappearance too.” Bev started forward, her flats grinding against the parking lot gravel.

Clay. I tried to recall the man but struggled. They’d been thick as thieves, constantly setting out on adventures, but I couldn’t really picture him. He’d had a daughter a couple years younger than me, a tiny blonde thing. What had she looked like? I’d just been a little boy, and my memories were foggy at best. Even my recollections of Dad were glimpses of emotions and feelings, rather than distinct images.

“What else?” I asked as we strolled down the stone walkway, heading for our parents’ resting spot.

“In the end, she thinks he either got into trouble with some locals, sticking his nose where it didn’t belong, or the pair of them were trapped underground, left to die. Even if their remains had been found, no one would ever send word,” she said.

“Did she finally tell you where he went… that last trip?” I asked.

Bev shook her head, and I smiled as a snowflake landed on the bridge of her nose. Bridge. The name from the journal. I needed to read more of it, to discover who this Hardy was, and what Dad was truly searching for. I’d been ready to give it all up, but I doubted I could, given this new information.

“Rex, you have that look again. I thought you were done,” she said, her voice full of disappointment.

“I’m not sure I can stop, Bev.” I paused, trying to familiarize myself with where I was. The eagle statue stood twenty yards away, and I swept my gaze toward the angel guarding her quadrant. That was where I would start. “What if he was right?”

“About what? Aliens?” she asked, unable to suppress her disbelief.

“Yeah. What if it’s true?” I asked.

“You’re an educated man, with science backing everything you’ve been taught. How could Dad have stumbled on anything important?” she asked. “He was so…”

“Normal?”

Bev kept walking. “Dad never wanted to be with us, Rex. Don’t you understand that? He made things up to give himself excuses for never being home. Not only that, but he’s also ruined your life because of it. Mom’s too. You think even if he didn’t die back then, that it’s worth finding him? After what he did to us?”

She pulled her jacket tight, blinking quickly as she stared at me.

“You’re right. He didn’t want to be with us, but only because there was something greater than his family to deal with,” I said, maybe for my own benefit.

She didn’t buy it. “That’s a bunch of crap. I’m a parent, and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for those kids. Nothing. You wouldn’t understand,” she said.

There it was again. The inevitable dig at my lifestyle choice. The perpetual bachelor. “No, I guess I wouldn’t.”

Snow fell harder, already coating the entire cemetery with a fresh sheet as far as the eye could see. The land flattened within the cemetery, rolling hills lining the back acres. The town, as I thought of it, technically was a city, but the cemetery was far larger than the population should have demanded. The township had been formed over one hundred and fifty years ago, making the dates on some of these crumbling gravestones well past a century old.

Most of those were in the far corner, near the vast oak trees and the duck pond. Those trees were bereft of leaves, and a few blew by me as we stopped. Dad’s gravestone didn’t match Mom’s. His was from the late eighties, sometime after he’d gone missing.