Cold Fear by Rick Mofina Read Free Book Online Page B

new life
was complete now.
    Emily’s chain to the monster of her past was broken with
Paige’s birth. Or so Emily thought. But as the years rolled by and Paige got
older, the monster beckoned her to return to Montana for a final confrontation.
It must be done, her counselor said, or you will never find peace, never
resolve your conscience. Go to Montana. Put things to rest.
    Emily had forgotten how much she loved it here. How her
girlhood on her family’s small ranch near the slopes of the Rockies had been
like a storybook. Her great-grandfather had built the house with its classic
rafter roof in the 1930s. Her mother taught her to cook and sew. She took her
to church in town on Sundays: “Emily, you must never forget that believing in
yourself is as important as believing in God. Above all, never underestimate
the healing qualities of forgiveness.”
    Her dad taught her how to camp in the backcountry and
how to drive a stick-shift pickup. He conveyed the value of honesty and the
wisdom of never approaching a high-spirited horse when you’re in a bad mood,
“’cause they can smell it on you.” Emily remembered how the pine and cedar
filled the house when he sat by the fire on winter nights looking at his dog-eared
collection of Life magazines. How excited he was helping her learn to
use her first camera, telling her that history was something to cherish,
especially with a camera. “It’s the only way you can hang on to the people in
your life.”
    That’s how it was for her, near Buckhorn Creek, where
stars were near enough to be jewelry, where the mountains were so close she
swore she could hear music as the wind danced through them. Emily embraced the
belief that a place can be as important to a person’s life as the people in it.
    Emily studied the purple sky over the mountains, longing
to hear their music again. She was struggling to tell Doug what had happened
here. She needed him to know. He was her Sergeant Rock, her Gibraltar, trying
so hard to be patient with her.
    His life had been a lonely one and he didn’t mind
talking about it.
    “What’s to tell, Em? Grew up an only child in Houston. Dad was better at gambling and drinking than he was as a father and mechanic.
Walked out when I was thirteen. Left Mom with a kid, a mortgage and a shattered
heart. She got over it by marrying a truck driver. We moved to Buffalo.
I hated the snow. Left home before my seventeenth birthday, wandered the world
alone, searching for someone like you.”
    Doug could always make her smile. Like when they first
met and she told him her name. “Emily. Now that makes me think of a bouquet of
mountain flowers.” And here he was, this gorgeous hunk of manhood with his
firm, lean body, broad shoulders, his chiseled rugged smile, the USMC warrior
who was privately reading Paddle-to-the-Sea. How could she not love this
man? When she showed him her favorite photos--not the weddings, portraits,
freelance news, postcards and calendar work, which paid the bills, but her
artsy slice-of-life pictures--Doug actually got it. Understood the story she
was trying to tell in a single moment stolen from time. They connected….
    Ah, Doug and Paige.
    She was Daddy’s girl. He was so good to her, using just
the right mixture of tenderness and Marine Corps discipline. Paige was bright
and perceptive, like her dad. At times, Emily realized Paige and Doug had a
bond so strong, it was as if he had given birth to her.
    As Paige got older, it became clear to Emily her monster
would not rest. She thought it was dead, that she had constructed a new life,
become a new person. But the monster was only sleeping. As Paige got older, it
had awakened and began coiling around Emily, tightening itself, pulling her
back.
    “Guess what I’m going to do.”
    Suddenly, an icy wind slithered from a glacier valley,
gripping her in a flurry of images. Dragging her back.
    Emily was thirteen. The day it happened, the county
sheriff brought her home in that big Ford.