Full Tilt

60

New York City

Kate stared at her screen in the newsroom struggling to forge a clear thought on what she should do next.

Since returning yesterday from Minnesota, she’d been pulled in a thousand directions. Reeka and Chuck wanted her to break more stories-Newslead needed to stay out front. Other news organizations wanted interviews. Grace was feeling the stress, too. She’d seen the TV reports, and kids at school talked about the case. She hugged Kate more often, tighter and for longer stretches.

Eclipsing everything was Kate’s agony over Vanessa.

She had been alive and free only to be recaptured by Zurrn. Where is she? Each passing minute increases the odds that he’ll kill her, if he hasn’t already.

Kate’s phone rang, the display showing an area code she didn’t immediately recognize.

“Kate Page, Newslead.”

“Hi, Kate, this is Sheri Young in Tilley, Alberta. We talked when you were here.”

“Yes, hi, Sheri.”

“You said to call if anything came up on Tara’s, well, your sister’s, case?”

“Yes.”

“This will sound strange, but a raccoon burrowed into one of the upstairs rooms at Eileen and Norbert’s place. It used to be a sewing room.”

“Okay…”

“When they started to make repairs, they found something in the wall, a short journal that Fiona Mae had kept in the days after Barton died. We think you should see it before we pass it to the RCMP.”

Within an hour Sheri had scanned some two dozen pages and sent them to Kate. Fiona’s entries were neatly written in blue ink.

We were camping near the Kicking Horse River in BC. The beauty of the place always helped us deal with the pain of losing our baby. Incredulously, during a moment of sublime peace, Barton spotted a child struggling in the river-a little girl. He got in the water and pulled her clear.

She was alive, terrified and didn’t speak. We put her in our trailer, and kept her warm and safe until she slept. All through the night we gazed at the stars, and this little angel, thinking this was a heavenly sign.

Fiona detailed how in the morning they’d learned about the horrible crash, the deaths, and the search, miles upstream.

God forgive me, I know we should have informed the authorities that we’d found the child, but our hearts were conflicted. We’d learned on the radio news that her parents were dead. We were convinced she needed a family and we were forever aching for a child. Barton and I believed that this was ordained by God. Suddenly, we felt whole again at having a child with us to love. We decided to keep her and name her Tara Dawn. In the early days, she’d told what she could of her turbulent, tragic history. Over time she stopped asking questions about her new situation, as she was accustomed to moving from home to home. But I confess, it tore me to pieces when she cried for her sister.

Instinctively, in the core of our souls, we knew what we did was wrong. We found comfort at church where we were bathed in God’s blessing and compassion, for He knew and He understood, that we did what we did with profound love in our hearts. We had rescued an angel who rescued us.

Fiona wrote how she and Barton had devised the idea to portray Tara Dawn as being a child they’d adopted from a distant relative in the US. Fiona went on to say how happy Tara Dawn had become living a healthy life in a loving home.

Then came the day she disappeared. When it was clear she was truly gone I was struck with a lightning bolt of horror. We were being punished for what we did. It was too late to tell the truth. The burden of our guilt added to our loss. We felt shame in God’s eyes. Our second child was gone, leaving us to live in agony and the pain of our sin. I fear it is too much to bear.

From there Fiona’s entries trailed, to brief notations of the weather and her disposition. “Sunny, cloudy. So alone today. I can’t go on.”

After she’d finished reading the journal, Kate left the newsroom and walked around the block, absorbing the new information. For fifteen years she’d ached to know what had happened to Vanessa.

Now I know.

Kate was angry at the Maes, yet understanding. They’d never harmed Vanessa. They’d loved her. But what they had done was wrong.

She returned to the Newslead building.

In the elevator, Kate felt that the truth had somehow brought her another step closer to her sister. At her desk she sent a message to Chuck and Reeka.

I’ve got a new story coming, an exclusive- Kate stopped herself to consider what she was typing next; something that she would normally write if she were writing about strangers. She swallowed, blinked quickly and typed it anyway, adding to her note: And this one’s a real heartbreaker, people will eat it up.