Rock Martin is a geologist from Indiana, Pennsylvania who explores the human spirit through his writing. A Penn State graduate, he depicts life’s challenges where the main struggle lies within. Rock enjoys fitness, camping, and hiking with his wife and young son, finding inspiration in nature and resilience.
You can’t hide forever, I tried to motivate myself as the funeral home loomed across the parking lot. I watched as old, familiar faces, draped in black, greeted each other and filtered inside, everyone here to pay their last respects to my father.
Long painted as the wayward daughter, I took a deep breath, swung the car door open, and dragged myself across the parking lot. The usher opened the large wooden door with a slight nod, and the murmur of guests spilled out as I took tentative steps down the red-carpeted hallway leading to the viewing room.
“Well, well.” My brother Shawn’s piercing green eyes burned through me, as they always did. I nodded but kept walking.
I settled into the darkest corner, welcoming its invisibility.
“Casey?” My head snapped up to see Patrick, one of my father’s business associates. “Is that you?”
“Uh, yeah.” I stood and forced a smile.
“My God, you’re all grown up! I’m happy you made it. Casey, I’m so sorry.”
“Yep.”
Patrick leaned in to embrace me, and his voice deepened to a whisper. “I have a message from your father, but I’d like to talk in private.”
“OK.”
My eyebrows wrinkled, but Patrick was one of the few people who’d stayed in touch after I left. I owed him more than a few moments of my time.
Once in the hallway, he pulled a letter from his jacket. “This is for your eyes only. It’s not part of his will.”
My lips quivered as I took the envelope. “Thanks.”
“He was a good man. I hope someday you can see that.” Patrick smiled and excused himself.
I bolted to the restroom and opened the letter.
It was two pages, written in his unmistakable cursive, just as sharp as I remembered. The letter opened with generic lines about how he should’ve been there for me, a weightless gesture at this point.
Near the bottom of the first page, the tone changed. It began to describe the location of a cabin near Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rockies. After another full page of directions, the letter ended with the plea, Please, find it before your brother does.
The white-hot needles of shock whistled through me before sinking into the pit of my stomach.
I hurried out of the restroom, and as I turned in the hallway, there he was, staring back at me.
“How are you, Casey?” Shawn said in a hollow tone.
“Fine.”
“It’s a shame. He was such a good man.”
“Yep.”
“It was time. He was slipping away. He couldn’t remember where he was half the time, couldn’t trust anything he said.”
“OK.”
“So, whatever he told you, it’s probably just the ramblings of a senile old man.”
“Shawn, stop it.”
Shawn leaned forward and sneered. “What is it? What did he give you?”
“Nothing.”
“Casey, I run this company now. If you’d been here, you would have known that. Whatever it is, I’m entitled to it.”
“Shawn….”
He lunged at me, his hands grabbing for my pockets, but I pushed him away and fell to the ground. The commotion caught the attention of a few guests, causing Shawn to relent.
“Why don’t you just go back to California, to whatever hole you’ve been hiding in?”
People were watching now, so I didn’t offer anything.
He sighed and walked away. I pulled myself from the floor, gathered my composure and met with a few more guests.
After the viewing, I dropped the letter in the trash and went back to my hotel room. Tomorrow’s funeral couldn’t end soon enough.
The next day, after Shawn’s pretentious eulogy, they lowered my father into the ground. The moment his casket struck dirt, I slipped through the crowd and made a beeline for my car.
Shawn had other plans.
“You know what Mom’s last words were?”
I stopped but didn’t turn to face him.
“She said, ‘Why isn’t Casey here?’”
“Just stop.”
“I was here. I was here for her and for Dad. What did you ever do for them? Whatever this is, just stay out of it.”
Tears pooled in my eyes as I heard him turn and walk away.
Six years earlier, my mother suffered a terrible accident. I was busy with work; a promotion was on the line. I tried to make it back, but she passed before I could. I was too ashamed to attend her funeral.
Heavy guilt and anger bloomed deep inside me, and I tightened my shaking hands into fists. I was tired of running. Always running. There was no escape, no matter how I tried.
I had to get to that cabin.
I raced through traffic, ran into the funeral home, and rifled through the trash can.
“Can I help you?” an usher asked.
“Nope.” I stood, letter in hand. “I’m just leaving.”
Two days later, I was flying to Edmonton, Shawn’s frail eulogy still slithering through my head. The words rattled with each bit of turbulence, just as hollow as the man they mourned.
Before long, the wheels of my rental car were humming across the Canadian plain. Eventually, the jagged spines of limestone and quartzite penetrated the flat horizon, thrusting upward into a barricade of stone. My stomach fluttered as the road weaved between the slopes, sinking into glacial bowls and climbing sharp valley walls.
With every turn, the mountains whispered about memories I’d tried to bury; slammed doors, muffled arguments, my father’s sprawling empire, our crumbling family. The names of his chemical companies, memorized by the time I was ten, fluttered through my mind. The money poured in, in numbers I couldn’t comprehend, yet the house felt empty.
People said he was proof that success comes from failure. I knew better. His failures weren’t lessons; they were casualties. Somewhere in the climb, he forgot about his other job, trading being a father for balance sheets and boardrooms.
Shawn never saw that. He idolized him and was proud to apprentice under the myth. I only saw the shell, trying to hide the bottomless pit inside. Mom saw it too, though she never escaped. I did.
The winding asphalt road yielded to gravel, then dirt. It circled up a limestone slope, flattening out along a wide terrace, before thinning to a pair of ruts. Just when it began to disappear, a dark, skeletal shape emerged in the distance.
The road ended in the shadow of the ramshackle cabin. Glass from a shattered window glittered on the twisted and splintered porch. Whole swaths of shingles were gone, showing only black tar bones, and a single gutter clung by one corner, its crushed length disappearing into the weeds.
Foot-high grass swallowed my feet as I stepped from the car, my eyes taking in the crumbling mass.
Inside, the air smelled of mildew and rot. Water stains dotted the floor, which bent and creaked with each step. An old couch sat in what must have been the living area, shredded by rodents. Cabinets hung from the walls in the far corner, their paint flaking like dead skin, and a few old photo books remained on the shelves, half buried in dust.
I pulled one free.
The pages creaked with age as I pulled them open, and familiar figures stared up at me. My parents. Before their hair was grey or their souls were scarred. Their smiles seemed foreign, almost impossible, and hope lit their eyes, the kind I had never known. Behind them, the cabin stood in its prime, walls golden with fresh stain.
The final photo featured my mother sitting in a wooden rocking chair, cradling a pale, blue bundle. My brother Shawn.
Just silence followed, thick as dust.
I pulled out the crinkled letter and reviewed the instructions. Somewhere behind this dilapidated building was a secret my father could only trust with the daughter he barely knew. I wiped away a few tears and made my way to the back.
The crisp elm and maple leaves crunched beneath my feet. An evening fog had settled on the mountain, cloaking the forest in a dense mist. I counted the steps off, making the turn at the large tamarack at exactly 180 paces, just as the letter described. Another 120 paces to the limestone boulder. I peered over it, waving the fog of my breath away. Thirty paces ahead, I could see it. The rounded corners of the paver stone, the marker identified in the letter, protruded from the soft forest floor.
I rushed over, falling to my knees and sinking my fingertips down its grainy sides, wrapping them around the bottom. I yanked the stone free, and my hands dove into the fresh soil, sending it in all directions until I felt a hard metal surface below. Larger than the paver stone, it extended to either side. My hands clawed the dirt away, eventually finding the edges. What emerged was a metal box about the size of a briefcase. Faded red paint still adorned the sides; the lid featured white lettering, too worn to read. My fingernails, now caked with soil, curled around the rim of the lid and popped it open.
The soft evening sunlight spilled into the box, its contents wrapped in a series of garbage bags. When the tangled mass loosened, a series of folders emerged, just as clean and crisp as the day they were printed. In large red font, the top folder read “Lake Simon”.
Cold prickled my spine, whisking me away to boardroom whispers and late-night phone calls. Back to the hungry gleam in my father’s eyes. Business was booming, with demand far outpacing what Dad’s company could provide. We had everything, but my father needed more. Then came the formula, the miracle he swore would change everything. He just needed a test site.
Lake Simon. A forgotten pocket of Western Virginia, too small to fight back, too quiet to be heard.
It started slow, just a blip at first. A few more cases in the clinic, a rumor in the diner. Soon, whole families were sick. The worst part was the birth defects. Children born with unspeakable abnormalities. It all played out right in front of Shawn and me. Whether it was a heel turn or an unmasking didn’t matter much. My father was who he was; there was no going back.
The official report blamed power lines. Neat. Convenient. He could fool everyone except his own family. My parents’ relationship grew cold. Dad escaped by immersing himself even further in his company. Mom drowned in guilt. I left.
My hands trembled as I opened the folder, my eyes falling on a series of pages describing everything I already knew. Maybe he thought he could somehow redeem himself, or maybe my mother got to him before she died. Either way, it was my burden now.
A snapping twig broke the silence. I stiffened as my lungs pulled a quick breath, and I spun around. The fog blurred his appearance, but the silhouette was unmistakable.
“I told you to let this go. It won’t change the past.” Shawn’s voice carried heavy with anger.
“All along I knew it. How can you just cover this up?”
“What’s done is done. It won’t help anyone to dig it back up.” He crept toward me. “Come on. Nobody ever did anything great without some kind of cost.”
“Shawn… Are you listening to yourself? Those people suffered. They’re kids…” I stumbled backward before catching myself against a tree.
“Do you know how much money we made from that product? How much development that paid for? Those people are martyrs.”
My eyes welled. “You’re sick. You need help.”
He stopped, and the corners of his lips rose. “You’re just like her. That was the last thing Mom said too.”
My mouth hung open for a moment. “What did you just say?”
“You heard me.”
“What did you do? Did you…?” The tight knot in my gut, the creature that had been gnawing at me for the past sixteen years began to stir. It crawled up to the base of my throat, but my words were only whispers.
“Did you kill her?”
Shawn looked back for a moment, then lunged. I slipped to the side but not far enough to escape his grasp. His fingers dug into my arm and back, and he threw me to the ground.
Before I could react, he was on top of me, his hands around my neck. My lungs heaved, my arms flailed, reaching for anything. He slid his knee across my left arm, trapping it in place, but shifting his weight enough for me to push him to the side.
His grip faltered. I tore free, scrambling upright. Branches whipped past as I sprinted, the thud of his heavy feet only yards behind. I reached for a thick branch jutting across my path, yanked it back and let it snap. A crack split the air, followed by a guttural curse. I dared a glance back, just long enough to see him clutching his face, when my foot caught a root.
The world pitched sideways as time fractured. The cliff’s edge rushed into view, closer with each heartbeat. I crashed onto the forest floor, pain bursting through my ribs, then tumbled across the ground until a boulder stopped me, inches from the cliff. Pebbles and stones spilled away beneath my palms, clicking and echoing down the canyon wall.
Shawn stepped over me, creeping closer until I could smell his rancid breath. “This is gonna be easier than I thought. No cleanup. Just an accident.”
I stayed motionless, gazing into the distance, though every muscle screamed to recoil.
“If you think anyone will miss you, you’re wrong.” His fists clamped down, one on my arm, the other on my leg, yanking my body toward the edge. My free hand brushed something coarse. A chunk of sandstone. My fingers, slick with blood, curled around it as he pulled harder, veins bulging in his neck. I didn’t move.
Frustration darkened his face. He leaned farther out, his weight shifting over me, desperate to finish it. The cliff yawned below.
I met his eyes. Empty, bottomless. Just like our father’s.
A flicker of recognition flashed across his face as my arm swung through the air. The rock cracked against his temple, breaking his grip. I swung my foot up, driving it into his gut, seized his collar and heaved.
For an instant he hung in the air, then spun backward into the void. His scream tore through the canyon before unraveling into silence.
The rock slipped from my hand. A scream ripped from my throat, mixing with the last echoes of his. Tears burned the fading sun across the canyon.
For the first time in years, I felt free. No more running. No more hiding. The past had finally faced me, and I faced it back.
A smile, fragile but alive, stretched across my face. Tomorrow, I would carry my family’s name into the light.
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