they can all seem to agree on is that you’re on the mend, and that’s enough for me to get you the hell out of this place. I’ve spent too much time in hospitals over the years. Both of my parents died in this very hospital. But I’ll get you out of here.”
There was a knock at the door and, before Macon or Ava could answer, the door was flung open and a pair of men entered in a rush. They were both dressed in scrubs like doctors, but something was wrong. They were too young to be doctors and, even more than that, they were wild-eyed. Macon and Ava leaped up from the bed.
“You’re her!” one of the men said. He had brown hair and a wide, bumpy nose. “We just need help,” the man said quickly. “Our dad, he’s sick. He had a stroke a few weeks ago and he’s not getting any better.”
The second man was shorter, with long blond hair and a sweaty upper lip. He only looked at Ava as the first man spoke. There was both fear and need in his eyes.
“He can’t move his right side,” the first man added. He huffed as he spoke, his words running together. It was obvious that they had used the doctors’ outfits to get past security. Macon pulled Ava behind him. He placed his hand on his hip—out of habit as sheriff. He had expected to find his pistol there, but he’d left it locked in the glove compartment of the squad car when he arrived in the hospital. He took another step back, keeping Ava behind him and opening the distance between her and the men.
Ava peered over his shoulder, frightened. Even with everything Wash and her father had told her about how things had changed since the incident, she hadn’t truly believed them. Perhaps she had not wanted to understand. There is always comfort in pretending that change has not happened in life, even when we know full well that nothing will ever again be the way it was.
From outside came the sound of footfalls running though the hallway toward the room. The second man looked back over his shoulder. “Shit,” the man said. He tugged his brother’s arm, as if to prompt the man to run. Then he stopped, realizing that they would not get far and, more importantly, that they had come to plead their case. So he stepped past his brother and toward Macon and Ava. “We just want our dad to get better,” the man said. His voice was full of sadness and insistence. He pointed at Ava. “She can do for our dad what she did for that boy,” he said. “That’s all we wa—”
His words were cut off as a pair of policemen came racing into the room. They tackled the two men to the floor. The man with the bumpy nose hit hard against the linoleum. Blood trickled from his mouth. But never, not even when another police officer stuck a knee in his back as he was handcuffed, never did he take his eyes off Ava. Never did he stop asking her to help his father.
* * *
Coming out of the hospital was as terrifying as Ava had expected it to be. It was a blur of yelling and lights and cameras and people calling her name. The policemen formed a wall between her and the crowd, leaving enough room for her and Macon to make it to their car. Parked in front and behind the car were state policemen, their lights flashing.
The sea of faces called her name again and again, and she could not help but look at them. Each time she turned to see who was calling her name, a wall of light flashed before her eyes. She could not count how many reporters there were, how many cameras, how many people holding up signs that read Ava’s Real and It’s a Miracle. Her eyes landed on a woman waving a banner that read Help My Child, Please. She had frizzled blond hair and heavy lines around her eyes and she looked worn down by the world around her. She did not chant or cheer like the others. She only looked at Ava pleadingly.
Then they were inside the car and the wall of policemen surrounded them.
“Not so bad,” Macon said. He’d driven his squad car. It was one of two the small town of Stone Temple owned. When he switched on the lights atop the car, the police cars in front and behind did the same. And then the car in front started off and Macon followed as they slowly made their way out of the hospital parking lot, past the crowds, through the streets of Asheville toward the highway.
“I don’t know what to do with all this,” Ava said as the crowds disappeared behind them.
“Do the best you can,” Macon said. “Just don’t get lost in it.”
Just as Wash had promised, home was not home anymore. The town of Stone Temple had always been a town that the world did not care to bother itself knowing. It was named after the Masonic temple that once stood in its center. But it was well over eighty years ago that the temple burned to the ground, along with a good portion of the town itself. The population, on average, was counted somewhere around fifteen hundred, and for the most part, it was the kind of place that people didn’t even pass through on their way to better locations—not since the building of the bypass almost twenty years ago. But there were still businesses that made life possible. And there were still people being born, living and dying here.
Stone Temple was an odd beauty. The town lived in a cradle of old trees and older mountains. The main road in and out of town rested on the shoulders of the mountain. In places, it promised to cast a driver off, to send them tumbling down the slopes that were covered in oak and pine and birch or, in some sections, covered in nothing but the unforgiving and constant rock.
But Stone Temple was peaceful, quiet. It was a place that slept.
All that was changed now.
It took hours to drive the length of the winding mountain road. Even before they’d entered the city, Ava could see how different it all was. In the fields along the outskirts, Ava could make out tents and vans, RVs and cars, all spaced in a field that had been harvested and sat bare and waiting for the next planting season.
“What do they all want?” Ava asked her father.
Macon grimaced, trying to keep his eyes on the road ahead. The state police had done a decent job of clearing the path into Stone Temple, but they could not remove everyone from the small road. People stood on foot—sometimes on the narrow edge of the road, other times in the oncoming lane, even though doing so meant they would have little place to go if someone came along the road out of Stone Temple.
“Turns out,” Macon finally said when he felt that he could split his attention enough to reply to his daughter, “all of that stuff people used to talk about, all that stuff about wanting to keep the world out, about wanting to keep Stone Temple a secret. Well, it went right out the door when folks started opening up their checkbooks.” He glanced at one of the fields brimming with people as they passed. “Gotta make a living, though, I suppose.”
The closer they got to town, the busier things became. The road leading into Stone Temple was two lanes, climbing and falling through the mountains, full of blind curves and steep drop-offs. It was generally a quiet road, but now it was inundated with vehicles, the traffic thicker than Ava had ever seen it. The police escort slowed to a crawl as they came up behind the wall of cars. Those passing in the opposite direction stared at Ava like rubberneckers watching a horrific accident.
When they finally arrived to Stone Temple proper, there were people gathered in the narrow streets. They had been waiting for Ava to arrive and were filled with a fervor that was typically reserved for presidents and celebrities—though neither a president nor a celebrity had ever come to Stone Temple.
Ava didn’t recognize any of the people standing along the streets, cheering and yelling and holding up their signs. And she couldn’t exactly say why she felt the need to look for familiar faces among the mass of people. Perhaps she simply hoped that if she saw someone she knew, it would help to lower the scope of everything that was happening, everything she did not understand.
“They
