Linda

At four in the morning she rose, moved through the darkened house, opened Google Earth. She was an owl, not a lark: a traveler by night to a place stuck between the clock hands of noon. Nothing had changed in the two years since her first virtual arrival. The same blond boy pedaled past faded awnings and boarded-up storefronts, face full of hope and yearning. Same cemetery, a single horseshoe of dirt. Same empty highway. Eight unforgiving miles to – it had to be – Pleasant View Ranch. 

The old story: Last son dies, first landlords return. Heat, hail, wind, blizzards raze barns, sheds, windmill, house. She closed her eyes. Still there. Opened them. Gone.

A few broken bits of silvered cedar straggled uncertainly along the ditch. Was it here that, every summer, she had unloosed a wire loop and dragged the cattle fence to let the Rambler pass through? Where the headlights found a pair of ruts that curved to the door where a single light shone?

She was helpless in her longing. Was this the place?