The Girl in the Picture

by Melissa Wiesner

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

As the newspaper clipping falls from the cardboard box Tegan takes in the woman in the picture: her chestnut hair, her eyes full of laughter, the way she nestles against the man beside her. And as she reads the words in the article, Tegan almost stops breathing. Was coming here a mistake?



When Tegan's family is torn apart by a terrible tragedy, she runs away in search of somewhere to keep safe from the past that haunts her, and the painful secrets she's never told anyone. Arriving in Copper Canyon, Colorado, where no one knows her name, Tegan breathes easy for the first time in years. And when she grows close with Jack, another lost soul who won't talk about his home, it seems she's found the perfect companion to explore with.



But just as Tegan starts to think maybe safety isn't a place, it's a person, she notices the box of photos and newspaper clippings that Jack has in the trunk of his car. Who is the woman in every frame? And why does she look so familiar?



Tegan knows the only way to protect herself, and keep her dark family history locked away, is to discover more about the woman in Jack's photos. But when she does, will the truth help her, or will it send her running once more?

Release date: August 23, 2021

Publisher: Bookouture

Print pages: 350

Sample

“Tegan, come on!” Jamie’s voice rippled across the hollow like the creek he was traversing, his feet hopping from one stone to the next as the water flowed past. “I’ll hold your hand, you won’t fall in.”

I eyed the bubbling creek with suspicion. Did it have the power to sweep me away? I’d spent eight years of my life in apartments in the city, and had never learned to swim. Neither had Jamie, but at thirteen, he might be tall enough to stand on the rocky bottom. Besides, Jamie was the strongest, toughest kid I knew. Jamie would never fall in.

Hopping back to the stone closest to me, he scrubbed a grimy hand on his equally dirty cut-off jeans and held it out to me. “I promise you’ll be okay.”

I leaned over the water and grabbed his outstretched palm without hesitation. There wasn’t much I could count on in this world except for my big brother’s word. If Jamie promised, I knew without a doubt he’d keep me safe. Just like he always had.

I inched my toes toward the edge of the creek bank. “Ready?” Jamie asked, bracing himself on the narrow stone. “One… two… three…”

I squeezed my eyes shut and jumped. When they popped open again, I found the sandstone sturdy beneath my feet, and Jamie’s proud smile warming me like the sun slanting through the sugar maple overhead. Hand in hand, we turned and leaped from stone to stone until we landed together on the opposite bank of the creek. From there, we scurried up the hill through the brush, crawling over fallen logs and pulling ourselves up on monkey vines when the incline grew too steep.

Finally, we reached a clearing covered in knee-high grasses swaying in the breeze and dotted with wild daisy and black-eyed Susan. Jamie lifted the bottom strand of a barbed-wire fence for me to crawl under, and I hesitated again. What if there were cows in there? Before we’d come to West Virginia to stay with Grandma, I’d never seen such a huge animal in all my life. Back home in the city, the only animals we had to dodge were the pit bulls that strained on their chains to bark at us as we walked through back alleys.

Jamie’s gentle nudge propelled me forward, and soon we were under the fence and running across the field toward an old, crumbling stone wall surrounding a stand of pine trees. Jamie sat on the wall, swinging his sneakered feet while he waited for me to catch up. For the first time, I noticed the soles of those old shoes were hanging on by a thread. As I sank down next to him, he waved a hand at the view.

The West Virginia hills stretched out in all directions, a patchwork of colors like the quilt on Grandma’s bed. Beneath us, the trees shimmered in every color of green as the wind teased the leaves on their branches. Somewhere down in those woods wound the creek that fed into a pond, sparkling jewel-like in the valley. Beyond that, dusty brown roads criss-crossed through pastures spotted with cows so tiny they looked like they’d fit in my pocket.

An old silver pick-up truck puttered along in miniature, and the dirt rose behind it into the air like steam from the kettle. “Maybe that’s Grandma on her way home,” I mused.

She’d had a doctor’s appointment in town that morning. We’d only been staying with Grandma for a few months, but we could tell from her hushed late-night phone calls that these appointments were important. Jamie said Grandma was sick, and he was willing to bet we’d have to go back to living in the city with Daddy. Jamie was never wrong, but I hoped this would be the exception.

“Look, Tegan.” Jamie grabbed my arm. “Over there. That’s the one.”

My gaze swung out across the valley in the direction of Jamie’s pointed finger, to an expanse of green so pure it could have been plucked from my Crayola box. At the very top of the hill stood an old white farmhouse with its tin roof glinting in the sunshine. A wraparound porch encircled the home, and I thought I could make out flower boxes on the windows and a swing swaying in the breeze, or maybe my imagination simply conjured them up. To the left of the house, a tractor idled under two enormous oak trees, and a lane wound down the hill to a faded red barn.

“Oh.” I breathed out the word like a sigh. “Oh, it’s perfect.”

Jamie and I had studied every rambling little farm we’d encountered since we hopped on the Greyhound bus that had brought us to this strange and wonderful world away from the gritty Pittsburgh neighborhood where we’d lived with Daddy. If Jamie’s instincts about Grandma were right, we wouldn’t be there much longer. So, we were on the lookout for the perfect country house, the perfect small town where we could live far away from the danger, the pollution… the memories… of our life of shuffling from rundown apartment to rundown apartment in the city.

When Jamie turned fifteen, he was going to get a job working construction. He’d save every penny, and I’d get a job too, as soon as I was old enough. We weren’t fancy, and we didn’t need much. Just a small house on a little bit of land with neighbors who’d stop by to say hello, and a sturdy wooden porch where I could sit and write my books.

“We’re gonna find it, Tegan. You and me, we’ll find our place, and we’ll make it a real home.”

A real home. I could hardly imagine it. “Do you really think we will, someday?”

Jamie gave my hand a squeeze. “I promise.”

And that’s when I knew. There wasn’t much I could count on in this world except my big brother’s word. If Jamie promised, he’d make it happen. Just like he always had.

As the ballpoint of Tegan Walker’s pen stabbed the truck driver’s thigh with a meaty thunk, he let out a scream so piercing she expected the windshield to shatter. He reared back, clutching his leg. Tegan threw her shoulder against the door on her side, yanking the handle with one hand and grabbing her backpack with the other. The door flew open and she lurched out of the cab, falling into the dirt on the side of the road.

Her left knee cracked on the ground and her right hand scraped across the pavement, but she couldn’t stop to wipe the blood from her leg or pull the gravel from her palm.

“You bitch!”

The desert dust billowed around as she crawled across the roadside berm to where her backpack had landed a few feet away. Ignoring her burning hand, she threw the strap over her shoulder and pushed herself to her feet. A short distance away, the truck driver’s door screeched open, and her heart rate doubled.

She had to get away from this scumbag. But, where am I?

Tegan stumbled into the road, her gaze following the broken white line down the center until it disappeared in a shimmering haze of dust over the horizon. She swung her head wildly to the left, and then right. There was nothing. Not a car, or building, or even a damn cactus for as far as she could see.

Her backpack slapped against her arm as she whirled around, scanning the opposite horizon, but she shouldn’t have bothered. Reddish brown dirt stretched for miles, punctuated only by an occasional scrubby bush not even big enough to hide behind.

Her heart played a staccato bass line against her ribcage.

“Don’t panic, don’t panic, don’t panic,” she mumbled like a mantra.

Somewhere behind her, a pair of sneakers slapped against the pavement. She swung back around and, less than twenty feet away, stood the truck driver, his face as red and angry as the blood seeping through the hole in the thigh of his faded jeans. Before she could stop to think about it, she twisted her arm through the other strap of her bag, yanked it onto her back, and took off down the embankment.

Barreling across the dune, her feet churned up dust and sent a couple of prairie dogs scurrying out of her path. Her sneakers snagged on the twisty little bushes that managed to survive in the parched landscape, but she pushed on, silently willing her legs to move faster. She picked up the pace, gasping for air as she raced to the top of the ridge and back down the other side.

She kept running, her desire to escape eclipsing the protests from her burning muscles. But, eventually, she staggered to a stop, bending at the waist and propping her hands on her thighs to suck more air into her lungs. She watched as rivulets of sweat and blood formed a Jackson Pollock painting as they trailed down her legs through patches of grime and dozens of tiny scratches.

Something scraped in the dirt behind her, and she whirled around as an enormous red-tailed hawk took off into the sky with a field mouse in its claws.

If that wasn’t a metaphor for her situation, she didn’t know what was.

The road and the truck were nowhere in sight, and there was no way that pot-bellied trucker could have chased her across the desert, especially with a stab wound in his thigh. But a guy who thought it was okay to stick his hand up a woman’s shirt while she was sleeping was probably the kind of guy who’d be pissed off when she’d fought back. What if he’d radioed his trucker friends to come out there and help him find her?

The sun blazed overhead, broiling her bare shoulders and her scalp where her hair parted. It would be about five minutes before the freckles multiplied on her nose, but that was the least of her problems. Still, she pulled a battered Pirates hat from the side pocket of her backpack and yanked it on her head as she made her way back down the hill. She veered slightly left, away from the direction she’d come, aiming for farther down the road from where the trucker had parked.

And then… what?

She’d have to hitchhike again, and hope someone would come along on that barren two-lane highway. Someone less likely to feel her up.

Tegan used the back of her gritty arm to wipe the sweat dripping down her forehead. Damn it, she was twenty-five years old. Was she ever going to get her life together? She’d been so sure that it would be the start of a whole new life for her and Jamie when she’d packed up the car and headed out of Pittsburgh a month ago. The plan had always been for Jamie to come with her, but even with the good news about his health improving, a trip like this would have been too much.

So, she’d set off alone to travel the country, find them a place to live, and write her novel. They’d made a list of states, spending hours poring through photos and articles together. Maybe Colorado, for the mountains. Or a little town along the coast in the Pacific Northwest—Jamie had always wanted to try fishing.

But then, two weeks into her trip, her ancient station wagon had keeled over outside of Salinas and couldn’t be resuscitated. Without the mattress she’d tossed in the back to sleep on, her meager savings were rapidly dwindling on campsites and motel rooms, so traveling on trains or buses was outside the budget.

For about a week, she’d hitched a ride with a grandfatherly old trucker who was carrying shipments for a grocery chain across California. He’d let her crash on the front seat of the truck while he took the sleeper cab in the back. But then he’d headed home to Santa Cruz, and she’d been on her own again.

She’d then traveled to Nevada with a woman on the run from an abusive boyfriend, but it was a relief when they arrived at a ranch outside of Vegas. They’d been looking over their shoulder for 400 miles, and Tegan hoped the woman would finally be safe with her burly ranch-hand brother who’d looked pretty comfortable with a rifle.

Next, at a coffee shop in town, she’d met a trucker carrying supplies to the oil rigs in southern Texas. She’d been eager to make it down near Austin, and he’d promised he’d be passing right through there. The trucker had a photo of a smiling red-headed woman and two ginger children in his wallet, and he’d chatted about playing for the church softball team while they ate their pancakes. Tegan didn’t even think twice about climbing into the cab with him.

Somewhere past the Arizona border, she’d drifted off to sleep. When she woke, the trucker had parked on the side of the road, and his hand was under her shirt. She’d given him a hard shove and he’d lunged for her across the gear shift. In a panic, she’d grabbed the first weapon she could find, which had happened to be the pen sticking out of the pages of her journal.

Damn it, as if this whole situation didn’t already completely suck, that had been her favorite pen.

She heaved a huge sigh that did nothing to clear the dust from her lungs, and kept walking. A few minutes passed, and then a couple more, and a nagging sense of unease began to settle over her. Shouldn’t she have found the road by now? She hadn’t run for that long—had she?

What if she was walking the wrong way? What if there was no road this way at all? Everything looked the same out here; it was possible she’d gotten turned around and hadn’t even realized it. She gazed up into the endless, boundless blue sky, broken only by the scorching sun directly overhead and, for the first time, it occurred to her that this might not be as bad as she thought.

It might be so much worse.

She could be lost out here, and nobody would know to look for her. Only one person in the world would even notice she was missing, and it could be days before that happened.

Tegan picked up the pace, practically running now, stumbling and scraping her ankle against a rock as she scanned the horizon for signs of civilization. Just as despair began to overtake her, she heard an unmistakable wooooosh from somewhere ahead. She crested the next hill and almost sobbed with relief. The road stretched before her, gleaming in the unrelenting sun as a car appeared over the horizon.

Tegan flinched and took a step back. Luckily, she was so dirty she pretty much blended in with her surroundings. But as soon as the car zipped by, dust wafting behind it like smoke from a campfire, she realized her mistake. Scurrying behind a rock like a lizard every time a car passed wasn’t going to free her from the scorching desert before the grabby trucker came looking for her. For all she knew, he was still parked over the next hill. That car might have been her only chance. If she were smart, she’d run after it and try to flag it down.

She saw the car begin to slow—but not for her. Across the canyon, so far in the distance that her gaze almost skated right past it, squatted a small chrome and glass building.

A diner.

A little diner with a flickering neon sign and a giant plastic cactus planted in front. There were five or six cars parked in the lot, and no sign of the tractor trailer she’d fled.

It was the most beautiful sight she’d ever seen.

She slid down the embankment and when her feet hit the road, she took off, not even stopping to glance over her shoulder. She could get herself cleaned up, order some coffee, and maybe none of this would feel so desperate. Maybe there’d be a nice family who’d offer her a ride.

She focused her gaze on that giant green cactus. God, she hoped it wasn’t a mirage.

Jack Townsend was willing to consider the possibility that he hadn’t been in his right mind when he’d planned this cross-country trip. Temporary insanity was the only explanation for why he’d let his sister convince him that enduring an endless week trapped in an enclosed space with nothing but his own thoughts was a good idea.

Well, it was too late now. He’d left California in the rearview mirror, and he wasn’t about to turn around and go back. There was nothing there for him, anyway.

An accident on the highway had diverted him to this side road, and having his carefully plotted trip go off the rails wasn’t helping his mood. He was behind schedule, which always made him a little anxious, and he might not make it to the hotel he’d booked in Albuquerque by dark.

Jack pressed his foot on the gas, and the V8 engine of his Mercedes G-Class easily kicked the speed up another five miles per hour. But then, out of the blue, a rusty orange pick-up truck appeared in his mirrors, hovering only feet from his bumper. The driver revved the engine and swung left, gunning it past him and then swerving back into the right lane. In another moment, the pick-up’s broken tail lights disappeared over the crest of the next hill.

Jack was going exactly the speed limit, which meant that guy had to be going at least ninety. Idiot was going to get himself killed. Jack eased off the gas. No reason to join him. He’d just have to make up the time with an extra-quick stop for lunch.

And speaking of lunch—was that a diner ahead?

He slowed even further, pressing the brake as a neon-pink Eat at Joe’s sign came into view. A couple of rusty vehicles populated the parking lot, and a ridiculous green plastic cactus sat by the entrance, holding a wholly unwelcoming sign that flickered on and off with the word, Welcome.

Jack almost pressed the gas again, but at the last minute he reconsidered. His GPS said it would be another thirty miles on these dinky back roads, and it was possible that this was the only option for lunch between here and Route 40.

He sighed and snapped on his turn signal. Might as well get this over with.

“How do you know if an addict is lying?”

“How?”

“His mouth is moving.”

That was what the girl with the pigtails said when we had to go around the circle at the Al-Anon meeting and share whatever we felt like sharing. She said it like a joke, and I almost expected her to say “Ba-dum-ching!” at the end. But she didn’t; she just turned to me, because then it was my turn to share. I sat there frozen, with all those kids staring at me, trying to think of something to say. Finally, I whispered my name, and we moved on to the boy sitting next to me. After we went around the circle, we had to put on blindfolds and lead each other across the room so we’d learn how to trust people.

On TV, it’s always the drunk guy who has to go to the meetings, after he’s crashed his car and his wife has left him and all there is to be grateful for is the bitter, burnt coffee in the church basement coffee pot. So, how did I end up there?

Jamie had seen the flyer hanging on the church bulletin board one day on his walk home from school. A group for elementary school kids like me, for kids whose parents drank too much. “It will be good for you.”

“Why do I have to go and you don’t?” I whined.

Jamie ran a hand through his hair. He was only fourteen but, for a second, I swore he was older than Daddy his eyes looked so worn out and tired. “Because… I think you could use a little help accepting things.”

He didn’t say it, but I knew what he was thinking. Jamie wasn’t the one who kept making excuses, kept trying to get Daddy to sober up and act like a normal dad, like the ones whose kids went to my school. The dads who showed up for concerts and school plays without making a scene. The dads who remembered to pay the electric bill and not just the tab at Kelly’s Korner Bar.

“Jamie, I promise I’ll accept things if you don’t make me go to that meeting.”

“I don’t think it works like that, T.”

“It does! I swear!” I stood up straight to show him how grown up and accepting of things I could be. “Besides, I don’t even care if Daddy comes to parents’ night at school.” I gave Jamie a pointed look. “That’s what I have you for.”

I don’t know how, but in that moment, Jamie’s eyes grew even more tired.

“What do you mean you don’t take credit cards?”

Tegan’s head snapped up from her laptop.

Damn it. Her hands were still shaking and her pulse still hammering from her run-in earlier. She’d spent the last twenty minutes trying to put her head down and work on her novel, and now she’d lost her focus thanks to some dude who didn’t know how to use his indoor voice.

She glared at him from her booth in the corner, but he was busy waving his platinum American Express card at the extremely unimpressed waitress.

“Everyone takes credit cards.” His voice carried all the way to the back of the diner, through the din of chatting customers and the clink of Corelle coffee cups on stained Formica tables.

The waitress shook her head and pulled her hands toward her chest as if he was holding out a rat she didn’t want to touch. “Cash only.”

He blew out an audible breath and Tegan rolled her eyes. What did he think, that the waitress was somehow going to stick a credit card in that ancient cash register? Did he not see the candy-colored buttons or the analog numbers that spun like a slot machine? Tegan’s gaze slid from the broken jukebox advertising songs by Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, and a group called The Dixie Cups, to the seats that had been repaired so many times they were made more of duct tape than vinyl.

What was a guy like that doing in a place like this anyway? In his pressed khaki pants and navy polo shirt, he had the air of a stodgy old senator, except he couldn’t have been more than thirty. He ran his hand through his dark blond hair and every lock fell right back into place.

“Okay, well, look.” He shifted in his canvas Top-Siders. “I don’t have cash on me, but I probably have a check in the car.”

The waitress sighed as she adjusted the apron covering her spearmint uniform. She tapped on a sign—CASH ONLY—scrawled in bright red Sharpie marker.

A couple of road workers at the counter swiveled in their seats to focus on the conversation at the cash register. Credit Card guy looked down his nose at them and then turned back to the waitress. “Well, where is the nearest ATM?”

The waitress shrugged.

One of the road workers spoke up. “There’s an ATM over in Diablo.” He nudged his friend, a grin forming on his lips. “But we can’t have you dining and dashing on Ruby. You’ll have to leave your car keys for collateral.”

Credit Card guy took a step back. “How far is Diablo?”

The road worker took a gulp of coffee and plunked the mug on the counter. “’Bout five miles or so.”

“Five miles?” Credit Card guy coughed as if the desert dust was already choking him. “You want me to walk ten miles round trip to pay for a six-dollar sandwich?”

Tegan shook her head. Those boat shoes weren’t going to look so shiny after they’d hiked ten miles to Diablo and back. Her favorite pair of sneakers, now permanently smeared with cinnamon-colored dirt, were Exhibit A.

The other road worker crossed his arms over his neon orange vest. “Maybe you shouldn’t have ordered that sandwich without being able to pay for it.”

Credit Card guy dropped his arms by his sides. “I’m able to pay for it, if you would just…” He paused, sighing up at the ceiling as if he might find his lost patience somewhere in the red aluminum tiles.

“Fine.” Ruby arched a painted-on eyebrow. “Leave your driver’s license, then at least we’ll have an address where the police can hunt you down if you don’t come back.”

Credit Card guy shook his head slowly. “It’s illegal to drive without a driver’s license.”

Tegan bit back an incredulous snort. Was this guy serious? The chances he’d get pulled over in the five miles between the diner and Diablo were next to none. An hour ago, she would’ve given her future first-born to see a cop car on the horizon, but it had literally been nothing but tumbleweed blowing by.

As he negotiated with Ruby about what would be an acceptable object to leave behind—Ruby wasn’t budging on the car keys or driver’s license—Tegan sat up straight in the booth. A tractor trailer had pulled into the parking lot outside the window and come to a stop. Her heart dropped to her stomach when a burly trucker swung the door open, favoring his right side as he slowly climbed down to the pavement.

Bright red blood bloomed on the leg of his pants.

Heart poundi. . .