A slew of police came to the hospital—some of the officers were from the Sheriff’s Department, some from Nephi city—and Tag was taken in for questioning. I was questioned as well, though I was questioned at the hospital and allowed to remain there. The sheriff had been killed, and it was Tag’s bullet that had killed him, that and the knife in his chest that Moses had apparently wielded. I was afraid for Tag and for Moses, and I was worried that the truth might never come out.
Then my parents arrived and in hushed, disbelieving tones, they told me that Lisa Kendrick had been found bound and drugged in Jacob Dawson’s SUV. And suddenly everyone wasn’t quite as sure of the world as they once had been. Ironically, it was Jacob Dawson who had once told me, “You can never get too comfortable around animals. Just when you think you’ve got ‘em figured out, they’ll do something completely unexpected.” And he would know.
When I could no longer be brave, I found the little chapel, buried my face in my blood-stained hands and talked to Eli, whispering to him, telling him about Moses, about our story, about how he came to be, about how he was the best parts of both of us. And then I tearfully told him that I needed him to bring Moses back one more time if he could.
“Send him back, Eli,” I begged. “If you have any pull in that place at all, send him back.”
Moses
I TOLD YOU RIGHT UP FRONT, right in the beginning that I lost him. The day I met Eli, he was already gone. I knew he was dead. I knew, and yet it still hurt. So much. I didn’t lose him the way Georgia did. But I still lost him. I lost him before I knew him. And I wasn’t prepared.
And each day, as I grew to love him more, as I watched him, as he showed me his short life and his huge love, it got harder, not easier. In truth—since I’ve decided that’s all I have—I would gladly submit myself to anything else. Anything but that. But that is what was given to me. And I wasn’t prepared.
I can’t tell you how it felt to say goodbye. How it felt to choose. But in the end, mercifully, the choice was made for me, and I didn’t have to do either. I held my little boy in my arms, and I heard his mother’s voice from somewhere far off, telling him our story. A story about how Eli was born, how he died, and how, from beyond the grave he healed us. And Eli and I listened together.
The first few words of every story are always the hardest. It’s almost as if pulling them out, speaking them into existence, commits you to seeing it all through. As if once you start, you are required to finish.
And we weren’t finished. Georgia and I weren’t finished. I knew that. And Eli knew it.
“You have to go now, Dad,” he whispered.
“I know.”
I felt myself slipping, almost falling, much like the way it felt when I called down the waters.
“Goodnight Stewy Stinker,” I heard him say, a smile in his voice.
“Goodnight Buzzard Bates,” I said, my tongue so heavy in my mouth I could barely form the words.
“See you soon, Diehard Dad.”
“See you soon, little man,” I whispered, and then he was gone.
Georgia
THEY SHARED HIS STORY on the 10:00 news—the little baby left in a basket at a dingy laundromat in a bad neighborhood in West Valley City, abandoned by a drug addict and expected to have all sorts of problems. And they shared his story again, twenty-five years later—the story of Moses Wright, the artist who communed with the dead and brought down a killer.
Both Tag and Moses were absolved of any wrong-doing in the death of Sheriff Jacob Dawson. And they were cleared quickly when Sylvie Kendrick’s remains were found on his property, along with the remains of several, still unidentified girls. Lisa Kendrick made a full recovery, and though she doesn’t remember Sheriff Dawson abducting her, she does remember walking along the road and having a vehicle pull up behind her, lights flashing.
Jacob Dawson is believed to have killed more than a dozen girls in Utah in a twenty-five year period, and may be responsible for similar disappearances of girls matching the same profile in surrounding states. Considering that he had inherited one hundred acres of land, including the land that bordered the truck stop and the highway overpass where Molly Taggert was found, there was still a lot of ground to cover, and, sadly, a lot of bodies to uncover.
The whole town of Levan followed the story, watching the reports, pretending like they had the inside scoop, and making up what they didn’t know, just to feel important, just like the first time Levan made the news. It was a great story, and people love stories, just like they love babies.
And although people loved the story of baby Moses who grew up to be a seer of sorts, when the news cameras left and life returned to normal, it was a story that many people had a hard time believing and accepting. Like Moses said, if you’re afraid of the truth you’ll never find it. But that was okay. We didn’t especially want to be found.
We let people believe what they wanted and accept what they would. We let the colors blur and the details fade. And in the end, people would tell the story and pretend that’s all it was. It was a great story, after all.
A story of before and after, of new beginnings and never-endings. A story flawed and fractured, crazy and cracked, and most of all, a love story.
Our story.
Georgia
“DON’T MOVE, I’M ALMOST DONE,” Moses insisted, and I sighed and laid my head back down on my arm. He was obsessed with painting me. My pregnant body wasn’t especially beautiful, but Moses disagreed, including my round belly as one of his daily five greats, along with my legs, my eyes, my blonde hair, and the fact that my breasts were a full size bigger.
Who needed a photographer when your husband was a world-famous artist? I just hoped that someday nude paintings of Georgia Wright wouldn’t be hanging in some rich old man’s bedroom, or worse, in a museum where thousands of eyes perused my greats, daily.
“Moses?” I said softly.
“Yeah?” His eyes lifted from the canvas briefly.
“There’s a new law in Georgia.”
“Does it directly contradict one of the laws of Moses?”
“Yes. Yes it does,” I confessed.