Oxbow, Florida 1985

Something was disturbing my peace, tickling at the edges—light without hope gathering at the corners of my consciousness. Cold. Pitiable. Lonely. Growing. Dissolving the warm, safe darkness. Suffocating my soul.

A woman appeared, pretty and young with empty eyes and strawberry hair. Aman reached for her, straining to get closer, aching to bridge the gap with just a gentle touch. She saw him but was powerless to help herself or him.

It had been another sleepless night, and after the icy scene I had just witnessed, the soft moonlight streaming through my window confused me. It felt like slamming into a radiant, glowing wall, and my senses were overwhelmed as I once again rebounded from the unnatural cold in which my ghostly visitors always enveloped me. Numbed from this eerily familiar and hated cold, I wrapped myself tightly in an old comforter I kept handy at the foot of my bed. Even in the warmth of the southwest Florida autumn, I felt the need for my old talisman. My five-year-old chocolate lab, Dutch, tentatively placed a paw on the edge of the bed, seeking to reassure me. His warm brown eyes pleaded to help me. His low growl turned into a pitiful whine. We were alone again.

"It's okay, boy," I lied, reaching out to ruffle his thick brown coat.

I slipped onto the floor with my comforter and welcomed him into its feathery folds with me, trying to generate warmth after my visitors had sucked the heat from my very bones. I couldn't ignore my own pale, drawn face as it stared back at me from the full-length mirror in the corner. For once that mirror didn't remind me of any excess baggage attached to my backside. Rich chestnut hair, wild and tangled, framed my face, and pure terror shone in my eyes—what my mom had always called my "grandmother's blue eyes."

Molly Martindale, that's me, doorway to the netherworld. How in the world did this happen?

"I know, I know, our visitors scare you as much as they do me," I said soothingly to Dutch, closing my eyes and placing my smooth, icy forehead against his furry warm one. These two intruders were just the latest. I had thought I was free of these otherworldly interlopers since finally uncovering the truth about my friend Dennis, but apparently that wasn't to be.

What could it be now? Oh, God, what could these sorrowful, hollow tendrils from hell be seeking from me this time?

The oh-so-normal day still hadn't quite thawed the previous night's horror, even as my friend Dana and I prepared to enjoy another glorious Florida sunset.

Dana D'Lorenzo had been in Oxbow for a little over a year, and during that time we had become great friends—even though I was a little bit country, and she was a little bit rock `n'roll, as the song goes.

Raised in a working-class West Palm Beach neighborhood, Dana had gone to the University of Florida in Gainesville before returning to the East Coast to practice medicine, so she was at home in the big city. Oxbow, Florida, certainly had none of the things she was used to. When she first arrived, I didn't think she'd make it even six months before hightailing it back to the coast. I guess you just never know.

I had successfully shaken off the shadows of the previous night's visitors as I went about my workday—collecting information for my front-page stories and gathering tidbits for this week's edition of the Oxbow Independent. It was my job to make sure the residents of Oxbow had their local paper to go with their after-dinner coffee, a Wednesday evening ritual at most homes, and it took a full week get it all together. Now as I tried to relax this Friday evening, I was having a hard time keeping my ghosts at bay. Would Dana understand about my hell-spawned visitors if I told her? Would anybody?

I was in the kitchen refilling our empty tea glasses—heavy on the ice and lemon for Dana—and had left her out on the back porch. Through the kitchen window I could see her, picking absently at a couple of pieces of pasta left on her plate, gazing out over the sun-kissed river slowly making its way to the Gulf of Mexico. Dana's pediatric practice was a magnet for all the mothers in Oxbow, and our "us" time seemed to dwindle weekly. My mind went over our earlier conversation as I tumbled ice cubes into our glasses and splashed the sweet brown liquid over them, trying not to think about the extra pounds our "girlie night" pasta dinner would add to my posterior. That fight and trying to quit chewing my nails were the never-ending struggles of my existence. Someday ...

Sitting there on the porch during supper, Dana and I had mused over the past several months of her life—remarkable mainly in their lack of remarkableness, she had said. She was a woman used to highs and lows. We had talked, half-mesmerized by the steady westward flow of the Oxbow River, while Dutch chased a small rabbit. The past few months had been a revelation to Dana.

Growing up, Dana had never had access to the finer things in life, but she was used to a somewhat faster pace—movies, theater, nightlife, traffic. Oxbow had none of those. It was quiet, and life was slow. The small things in life still had importance. Yet there were times when a girl just wanted to have a good time. And Oxbow-well, Oxbow just fell short in that category.

"I do like it here," she said, reaffirming an earlier comment as I returned to the table with the two large sparkling glasses of sweet tea.

I gave my friend a quizzical look. As a sister of sorts, I had often witnessed Dana's symptoms of withdrawal from city life—and it wasn't pretty. "Is this the same Dana D'Lorenzo I've come to know and love?" I asked. "The one who has moaned time and again about no movies, no nightlife, no shopping?"

"I know, I know," Dana said, laughing and brushing her thatch of auburn hair away from her lovely face. "I've been a real pest about that, and I still have a problem with no shopping, for heaven's sake."

I couldn't resist intoning her trademark line. "No shopping, no civilization."

Dana smiled ruefully. "Yes, I admit I'm a shopaholic. Being here has introduced me to the joys of junk store shopping, though—a whole new branch of the sport for me!"

"I know. I'm as guilty as you are," I said.

It was true. We had elevated thrift store shopping if not to a religion, then at least to something just short of idol worship. We both smiled at the shared memories. It was a point of pride—no thrift store within a hundred miles was safe from these two bargain-store plunderers!

We continued to sip our tea as a virtual legion of brilliant red dragonflies swooped across the yard in staggered formation. The troops were well disciplined—there were no malingerers, and every soldier seemed to be aligned just right, their objective, whatever that might be, apparently clear in their little minds.

"Still, in all honesty, I do miss being able to catch a movie on a whim or just head over to the zoo. I used to love to go to the zoo. My mom and I, and later Aunt Stella, spent many a Saturday there when I was growing up."

After her mother died, Dana had been raised by what used to be referred to as a "maiden aunt." We had found out early in our friendship that this was one of life's experiences we shared.

I recalled how our friendship had started. Dr. Dana, as all the kids called her, had come to Oxbow to take over the pediatric practice that her mentor, Dr. Arthur Michaelson, had begun in the office across from mine at the Oxbow Independent, where I had worked full-time since high school. (I had started out as the receptionist, contributing stories now and then, shepherded by the editor, until she deemed me ready to take on reporter duties.) The doctor had been Dana's mentor since childhood and was an old flame of her Aunt Stella's.

The flame had withered many years earlier when Dr. M. met Verna, the love of his life, but against the supposed rules, they had all remained friends over the years. Aunt Stella and Dr. M. had grown up together in the same working-class neighborhood where Stella still lived. He had remained true to his dream and had become a doctor, thanks in large part to Verna's devotion and hard work.

Aunt Stella had stayed in the old neighborhood and made her living as a bookkeeper. She never married, but that didn't seem to be a problem for her. She was basically a happy, well-adjusted human being and did not particularly feel the need to have a man of her very own, at least not a permanent one.

When Virginia, Dana's mother, was diagnosed with breast cancer, Stella took care of both her sister Virginia and little Dana, then a precocious eight-year-old. Virginia's illness took her quickly. Soon it was just Dana and her Aunt Stella. Dana's father had long since vanished. At least that's what Dana believed. In all the world, only a couple of people knew the truth about him.

The truth was that Buddy Parker and Dennis Blankenship, my friend, the man Dana could see only as pathetic at best, were one and the same. And the truth was also that Buddy Parker was Dana's father.

Franklin Brown knew it. He was the oldest man in Oxbow and maybe the best. He was the grandson of slaves, and every kid who grew up in Oxbow had called him friend since—well, since way before I came to town as a scared thirteen-year-old orphan.

The experience of losing our parents early in life had helped Dana and me bond very quickly, but the truth was that Dana's father had not abandoned her and her mother, although that's what she'd grown up believing. Buddy Parker had managed to come home from the hell that was Korea in the early 1950s, but he would never be the same. An explosion had seared the flesh on most of one side of his body, leaving him grotesquely disfigured. By the time I met him, decades later, the horrific scars still had the power to repel people, and most couldn't or wouldn't meet his gaze. Although he was very capable, securing more than an occasional menial job was impossible. His drinking only served to alienate people even more, although he never made a scene. I'm sure drinking and his scruffy mutt, Li'l Bit, were the only buffers he had against a world that had stripped him of everything. I prayed that the friendships he had with a few folks in Oxbow had also given him some comfort.

Anyway, his injuries had kept him from returning to his family. He had resolved not to subject them to the stares and ostracism he would endure for the rest of his life—but he always did everything he could to help provide for them. Dennis, born Buddy Parker right here in Oxbow, had died just about a year before this autumn evening Dana and I were sharing. Uncovering the Parker family story had been one of the most difficult and rewarding things I'd ever done. And Dennis had entrusted me with the task of finding the right way, time, and place to tell Dana about him.

Dana hadn't realized who he was, but she had actually met her father here in Oxbow when she first arrived—long after she had been told he died. That meeting was a fiasco. Dana saw Dennis as creepy and inept, but what she actually saw was his utter befuddlement at suddenly being face-to-face with his beautiful and intelligent daughter after a lifetime of self-inflicted deprivation.

There was so much about the man that Dana could not know, could not appreciate. In fact, Buddy Parker—the man Dana knew as Dennis Blankenship—had been the sole survivor of his family. The rest had all died in 1943 in a fire set by the sainted mayor of the time, Anderson St. Claire, his brother, and a couple of his flunkies. Of course, they'd covered up the fire and told everyone the family had pulled up stakes and moved to Georgia. No one in Oxbow would question anythingAnderson St. Claire said. Only a handful of people knew the truth, and without irrefutable proof, the powerful St. Claires could hardly be accused of murder. Still, the truth had satisfied my original ghostly visitors, the ones who had introduced me to that unfathomable hell to bring Buddy's story to light. I had fulfilled their need and had been left in peace—until the previous night's newcomers had found their way into my head and my life.

I thought again about Dana's arrival in town. Dr. Michaelson was a kind elderly man with a gentle touch and quick smile. His practice here, which he had started after they moved to Oxbow from West Palm Beach, was just beginning to get off the ground when his beloved wife Verna was diagnosed with a slow-spreading terminal cancer. They had always talked about traveling the world, so Dr. Michaelson took Verna off to do all the things they'd always dreamed about before it was too late.

Dr. M. was Dana's godfather and had been her mentor for as long as she could remember. When he and Verna decided to travel, Dr. M. offered Dana his practice. Not long after she'd started coming here from the coast, Dana confided in me that she wasn't really keen on moving to a small agriculture-based town. But she eventually did decide to divide her time between her practice on the coast and Oxbow, and then she decided to stay—I think more because her old mentor wanted her to than anything else, at least in the beginning.

My story was different. My parents died in a traffic crash when I was thirteen. That's when I came to live with Aunt Nell in Oxbow. Dana and I found that we'd had a lot in common as children—the pain of losing our parents and the care each of us had found with a strong and loving maternal aunt.

We hit it off from the beginning. I learned a lot about Dana when I interviewed her for the paper—a new doctor in town was big news. Our acquaintance quickly expanded to a real friendship that gave both of us a shared sense of belonging.

Now it was a fine Friday evening, and neither of us had any demands on our time for once. Dana had wiped the last toddler's runny nose and sent her back home with her mother with a recommendation for some TLC and an over-the-counter cold medication. After such a short time in Oxbow, Dr. Dana was already well known and well loved by all the children and their mothers, who had soon found that she was an excellent physician and seemed to have just the right touch with both her young patients and their moms.

I had actually gotten out of the newspaper office shortly after five that afternoon. I had then called Dana, and we quickly made plans to have dinner. We usually had our little dinners at my place because we loved to watch the river roll by as we ate. Plus, it gave Dana the chance to get out of her tiny apartment for the evening and play with Dutch. Dana leased an apartment above Ruby Mae's Café, one of Oxbow's "social centers." It was an especially nice apartment just down the block from her office (and from mine), so it was convenient. But her landlord, Oliver St. Claire, wouldn't allow any real pets there, so I graciously shared Dutch with her.

Our little suppers were nothing fancy. Dana had her mom's recipe for spaghetti and brought her "world famous" sauce. I made the salad and garlic rolls. If we really felt decadent later, we'd pull out the ice cream (Rocky Road for me, butter pecan for Dana) to put the perfect cap on the perfect girls' evening. Neither of us had a man in our life at that time, and that was just fine—or so we always told ourselves.

As we were getting ready to clear the table the phone rang, and I stepped inside to answer it. It was Glenn Morrison calling from Hayworth, Georgia.

"Hey, girl! How's everything down in the Land of Sunshine?" This, Glenn's usual greeting, always gave me a little lift when I heard it. He had helped open the door to one of the most important friendships of my life—that with Dana's father—and had helped me find some elusive pieces to the forty-year-old mystery of what had happened to the Parker family. We had kept in touch ever since.

"Did I catch you at a bad time?"

"Hey yourself, Glenn! You know very well you couldn't possibly call at a bad time! My friend Dana and I are just finishing a great spaghetti supper—we're well fed and happy. You don't know what you're missing! So tell me the news. Are you running that law office yet? And how are your folks?"