We had been on the road for about a month, slowed by an epic drug-fueled night in Southern Oregon that damaged everything around us and had us needing recovery time. I learned the linchpin story that changed the way I viewed an unknowable past, something so dark that it was hard to discern without recoiling.
On a bit of a whim, we detoured into the charming town of Ferndale, CA — a three-block strip of Victorian facades and old-timey kitsch surrounded by rich river-bottom meadows and redolent with the scent of cattle. An excellent dinner and a few bottles of wine had us in a giggly-yet-conspiratorial mood when we returned to the Gingerbread House to have our young hostess hand us her home phone number. There was another set of guests in the room across from ours but no staff onsite overnight. She left with a cheery wave and we scampered out to the car to snag a couple bottles of Japanese whiskey. The other guests were a young couple and they had returned from THEIR dinner and promptly turned on a television. Funny, I don't even remember seeing one in our room. The common areas were our first thought for playing but we quickly discovered that every bedroom in the rambling mansion was unlocked and we drank our way from room to room looking for interesting corners.
Jess was hurtling down the hallway back to our room, green negligee and heels a fitting complement to her wild red hair and an empty whiskey bottle in each hand, when the door across from ours opened. I was further back in the shadows but caught the boy's face peer out at the commotion and grow pale as if some sort of wraith were assaulting him. The door closed abruptly and several locks were latched firmly. The boy had more sense than I in that moment but I have always wondered what he told his partner?