Saltery Cove Road

The problem with living in Kodiak is that it is very easy to hide a body. Even if there were no bodies to be found, there’s no way to tell the difference. Our town, this beautiful emerald island, could be hiding countless mysteries. I hadn’t even considered this possibility until Granddad brought in the paper that morning. Normally, he reads the whole thing, front to back—save for the comic strips; he leaves those for me—but on that Monday morning, when Mom and Jessie had just left for work, he was staring at the front page with an expression on his face that I’d never seen before. His glassy eyes darted back and forth as he read and reread. His chapped lips were parted, his reading glasses slid down his pointed nose, and he sank into his leather chair, seeming to completely disassociate from reality.

This was concerning to watch, and I was already prepared to dial 9-1-1. After observing this behavior, I rushed over to him, cell in hand.

“Granddad? You okay?”

“Hm? Ah…yes, I…hm…” He flinched as I addressed him, and he was unable to string a sentence together.

“That’s not very convincing. If you need an ambulance, I can—”

“—ambulance! Just because I’m eighty-six don’t mean I could keel over at any moment! I’m a perfectly healthy young buck.”

He returned to himself then, and I slid my phone into my back pocket. “Oookay. Well, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. What’s on your mind?”

Granddad silently motioned to the couch where he wanted me to sit and turned the newspaper around so I could see the front page.

Kodiak Native Lena Harriot, 52 Years Old, Goes Missing

I frowned as I read, then studied the photograph provided. She was fair skinned with kind baby blue eyes. Her wispy hair was tied back into a bun and in the process of graying, but there was still some blonde hanging on for dear life. I didn’t recognize her, but clearly, this story disturbed Granddad quite a bit.

“Did you know her?”

“Nope.”

“Oh…then why’s this upsetting you so much?”

“Cuz, I don’t know her. Never seen this name or this face in my life.”

My brows furrowed as I searched for a way this could make sense. I came up with nothing.

“I’m sorry, I don’t follow…why does that bother you?”

My grandfather looked very agitated now. He didn’t seem to get what I wasn’t getting. He grabbed his cane and shakily stood to his feet. I rose to help him, but he waved me away. Refusing help was always Joe Fischer’s specialty.

“I know everyone in this town. If I don’t know ‘em, I know someone who does, or I know their folks or their uncles or their great grandparents. Ain’t never heard of a Lena Harriot. Called up my boys and they ain’t heard of her. Their wives, neither. Nobody in Kodiak knows who this is, but according to the paper, she’s born and raised here.”

“Do you think it could be a misprint? That happens sometimes.”

Granddad scoffed and shook his head. “The Kodiak Daily Mirror don’t misprint, girl!”

“Okay, okay, sheesh…I mean, someone has to know of her, or else they wouldn’t have written this story.”

“Maya.” Granddad said my name with a frustrated sigh. “You’re not understanding me. This lady. She don’t exist.”

I felt a chill go up and down my spine as I detected the tone of my grandfather’s voice. He was deeply disturbed, and it was palpable. Contagious, even. But I still couldn’t believe this could be true; it didn’t make a lick of sense.

“Why don’t I go to the Daily Mirror myself and inquire about this Lena person? There’s no way that she just doesn’t exist.”

“Pfft. Go ahead and waste your time then. Bring me back a birch beer while you’re out.”

“Sure thing, Granddad.”

I heard him mumble something under his breath as I grabbed my keys. I assumed that it had to be something about me not having a job, and I didn’t have the time or the energy for that conversation. I swiftly slipped out of the front door and hopped into my mustard yellow buggy, now eager to prove Granddad wrong so that he would relax and stop being so cryptic. I was raised to believe that there was a feasible explanation for everything in this world. There were no exceptions.

I drove into town that afternoon feeling excited that I had something to do that day as opposed to just sitting around. Sending in college applications felt pointless; it was too late for me. College freshman at 26. Pathetic. Even if that weren’t the case, my grades weren’t ever good enough for higher education. That didn’t stop my mother from forcing me to apply anyway. A job was hopeless, too, since not even the Pizza Barn would hire someone who had been a D-average student and had no previous experience to speak of. I might as well have been a ghost in Kodiak. Existing and floating through life, bored out of my mind, while everybody else had things to do and places to go. People to see. Goals to meet. Somebody to be.

When I arrived at the Daily Mirror, the receptionist looked shocked, as if she’d not seen another human being in weeks. She sat up straight in her chair and flashed me a plastic smile as her black bangs dangled in front of her eyes.

“Hey there! Can I help you?”

“Yes, I, uh, I wanted to see if I could speak to the journalist who wrote the article on the front page of the recent paper. The one about the missing woman.”

“Oh! Let’s see…”

The receptionist typed on the squeaky keyboard, sighing every few seconds as she waited for the dusty device to load.

“So, Mr. Keyne wrote that piece, but you’ve just missed him unfortunately! He’s gone on a vacation with his wife and little girls. Lucky bastard, I can’t remember the last time I got a day off—but, uh, anyway! Can’t help ya. Sorry.”

I leaned forward against the desk and snatched one of the mints that sat in a rusted mental tin. What an unfortunate coincidence that he had to go now, of all times.

“Do you or does any other journalist know anything about this Lena Harriot person?”

“Nah, don’t think anybody knew her. Sad thing, though. I bet it was a man. Probably her boyfriend or husband or something; that’s always how it goes, and I know cuz I listen to lots of true crime. Coulda tossed her in the Buskin or the Bay. Or maybe out by Saltery.”

“Saltery, huh…” I mused, remembering how that word felt familiar.

I turned over my shoulder to look at the newsstand and narrowed my eyes to read the small print without having to move. Sure enough, that word was there, in bold.

“Oh, the story says that Saltery Cove Road was Lena’s last known location!”

The receptionist perked up, eyebrows raised. “Huh, really? Dang. That’s like, a touristy hiking spot.”

I bit my lip as I became lost in thought. Could Lena have been a tourist and mistaken for a Kodiak native? Would someone near that road know more?

I took a few steps back and took the paper off the top of the stack, skimming over the words on the front page and looking at Lena’s picture once again. I met her eyes, and they seemed to pierce through mine. A numbing sensation overtook me, and goosebumps covered my arms. There was something about this woman. I didn’t know what it was, but it felt so…familiar. So loving, so sweet. So warm. It was none of my business, but now I felt like I had to uncover this mystery. Less so for Granddad’s sanity, and more for my own.

As requested, I returned home after my outing with a birch beer for my grandfather, and he proceeded to lecture me about finding a job or going to school, literally anything that would keep me busy instead of free to fool around town getting involved in some shady crime. I would have thought that he would appreciate having someone home to look after him or keep him company. No such luck.

For the following weeks, I stopped bothering with college, stopped refreshing Indeed and ZipRecruiter every day. Instead, I was in the library researching the disappearance of Lena Harriot or driving from home to home, asking if anyone knew a shred of anything about her. I had something to do now, something that actually mattered, at least to me. Even though every clue I followed led me to a dead-end, I was still enjoying myself quite a bit. Perhaps too much.

Now, it had been one month since the Lena story, and I had decided that I myself was going to Saltery Cove Road. I didn’t know what I was going to do once I got there, but I’d run out of options. There were only about 6,022 people in Kodiak, and it really seemed that not a soul knew her. This angered me. I knew what it was to be forgotten. Unwanted. Unloved. I never really knew my real parents, all I knew was the various foster homes until I met Mom, and at the time, Dad. They all seem to have forgotten Dad, too. Then it dawned on me that I didn’t really remember him, either. All I knew was that I’d had him, at one point. And he had mom too. Then he left her for another woman, whom I don’t remember either. It shouldn’t have been that long ago, so I should know these details. But I didn’t.

When I got to the road, I immediately noted how empty it was. This was good, and actually not surprising. The types of tourists who come to Kodiak instead of Anchorage or Juneau are the kinds who wake up before the sun does, and it was 6 pm on the dot. They would be long gone now.

For the first time since the start of my investigation, it dawned on me that this was a rather dangerous thing to do. I should have informed someone where I was going or what I was doing because if I went missing too, they might never find me. At least I would have Granddad and Mom and Jessie who knew me, and maybe that receptionist would recognize me. I wouldn’t be an enigma like Lena. There was no signal out by where I was, so I couldn’t call anyone.

Oh, well. I wouldn’t be very long.

I followed the hiking trail, keeping my eyes peeled for anything out of place. But after twenty minutes, I started to feel stupid. What was I going to find here? She went missing one entire month ago. Any traces she could have left behind wouldn’t still be here. I turned around to head back to my car, deciding that I was going to give this up. I was no detective. This is why I could never get into any university, this is why I could never get a job. I felt worthless and so impossibly small.

On the way back to the parking lot, though, I started to have a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach. It was like an ache, a rumble, a lurching. Then, I saw the first of it. This cloud of misty fog. It hadn’t been there when I had passed by before. Everything inside of me was telling me to run, but I had to follow it. I had to. I began to hear whispering. I heard a voice that sounded oh so familiar, I could almost place it, but not quite.

As I followed the fog, my walk turned into a jog which turned into a sprint. I was in the middle of the forest now, surrounded by this fog, heart racing, ears ringing, legs trembling. Then, in one instant, it all hit me at once. I fell to my knees and began to sob.

I was sobbing because I remembered.

Lena and I went to the mall, searching for a gift for Dad. The divorce was final, and his parents were giving him hell about it. Infidelity was a sin, they lectured. Amy was such a wonderful woman, and what about the girls? To cheer him up, Lena decided to get him a comic book, but she needed my help to choose which since she didn’t know superheroes as I did.

Lena was the woman that Dad left Mom for. Why didn’t I remember that? How could I have forgotten? How could the whole town have forgotten? That affair was the talk of the town at one point! Sure, I was the only one in the family who liked her, but that’s no reason for her to just leave Kodiak’s collective memory. I loved her. I loved her as much as I loved Mom. Now she was gone.

I’d almost twisted my ankle as I raced back to my car. I didn’t put my seatbelt on. I just drove. I got back to my home, ready to tell Granddad, Mom, and Jessie that we knew Lena, we knew her, we really knew her. I was going to drive us all to the hospital so the doctors could deal with the amnesia. I was going to call Dad and tell him how sorry I was, both for his loss and for how I abandoned him, for how I had taken Mom’s side and believed the lies.

I threw open my front door to find Granddad in his chair. Mom and Jessie were home, sitting at the kitchen table. None of them seemed to notice that I had come in.

“Guys!! I—I solved the mystery! Sort of! Lena Harriot, we knew her! She was Dad’s fiancé! We knew her!”

There was nothing but silence.

“Hello?? Guys this is serious! I swear I’m not crazy!”

Silence.

I spent ten more minutes screaming and waving my arms, but none of them even glanced in my direction. They couldn’t hear me. They couldn’t see me. I began to cry again. This had to be some sort of nightmare. This couldn’t be happening.

No matter how much I wailed, none of them noticed me. As I glanced around the room, I realized in horror that I was in none of the photographs hung up on the walls. The door to my bedroom was open, and it wasn’t my bedroom. It was a home gym. It was real, my eyes were not deceiving me. How could they just forget me? Is it because I was adopted? Was it because I wasn’t a real member of the family? This wasn’t fair, what had I done to deserve this?

“GUYS!! MOM! JESS! GRANDDAD! PLEASE!!”

They did not respond, but people did begin to speak.

Jessie leaned over Granddad’s shoulder and peered at the newspaper. He had a horrified and terribly familiar expression on his face.

“Granddad? You okay?”

“Hm? Ah…yes, I…hm…” He flinched as she addressed him, and he was unable to string a sentence together.

“That’s not very convincing You look like you’ve seen a ghost. What’s on your mind?”

Granddad turned the newspaper around so that Jessie could see the front page.

Kodiak Native Maya Fischer, 26 Years Old, Goes Missing

“Did you know her?”

“Nope.”

“Oh…then why’s this upsetting you so much?”

“Cuz, I don’t know her. Never seen this name or this face in my life.”

“…why does that bother you?”

My grandfather looked very agitated now. He didn’t seem to get what Jessie wasn’t getting. He grabbed his cane and shakily stood to his feet.

“I know everyone in this town. If I don’t know ‘em, I know someone who does, or I know their folks or their uncles or their great grandparents. Ain’t never heard of a Maya Fischer. Sure, we got the same surname, but that must be a coincidence cuz you’re an only child. Called up my boys and they ain’t heard of her. Their wives neither. Nobody in Kodiak knows who this is, but according to the paper, she’s born and raised here.”

“Do you think it could be a misprint? That happens sometimes.”

Granddad scoffed and shook his head. “The Kodiak Daily Mirror don’t misprint, girl!”

“Okay, okay, sheesh…I mean, someone has to know of her, or else they wouldn’t have written this story.”

“Jessie.” Granddad said my sister’s name with a frustrated sigh. “You’re not understanding me. This lady…”

“…she don’t exist.”