I hadn't come home this way in a long time. Actually, it had been seven years. And I didn't know why I decided to take that road. Or why I'm now writing this down.
But go down that road, I did.
The last time I'd been there, I had been a kid -- 14, maybe, on my way home from my older brother's spelling bee. The day my brother had qualified for nationals. The day a week before my father and brother left for Washington, D.C., and never came back. It was the day I first saw him.
Since I had just been along for the ride, I had long since finished the book I had brought to occupy myself with. I had resorted to counting fence posts along that long, winding country road, trying to stay awake. But then all of a sudden, the fence posts changed. They were bigger, simpler, sturdier. I sat up and looked past the posts.
There was this huge, expansive ranch. We drove alongside it for several minutes, alongside pastures full of sheep and cattle, before I saw the barns and the three houses. Before I saw him.
At first glance, he didn't seem to be very unique. Just a kid on a horse, trailed by two or three dogs. Blue jeans, t-shirt, boots, baseball cap. Good steady seat and hands as he guided his mount. He couldn't have been more than 16 -- just another kid.
And yet . . .
Something made me do a double-take. Something made me look harder, to see him clearly. And something caused me to remember his face. It was etched into my mind, and in the horrifying weeks to follow that day, that boy's face would come to me at the strangest times, both comforting and bewildering me.
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