Sanctuary
By
E. Edgar Price
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Published by:
Sanctuary
Copyright 2012 E. Edgar Price
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Chapter 1: Overlook
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The mountains of Colorado looked strange and alien to Sarah. She’d never seen anything like them. They were jagged and sharp, covered sparsely with trees that only highlighted the visible stratum. Unlike the red, sandy mountains of Grand Junction, where Sarah and her family had flown into, the Rockies further south were dark: black and silver and gray. Oddly, they still had adornments of snow even though it was the end of May. Miles away, back home in Mobile, Alabama, it was already hot and humid, but here the air was thin and cool. It was like a whole other world.
Sarah was startled out of her window gazing when the SUV came to a jarring halt. She turned from the pretty view and watched with knots in her stomach as her dad got out of the vehicle without a word and marched to the edge of the overlook where they were stopped. Benji, her thirteen year old little brother, began to pound the dashboard in front of him. Looking around the seat in front of her, she watched as Benji continued to vent his anger on the rented vehicle.
Sarah pulled her headphones, which had been serving to block out the continued arguments in the front of the car, out of her ears. She looked between Benji’s scrunched up face and her father’s rapidly retreating back with wary apprehension.
“What just happened?” Sarah asked once her brother calmed down.
Benji’s face was splotchy with anger. He didn’t answer her. Instead, he glared out the window at the tall pacing figure of their father. They’d pulled off at a tourist’s overlook and Todd, their father, was currently ping ponging in anger between a low stone wall and a brief picnic area.
Benji and Todd had been fighting over this trip for weeks now. The problem: this wasn’t a vacation. This was a move. And Benji wasn’t bothering to hide his unhappiness about it.
Sarah looked over to her older brother, Tyler, sitting next to her. His ear-buds were in, his iPod was on, and he was indiscriminately ignoring all of them while reading a book. Sarah, sighed, patted Benji’s shoulder, and attempted to calm him as she unbuckled her seat belt and opened her door.
“This isn’t helping, Benji,” she said softly, “Dad’s just trying to do what he thinks is best for all of us.” Benji snorted and kicked the dashboard again. She hadn’t really expected him to listen to her. “Hang on for a minute and we’ll get a snack and work it out,” she told him diplomatically.
Sarah rudely shoved Tyler’s arm to get his attention and motioned towards the grocery bag filled with snacks between their feet and then to a picnic table she spotted nearby before getting out of the cumbersome rental car. She checked to make sure he was following through with her gestured suggestion (he was, though his headphones were still crammed in his ears) before she took a deep breath and started toward her pacing, red faced, father.
It had been like this since their father, a professor of anthropology, had announced, with no preamble, he was going to Australia for a year to study aboriginal religions. That was two months ago. It had been only nine months since their mother, Annie, died in a horrible car accident on a rain soaked bridge back in July. The one year anniversary was now looming ahead, barely a month away.
Todd had never been the world’s best dad, always working and traveling periodically for research, but he tried to make time for his kids and his wife. He showed up at their sports games or school plays when he could manage it and took Annie out to dinner or a the theater at least once a month. He was a good dad, Sarah thought. He just couldn’t handle being a single dad.
Their small family was stopped about an hour south of Grand Junction, Colorado at yet another scenic overlook (people in Colorado must love to look at the scenery, Sarah surmised). The rental SUV was crammed with all the stuff they could reasonably pack and they were about a half an hour away from a town called Natalie where Black Rock Wildlife Sanctuary was apparently situated. And, of course, the closer they’d gotten to their destination the more vocal Benji became and the angrier and more nervous Todd seemed. Sarah was grateful that Benji had at least waited until they were off their numerous flights and out of the airports before he’d thrown this particular tantrum.
The sun shone brightly, at odds with her family’s mood. When Sarah reached her father, Todd stopped pacing and stood with his hands in his back pockets looking over the low stone wall and down to the cliffs and valleys below. He took slow deep breaths, but Sarah thought he still looked tense and red.
“Daddy?” she said cautiously as she approached him. “You okay?”
He didn’t look at her, but said, “I forgot how thin the air is up here. Funny how you forget little things like that.”
“How long has it been since you’ve been here?” Sarah asked, not willing to push into talking about Benji just yet.
“Not since your mom and me got married,” he said quietly. This was new. He hadn’t talked about her mom directly since her death and Sarah was startled into listening. “She stayed with us, me and your aunt and my parents, during summer holidays. She went to the university in Denver with Aunt Rachel. That was how we met.” Todd’s shoulders had relaxed, his hands drooped at his sides and his voice was nearly a whisper now. With a quick shrug and rapid change in demeanor he huffed, “I’m fine Sarah. Your brother just got me riled.”
He hugged her to his side before looking back towards the SUV. “I see you’ve got them setting out snacks,” he commented. “What do you say we eat before we get going again?” He smiled at her and walked over to the picnic table where Tyler and Benji now sat, munching chips and cookies without enthusiasm.
“Sure, Daddy,” she said quietly to his retreating back. “Sounds like a good plan.”
As she walked away from the overlook, she watched her father with a worried frown. She could have sworn he’d looked almost frightened when he was talking about Mom. But that was stupid. He was just sad. They all were. But the thought brought on a small fear in herself, and the more she thought of it, the more she was sure he really had looked scared. Not sad, but scared.
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Chapter 2: The Middle of Nowhere