Route 66

18 Fake Smiles

Blake's parents graciously gave us a loan so that we could afford the down payment on a home in Arden Hills, a quaint suburb of Minneapolis. It was a beautiful ranch home with a spacious backyard in a young neighborhood. Most residents had children or were just starting out like us.

I reached out to the neighbors and got to know them, and during working hours the wives would come to my place, or I to theirs, and we'd chat about many things, but conversations usually steered to chatter about our husbands in the end.

An endless barrage of questions were flung my way asking when our family would grow. I gave a congenial smile and said we hadn't really decided but hopefully soon. At no point did I share my dark past. How could I tell these women that I didn't feel ready to weather the challenges of motherhood after experiencing sinister things they could never fathom?

The fact is I was screaming inside to share those experiences with someone who could share my emotional burden, aside from Blake.

Yes, I had gone to therapists and would periodically get calls from the FBI to see if my story checked out regarding a Soviet connection. But that was different. I wanted to share my experience with female friends, but wasn't ready for that yet. Part of me wanted to go to the hilltops and yell for all I was worth that there was a psychotic madman out there who destroyed my life. But would these women believe me, and if they did, would they even care?

When I came back from a shopping trip on a Saturday afternoon my jaw dropped when I found myself staring at a polished black baby grand piano in the living room. Blake gently rested his hand on my shoulder, grinned, and said, "Do you like it?"

"Blake, it's beautiful!"

"You're so talented," Blake said, brimming with pride.

"I don't know what to say. An upright would have been fine and it looks so expensive."

"Nothing's too good for our resident virtuoso," Blake said, beaming.

I gazed up at him with an excited twinkling in my eye.

"Go ahead and try it," he urged.

With a straightened back, I took my place on the bench, fingers poised over the keys, mentally struggling to recall the distant notes that felt obscured by an impenetrable fog, my hands shaking and sweat streaming down my forehead.

"Veronica? Honey?"

"I-I can't play. I can't play anything. What's wrong with me?!!" I screamed in frustration and banged my fists on the keyboard, the dissonance echoing throughout the house.

Blake gently wrapped his arms around me as I buried my face in his chest and hugged him tightly.

"I called the Sheriff in Beatty yesterday and they still haven't found a trace of that terrible place where they held me. How can they get away with murdering so many?!" I exclaimed.

With a thoughtful expression, Blake glanced out the window and offered an explanation but I couldn't tell if he was serious or just humoring me.

"You know how I told you we found blood soaked blouses next to a dead coyote? Well, maybe that's what they've been doing with all their victims to throw law enforcement off their trail. They abduct them and put scraps of clothing next to an animal they kill themselves to make it look like the victims were taken down by the wild. After all, that's what we thought happened to you."

To know that Randolph may still be out there, somewhere, was enough to drive me crazy. I'd wake up from nightmares in a cold sweat and Blake would have to calm me down.

Could it be that I really had escaped from wild animals and Annette wasn't so lucky and that after my escape I wandered the desert for a week, disoriented and hallucinating, until Steve found me?

No. I didn't have the survival skills to beat it, especially in my mental state, and the track marks on my arm?

I desperately wanted to know the truth.