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CHAPTER 20
Cedar Creek, Nevada Friday, July 26, 2024
SHE MANAGED THE FIVE-HOUR FLIGHT FROM RALEIGH TO RENO WITHOUT incident, found her rental car, and headed out of Reno International Airport right on schedule. Cedar Creek was perched in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains an hour and a half to the north. The largest city in Harrison County, Cedar Creek was a mini metropolis flanked by the Great Basin to the east and the insurmountable peaks of the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the west. The creek for which the town was named originated from a large lake in Oregon, merged with tributaries that funneled down from the snow-capped Sierra Nevada peaks, and split the town in half before emptying into Lake Harmony on the south side of Cedar Creek.
As Sloan crested the bluff that overlooked the town, she took in the aerial view. The quaint town sprawled out below her revealing beautiful homes lining each side of the creek, and three arch bridges—one to the north, another to the south, and the third smack dab in the middle of town—that vaulted over the water to connect one side of town to the other. Had Sloan been visiting for reasons other than reuniting with the family she had been abducted from and trying to wiggle her way into their good graces to find answers to what happened to her birth parents nearly thirty years earlier, she might have considered the place beautiful. Instead, she took a scientific approach to the town of Cedar Creek, the same way she had to the five autopsies she assisted with during the past week. Like the bodies and the clues they offered, Cedar Creek held something deeper than its beauty. The town held secrets, and Sloan was on a mission to dissect them from wherever they hid.
For one hundred years, and three generations, the Margolis family had run this small splinter of the country, controlled the local government, and had managed to stretch their reach into state-run industries and offices. Sloan was unsure what sort of dangers lurked in Cedar Creek. She knew only that since discovering she was baby Charlotte, a girl who had disappeared when she was two months old and separated from parents who loved her, she had a burning desire to find answers. As Sloan drove down into the valley and toward Cedar Creek, she knew she was headed to the only place on earth where she might find them.
The two-lane road twisted for a mile until it skirted along the creek, which Sloan estimated to be two football fields wide. On the edge of town a sign welcomed her to Cedar Creek—A PLACE WHERE DREAMS COME TRUE. From what Sloan had learned so far about the things that had taken place here, she wasn’t so sure about that.
She drove north with a perfect view across the water, where the setting sun lit the creek-side homes in the splendid glow of evening. When she entered the town center she took a few minutes to explore, navigating through a series of roundabouts until the last spun her into the heart of town, a place known locally as The Block. She took in the shops, galleries, and restaurants the quaint town had on display. On the north side she found the Louis-Bullat Bridge—named, Sloan knew from her research, for the structural engineers who had designed it—which stretched over Cedar Creek and took Sloan to the east side of town. She turned down a side street and found the Vrbo home she had rented until September. A month felt suddenly inadequate to figure out what had happened to her parents three decades earlier.
Sloan parked in the driveway and pulled her suitcase from the backseat. She looked at the mountains to the west, which cast long shadows over the town as the sun began its descent behind their peaks. At once she felt small and insignificant standing in this valley in northern Nevada, but also like she was meant to be there. Like the universe had brought her to this exact place, at this exact time, to somehow right an injustice from decades earlier. To find answers for the Margolis family, Eric Stamos, and herself.
She heard the crow of a bird—a long squawk that echoed into the evening. When she turned, Sloan saw a Cooper’s hawk balanced at the top of a lodgepole pine. It crowed again before taking flight, pumping its powerful wings and soaring high over Sloan’s head. She followed the hawk’s flight as it headed west into the setting sun, until it was just a small speck on the horizon before disappearing.
Her phone buzzed with a text message from Nora Margolis.
Did you make it?
Sloan stared at the phone and tried to calm her nerves. Her anxiety felt less like butterflies swarming in her stomach and more like luna moths ricocheting off the inside of her ribcage as they attempted to escape her chest.
Sloan typed back:
Just pulled up to my rental house.
NORA: I’m literally shaking with excitement. What time can we meet?
SLOAN: I need a minute to put myself together. Long travel day.
NORA: Take your time. I can come to you, or you can come here. I’m on the north side of town.
SLOAN: Address?
NORA: 378 Chestnut Circle.
SLOAN: See you soon.
NORA: Can’t wait!
Sloan took a deep breath. There was no turning back now.
CHAPTER 21
Cedar Creek, Nevada Friday, July 26, 2024
BY 8:00 P.M. SLOAN HAD UNPACKED HER SUITCASE AND FILLED THE drawers of the bedroom armoire with a month’s worth of clothes. She ditched her cross-country travel attire and slipped into a pair of jeans and a white halter top. She took a moment to comb her hair and freshen her makeup before she climbed into her rental car and, with the flutter still constant against her ribcage, headed to Nora Margolis’s home. Sloan followed the creek north until she found Chestnut Circle and navigated the long, bending road canopied by the arching branches of bristlecone pines that lined each side until she arrived at Nora Margolis’s home.
It was a beautiful, two-story Victorian with a wraparound porch and meticulously manicured lawn. A flood of adrenaline pumped through her veins as Sloan pulled into the driveway. She took another deep breath before she climbed from the car and smoothed the front of her jeans, a nervous tell she’d performed her entire life—before important tests, before her first day in the morgue, and now, before meeting a member of her biological family. Sloan walked up the front steps of the wraparound porch, potted plants hanging in rows on either side of the front door, and rang the bell.
The door opened a moment later and it took only a second before Nora Margolis began to cry.
“Oh my God,” Nora said, standing in the doorway and staring at Sloan. “You look just like Annabelle.”
The woman moved in for a hug, and Sloan felt obligated to not only accept the gesture, but return it. She couldn’t quite understand why Nora’s emotions were so contagious, but before Sloan knew it she was crying, too. She had no emotional connection to this family, but understood that for just a short while she had once been a part of it. And so Nora Margolis’s reaction to laying eyes on her husband’s biological niece was logical, and Sloan was not about to fight against it.
Nora broke free from the embrace and held Sloan at arm’s length as she stared.
