She has the property survey out in front of her. On it I can see the main house, the barn, the well, the septic. I didn’t know the other families were our renters. Did they pay? Or was it a barter arrangement? I ask the question of Joy but she shakes her head. She doesn’t know the answer.
I think of the bunker, packed with food supplies, big bins of rice, flour, sugar, canned fruits and other goods, the guns, ammunition. It never occurred to me to ask where it all came from.
“The Wilsons lived here.” She points to a clearing where no structure is shown on the survey. “They built a cabin. No permit was obtained, of course, but I’ve been up there and seen it with my own eyes. It’s a solid, well-built structure. There’s a generator, some solar panels.”
I’ve been to the main house a time or two since that night, but I’ve never wandered the property again even though Robin always begs me to follow her, to go back to the tree house.
“They were all off the grid?” said Bailey.
“There was a power line to the property if that’s what you mean. But Luke Carson built a pretty sophisticated system using solar panels. There were a couple of generators. There are two septic tanks on the property, running water from wells.”
“But they were self-sufficient up there.”
“More or less. Robin’s mother worked in town at the grocery. Lovely lady, always with a smile. But the Wilsons and the Stones, they were real ‘hill people’ as folks in town here like to say. Lived off the land almost totally. Homeschooled kids. Failed to report births, buried their own dead.”
“Doomsday preppers,” says Bailey. He seems to like this phrase; I suppose it’s a kind of shorthand that makes the lifestyle choice easy to understand.
Joy shakes her head slightly, pushes up her glasses. “These folks thought that society had already collapsed. They had dropped out, walked away from—”
“The world of men,” I finish. “That’s what my father always said. That the end was already underway.”
“Some days it’s hard to argue with that,” says Joy.
I think of the fires raging, the virus that’s spreading, the category five hurricanes that have been ravaging coastlines, war all over the world, famine, drought. Maybe he was right.
“Anyway, they were up there peacefully enough,” Joy continues. “Living off the land, not really bothering anyone and no one bothering with them. Then the local police got the call about guns and ammunition being stored.”
“Law enforcement doesn’t like to hear about private weapons stockpiles,” says Bailey. “Generally it comes to no good. I’m not surprised that they raided the property.”
Joy shook her head.
“It wasn’t meant to be a raid. I don’t get that sense. It was meant to be an investigative call, hoping for transparency and cooperation. But apparently, word got back that the cops were coming, and the men up there armed themselves.”
“How did word get back? A leak in the department?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know,” she says with a sigh. “But violence erupted. A tragedy.”
“Who died that night?” I ask.
“Your mother and brother.” She reaches for my hand. “The Stones—Wyatt, Melba, Emily, and Joseph. The Wilsons fled.”
“How many Wilsons were there?” asks Bailey.
Joy opens another binder and flips through the pages.
“Jessup and Lina and as far as I can recall there were two children, whose births were not recorded in The Hollows. But there might have been more children born at home.”
As hard as I try, I can’t remember any of them. I have vague recall of the men who gathered with my father sometimes, one with dark hair and a scar on his face, the other with a shaved head, lots of tattoos. Maybe there was an older boy around Jay’s age, sullen and silent. I don’t know that I ever saw the women, or Emily, the girl whose life I stole. I suppose it’s the typical myopia of youth; you only see what impacts you directly.
“Any idea where Jessup and Lina Wilson might have gone?” Bailey again, looking for that thread he hopes to pull.
Joy Martin shrugs. “I imagine they found another place to live off the grid. When strangers leave this town, we let them go.”
The comment is more than a little pointed. I hold back a smile, wondering what Joy has against Bailey.
My gaze falls on Bailey’s phone; he’s recording the conversation. I wonder if he’s recorded other conversations, those between us, and that’s why he never takes notes. I don’t say anything but he sees me looking, gives me a lift of his eyebrows like: Yeah, so what.