Chapter 3.

Dallas Jacobs.

He was the first born son to Susan and John Jacobs.

My parents had struggled to get pregnant. They'd been married five years already and had been trying to have their first baby from the very first night of their marriage. They desperately wanted a family.

My mother, Susan, born on a reservation in Wyoming, longed to have a house full of children. Growing up on the reservation she watched all of the other families with all of their children. She had so many friends to play with during the day or while attending school. They'd ride horses, play hide and seek in the fields, gather together to listen to grandparents telling them all about their heritage and stories from a time gone by. All of the children would sit, caught on every word, smiling to each other as the stories of their ancestors took them on wild journeys.

But when it was all over, and the sun would start to dip down on the horizon, she'd go back to her tiny home where she shared a bedroom alone with her mother. She'd longed for siblings, but her father had been killed only a year after she'd been born.

Her grandparents had long since past, and she felt lonely every night she tucked into bed with her mother.

When her mother met a man named Rusty who was a tourist passing through on a tour of the Western US, they were instantly smitten. After only knowing him for one week her mother packed up their lives and moved to Alabama when my mother was only ten. She'd hoped that maybe there, she'd finally get the siblings she always wanted.

Instead, all her mother and new step father did was fight. Outside of the home, Susan found that the other kids in her new town and school, didn't want to be friends with her. They told her she was different. They would tease her, asking her where her feathered crown was. Little Indian Princess. She'd never felt more isolated from her people as when she was surrounded with other kids who didn't look like her, who didn't have stories to tell like hers.

Going home was like entering a war zone, dodging flying plates or shattered glasses while covering her ears to avoid the words like daggers being tossed between two people who were supposed to be in love.

To pass the time, she'd paint. She'd paint the places she missed. The mountains, the plains, the inky night skies decorated with shimmering diamond like stars.

She escaped into her canvases, letting everything around her slide away.

When she was seventeen years old, she met a boy. A nineteen year old John Jacobs who was in town touring Alabama University. He was their with his father, sitting at a table in the diner she waitressed at.

She would swear to you that the moment their eyes locked onto one another's, there had been an electric current. Her head felt woozy, her breath hitched. He would say he'd never seen someone with such beautiful raven hair or eyes so full of life and longing than when he'd looked into hers for the first time.

Their fingers touched as she passed him his water and they both say they knew. They knew right then and right there without a word needed, that they were going to get married.

He came back the next day, waited for her to finish her shift, then they'd spent the entire night together, walking around town in circles, talking about everything under the sun. Susan had blisters on her feet when she finally snuck back into her house that morning as the sun came up, but she didn't care. Not in the slightest. Because she knew without a doubt, she'd never be lonely again.

Months passed where they wrote each other every single day, both running to their mailboxes, hearts slamming with excitement to pull out a new letter with their names on it.

Much like her mother had done, as soon as Susan graduated, with her cap and gown still in tow, she boarded the bus that took her to Montana. That took her to John.

On her twenty second birthday, John placed a tiny diamond on her ring finger and promised to love her with every breath he took, until he had no more breaths to give.

They'd both seen what bad marriages looked like, and together they vowed to do better. To listen to each other. To respect each other. To never let the other feel like they weren't the one who hung the stars and moon into the night sky.

All they wanted, was to do better for themselves and to the children they both dreamed of having.

They bought a little white brick home on a large plot of land with the woods at the back, and they married under a flower arch in a courthouse side room.

But the children didn't come.

They spent countless dollars on doctors visits, interventions, and specialists trying to conceive, but nothing worked.

Their hearts where broken but their love was strong. Strong enough that as long as they had each other, nothing would break them. They could be whole, just the two of them if that's what God had in mind.

The Lord works in mysterious ways though.

Five years after they had given up, Susan missed her period.

Nine months, and a long miserable delivery later, Dallas Jacobs came screaming into this world.

Susan and John had never felt more joy than when they held their baby boy in their arms for the first time.

To hear them tell it, there had never been a more perfect baby to ever be born. He slept through the night, he rarely ever cried, he smiled and laughed and watched them intently as they spoke to him. He was the perfect child, the final piece in their happily ever after.

Less than a year later, they were blessed again.

Two sweet babies when they'd thought they'd never even get one.

I remember a lot from growing up with Dallas as a big brother. Or as I used to like to say, a slightly older brother.

I believed my parents stories of what a perfect baby he was, because I knew just how perfect he'd always been to me.

He was quiet, always watching people, and listening to them intently. Never overstepping or pushing himself into conversations. He was the type of guy you could spend hours talking to, knowing you had his full attention.

Dallas was my best friend.

We shared a bedroom for the entire time we lived in that house. As we got older, a curtain hung to separate the two sides, but we rarely closed it. We'd read books together, beg to rent movies to watch in a fort in the middle of the room.

Even as we got older, I always looked forward to getting into bed at night, and talking to him until I would fall asleep.

Even though he snored like a Honda muffler, I wouldn't trade all of those good years we had together for anything.

I think that's why it hurt so bad. When he left, it was the first time I was ever truly alone. I tried to be understanding. I knew how much the perception of him changing bothered him. He went from being a teenage boy everyone loved, to being a social pariah in a matter of days. All of the shouting, the questions, the cameras, it all ate away at him.

He went into his shell, and even I couldn't break him back out. He shut down after our fathers conviction. Then when our mother died, it was like the two of them had taken the light right out of him.

They gave him life, and with their deaths, they took it away again.

When he told me his plan, I tried to argue, but I knew it would be no use. Once Dallas made his mind up about something, it was made. Nothing could change his mind.

He'd always dreamed of being like one of those wilderness men we used to watch on those terrible tv shows. He spent all of his free time camping with his friends or studying survivalist skills, or off skiing in the mountains down restricted slopes.

I wasn't sure he could really do it, but he did. He packed up his stuff, used his half of the inheritance to discreetly buy supplies, then he gave me a satellite phone to only use in emergencies and he left.

It would be a year before I ever heard from him again. After he'd run away, literally escaping society and everyone who wanted things from him.

Honestly, I'd been convinced he was likely dead too. I assumed I was truly alone in this world. Just me and one aunt who wanted nothing to do with me.

I imagined he'd frozen to death out in the wilderness. That he'd been attacked by wild animals. That he'd been injured in a hike and couldn't make it back to the safety of his camp to recover, instead succumbing to his wounds and his body later becoming snacks for the scavengers.

I'd half thought I was imagining it when I got the call on that satellite phone I'd all but forgotten I even had.

"Missy, it's me." After a year he even sounded different. "I'm sorry it's been so long."

He was sorry? He'd abandoned me and left me to practically fend for myself in this hell hole. I had no idea if he was dead or alive after he'd left me.

"Dallas?" I'd asked, needing to hear the confirmation before I'd believe it.

"Yes, I'm so sorry."

"What the hell?" I tried to sound mad but I'd stared bawling my eyes out, my constant hiccuping and sucking my snot back up didn't quite sell me being angry. "Where are you?"

"I can't tell you that right now, but I promise I'm ok." He sighed and I could hear the sadness in his voice. He hated disappointing people, me especially. "I found an abandoned cabin. I'm safe. I promise I'm good. How are you?"

I didn't know how to answer that, but if he was safe and ok, then I didn't want to bring him down by telling him how much more everything had hurt since the day he left. He wasn't even at Mom's memorial.

Can't say I blame him too much on that one. It was just me, Ruth, and two of the gallery owners who used to sell her work. The rest of her so called friends and colleagues couldn't be caught at her service. Not when Dad had just been locked up and admitted his guilt. Those people were parents and friends and families of girls he'd brutally murdered.

I was the only one there who still loved her. Despite what she did, she was always a good mother to me. She'd seen plenty of pain in her life and after what my father had done, she couldn't take anymore.

So many decisions had been taken from her. She no longer even trusted herself after sharing a bed with a man who could do such awful things behind her back. Her heart couldn't handle anything else and she made a decision for herself. One she felt good about. She got out.

I'd be lying if I said I'd never considered the same thing. A permanent release from pain. An escape with no chance of being sucked back in.

For whatever reason, I continued. I kept going. And I wanted Dallas to find whatever semblance of happiness he could find too. Even if that meant he had to find it away from me.

"I'm ok too." I'd lied to him. I was a few days away from my eighteenth birthday. To being released from foster care. To starting my own life. Maybe it wouldn't be a lie for too long. "I'll be leaving soon."

"I know, that's why I wanted to talk to you." He'd told me. Part of that hurt me more. He didn't call because he missed me? "I needed to be sure you've got a plan."

Of course I didn't. "Of course I do."

"Where will you go?" He asked. "You can't stay in that place."

"I know." That part I already had figured out. "I'm going back to Wyoming."

"Why there?" He'd sounded skeptical of my plan. Me too, buddy, I'm making this up as I go.

"Try to find a place there. Maybe on the reservation." I'd said, the plan forming in my mind. I remembered visiting my grandmother there after she'd finally left her husband in Alabama and went home. I could see myself riding horses again like she'd taught me. I could find work there. They were my people too anyway, surely I could go there and not have to worry.

"Missy." Dallas had said my name so simply but I heard the tone. The one that said he was about to bust my bubble. "Emily Pallo."

Her name punched me in the gut.

One of our father's victims.

She'd disappeared here while on a skiing trip with her family. They were from the reservation.

"You'll never find work there." He told me. "There is a lot of angry people, Missy. It's misplaced. We didn't do anything wrong, ok? You hear me? I'm telling you none of this is our faults, but it's what we have to deal with now. We have to always assume that people aren't going to just accept us anymore. What he did...it left tremors behind. It's a reaction. Aftershock. Whatever you want to call it. You did nothing wrong, but you've got to go someplace where he hasn't ruined."

The sins of the Father.

"Right, that was just an idea." I brushed it off. "Maybe south?"

"Maybe south." He agreed. "Look, Miss, we gotta keep these calls short. Get a plan together and I'll call again in a couple weeks to find out where you're landing."

Where I'm landing...

I was nothing more than a paper plane. Tossed into the air, the wind beneath my wings. Where would I land?

There wasn't any landing.

There was a crash.

"I love you, Missy." He'd told me.

"I love you too, bro." I'd done my best to keep the tears in. "I miss you."

"I miss you too. Everyday." His words helped break a little of the ice wrapped around me. "We will talk soon, ok?"

"Ok."

Then he was gone again.

From then on, Dallas called once a month, on the fifteenth. Clockwork. I could always count on that call. I knew he was ok, and I pretended my way into making him believe I was too.

I'd never lied to my brother before. But soon everything he heard from me was a lie.

Dallas Jacobs was my protector, my friend, the only one in this whole world who understood me. It was my turn to protect him and his happiness.

Dallas lives alone, just how he likes it. The world can think he's dead, but I know the truth. I alone am the keeper of his secret.

As long as he keeps living, so can I.