Chapter 8 - The Walk Through Oak Creek
The next morning, the mist had cleared, leaving the sky over Licking County an immense, crystalline blue. The air was crisp, forty-five degrees, smelling of frost and woodsmoke.
At eight-thirty, I stepped out of Arthur Greer’s front door.
I was not wearing civilian clothes. I wore my service uniform, every ribbon brushed, my trousers pressed, my shoes gleaming like black obsidian in the morning light. My duffel bag remained in Arthur’s spare room, but my military identity card was in my pocket, alongside the small spiral notebook Arthur had given me.
I walked down Maple Street toward the center of town.
Oak Creek was an old town, laid out around a central village green where a bronze statue of a Union soldier stood atop a granite pedestal, facing south toward the river. Surrounding the green were the institutions that had governed my childhood: the municipal building, the First National Bank, the Miller Bakery, and the brick facade of the Grace Methodist Church.
As I reached the corner of the green, the sidewalk traffic stopped.
Mrs. Henderson was coming out of the bakery, holding a white paper box tied with red twine. When she saw me, her steps faltered. She stopped in the middle of the brick crosswalk, her face cycling through surprise, shame, and a terrible, awkward guilt.
"Emily," she breathed, her hands clutching the bakery box to her chest.
I stopped three paces from her, bringing my hands to rest behind my back in a parade-rest posture.
"Good morning, Mrs. Henderson," I said clearly.
"Emily... I... we didn't know," she stammered, her eyes darting to the ribbons on my chest, specifically the gold oak leaf cluster on the Army Commendation Medal. "Your mother was so convincing. She had the dates... she had the stories about the visits... if we had known you were over there... if we had known you were serving..."
"If you had known, Mrs. Henderson," I said, my voice carrying across the small square to where the tellers at the bank were watching through the plate-glass windows, "you would have put an American flag in your window and brought a casserole to the porch. But you didn't know. Because it was more entertaining to believe I was a convict."
She turned bright crimson, her mouth opening and closing without producing another sound.
I walked past her, my boots rhythmic against the brick pavement.
I went into the municipal building.
Tommy Miller’s father, Marshal William Miller, was sitting behind the high wooden counter of the police desk, his glasses perched on the end of his nose, reviewing the morning incident reports. When the door chimed and he looked up, the color drained from his weathered face.
"Emily," he said, rising slowly from his swivel chair.
"Marshal Miller," I said, approaching the counter. "I’m here to request a certified copy of the incident report filed yesterday morning regarding the false report of an escaped fugitive at 412 Elmwood Lane."
Miller swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing above his uniform collar. He pulled a yellow carbon copy from a wire basket on the desk and laid it flat on the counter.
"It’s already been processed, Emily," Miller said quietly. "Tommy filed it before his shift ended last night. Class 1 misdemeanor charges have been forwarded to the county prosecutor’s office in Newark. Diane... Diane was served with a summons thirty minutes ago."
I looked down at the document. There, beneath the township seal, was my mother’s name, listed not as the aggrieved complainant, but as the defendant: DIANE MARIE VANCE – SEC. 2917.32 ORC – MAKING FALSE REPORT.
"Will she serve time?" I asked.
Miller sighed, running a thick hand over his cropped gray hair. "First offense, non-violent... probably not jail time, Emily. But she’ll get two hundred hours of community service. She’ll get a five-thousand-dollar fine. And the county prosecutor—Jim Harris, whose boy was in the Marines down in Helmand—told me this morning he’s personally handling the arraignment. She won't get a plea deal that hides the record. It’ll be in the public docket forever."
"That’s fine," I said, folding the yellow paper and sliding it into my interior coat pocket. "I don't need her in a cell, Marshal. I just need her name on the paper."
"Emily," Miller called out as I turned toward the door.
I stopped, looking back over my shoulder.
The old lawman stood behind his counter, his shoulders slightly stooped, his eyes heavy with an apology he didn't know how to phrase.
May you like
"I’m sorry," he whispered. "We should have looked into it. When she first started talking four years ago... we should have run the query through the state database. We just... we didn't think a mother would do that to her own blood."
"A mother didn't do it, Marshal," I said. "Diane Vance did."
