A man was arranging torches in a half circle around the front of the stage.
He stepped down, and a woman in a strapless dress took his place in the firelight.
Only her blond dreads gave her away—it was the barista from the coffee shop.
She was smiling, holding a martini glass in one hand, a hand-rolled cigarette in the other.
There was no microphone.
She said, “It’s getting late. I think we only have time for one share tonight.”
A man stood, asked, “Okay if I go?”
“Sure. Come on up.”
He made his way to the stage in a dark suit that didn’t quite fit him—a little short in the cuffs, a little tight across the chest—and as he stepped into the spotlight and the candles lit his face, Ethan realized it was Brad Fisher. He and Theresa had eaten dinner at the man’s house just two nights ago.
Ethan scanned the crowd, but he didn’t see Mrs. Fisher.
Brad cleared his throat.
Nervousness in his smile.
“My third time here,” he said. “Some of you know me. Most of you don’t. Yet. I’m Brad Fisher.”
The room responded like an AA meeting, “Hello, Brad.”
He said, “First of all, where’s Harold?”
“Back here!” Harold yelled.
Brad turned slightly so he faced Ethan’s table.
“Harold came into my office two months ago, and without going into too much detail, made it possible for me to come here. I don’t know how to thank you, Harold. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to.”
Harold waved him off and yelled, “Pay it forward!”
Laughter shuddered through the room.
Brad went on, “I was born in Sacramento, California, in 1966. It’s funny—the week before I woke up in Wayward Pines, I thought I had finally arrived at the prime of my life. I actually remember thinking those exact words. I had this great new job in Silicon Valley, and I had just married my best friend. Her name was Nancy. We met at Golden Gate Park. Don’t know if any of you know San Fran. There’s this Japanese Tea Garden. We met on the moon bridge. It was…” His face softened at the memory. “So cheesy. One of those high arching bridges. I mean it was something out of a movie. We always laughed about it.
“For our honeymoon, we opted for a road trip instead of a tropical getaway. We’d only known each other six months, and there was something that sounded right about just being on the road together. Driving across the West. We kept it loose. We didn’t make plans. It was the best time of my life.”
Even from the back of the room, Ethan could see that Brad was steeling himself to go on.
“A week or so into our trip, Nancy and I hit Idaho. Stayed in Boise for the first night, and I still remember that morning over breakfast when Nance picked Wayward Pines off the map. It was in the mountains. She liked the sound of it.
“We checked into the Wayward Pines Hotel. Had dinner at the Aspen House. We ate on the patio, all those white lights strung from the aspen trees twinkling above us. It was one of those nights. You know what I mean, right? You talk about the future over a bottle of wine and everything seems possible and within reach.
“We went back to our room and made love and fell asleep and when we woke up, we were here and nothing has ever been the same. Nance lasted two months and then she took her own life.“Now I live with a stranger with whom I’ve never shared a single authentic moment. It’s been a lonely couple of years since I woke up in Pines, and that’s why meeting Harold and now all of you—people who I can share real moments with—is the best thing that’s happened to me in a very long time.” He sipped his martini, winced. “It grows on you, right?”
Someone shouted, “Never!”
More laughter.
Brad said, “I know we all have to start the cold walk home pretty soon, but I hope I can get up here and talk more about my wife. My real wife.” Now he raised his glass. “Her name was Nancy, and I love her, I miss her…” Here came the emotion. “And I think about her every single day.”
Everyone in the room stood.
Glasses raised, winking in the firelight.
The room said, “To Nancy.”
They drank and then Brad stepped down off the stage.
Ethan watched him walk out into the passageway where the man slid down onto the floor and wept.
Ethan looked at Kate, wondering what her group thought of the striking incongruence of time. Brad Fisher had said he was born in 1966, but the man couldn’t have been older than twenty-nine or thirty, which meant he had come to Wayward Pines, Idaho, in the mid-1990s, with Bill Clinton president and 9/11 still five or six years away. No doubt others in this room had come to town before him and after him. What did they make of it? Did they compare and contrast their own views of the world before, searching for meaning in their current existence? Did those who had arrived around the same time seek one another out for the comfort of a shared knowledge of history?
“Imagine it,” she said. “First time in two years he’s been able to openly speak about his real wife.”
People were forming a line to the dressing room.
“What about his Wayward Pines wife, Megan?” Ethan asked. “He couldn’t bring her?”
“She’s a teacher.”
“So?”
“They’re true believers. Someone scored him a dose of something that he probably slipped into his wife’s water at dinner. Knocked her out cold for the entire night so he could slip out.”
“So she doesn’t know he’s coming to these.”
“No way. And she can’t ever find out.”
Everyone had left.
Ethan changed out of his black suit and back into the damp jeans and hoodie.
In the main cavern, Kate was blowing out candles and Harold was collecting empty martini glasses and lining them up on the bar.
With the last candle, Kate lit a kerosene lamp for the journey home.
They followed Harold down the passageway.
Outside, the sky had cleared.
Stars blazed down out of the dark and the moon was bright.
Harold took Kate’s lamp and slung it over his shoulder and they all moved down the ledge to where the path swung out across the face of the cliff. All of the homeward-bound foot traffic had polished the wooden planks and the cables clean of snow.
Ethan could see Wayward Pines now.