He recalls, as well, the Rolodex card with their names and address.
They live in Mammoth Lakes.
Again, he is poignantly aware of what he has lost. Even if he can
reclaim his life from the imposter who wears his name, perhaps he will
never regain the memories that have been stolen from him. His
childhood. His adolescence. His first date. His high school
experiences. He has no recollection of his mother’s or his father’s
love, and it seems outrageous, monstrous, that he could be robbed of
those most essential and enduringly supportive memories.
For more than sixty miles, he alternates between despair at the
estrangement which is the primary quality of his existence and joy at
the prospect of reclaiming his destiny.
He desperately longs to be with his father, his mother, to see their
dear faces (which have been erased from the tablets of his memory), to
embrace them and re-establish the profound bond between him self and the
two people to whom he owes his existence. From the movies he has seen,
he knows parents can be a curse the maniacal mother who was dead before
the opening scene of Psycho, the selfish mother and father who warped
poor Nick Nolte in The Prince of Tides–but he believes his parents to
be of a finer variety, compassionate and true, like Jimmy Stewart and
Donna Reed in It’s a Wonderful Life.
The highway is flanked by dry lakes as white as salt, sudden battlements
of red rock, wind-sculpted oceans of sand, scrub, boron flats, distant
escarpments of dark stone. Everywhere lies evidence of geological
upheavals and lava flows from distant millennia.
At the town of Red Mountain, the BMW leaves the highway. It stops at a
service station to refuel.
He follows until he is certain of their intention, but passes the
service station without stopping. They have guns. He does not. A
better moment will be found to kill the impersonator.
Re-entering Highway 395, he drives north a short distance to
Johannesburg, which sits west of the Lava Mountains. He exits again and
tanks up the Camry at another service station. He buys crackers, candy
bars, and peanuts from the vending machines to sustain him during the
long drive ahead.
Perhaps because Charlotte and Emily had to use the restrooms back at the
Red Mountain stop, he is on the highway ahead of the BMW, but that
doesn’t matter because he no longer needs to follow them. He knows
where they are going.
Mammoth Lakes, California.
Jim and Alice Stillwater. Who taught him to be an honest man.
Who can’t be blamed if he is able to think like a criminal. To whom he
dedicated a novel. Beloved. Cherished. Stolen from him but soon to be
reclaimed.
He is eager to enlist them in his crusade to regain his family and his
destiny. Perhaps the false father can deceive his children, and perhaps
even Paige can be fooled into accepting the imposter as the real Martin
Stillwater. But his parents will recognize their true son, blood of
their blood, and will not be misled by the cunning mimicry of that
family-stealing fraud.
Since turning onto Highway 395, where traffic is light, the BMW had
maintained a steady sixty to sixty-five miles an hour, though the road
made greater speed possible in many areas. Now, he pushes the Camry
north at seventy-five and eighty. He should be able to reach Mammoth
Lakes between two o’clock and two-fifteen, half an hour to forty-five
minutes ahead of the imposter, which will give him time to alert his
mother and father to the evil intentions of the creature that
masquerades as their son.
The highway angles northwest across Indian Wells Valley, with the El
Paso Mountains to the south. Mile by mile, his heart swells with
emotion at the prospect of being reunited with his mom and dad, from
whom he has been cruelly separated. He aches with the need to embrace
them and bask in their love, their unquestioning love, their undying and
perfect love.
The Bell JetRanger executive helicopter that conveyed Oslett and Clocker
to Mammoth Lakes belonged to a motion-picture studio that was a Network
affiliate. With black calfskin seats, brass fixtures, and cabin walls