Opia

Chapter 19

Artis made it to the mountains of Tennessee where Belleview was located in two hours. By the time she arrived, it was getting close to midnight. The adrenaline of constantly wondering whether she was going to get shot in the chest kept her awake and alert on the trip, but as she neared the house, she could feel exhaustion closing in.

An odd feeling hit her as she rounded the last bend of the half-mile gravel driveway and saw the place. It looked exactly as it had during her last visit there with the Harpers, when Cooper had been alive and everything had been right with the world.

Belleview was a large home made of vertical planks of light brown, treated wood. The outside entry had a v-shaped overhang with windows along either side of the dark red, oak front door.

Artis made her way up to it along the stone walkway, stopping long enough to grab the spare key from under a large rock.

As she entered the home, her breath hanging in the cold air, she tried the six switches on the nearest wall. None of them worked. The power was off. Sighing at the thought of searching the house without heat, she walked into the massive living room with its cathedral ceilings and wood burning fireplace. She considered trying to start a fire, but then dismissed the thought. The first and last time she had attempted such a feat had also been the first and last time she had almost set the entire house ablaze. She could stand being cold for a few hours.

One of the living room walls was floor to ceiling windows and looked out over the Great Smokey Mountains. Awe filled her as she looked out at the peaks, enough moonlight coming through the clouds that it illuminated the landscape for her. Snow had begun to fall, sticking to the pine trees. In the distance she could barely make out the tips of the mountains covered in a thick fog. The sight was majestic.

An owl swooped to grab its prey from the ground a few feet outside of the window. Artis could see the way the wind rustled through its feathers as it flew. As she had earlier at Fuzzy's, she wished she could be like the birds and fly away from all of her troubles.

Not wanting to turn away from the view, but knowing she had important work to do, Artis went in search of Cooper's work things.

The room where his stuff had been stored wasn't hard to find. On one side of the house, four bedrooms were off the same hallway, but on the other side there was a separate guest room. Often it remained unused. At that moment it contained half a dozen boxes. A couple were labeled, the others were not. She pulled over the nearest one and started sifting through it.

Three hours passed before she found something worthwhile and it was not what she had been expecting. At the bottom of one of the boxes filled with counseling session notes, she found a white, legal sized envelope with the state's emblem on the cover, a palmetto tree topped with a crescent moon. Curiosity building, she pulled the contents of the envelope out and stared at the sheet of paper she unfolded, dumbfounded.

"No way," she whispered to the empty room.

They were adoption papers. Her adoption papers, or at least a copy of them, and the front sheet listed Doctor Theodore Darj as the recipient of a new daughter. Sinking to the floor, she studied the papers again, everything suddenly making sense. Of course she was adopted. The truth was so blatantly obvious that she was almost angry with herself that she hadn't thought of it before. Darj hadn't acted like a biological father once. No real father, no matter how cruel, could have done what he did to her. The anger was soon replaced with a rush of intense relief. She did not, in fact, share the same blood as that truly terrible man. She could face the probers without fear, knowing it wasn't her true father that had tortured them. That fact alone changed so much.

She had to give Darj credit. Adopting his first project was a good idea. An orphan would be free from any intrusive familial connections.

Even lost in the new revelation of her lineage, she didn't miss the sound of a car making its way up Belleview's long driveway. James. It had to be him. The shooter wouldn't have announced his presence and no one else ever came up to the house. Smiling, she jumped to her feet and hurried through the foyer, thrilled he had decided to follow her. She was also eager to tell him about her new discovery.