There is one thing I have never done in the second life, not once, not even when I was in the hills for work. I have never gone back to the cave.
The county sealed it the winter after the trial, with a concrete plug and a sign. The trail is still closed. The rangers still write reports. Elliot Marsh retired a few years ago and moved to Oregon with his wife, and he sends my family a card every Christmas.
I have driven past the trailhead twice. Both times I kept going.
The cave is empty now. The chain is in an evidence locker in a county facility, tagged and bagged in a cardboard box. Martin Blakely died in prison, four years into his sentence, of a heart attack. He was fifty-three years old. There was a brief notice in the newspaper. Nobody in our family read it.
The story is over. The
