Mortal Danger

like a safe haven from the world, was now menacing. Kate unfolded a map of Oregon on her kitchen counter and looked for some kind of sign that would show her a spot she should seek for a time-out. She scanned the southern Oregon coastline and found nothing promising. Then she looked north. Just east of Astoria, she saw a small town: Jewell, Oregon. Her own name.
    She had her sign.
    “I thought that I would go to Jewell to see if I could find me. ’Cause I wasn’t happy. I had looked inside myself and I wasn’t there anymore. I felt like John had sucked my soul out. I was empty, frightened, miserable, and lost.”
    That was a massive understatement.
    Kate told Bill and Doris where she was going, and she promised to check in with them every day by phone. She didn’t plan to tell John where she was headed, knowing full well that he was likely to track her down wherever it might be. She would tell him only that he could call their landlords, and they would let him know she was fine.
    “I just meandered up the coast on 101,” she said. “I took the ‘cape route’ north, and I walked every beach, and followed every trail I wanted to. I was gone a week, but I checked in every night with Bill and Doris.”
    Heading north, she stayed in a “funky little cottage” in Oceanside and used the only pay phone in the two-block town for checking in. But the connection was bad, and the message was garbled. Misunderstanding, Bill played it for John—and John picked up “Oceanside.”
    Kate had already moved on when the manager of the cabins received a call from a man identifying himself as the “Oregon state police.” The officer asked the manager if Kate Jewell had been there, who she was traveling with, and if she’d left any drugs or alcohol behind in the room. He also asked which direction she’d been traveling in.
    It wasn’t the Oregon state police; it was John Branden, tracking her, trying to control her.
    “I found that little spot in the road called Jewell,” Kate said. “There was the Jewell School and the Jewell Elk Preserve—with not an elk in sight—and that was about all.”
    During her walks on the beaches along the way, Kate had finally allowed herself to recognize that a decade of her life was gone, and a sea change was washing over her. Whatever she and John had had together was finished andcouldn’t be resurrected. If only she could convince John of that. It was taking such a long time to peel him from her life.
    She got back to Gold Beach on Monday, May 24. John was due to return the next day. She called him from the road and was vastly relieved when he appeared to have come to the same conclusion that she had. Staying together was too painful for both of them. They were through. He didn’t accuse her as he usually did. He sounded only a little sad.
    She would be free of him, after all.
    “I thought I had finally achieved what I had been working for years to accomplish—a friendly separation. And he said it first, just the way I’d hoped it would happen. John actually said, ‘I can’t take this anymore, you can’t take it anymore—so let’s just end it.’ He wasn’t angry, and I thought we both felt relief that it was over. I think he even said, ‘Let’s be friends.’ I promised to be at home in the cabin if he came up from San Diego.”
    She felt happy and calm for the first time in years. They could work together without recriminations. They could still help people with health problems but let go of the anguish of a doomed love affair.
     
    The next few days were fine. John respected Kate’s space, and he was “wonderful” to her. She didn’t totally trust him, because she knew how quickly his mood could change. They lived platonically, talking calmly about their plans. Kate still hoped to have a work relationship with John, and a friendship. Seeing the “good John” for those days at theend of May, it all seemed possible. They blazed a shortcut trail to the fire road that led to the beach—John with a weed whacker and Kate with a machete.
    They had planted a large garden on the lower terrace of their rental property, and on Saturday, May 29, John was busy cleaning up brush and weeds on the upper level of the property. Whether either of them would be there to harvest the garden was anyone’s guess, but it seemed important to both of them to do the yard work.
    Kate was idly watching soap opera videos in midafternoon without paying much attention to them. She felt