Last week, Michael and Sarah were at Marsee’s coffee shop debating how best to look for Kerensa. This chapter begins earlier, at the time of Kerensa’s disappearance, and reveals something of her love.
The Emerald is printing “And the Dew is Our National Treasure” in serial form, with an installment every Tuesday in the Pulse Relax section. The first installment can be found at www.dailyemerald.com.
 
Four days earlier, before we realized Kerensa had disappeared, Sarah was on her way to a solstice sunrise, and discovered on her windshield a note in Kerensa’s lissome hand: “I’ve found a love. I’m going. I feel clearer, more alive than ever. I know it all has meaning, Sarah. Keep on! Until we’re together again, look for me in the sky between the branches, and in the prisms at dawn. Love Always, Kerensa.”
Sarah called me to ask if Kerensa had a new lover. I said I’d heard of none. “Then she’s in danger,” Sarah said. “I feel it.”
At that time, I wasn’t alarmed. I thought: Kerensa’s young, and love is healthy. Besides, she often traveled across the state to hearings and meetings without notice, reappearing several days later. In the end, the letter struck me as
another of the enigmatic messages she left at the intelligent intersections of her life, and in a couple of days all would become clear.
But the mystery turned dark three days later. I had stayed at the office, and by 9:30 p.m. I could no longer direct my mind to work. I closed my computer and stepped into the mild night. The east was clear, and Mount Hood, brilliant white under a moon two days short of full, seemed to have melted a bowl in the black sky.
I stopped to look because something was odd. The clouds were behind the moon! I looked more closely, and it was true. Then I saw the trick: The clouds were so thin, they became transparent in front of the moon, but appeared solid against the black sky. I remembered a childhood drawing of trees behind the sun. I wondered what Sarah would make of this.
Driving south on I-5, I listened to messages on my cell phone: the Red Cross reminding me to give blood, my broker peddling an Internet stock, and Sarah, the one who laughed, urging in an unfamiliar voice: “Michael. I’ve got to talk to you. Call. Or, better, go home. I’ll wait for you there.”
Sarah sat on the front stairs beside the rhododendrons. I beeped when I saw her; she stood, clutching a paper in her folded arms. She was a decade older. I turned off the engine, stepped from the car and stared at a dear friend I didn’t know. In the faint glow that came from the car’s inside light, I saw a tear roll down her cheek. “Sarah?”
She handed me the paper. “I found this in her house.”
I read aloud. “Michael. Never doubt my love; you’ve been the family I needed. And my gratitude to your parents for adopting me. Now I’m called. And I’m going. I won’t be back. This
is goodbye. Please, for peace of mind and for closure, assume I’ve died. I love you very, very much. Kerensa.”
We travel through years perfecting a mask. Then a sharp event tears the luminescent skin, and the raw grape bleeds. Kerensa was vast; her worldview had pulled Sarah from the tree-crowded, New England consciousness of her youth to the big-skied mind of the west. And her sisterly concern for me had nurtured modest plans into career ambitions. With just a
few words, she’d cut the tether, and Sarah and I dropped into an abyss.