Chapter 2 – Suffering

~ Three years later ~

In this world of digital records, fingerprint databases, close circuit tv, and passive facial recognition systems, few are ever able to truly disappear. Rarer still, those who manage the feat twice in a single lifetime. The man known as Joseph T. Kettleman was about to do exactly that, though he didn’t know it yet.

His weekend appeared to be wrapping up just as it always did, with a ride up the Ortega River to a secluded fishing hole. The only thing mildly unusual was that his wife was already awake.

“Morning, Joe,” Carolyn said brightly. “Made you some coffee.”

“Morning, sweetheart,” he said, snaking his arm around her waist and kissing her cheek. “Going with me again?”

“Oh, no. I don’t think so,” she said disdainfully.

Too late, the damage was already done. Joe dug in his pocket for the bottle of antacid.

Last Sunday had been a disaster. Despite his warnings that she would hate it, Carolyn had insisted on going with him. Apparently she’d read some article in Cosmo that had convinced her she needed to take an interest in the things he enjoyed.

Despite his better judgement, Joe had relented. The thirty minute ride out had been fine, Carolyn barely said a word, but that had just been the calm before the storm. The fog had been thick and she’d almost seemed to share Joe’s reverence, quietly watching sleepy docks slide by. Her only complaint had been about why they couldn’t have taken one of the bigger boats.

Carolyn had always hated the bass boat. He’d bought it two years ago, but last Sunday was only the second time she’d been on it, even though she was the one who had talked Joe into buying it. He’d been ready to pull the trigger on a sixteen foot Carolina Skiff when she’d asked the salesman to show them the most expensive bass boat on the lot. That turned out to be a Ranger Icon which was still painfully boring, but must be better because was ten times more expensive.

Joe was not a flashy guy, a point that annoyed Carolyn to no end. She had tried to talk him into a Porsche and had been furious for weeks when he’d come home with a pickup truck.

“Oh my god, you’re the only person on the whole island with a hick-mobile!”

The ‘whole island’ amounted to about fifteen houses. It was a man-made island—part of a much larger neighborhood—that had been severed off by deepening the low lying portion of a parcel of land that jutted out into the river, creating a canal that separated the island from the rest of the neighborhood.