Santee, California was invisible to Sarah, not even a blur. She could have been anywhere that morning, stepping through thoughts so intense she was oblivious to her surroundings.
She wanted to stop thinking about her mother but couldn’t.
Somehow a dam had burst.
And every dam, she knew, kills a river and destroys its flow.
When there’s a dam, tight canyon walls and broad banks are seized from nature’s capable hands. Once the river was textured by seasons, storms and droughts. Now it was in the clutches of engineers and bureaucrats.
When the dam is built, a river’s swirling pools, capricious channels and gentle passages can’t help but surrender. The color and the temperature of the water are altered as its independence is seized.
Every dam smashes the rhythms of a river into discord. The sound of the water falls out of tune. It soars over spillways, amplified and compressed.
Now that Sarah saw that her mother’s dam had burst, she could better recognize resentments flung out in the open. Her mother’s attempts to disguise her thirst for dominance were abandoned.
There would never be a better time to find a river of her own.
Like avoiding the trouble at the Teton Dam, she would avoid her mother and sister.
This detachment would be methodical, not maniacal. She would engineer her self-control to the degree it would infuriate the two of them.
She would express her opinions, dress as she wished and spend time with whom she wished. She would pursue her own interests.
Her days as a forensic accountant were numbered. There were probably better ways to occupy herself. No more trips to a disengaged client’s cramped office in Santee, California or anyplace else.
The sudden arrival of this intense clarity both rattled and rescued her.
When Sarah came to see her life as a river where a dam had burst, and its natural flow resumed, she was anxious to learn more.
And anxious to open the safe deposit box at the bank in Burbank.
