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“You don’t suppose there are any records still inside, do you?” I asked.
“No. Health records are sensitive information. They would have moved them first.”
“Then I don’t know what we’re going to find here,” I told him.
“Neither do I. But, let’s say that you were born here. The chances are that this was your mother’s closest hospital, right?”
“She might have been traveling at the time and had simply stumbled on this place after going into labor. That could be why they didn’t know her name.”
“That’s a possibility. But most women late in their third trimester aren’t much up for long road trips. I think the most likely scenario is that this was the closest hospital to where she lived.”
“Okay. So, what does that mean?”
“It means that she came from one of the surrounding communities.”
“You saw the map. There’s nothing out here but long roads and trees.”
Quin looked at me. “We should take a drive.”
“Okay,” I said not wanting to disagree with him.
Quin’s eyes darted around like his brain was in overdrive. We got back into the truck and circled through the driveway towards the empty road.
“Which way?” I asked him.
“We saw what was back that way on the drive here. Let’s keep going on this road,” Quin said completely engaged.
Before now, I didn’t realize how interesting it could be to watch somebody think. Looking over as much as I could, I watched his eyes scan every tree and every bend in the road for evidence. This was my guy doing this. I knew that I couldn’t officially claim him as my guy, but it still turned me on to think it.
When we approached a road to the left, he stared at it intensely.
“What’s up?”
“Where do you think that goes? Why would a county put it there? It’s not large enough to be a through road to a highway. Yet the county had to pay for it which means there had to be someone who convinced the members of the budget committee. Make a turn,” he decided.
I did what I was told. For a long stretch, the new road was identical to the one we had turned off of. The elevation was increasing, though. And pretty soon, we were both wishing we brought our jackets.
When we saw snow on the ground we knew we had entered the Great Smoky Mountains.
“It’s beautiful,” I said awestruck by how the setting sun cast shadows behind the snow-tipped trees that extended like waves into the distance.
“What? Oh, yeah,” Quin said momentarily seeing the forest instead of the trees.
“Could you imagine seeing this view every day? How incredible would that be?” I said thinking I was saying it to Quin but ended up saying it to myself.
“There! Look!”
“Welcome to Snow Tip Falls? Talk about being off the map. This place is actually missing from the map. Do you think people still live here?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Quin said with a smile.
Continuing for another half mile, we approached what appeared to be deteriorating walls on either side of the road.
“Is that a wall? Do you think it’s private property?”
“There’s a chance this used to be. But if it still is, they’re doing a horrible job of maintaining security. The walls only run for ten feet.”
“It looks like they used to be longer.”
