Bittersweet (27 page)

“That’s right,” Tilde said calmly, keeping a firm grasp on Lu, “that’s right, let the anger go. It’s of no use to you. And look, here’s your beautiful daughter, right here; you wouldn’t want to lose your temper in front of her, would you?” Birch cast his eyes over Lu, who had finally managed to break free of her mother’s grasp. He ran his
fingers through his hair, appearing elderly for the first time in my memory.

Tilde looked up at me, peering at them from the porch. “How about you invite us in?”

Inviting them in was the last thing I wanted to do. But was I really going to stand here in a locked house when my hosts had demanded entry? And what did I think Birch was going to do to me? Still, my hand shook as I undid the bolt.

We sat in the living room and pretended everything was fine, even as Fritz cowered in the kitchen. “Have you heard anything about Indo?” I asked, trying to make conversation, watching Lu rub her wrist as she pouted from the porch sofa.

“Why don’t you apologize to May and she can tell us what she knows?” Tilde asked as she placed her fingers on the back of Birch’s hand. He still looked distracted, not quite himself, but he nodded. It was hard to align this new version of him with the powerful man who had hosted me on his porch only a week or so before, or even with the man who’d just pounded on the door.

“What Birch wants to say,” Tilde told me instructively, “is that Luvinia shared the news that Genevra seems to have flown the coop. Naturally, we were both concerned to discover this absence. But he forgot himself.”

“I understand completely.” I tried to sound convincing and not to glare at Lu for being a tattletale. I wondered if she’d known how angry the news would make her father.

“How long has she been gone?” Birch spoke, his voice shaky.

I replied carefully, wondering what my escape plan would be if he were to anger again. “I discovered her missing this morning. I was on my way to tell you when I found Indo in her room.”

Birch swallowed. Tilde smiled her cool smile. “See?” she said to her husband, adding to me, “I knew you wouldn’t keep such important news a secret.”

Birch was coming out of his foggy state. With every second, he seemed to become more aware of the world around him, to inhabit his body anew, to reinvigorate. “Do you know where John took her?”

So he knew about them. I guessed they hadn’t been too discreet. I shook my head.

“We’ll find her,” Tilde said in a soothing tone. “We’ll make sure she comes right back home, now, won’t we, dear?” To me, she added, “It’s so hard to love one’s children as we love ours. It’s easy to get … passionate.”

As Tilde rose to leave, the strangeness seemed to dissipate. Birch teased Lu that, if she kept sticking out her bottom lip, a bird would come perch on it, and tapped Tilde on the butt as though they’d been flirting all morning. I could sense relief in both Tilde and Lu, relief I recognized from my own childhood and, in truth, was feeling too. We were no longer under siege.

“Well then,” Tilde said, opening the screen door, “we’ll leave you to your day.”

I realized I was gripping my bag, which had held Kitty’s journal the whole time.

Nearly at the door, Birch turned to me. “As for Indo, we’ll find it’s another symptom of her downturn, I’m afraid.”

“Downturn?”

“Of the cancer.”

“Cancer?” The thought of Indo sick was a punch to the gut. “She has cancer?”

“Oh, my dear,” he said, stepping toward me, pulling me into a hug I didn’t want, “I thought for certain she would have told you. It’s spread to her brain.” I could hear the thud of his heart inside his chest. He smelled of mothballs. His sweater scratched. “She has a month at the most.”

“I had no idea.” I tried to pull out of the embrace. But his arms resisted the distance, as though they were programmed to clasp me
close. They only unclamped when I tugged hard against them. My feet launched backwards. I skinned my heel on the table beside the porch couch.

“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you.” Birch watched me as I rubbed the new scrape. “I’m sure she’s mentioned some batty ideas. Make no mistake, she is eccentric, but she’s also, literally, losing her mind. I wouldn’t take anything she’s told you, or promised, to heart.”

Kitty’s journal burned under my arm.

From out on the driveway, Tilde called to Birch, and he descended the porch steps toward her; Lu was already out of sight. Satisfied he was coming, Tilde walked on, out of earshot.

“Oh, and Mabel,” Birch said, turning just as he reached the driveway, “I’ve been meaning to ask you. Have you called Daniel lately?”

My mouth turned to cotton.

“Your mother says the care he’s getting at Mountainside is fantastic.”

I couldn’t move, or speak, or think.

“I know your father works hard to keep him there. Let’s remember your promise to keep me informed.” With that, he left me.

I
shook as I made my retreat from Bittersweet. The words Birch had used were innocuous enough, but they had shaken me. He’d been speaking to my mother? How much did he know about Daniel?

I cut into the pine forest behind the Dining Hall. I’d never wandered there before, and I welcomed the soft carpet of needles under my feet, the occasional pull of brambles across my bare legs. But in the shadowed woods, doubt pulled hard—if Ev was truly gone, if Lu was leaving, if Birch was threatening me and Indo was dying, and Galway coming only on the weekends, what was the point of staying here? But I had no money. And no place to go except horrible Maryland with my horrible aunt.

A rapid pounding echoed through the woods. With the day’s sounds in play—the distant roar of a mower, the buzz of a motorboat—I couldn’t distinguish whether the steady hammering was coming from a woodpecker or maintenance men. As I made my way deeper, downed, mossy trunks occasionally blocked my path. Above, the treetops rubbed against each other, a creepy, private sound, as though they were telling secrets about me.

Without warning, a great, primordial beast alighted on a dead tree only a few yards away. I froze. The creature’s wingspan was massive, pterodactyl. I watched as it folded its wings, drew its red crest
back, and proceeded to pound its beak hard into the rotting wood high above the forest floor. The sound was crisp and loud. The tree swayed.

I stood, enthralled, at the sight of the pileated woodpecker Lu had promised me, until he was done with his grubby snack and took off again. I could hear the rush of air through feather. I closed my eyes. I was being ridiculous.

Birch Winslow had been worried about Ev. A father should worry about his daughter; it was only because mine didn’t that I’d thought his behavior odd. If he had threatened me—and I was starting to convince myself he hadn’t—it was only to ensure I kept my promise to tell him of his daughter’s whereabouts. Hadn’t I been the one to break his trust by keeping mum on the matter? And anyway, wouldn’t I want someone like Birch Winslow on Daniel’s side? Hadn’t that been part of the point of going to college, of all of this—to make connections that could better my, his, our life?

I almost tossed Kitty’s journal into the forest. Whatever secrets it held, they weren’t mine. It was the conceit of a dying woman, “literally losing her mind,” that the journal even held anything of note. That’s what Indo was saying, I told myself, when she talked about the tumor. Not about her family being infected. But about her body filling with cancer. Who knew what she meant by “blood money,” but really, was it worth caring?

I hiked into the heart of the Winloch forest, slapping myself like a madwoman to kill the mosquitoes who’d found me. A couple of horseflies joined the swarm, and I draped the towel over my head to protect myself. Ev’s flip-flops slipped on the forest floor, but I trod on. I’d run into a road someday, although whether I’d follow it was a question I had not yet answered. The crunch of pine needles gave way to rocky forest floor as, above, the canopy changed to maples and birch. I gave myself over to the chastising chatter of the brown squirrels, the far-off squawks of crows at play. I guessed I was walking
in the direction of Mrs. LaChance’s house, so I cut back to my right. I didn’t think I could bear her.

I wandered into a clearing, rustling a white-tailed deer out of a peaceful lunch. I froze. She held my gaze from the other side of the patch of grass, head lifted, smelling my human stink, until some indeterminate revelation about me sent her into the forest, her tail flagging long after the rest of her body was invisible. It was a sensible moment, a reminder that I was not a survivalist and could not stay in these woods forever. I looked up at the clouds breezing by, killed three more mosquitoes, and decided to follow the deer’s trail.

Not that I had any idea how to follow a trail; I simply walked in her direction, cutting into my apple with an appetite it wouldn’t long satiate. I thought of Eve and her apple, wandering in Eden. I walked on and on, until I started to feel tired and, frankly, bored. I nearly laughed at the memory of my former self, running from Bittersweet into the woods for cover. Ev would come home. Galway was my lover, not my boyfriend. And Birch was just a father looking out for his brood. Besides, my stomach was growling. I was about to turn back when I caught a phrase of music on the breeze. Motown. I followed the strains until I found myself in a clearing. There, before me, stood a cottage. A hand-carved sign over the door, straight out of the Brothers Grimm, read
JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT
. Deep inside, a radio played.

The cottage was standard issue, but it resembled Mrs. LaChance’s more than Indo’s. Perhaps the buildings on this side of the bay, deep in the woods as they were, where the damp clung, were simply more prone to rot. “Hello?” I heard myself call out, my mouth watering at the thought of the lunch that might be inside.

The radio switched off. If a wolf leapt out, or a raccoon, a vampire, anything, I would turn tail and sprint into the forest. Or maybe the creature would just kill me quickly, draining me of my blood, before I knew what hit me.

“Hello?” came the woman’s voice as she stepped from the screen door, wrapping a shawl around her shoulders.

“CeCe!” I rejoiced with inappropriate familiarity. It was meant to be, I told myself. “I’m Mabel,” I chatterboxed, removing the shroud from my head, “Ev’s friend? We met on Winloch Day. I guess I got lost! I was trying to find a good swimming spot.”

“There’s not much swimming over on this side. You’d do better at Bittersweet.”

“Oh.” I tried not to show my disappointment. “I guess if you could just point me to the road …?”

She gestured down a pockmarked driveway I hadn’t noticed. I nodded. Started walking in that direction.

“You hungry?” she asked after me.

I turned. “Do you mind?”

“Just got supplies in town.”

J
ack-in-the-Pulpit was spotless inside. Every place had its thing and every thing had its place, but the whole building reeked of cigarettes—I felt my asthmatic lungs constrict the second I stepped inside. I realized this was one of the first Winloch homes I’d entered without a dog in it. My eyes lingered over the only picture on the living room wall: a clear-eyed, handsome soldier who resembled his cousins but would never grow old.

CeCe made us Campbell’s tomato soup with three baby carrots each on the side. Her serving sizes were minuscule, and she nibbled at hers like a mouse. We sat at a rickety folding table in her large eat-in kitchen, surrounded by the same Vietnam-era appliances as in Bittersweet. The woodstove held court at the other end of the room. Above it, a wall that had once hung with several large frames still bore their outlines. The floor was scarred, as though the real furniture that had lived here for decades had crept out of the cottage by itself one night.

I ate slowly, trying to pace myself, but at the meal’s end, my stomach growled. I assumed CeCe had heard the news of Indo’s collapse, but she was surprised when I filled her in, if not very concerned. Indo was CeCe’s sister, after all. But then, Indo hadn’t been exactly warm
to CeCe on Winloch Day—in fact, CeCe was the only person I had ever seen Indo treat that way.

“Did you know about the cancer?” I asked, looking around. Even Mrs. LaChance’s house had felt happier than this—sadness seemed to have soaked into Jack-in-the-Pulpit as surely as the nicotine.

“It doesn’t surprise me she’ll die of it.” CeCe drew a pack of cigarettes from a kitchen drawer and lit up. The words were harsh, but she didn’t say them harshly.

“Why?”

“Indo has fed on anger for years. Blame. Deceit. Makes sense she’ll be eaten from the inside out.”

I must’ve made a face. CeCe looked briefly shattered, as she had on Winloch Day. “Sure I’m sad,” she added. “She’s my sister.”

“She wasn’t very nice to you on Winloch Day.”

“People living a lie generally don’t enjoy the company of the one person who says the truth,” she pronounced cryptically.

I rose from the small Formica table. “I should go.”

“Oh, please don’t,” CeCe cried, grabbing my wrist with a claw-like hand. The smell of her tarred breath rose up all around me. “You’re the first person who’s really talked to me in weeks.”

I sat down. “Ev told me about Jackson. I’m very sorry.” I was, but I was also very curious.

She stubbed out her cigarette and lit another. The room had filled with a filmy haze. I felt my lungs tighten, but my cough went unnoticed.

“They claim they had nothing to do with it,” she said.

“Who?”

“Any of the Winslows. Anyone who keeps their secrets.” She narrowed her eyes at me.

“You blame your family?”

“I can blame anyone I want.”

“But he’d just gotten back from the war.”

“Shell shock,” she mused. “People have been using that excuse as long as they’ve been killing each other.”

Silence hung over us for a moment. I made out the sharp ticking of a clock, somewhere deep in the confines of another room. “But you don’t think that was why,” I said leadingly.