Out of The Woods (25 page)

Hero!
An ill-fitting name if ever he had heard one. If there were a name that meant “coward”, then, that would be fitting. His lips curled in a sneer.

Yes, she had escaped him a few times. That didn’t bother him so much.

Her time was running out. Soon the car, inert under the deep river, would be full to the roof with water. Soon, none of this would matter.

One way or another, he would have her. But this way would be more fun.

He swung his canteen back over his shoulder, and rubbed his hands together. Unaccountably cold on this warm day, he decided to increase his pace.

As suddenly as he appeared, her father was gone. Halley’s shoulder tingled where his hand had lain. She placed her own hand there and spread her fingers wide. She wanted to soak up his essence; to draw inside what had been outside, to become one with her father who was so long gone. Her hand fell back to her side, and she heard the sudden sound of the horses thundering as one who had recovered a lost sense of hearing.

“You okay?” Eden asked.

“Did you see him?”

“Of course I did, silly! Dad. He’s always showing up!”

“He is?”

“You’ve just got to know how to look,” Eden said. She picked up the discarded pipe – it had burnt out – and played at holding it between her teeth. “I like how he dresses now much better – silly old thing, with his pipe – it was time he let go of that too!” She giggled and let the pipe fall back to the earth. “Why do you look so surprised? I told you he was real!”

Halley didn’t reply. She was thinking about what her father had said, about facing all of who he had been. It seemed like Eden thought he was perfect too.

Eden began to trot forward like a horse. “We’ll have to do the trotting ourselves now. Come on, let’s pretend we’re mustangs!”

Eden didn’t trot for long: the weather changed and trotting became less fun. First, the sky dulled. Then the clouds slid off the mountains, dropping heavily upon them, forming a thick fog. The world became opaque, the air thick with mist and yet uncomfortably hot. Halley sweated heavily and the sweat didn’t dry – it lingered on her skin, and she ran her hands down her bare arms and flung it off. “With this fog, I can’t even tell if we’re headed in the right direction. I don’t understand – it was so clear this morning. Now I can’t see two feet in front of me.”

“I like the fog,” Eden said. “It makes it easier to play hide and seek!” With that, Eden darted a few feet away, giggling.

“Where are you? Come on, I don’t want to play right now.”

Eden jumped out of the fog, tapped Halley on the back, and then darted back into the whiteness, shouting, “Right here,” and then laughing.

“Oh – I see!” Halley spun around; she could only see fog. “Okay – where?”

“Right…” Eden tapped her on her kneecap, “…here!” And jumped back. “No…” Eden jumped and touched the top of Halley’s head, “…here!”

Halley finally laughed. “Okay, okay, you win! I won’t be so grumpy about the fog. Come on, come back.”

With a little skip and a hop, Eden reappeared.

They walked on. The fog thickened, swathing them in a blanket of white. Thus cocooned, their conversation felt both secret and safe.

“What were you like when you were little?” Eden asked, without preamble.

“Hmmm?”

Halley’s eyes were smarting from the effort it took to see through the fog.

“When you were little…what were you like?”

“Little? You mean, like your age?”

“I’m
not little,” Eden giggled. “No – little…you know…like four or five.”

“I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Why?”

Halley bit the inside of her cheek and looked away.

Eden waited.

Hailey sighed heavily.

“Scared,” she said.

As if she hadn’t had enough to worry about before. Dad –
the man who watched the horses with her
, she corrected herself – had to remind her of the way he’d scared her when she was little, had to speak his futile, ‘I’m sorry’. She hadn’t thought about it in years, and his ‘sorry’ was a long time too late.

“Are you mad at me?” Eden asked.

“No…it’s just…”

Eden looked at her appraisingly and Halley looked down, and unclenched her fist.

“Why were you scared? You had Mom and Dad to keep you safe. That’s what parents do…”

“That’s what parents should do,” Halley corrected. “And Dad did, very well…before, and after. Just not when I was five.”

“What happened then?”

“Mom died.”

The words seemed to clump, like sticky rice.

“When I was five. She died. Left me. No more ribbons in my hair. No more little dresses. Dead.”

“Oh.”

Eden crossed her arms across her chest; it was a defensive movement and Halley noticed it and was surprised.

“What is it?”

Eden shook her head, and looked away.

Halley looked at Eden’s hands – they were small and soft, still the hands of a child.

“Tell me,” Halley said.

The fog was so thick, they had stopped walking.

“It was my fault.”

“Your fault?”

“That she died. It was my fault.”

Eden spoke as a child who had learned the rules, and was well aware that she’d broken the most important one of all. It was black and white, and she was black.

“Mom died of cancer. That can’t be your fault.”

It was becoming hard to see Eden in the fog.

“It
was
my fault. She got it when I started school. That’s what caused it.”

“But…”

How could Halley explain that what Eden believed so absolutely made no sense? It was the theory of a five-year old, who had put two unconnected events together – her mother’s death and her own starting school – and glued them solid with cement made increasingly impregnable with each passing year. The theory had never been disproved. Halley knew this for sure, because there was a place inside her grown-up mind – somewhere hard, just left of center – that believed exactly as Eden did: Mom’s death was her fault.

“Anyway…” Eden was saying, drawing the conversation backward, onto safer ground, “It doesn’t mean you weren’t safe, just because Mom died.” Her words were rehearsed, like she was parroting something she’d been made to read in a book. “Lots of people die – it’s the ones who are still alive that keep the children safe…”

Halley looked at her in dismay; she knew what Eden said wasn’t true. Not this time.

Eden continued, as if speaking to herself, but dawning awareness made her sentence break into small bits, like a favorite toy, smashed.

“But. But I didn’t
feel
that way. Not safe. Not when I was five.”

She looked at Halley with wide eyes, like she’d like to run into the fog and hide away.

Halley reached out a hand but Eden didn’t seem to see it. “The basement?” she prompted.

“The basement,” Eden agreed.

How awful to shine light on dark truths. Far easier to think about how good her father had been, how smart and kind and gentle. Why did they have to talk about how everything had changed? Why even think about it? They should stay in the time before her mother’s death. Not after. Not then.
Not the basement.

Halley tried to walk again, but in the thick fog she tripped on a rock and nearly fell. “Ouch,” she said.

“You know I’m a good listener…”

Now Eden was shining the light; they kept trading places, one probing and then backing off, and then the other.

The fog made Halley’s head pound; if only she could see her way through. “After Mom died…” she began. She stopped. “I haven’t thought of it in years. It doesn’t matter. It’s ancient history.”

“No, it’s not.”

“What do you mean, ‘No, it’s not?’”

“Ancient history is about
ancient
stuff – like the Greeks and the Romans,” Eden said. “This is like…well, more like…modern history…”

Halley had to smile. “I guess you’re right.”

“Tell me like it’s a story about someone else. That makes telling stuff easier.”

“Don’t be silly.”

Eden just looked at her.

“Okay…Once upon a time, there was a little girl whose mother died…God, this is ridiculous!”

“What happened when her mother died?”

“It was all different. Her dad would get home from work, like usual, just like before. He’d kiss her and she’d hug him and he’d be ‘Nice Dad’. Then he’d go to the basement…”

“Bad Dad,” Eden said, in a quiet voice. “That’s when he became Bad Dad.”

Halley gave up on the bedtime story idea. “It was terrifying, the noise he made down there,” she said. “He must have been throwing things around. I don’t know what…” There was a tremor in her voice, like she was still little and still afraid. “He’d come up some time later – I couldn’t tell time yet, so I don’t know how long he stayed down there. But when he came up, he’d be ‘Bad Dad’. It was dinnertime. Not the same dinnertime as when Mom was alive – it must’ve been much later, because I was very hungry.”

“Very hungry,” Eden echoed.

“He’d crash around in the kitchen, just like he had in the basement,” Halley continued. “Bang crash bang smash. The noise was closer to where I was playing then, much closer. It sounded like war, like I’d see on TV when I wasn’t meant to be looking. Like people were battling in the kitchen, throwing things at each other. I couldn’t believe one person could make all that noise. It made my ears hurt.”

Eden looked thoughtful. “It was because you made him mad. You made Mom get cancer and die.” Eden’s voice held all the authority of a five-year-old, even though she was ten and should’ve lost this way of thinking by now. “That’s why he did it, made all that noise, why he was so angry. He was mad at you.”

Halley didn’t respond.

Eden rubbed her small arms. “The noise in the kitchen. It wasn’t just the plates…”

“No.” Hailey began to breathe faster, like there wasn’t enough air. “He shouted to himself in there too. His voice was like a tightrope. I felt like I was walking on it. Like I could fall off at any moment. All the other sounds in the house got quieter…until there was just his voice and the crashes…” She stopped and looked at Eden. “I kept thinking…I kept thinking he’d come out of the kitchen one day and hit me…throw me around, instead of the pots and pans.”

“Did he ever come out?” Eden said. “Did he ever come out of the kitchen when he was ‘Bad Dad’?”

“A few times. That’s when he hit my brother.”

They fell silent.

Halley saw the scene: the thin wooden stick slicing the air, connecting with her brother’s flesh.
Smack smack smack
. The beatings had happened three times. The fourth time, she’d got between the two of them and the thin stick. She could still see the stick lifted above her and her brother, could see it hesitate, stop, shiver in the sudden silence. When her father had dropped it, the stick had bounced twice, making an unforgettable sound of wood on wood.

“He was a good man,” Halley said firmly. “He told me I was the most important thing, all the rest of my life. Both of us, me and my brother. He was wise, and gentle, and…”

Eden’s brow furrowed. “That was later. He was nice later. But what about when you were five? What about then?”

Halley stared at Eden. “What are you asking?”

“Did he ever hit you?”

Halley released the breath she’d been holding. “I never gave him the chance. I disappeared, hid in my room, just in case. Closed the door. Leaned my back against it. I put my stuffed bear against the door too. As if that would’ve stopped him.”

Eden smiled. “Fluffy. He was a warrior bear.”

“Sometimes, hiding in my room wasn’t enough,” Halley mused. On those really bad days, I’d pretend there was a secret room I could get to through the inside of my closet. I imagined making a hole in the back wall that only I could fit through – not grown ups.”

“Like in Narnia!”

“That’s what gave me the idea. But it wasn’t just there to begin with, like in Narnia. I made it. Dug it out myself. It took a long time. But it was small and cozy and not a bit scary. I made sure of that.”

“That sounds even better than Narnia.”

Halley kept speaking, as if she hadn’t heard Eden’s reply. “I’d go into the closet through the door, and then I’d magic the hole in the back wall open, and crawl through to the secret room. I’d take Fluffy with me to be on guard. When I was in, I’d pull the hole closed behind me.”

“Weren’t you scared to be alone in there?”

“I wasn’t alone. There was always someone waiting for me there, someone warm and soft, with a belly I could snuggle into. She’d protect me. Keep me company. Brush my hair.”

“I bet she smelled like bayberries.” Eden smiled through her tears. “So you were always safe, and always loved.”

“As long as I stayed in the secret room I was.”

Eden nodded.

They both fell silent. With tacit agreement, they began to walk again, though the fog still obscured much of the path.

* * *

Some time later, the fog thinned.

“Hey – look at that…”

In front of them was a large mass of green ferns, punctuated by one tall tree.