Woodlands (10 page)

The backdoor opened again, and Kyle’s brother, Kenton, and his wife, Lauren, appeared with their two-year-old, Molly Sue. Lauren wore her short hair tucked behind her ears. She recently had colored it a shade of cinnamon brown that was close to her daughter’s hair color. Molly Sue wore a frilly Easter frock with a big pink bow in her hair.

“And look at you!” Leah said, making over Molly Sue with equal enthusiasm.

Lauren said hello to Leah and told her the eggs she had decorated were on the kitchen counter. Kenton introduced Lauren to Seth.

The four of them chatted a few minutes before Kenton asked if he should start to hide the eggs they had brought.

“I can do it,” Leah said.

“Actually, I was kind of looking forward to it,” Kenton said. “I have a few favorite spots where I hid them last year.” Kenton resembled his brother with his strong jaw and dark hair, but he was a little heavier than Kyle and not quite as tall.

“Then I wouldn’t want to spoil your fun,” Leah said. “Jessica and I already hid a lot in the back section of the yard. You might want to put some around the sides of the house.”

“Okay, got it,” Kenton said, going inside for the eggs.

Lauren called over to Jessica, “Did you see your daughter here? We came early to help, but we’ve been inside the last fifteen minutes. I’m afraid we created a little peer pressure. When
Emma saw Molly Sue all dressed up, she wanted to wear her Easter dress, too. I hope it’s okay that I let her change into her Easter outfit.”

Jessica smiled at her little charmer. “You look beautiful, Miss Emma.”

“You probably didn’t want her to wear all this cute stuff until church tomorrow, did you?” Lauren asked.

“No, it’s okay,” Jessica said, joining them on the porch.

Lauren fussed with the ruffles on her daughter’s dress. “I decided this morning that I’d put so much money into Molly’s outfit I wanted her to get as much wear out of it as she could before she outgrows it.”

“I agree,” Jessica said. “As long as we have them in their finest, let’s go out front and get a picture of these two cousins on the porch swing.”

They all left, and Leah stood there with a big rip in her heart. She had never been anyone’s little princess. She couldn’t remember an Easter or any holiday when she had been dressed up and made a fuss over. It never had bothered her before. Why did it hurt so much now?

Seth was looking at her. Leah blinked and tried to sniff quietly. It didn’t work.

“Do the windows of your soul need another cleaning today?” His voice was kind but also carried a pinch of teasing. That was enough to convince Leah to buck up and put her exasperating emotions back inside, somewhere deep, where they couldn’t get out again and make her look foolish.

“No, I’m okay. Must be the smoke from the barbecue. It messes up my contacts.” Leah quickly wiped her right eye. “Do you need any help there?”

“I think these are about done. Kyle told me to load them up in that tray and then put on another round.”

“I’ll get the next round. They’re in the refrigerator.”

When Leah entered the kitchen, Kyle was holding baby Sara and talking to his brother, Kenton, about the Little League game coming up on Tuesday.

“Is Seth ready for more kebabs?” Kyle asked when he saw Leah opening the refrigerator.

“I can get them,” Leah said.

“Tell him I’ll be right there after I change Sara. Jess wants her in her Easter dress, too, so she can take pictures on the porch.”

“I’ll trade you,” Leah said to Kyle. “You can take the shish kebabs out, and I’ll change Sara.”

Kyle handed Sara over a little too willingly. “Jess wants the little bows in her hair,” he said, admitting that wasn’t his area of expertise. “I think Jess had to use Scotch tape the last time.”

“I’ll figure it out,” Leah said, balancing the sleepy-eyed girl on her hip.

“And I better get these eggs hidden,” Kenton said.

Leah talked softly to nine-month-old Sara all the way up the stairs. The nursery smelled like baby powder and lilacs mixed with a twinge of barbecue smoke. From below the open window came Kyle and Seth’s voices with an occasional yap from Bungee.

Leah looked out the window, still holding Sara close. Sara nestled her head in the curve of Leah’s neck and breathed with the calm, steady rhythm of a heart secure and at rest.

For several minutes Leah took in the closeness of her little Sara Bunny and the view out the nursery window, which consisted of rich grass bordered by deep woodlands and the fair, blue sky with a handful of fluffy clouds frolicking over the tops of the giant cedars like spring lambs at play. It all was beautiful.

Leah had lived in Glenbrooke all her life but never had the sky, the trees, or the birds’ songs seemed as magnificent as they did this moment. If she ever did pack up her Amelia Earhart
spirit and fly to the ends of the Earth, this was where she would want to come home. And these were the people she wanted to greet her when she returned.

This is where I belong
.

Brad’s counseling advice from last summer made even more sense now. For so long she had thought her parents were blocking her goal to see the world. Then, for years, she stuffed her anger inside and fought depression. Yet the truth was, when she no longer was bound by her obligations to her parents, what did she do? She had enough money to pay for a memorable trip. Instead, she bought a house and settled into Glenbrooke even more firmly.

This must really be where I belong
.

D
o you remember what Shelly said at the party yesterday?” Leah asked Seth, as his car bumped along the dirt logging road in the dark on Easter morning. “Didn’t she say keep to the left off the side road at the end of the camp property?”

“I thought she said right,” Seth said.

He had arrived punctually at four that morning to pick up Leah for their sunrise adventure. She had been ready twenty minutes early and had made a thermos of coffee, which they had given up on drinking as soon as the road turned bumpy. They also gave up trying to listen to the CD in Seth’s portable player since it kept skipping. At the moment, drizzle covered the windshield. The wipers’ steady swish filled the strained silence between Seth and Leah. Things weren’t going the way she had thought they would.

The day before, at Kyle and Jessica’s Easter party, the only time Seth and Leah had really talked to each other was their brief exchange right after he had arrived. Once she had dressed
Sara, other guests began to show up, and Leah ran around at her usual pace, doing everything she could to help with the event.

Seth left right after the egg hunt. He came up to Leah while she and Shelly were lacing the kids together for the three-legged race. “Four o’clock tomorrow okay for you?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said. “Have you asked yet about the logging roads?”

“No.”

“Well, Shelly here is the one to ask. Do you remember I told you she and her husband, Jonathan, run Camp Heather Brook? Shelly,” Leah called to her recreation partner, “can you tell us how to get to the top of that hill behind the camp? Seth and I want to go there for an Easter sunrise view of the valley.”

Shelly, who had been a flight attendant for many years before marrying her childhood sweetheart and moving to Glenbrooke, gave Seth directions. She pointed with two fingers the way a flight attendant indicates where the emergency exits are located on a plane.

Leah wished Shelly and her two efficient fingers were with them now in Seth’s Subaru so she could point out the emergency exit on this dark, bumpy road.

“I’m almost positive Shelly said to turn this way,” Leah said, holding on to her shoulder safety strap so it wouldn’t press against the side of her neck with each bounce. “This road is really bad.”

“Are you kidding? This would practically be a super highway in Costa Rica,” Seth said, bringing the car to an abrupt halt. “Look, there’s the cedar tree she told us about and the fork in the trail.”

“You’re right,” Leah said, squinting into the light of his high beams at the obvious division in the trail.

“At this fork we go right,” Seth said.

“Right,” Leah agreed, and on they went, bouncing like crazy.

The road curved and led up a steep incline. Seth punched his way to the top and stopped with a jerk when the road suddenly ended.

“Looks like a moderate hike, from what I can see,” Seth said, getting out of the car.

Leah was glad the rain had stopped as they began to hike. She had to hoof it fast to keep up with Seth. He held a large flashlight high to spread light for both of them. The earth beneath their feet was soft but not so muddy it slowed them down.

They hiked in silence for ten minutes before Seth said, “This looks like a worthy spot.” He swung the light to the right and left. Leah could make out that they were standing on the knoll of the hill. Half a dozen sawed-off tree stumps revealed that this area had been the victim of a clear-cut decades ago. What lay beyond them and in the valley below remained to be seen.

“I’d put a bench right here, if I owned this mountain,” Seth declared.

“It’s not exactly a mountain,” Leah stated, brushing off the top of mossy log before sitting down and removing her left boot. She shook it, and a tiny pebble fell out.

“Was that in there the whole time?” Seth asked.

“Yes, but I didn’t want to stop.” They were speaking in hushed voices, as if the rest of the world was still in a deep sleep. Their whispers carried far on the top of this windless hill. The moist scent of earth and decayed leaves filled the air.

Seth sat on the stump closest to hers. “You’re the kind of camper we loved to have on our tours. The ones who didn’t complain and could take a bit of inconvenience.”

“That’s me,” Leah said. “The original happy camper.”

“You know, it took us a lot less time to get to this lookout point than I thought it would,” Seth said. “Are you cold? Do you want to walk around some? It’s going to be awhile before we see the sun.”

“I’m fine.”

The low-hanging clouds served as a canopy, covering the stars and keeping the earth warmer than it would have been if the sky were wide open above them.

Seth flashed the light around. “It is pretty dark, isn’t it? Not much chance of being mauled by a mountain lion here in the clear-cut, is there?”

“Oh, now, that’s a nice thought,” Leah said. She noticed for the first time that she could see her breath. Crossing her arms, she tucked her hands under her armpits to warm them.

“Tell me about your family,” she suggested as an alternative to concocting spooky images in the darkness.

“My family?” Seth turned toward her. He placed the flashlight on the ground between them. The light shot upwards like a beacon. Its brilliance dispersed in the fine mist of the clouds.

“You said you grew up in Colorado, right?”

“Yes, the Boulder area. My parents are mild, law-abiding citizens. My dad is a financial consultant. I have one older sister, who lives in Canada with her husband and three kids. That’s about it.” Seth gazed into the vast night, preoccupied with his own thoughts.

It disappointed Leah that he wasn’t acting more attentive to her. The closeness and warmth that had overpowered her on Friday night when he had called her George didn’t seem to be with them in the damp chill of this early morning. She wanted that feeling back. She wanted him to say something tender and poetic like he had said yesterday about her tears washing the window of her soul.

Seth’s thoughts obviously were elsewhere because he said, “Do you know an elderly woman named Ida?”

“Yes.” Leah looked at Seth in the light of the flashlight beam. “Ida Dane. You met her. You delivered a package to her last week. My car stalled in front of her house.”

“That’s
why she acted as if she knew me. The lemonade. She invited me to come back for lemonade the day I delivered a package to her.”

“You should take her up on it,” Leah said. “Ida makes terrific lemonade. She uses local summer berries and makes it in the blender.”

“I did try some. She gave it to me at the Easter party yesterday.”

“That’s right,” Leah said, “Ida did bring some yesterday, didn’t she? My favorite is her marionberry lemonade.”

“I think that’s the one I had. It was great. Although when she started to talk to me, I didn’t realize I’d already met her. Do you think Ida knows what she’s talking about?”

“Most of the time. She gets fuzzy every now and then. Why?”

Seth stretched out his legs in front of him and stomped his right heel in the damp earth, dislodging a mud clod from the bottom of his boot. “When Ida found out I was Franklin’s relative, she had all kinds of trivia to tell me. For instance, she said this hill and the surrounding 150 acres belonged to Cameron Madison, as well as another 50 acres on and around Madison Hill.”

“That sounds about right,” Leah said.

“Ida also said that Franklin inherited all two hundred acres.”

“How could that be?”

“I don’t know, but that’s what she said.”

“It doesn’t make any sense.” Leah paused. “I always heard
that Cameron was bankrupt when he died. How could he leave anything to Franklin? Or, if he did, then Franklin must have sold it all long before I was born.”