A History of Wild Places(100)

“What happened at the ferry?”

She rubs her palms against her knees, craving a cigarette worse than ever, I imagine. “It was a week or so before you disappeared. You came to the house for dinner—you don’t remember?” She looks at me, but she must see in my eyes that I need her to keep going, I need her to tell me what happened. “You were angry with me. You said—” Her voice breaks off, and for a split second she glances to the door, her exit, her way out of here if she wants to bolt back out into the hall and escape whatever it is she doesn’t want to say. But then her eyes sweep back to me. “You said I hadn’t been a good mom; you said I loved your brother more than you. But that’s not true; it’s not.” She’s fighting the tears now, but it’s a helpless effort; they spill down her cheeks in little damp trails. “You said your father was the only one who really cared about you.”

I release my hold on the windowsill, remembering now. Remembering that day on the wharf, waiting for the ferry. “And you told me that he wasn’t even my real father,” I say so she won’t have to.

Her jaw trembles. “I never planned to tell you, I didn’t mean to.” She touches her face with her hand, smearing away the tears and mascara, making an ashy smudge at the corners of her eyes.

It was raining hard that day, the sky indistinguishable from the sea, and I remember the anger I felt growing inside me. But it wasn’t only about her, I was angry at a lot of things. My career had suffered in the previous year, several kids had gone missing, run away from home in search of the underground—the fictional place I had written about in my books. My stories were too dark, many said. And they were inspiring children to trek into forests and backwoods, hoping they might find the place where Eloise had followed the fox and become the monster. But the worst had happened only a month before I stood on the wharf with my mom—a boy had died. Markus Sorenson was only fourteen years old when he walked into the Alaskan wilderness not far from his home, the first book in the Foxtail series tucked into his backpack along with a thermos of hot apple cider, a flashlight, a small shovel, and an extra pair of socks. His body wasn’t found until a week later; hypothermia had taken his life only a couple days after he vanished. And the guilt that tore through me was enough to make me start drinking at a rate that began to drown out the days.

When I came to Whidbey Island to see my parents, I wasn’t in good shape. I hadn’t had a sober day in a month, and hearing my mom say that my father was not my real father felt like a brick slamming against my bones. I hated her for it, hated her for the lies she had told me my entire life. And I hated her for finally telling me the truth.

She told me how she had married too young, how she had had an affair with a man who had only been visiting friends on Whidbey Island, a few houses down from my parents’ home. How when she learned she was pregnant, the man told her she could come live in a community where they would care for her and the child after it was born. So she left her husband, packed her things, and went to Pastoral. But after I was born, she began to realize she couldn’t stay there—it wasn’t the kind of life she wanted for herself, or her child. She fled Pastoral and retreated back to her husband. She lied and told him that the baby was his, and he believed her—or at least pretended to. And I was raised by a man who I thought was my father.

My mother told me all this that day, waiting for the ferry, and I understood why she had always treated me like she did—kept me at arm’s length—I held her secrets inside my very existence. When she looked at me, she saw my real father, she saw the mistake she’d made, and she feared that someday her husband would look at me and see it too. I was a bomb waiting to go off—to break apart her entire world. I could ruin everything.

With the rain streaming over us, I asked her the name of my real father. I asked her about the place where I was born. His name was Cooper, she had said.

I need to see it, I told her. I pleaded with her. I need to go there.

She refused at first, but she also must have known that there was no turning back now. She had given up her secrets, and I deserved to see the place where I took my first breath, to know if my real father was still alive. So she told me how to get there: the route into the mountains and the old red barn and the path through the woods.

Now, facing my mother in this hotel room, a new betrayal begins to surface. “You knew where I was this whole time?”

Her head moves slowly, nodding.

“You could have told someone, said something.”

I think of my father who raised me, waking each morning for the last seven years, not knowing where I was. His only daughter.

“I couldn’t,” she answers.

I press a hand to my side where the incision has started to throb, the pain meds wearing off. I need to sit down, but I don’t—not yet. “You wanted to protect yourself, you mean,” I say. “You didn’t want my dad to know the lie you’ve kept from him after all these years.” She would rather let him suffer, than tell him the truth—than tell him how she had had an affair, how I wasn’t his real daughter.

I bite down on all the things I want to say to her, all the vile thoughts swirling inside me.

“Is he still alive?” she asks.

“Cooper’s dead,” I tell her bluntly. “He died before I arrived. I never got to meet my real father.”