A History of Wild Places(51)

I reach forward to see it more clearly, but she snaps her fingers closed—her eyes resting coolly on me, a warning for me not to touch it. She opens her fingers again, slowly, and this time I peer forward, observing it, the small silver sides, the clasp broken at the top. This too, has a bit of dirt still caught in the creases, but most of it has been smoothed away, either by Calla’s fingers or because it’s been living inside her pocket. And I can even make out a number, clear and distinct, etched into the center of the book: three.

My lungs suck in a breath, like a record stalling mid-song, and the morning sunlight through the windows seems suddenly too bright, a single glaring eye, watching me. Observant. “It’s a charm,” I say aloud, nearly choking on the words.

“A what?” Calla closes her fingers back around it and slides it into her pocket, out of sight.

“It was on a necklace once, and there were others like it. Five of them.”

Her mouth seems to be working on a question, turning it over, making pulp of it. “How do you know that?”

In my back pocket, I find the notebook and pull it out. But just like Calla, I don’t want her to touch it, to take it from me. We each have things we covet—our secret, private treasures.

Inside the notebook is the photograph of Maggie St. James. I’ve pressed it between the pages to keep it safe, to keep it from bending, and I don’t want my wife to know I still have it—that I still look at it every night, searching the woman’s face for some clue I’m waiting for her to reveal; some truth in the lines along her eye, the slope of her hair just above her shoulders that will tell me what happened to her. Where she is now.

Just like Travis Wren, I’m trying to find her.

“What is it?” Calla asks, nodding to the notebook, but not taking a step closer to me, like she already understands the agreement between us: We each keep our own things. We don’t share.

“I found it in the sunroom,” I say.

She swallows, eyes no longer blinking, waiting for me to continue.

“It belonged to Travis Wren, the man whose truck I found.” I look down at the notebook, an artifact from another time. “He came to Pastoral looking for a woman, for Maggie St. James. It’s why he had the photograph of her in his truck. She was missing, and he believed she was in Pastoral. He found her here.”

My wife lowers her gaze to the thick, black book in her hand. A moment passes, silence vibrating through the old farmhouse, then she flips open the front cover to a page with the title printed again in black ink on white paper. Calla swivels the book around so I can read it clearly. So there will be no question of the author’s name:

Maggie St. James.

And below the printed name, are handwritten words in looping, oversize letters. Remember Maggie.

Maggie St. James wrote the book my wife now holds. Travis never mentioned the title of Maggie’s books inside his journal. But now, Calla has found one of them in the garden. Buried there—kept hidden. Why?

And who wrote those words at the bottom? Who wanted to make sure Maggie wasn’t forgotten?

Calla’s hands begin to tremble, her eyes shiver. Maybe it’s the lack of sleep or the colliding together of too many things, parallels aligning themselves in this singular moment, but the book slips from her hands—like the weight is too much—and as it tumbles to the floor, the pages fan open briefly and I glimpse the eerie, dark illustrations inside. Broad charcoal lines that are smeared and ashen, a rush of images that send a cold, icy prick down to my tailbone.

I kneel down to retrieve the book and so does Calla. But we both stop, our faces only a few inches apart, the book on the floor between us, pages closed. My wife stares at me, a hint of terror in her eyes, like she’s waiting to see if I will make a move for it.

“Maggie was wearing a necklace when she went missing,” I say. “There were five charms on it, five silver books. But book three was broken off, and Travis Wren brought it with him when he came to Pastoral.”

Calla settles back onto the floor, leaving the Foxtail book where it sits. “He buried the book in the garden?” she asks.

I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

“If he brought it here,” she says, reaching back into her pocket to retrieve the silver charm, the metal glinting in her palm. “Then he must have buried it. He probably buried both books.” She nods to the larger book on the floor between us. Her voice sounds clearer now, more lucid, like she’s shaken off the lack of sleep. “And maybe he wrote ‘Remember Maggie’ on the inside.”

“No,” I say. “He didn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“His handwriting in the journal is sharp and slanted. It’s nothing like the note in the book. Someone else wrote ‘Remember Maggie.’?”

“Who?”

Again, I shake my head—I don’t have an answer. I peer down at the book, still resting on the floor, a harmless thing, merely paper and ink and glue. And yet, it frightens me: the thick quantity of pages; the dark, lusterless cover that contains only the title of the book; the place where Calla found it—buried, concealed away in the garden, where only my wife would find it.

“You read it?” I ask.

Calla’s mouth curves, one side dipped down. “Some of it.”

“What’s it about?”