A History of Wild Places(71)

Peering through the front window, I watch Levi walk to the cabinet and drag out another bottle of whiskey. The dark, tawny liquid splashes onto the wood table as he fills a glass, holding it to his mouth, before knocking the whole thing back in one gulp. He sets the glass on the cabinet but doesn’t refill it.

The fireplace is lit in the living room, candles glowing throughout the house—one of the community members must have lit them earlier in the night so our leader and his bride could return home and not be forced to fumble around in the dark.

He walks to the fireplace and tosses something onto the flames. It looks like a small piece of wood, kindling maybe. And then, through the muffled barrier of the windows, I hear a sound, like a back door shutting. Levi turns his head, listening. For a moment there is only silence, and then footsteps.

“Levi?” a voice calls into the house.

I recognize the sharp upswing of her voice. It’s not Alice Weaver, come to look for her new husband.

It’s Bee.

Levi walks to the back of the house, where the kitchen faces the forest beyond. Bee’s voice is low and I can’t make out their words, but soon they appear again in the dim light of the living room, Bee’s hand in Levi’s, and he leads her up the stairs.

When they’re out of sight, I enter the house quietly and leave the door ajar behind me, to allow for a swift exit. At first, I don’t know what I’m doing, why I’m here—or what I’m hoping to find. Maybe some proof that Levi knows more than he’ll admit. So I walk into his office, keeping my footsteps light.

The interior of his office is filled with dark wood furniture, and the heavy cotton curtains are drawn closed. I’ve never spent much time in here—I’ve never had reason to—but now, I eye Levi’s mammoth desk: a thing that was here long before Pastoral was founded, the kind of solid antique desk that will last another hundred years, with thick wood legs and a smooth, lacquered top.

I move around it, where the wood chair sits pushed forward, and I begin opening drawers, peering into the cavern of each one. I find another bottle of whiskey, a few books on native plants, a box of keys—car keys that once powered the abandoned vehicles now decaying in the parking lot to the south. Nothing relevant. Nothing to explain any of the questions clanking around inside me. In fact, I’m not even sure what the right questions are, what I should be looking for.

I leave the office and step back into the living room.

The fireplace burns low, candles lit along the mantel, and I think of Alice Weaver—still out celebrating her recent marriage to Levi, while her husband is in his house, upstairs with another woman. And I realize suddenly that I don’t want to be here.

It’s time to leave before I get caught.

But as I move to the open door, my eyes jerk twice over something in the fireplace. A thing I dismiss at first, then glance at again.

Something rests among the burning logs—square, manmade.

I move away from the open door and kneel down beside the fire, my left temple throbbing with strange little pulses. I use one of the heavy iron pokers to dislodge the thing from the fiery logs and watch as it rolls out onto the floor.

It’s a wood box.

Its edges are still burning so I push it back into the ash of the fireplace, putting out the flame. I blow the soot away, waiting a moment for it to cool before I lift it up. It’s small, about the size of my palm, and it’s still warm, but not enough to burn my hand. This is what Levi tossed into the fire when I watched him from the porch. I had thought it was only a scrap of wood—I couldn’t see it clearly through the window.

Now, I have spared it from the flames. The hinges have melted some but I manage to pry open the lid, ash falling away from the cracks.

Inside is a heap of metal.

Shiny, silver.

My eyes vibrate for a moment, certain I’m not seeing it right.

I pull out the thing inside, holding it in my palm: a necklace. And hanging from the long silver chain are four charms: four tiny books with numbers stamped onto their covers.

Levi had tossed the box onto the fire, he had tried to burn it—maybe he thought the necklace would melt inside the wood box—be reduced to a puddle of shivering metal.

But it didn’t burn.

And there is something else in the box. Folded and pressed into the bottom. I pry it free: a piece of paper, a note, unburnt. My hands begin to shake as I unfold it quickly, my eyes darting over the words. I already know what it is. What I’ve found.

It’s the third page from Travis Wren’s notebook.

The last missing note.





BEE


It’s a mistake coming here.

I open the back door, the divot in the wood floor familiar as I step into Levi’s kitchen. It smells of candle wax, and a fire is burning from the fireplace at the other end of the house, the snapping of embers like little bursts in my ears.

Levi is alone in the house—Alice Weaver isn’t with him, I heard her clear buoyant laugh back at the party as the others swirled around her, running their envious fingers down the fabric of her dress, a gown that’s been worn by many women in the community on their wedding days. A dress that I’ve been told is no longer a pure white, but the color of hen eggs, speckled along the hemline from the stains that refuse to be washed out.

Alice Weaver absorbed their praise and admiration, she breathed it into her lungs as if it was always meant for her. But it should have been mine.