California(7)

“How long have you been here?” Frida asked.

“Forever,” Sandy said.

That was the thing about the Millers: they never got specific. It was easy to deduce they’d arrived at least seven years before, since Jane was born on the land, but that was as much as Frida could figure out on her own. Sandy and Bo wouldn’t say where they were from, either, though Los Angeles didn’t seem to register much familiarity on their faces, nor did Cleveland, where Cal had been raised. It wasn’t that their speech was accentless but that it shifted, from bland to twangy and back again in a single conversation. Once, Bo wore a Duke shirt, but Sandy said she’d gotten it from a friend, years and years ago. “Be protective of your past,” she finally told Frida. “Our children don’t need to know too much about ours.”

On that first meeting, Sandy told her the names of the fish in the creek. “We don’t know what that one’s called,” she said, pointing to a thin silvery one, “so we call it a princess.” Frida wished she had a Device that worked, to take notes. She hadn’t felt this happy in—maybe ever. Sandy’s eyebrows were light as dandelion fuzz, and Frida loved the surprise of them. She hadn’t realized how tired she’d gotten of Cal’s face.

Sandy offered to help Frida with her laundry, and Frida accepted. Garrett ran up and down the creek, collecting rocks, and Jane stayed to help the women. Frida hadn’t been taking much notice of her until Sandy said in a stern voice, “Hand that over.” When Jane hesitated, Sandy snatched Cal’s red bandanna out of her daughter’s hand. She threw it to the ground as if it were on fire, her eyes squeezed shut.

“You okay?” Frida asked.

“She likes red,” Sandy said. She affected a breezy laugh, but there was something shaky and nervous behind it. “We don’t let her have too much of it.”

“Sorry, Mama,” Jane whispered.

The next time Garrett sped by, Frida tried to keep her voice casual. She didn’t want to freak Sandy out again. “What’s with his shirt?”

“He likes to help forage.” Sandy raised an eyebrow, her eyes going twinkly for a moment. “* is a kind of mushroom.”

Frida laughed until she realized Jane was watching them.

“We find food, in the forest,” the little girl said.

“Cool,” Frida said. Cool? She supposed it didn’t hurt, lying to the kids. It wasn’t like Garrett would find out the truth. They could rename everything, if they wanted to.

The laundry was drying by the time Sandy led her kids away, back to their house. Frida practically ran to the shed. Sandy had invited them over for lunch the next day! The route to their house was easy, Sandy had said. With a stick she drew a rudimentary map in the mud. “And we’ve nailed hawk feathers into trees, to mark the trail. You haven’t noticed them?” Frida shook her head.

It took some effort for Frida to convince Cal she wasn’t playing a trick on him. And once he believed her, he was concerned. How did she know they weren’t dangerous? Why had they brought children into this world? “That’s troubling to me,” he said, but Frida wasn’t eager to follow this line of argument. He sounded like her brother when he talked that way—all doom.

“I’m going whether you come or not,” Frida had said, and that settled it.



The Millers’ house would have been impossible to find, were it not for those feathers, and those key phrases chiseled into Frida’s brain: “Turn left at the boulder, walk until you reach two fallen trees, one atop the other, forming a cross. Turn right.” A few times, Frida felt a flash of nervousness that they were lost, but an hour later they pulled back a large branch, attached to which was another feather, tied with turquoise-colored leather, and entered a clearing. Across the field, a house materialized. Frida felt victorious.

Compared with the shed, the Millers’ home was enormous, and durable, its exterior built of stone and wood. The family must have heard them approaching because all four of them were waiting outside the front door.

“Are they getting their portrait done?” Cal whispered. Frida barely registered the comment, so transfixed was she by Bo’s naked face, no beard to obscure it. Cal himself had a thick beard going, the same look Micah had sported when he left for college, as if he hadn’t been raised in a city, as if he’d ever gone camping. She kind of liked Cal’s copper-colored beard, but maybe this Bo could teach her husband how to shave with a knife. What she missed was having the option.

“Welcome.” Bo stepped forward and shook hands with both of them. He did not smile. He was shorter than Sandy but sturdy with muscles, barbed with them. His seriousness took something away from him, Frida thought, his high cheekbones and heavy black eyebrows menacing rather than dignified. And he squinted, as if he’d lost his glasses. Perhaps this was a man who had been broken down by blurriness.

“We’re so happy you made it!” Sandy said. She wore the same overalls but, thankfully, had added a blue T-shirt to the ensemble. She held Jane’s hand, and Garrett was slung on her hip. At Frida’s greeting, the boy rubbed his left eye with a fist and shook his head. “He just woke up from a nap,” Sandy said. The little girl nodded, as if confirming her mother’s story.

Bo invited them inside, and Jane skipped forward to lead the parade. The house was one large, low-ceilinged room, with two cubbylike spaces for bedrooms. They slept in real beds; Sandy and Bo’s had a wooden headboard, and the children slept on what looked like sturdy cots. Frida saw Cal take in these comforts. In the shed, she and Cal had four sleeping bags, which they rotated or layered. No pillows.