These Silent Woods: A Novel(61)

She balls the hem of her pajama top in her fist. “She’s my friend.”

“That girl is not your—” I pause, change my words. The sadness of it striking a nerve: for a person who has no friends, watching a girl in the woods—that would feel like friendship, maybe. “You don’t even know her, Finch.”

“I know her enough.”

“Did she see you?”

“No. Well, I’m not sure. Maybe. Actually, I think yes. Because—the last time, something happened. Someone else was there.”

“Someone else?” A menacing thought, a flash of terror: Scotland, snooping after all. Meddling, or something worse, and Finch as witness, and the trouble we are in if this is true because what are we gonna do about it? Report him? Avoid him?

Finch steps closer, holding out a newspaper. “Him.” She points to a photograph of a young man with brown, curly hair, standing next to Casey Winters. The two of them dressed up, like for a school dance or something. “And he’s lying.”

“Finch, you don’t know that.” She’s been wading into the Nancy Drews lately, and apparently they’re rubbing off on her.

“It said in the papers that he told the police she was going to California. Why would he tell them that? He knows where she is.”

She begins clenching the corner of the quilt, hand wrapped tight around an old onesie. There’s more, I can tell.

“What else?”

“He was yelling at her. And then he pushed her.”

I look at her, taking this in. Throat tight.

“I sent a rock at him,” she says, “with my slingshot. I hit him square in the back.” She juts out her chin and her eyes glimmer. “It hurt, too. I could tell. He started after me, but you know how I am in the woods. He would never catch me.”

I slam my fist onto the trunk and rise, the needle and thread tumbling to the floor. “You got any idea how stupid that was, Finch? How dangerous? After all I’ve taught you.” The spool of thread rolls away, stuttering across the floor.

She steps back, startled, but not deterred. “He was hurting her. What was I supposed to do, just stand by and watch?”

Yes. No.

A series of emotions scuttle through: anger, frustration, disappointment, pride. But also fear. Because someone is out there, maybe close, maybe not. Someone capable of violence, someone who saw Finch. Could he be looking for her, now? I walk to the window and peer out, hand on the Ruger.

I shake my head, scoop the needle and thread from the floor and dump them into the wooden bowl on the trunk. “Well, where?”

She bites her lip. “Close to where we saw her, but north a ways, up the valley. I meant to go back and check on her, but then Marie came, and the snow. I can show you where. If we leave now, we can get there before dark.”

“We’re not going anywhere near that place. You got that?”

“But I’m worried about her. What if something happened to her? What if he did something after I left? We need to check on her.”

This whole time as a parent, there were two things I wanted. The first and most important was to be with Finch, to take care of her. But close behind that goal was the second, which was to raise her right. To help her grow up to be a person with good values and compassion. A person who did the right thing, no matter what. Which is what she was doing, really. Standing up for someone. All these years, the choice I made to come here, the risk that choice entailed and the so-called rules that I broke in order to do it—all this time I’ve been justifying it by telling myself that at least we’re together and at least my daughter is growing up with a sense of right and wrong.

But now here we are, Finch and me at an impasse and my own two desires in direct opposition. Where, no matter what, one of those things must be let go.

“We can’t afford to get involved in this. I’m sorry but that’s how it is.” I look out the window again, scanning the woods. “There are things you don’t know, Finch. About us.”

“I don’t understand what anything about you and me has to do with this.”

“We aren’t going down there, Finch, and that’s that.” I lean down close and look her in the eye. “You knew the rules and you didn’t stick to them. You broke my trust. For that, you’re grounded.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you’ve lost your privileges for a while. Till this thing blows over, you’re not leaving my sight. No trapping, no scouting. Nothing.”

“But—”

I return to my sewing. “I don’t want to hear another word about it. You got that? Not a word.”

Her face crumples and she squints her eyes and pushes her lips out. “‘All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor.’ That’s Whitman and I know you remember.” She points to the couch. “We were sitting right there when you read it to me. I asked you what it meant and you said no matter what happens in life, you should be honest. Be a person of honor.”

Whitman with his hat and his fat white beard, staring into the sky and making up pretty lines. He wasn’t a soldier. He never had people show up at the house with a clipboard to write down everything that was wrong about his life and then haul his kid off. “It’s easy for a person who sits around and writes poems all day to have certain philosophies on life.”