These Silent Woods: A Novel(67)

Finch tumbling into the grass and stooping and soaking in the world. All her questions, all our days. This wild and precious life. I know it right away: this is the poem I will write in my crooked lettering and leave for my daughter before I get in my truck and drive to the end of myself.





THIRTY-THREE




For a while I lie on my bed, listening to Finch breathe, shuffle through the sheets. I crawl out and kneel next to her, stroke her blond hair, rest my palm on her back. The thought that this will be the last time I see her here in our home. That she will grow and shift. That every muscle and bone will expand and her looks will change and she will become someone I won’t know. Maybe not even recognize. And that I will change, too. Not grow but be different all the same.

I can’t go through with this. Can’t. Won’t.

I sit up. Crying hard now and shaking bad. I sneak out to the main room and slump into the couch and wipe my eyes with Finch’s quilt, finished now: all those squares, all those pieces of things she wore. The blue and white dress from the summer she learned to walk. The yellow sweatshirt she wore all last winter. The pink onesie with an elephant. Cindy had picked that one out before Finch was born.

“It’s not safe here anymore,” I say aloud, to Cindy. The weight of her absence like a stone in my gut.

And even if it were safe, that’s beside the point. Knowing that girl died a terrible death. Knowing her parents are out there, hoping she’ll come home. Waiting. I wipe my face with my sleeve. “I can’t just sit on it, what happened to her. It’s not who I am. Who I want to be. For Finch and also for myself.”

I rise from the couch, grab a box of matches and the flare, from the first time Scotland showed up in the yard, all those years ago. I unlock the front door, move the shovel at the handle, and step out into the night. For some reason the story in the Bible where Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane keeps roiling through my mind: Jesus asking God whether there is some other way. Not that I’m comparing myself to Jesus, mind you. But the wanting there to be an alternative. A different path. Some way to avoid the heartache that looms just ahead. Terrible feeling, to know that though it’s not here yet, something bad is aiming toward you, lumbering its way closer. And to know that you do indeed have a choice: it’s on you. You could decide not to. You could back out. You could run.

I step off the porch and lie down on the grass, stretch myself out and look up. The yard is bright, the moon almost full and the sky without clouds. The stars endless out here, visible and distinct. Orion, Taurus. Some assurance in the fact that the sky will stay unchanged. I don’t look, but I know the hens are roosting, quiet and defenseless.

I set off the flare, the blaze shooting through the night. Which hopefully he is watching, this late. I grab some kindling and a few pieces of firewood from the porch and get a fire going in the ring. A final luxury, a campfire, just for the sheer pleasure of it. The warmth against the cold night air. I sit on a boulder and watch the embers lick the tinder. The sparks sail into the dark. No good to think about how this is the last time, but I do. Think about it.

How small my world has become, here. How simple and good. Eight years of that, Coop. Peace and quiet and happiness. More than a lot of people get, really. You should be grateful.

In a while, he is there, his figure moving toward me, illuminated by the light of the fire, his body casting a long shadow across the yard.

“Cooper?”

I think of the first time he showed up, right here, with the AK and the flare and the dead rabbit in his backpack and a crow hovering at his shoulder. “Thanks for coming,” I say.

“You all right?”

“I got a favor to ask.”

He settles onto a boulder across from me. His forehead damp with sweat, huffing a little. Must’ve hightailed it down here. “Sure. Anything.”

“I’m heading to town, in the morning. Gonna tell them about the girl. Take them to her. Marie is on her way. She’ll take Finch to her grandparents’.” Funny how saying something out loud can bring such grief. It rises up, settles in my throat. “What I’d like from you is some help with the chickens. Can’t leave them here. Don’t want to set them loose in the woods, either. They won’t last a single night.”

He blinks, his face lit by the fire. Pain in his eyes, distress. “I could hide you. I know places. Let me help.”

“Appreciate that, Scotland. More than you know.” And I do. All these years of his spying and meddling—for the first time, I wonder if maybe all along what he wanted was to help us, in his own strange way. “With our picture out there, that changes everything for Finch and me. Like you said, FBI’s probably already figured out who we are. Cindy’s parents, if they think we’re alive, they’ll be looking. They’ll relaunch the search, get our faces out, all over again. Everywhere, just like before.”

“You could go somewhere. Move. Start over.”

“Nowhere to go, this time.” I let the end of the stick catch fire. “We’re backed into a corner. I did that to us, I know that. Time to face the music.”

Scotland sits in silence, watching the fire. “Your mind’s made up?”

I nod.

“You got pen and paper? I’d like to write Finch a little note if that’s all right.”

“Sure.” I stand up, go into the cabin, and get a notebook and pen from the drawer.