These Silent Woods: A Novel(72)

Cooper will be waiting. Marie, too. The year I turned eleven, she sat Cooper and me down at the little table and said that, with our blessing, she’d like to sell Jake’s house and move in with us. A month later, she arrived with her belongings and three crates of books. She and Cooper exchanged vows and the three of us had a wedding.

It was Marie, mostly, who paved the way for my entry into the world beyond the cabin. I was fourteen when she initially broached the topic. Specifically, she pointed out that there were significant benefits to be had from my connecting with my grandparents. My father didn’t budge on this until I turned sixteen, which, knowing Marie’s wisdom in such matters, may have been her goal all along.

Perhaps the sixteen years that had passed since they’d lost my mother as well as me had softened them. Alternatively, maybe my grandparents were never quite as cruel and impenetrable as my father had perceived them to be. There was the initial shock, of course. For all of us. But the truth is that by the time I was sixteen, I was growing more and more restless for answers, for connection with the outside world, and I was willing to face whatever awkwardness might ensue. As Cooper predicted, it didn’t take long for them to accept me. They were good to me. They are good to me still. We’ve come to an agreement not to speak of my father at all, and that has helped.

The same year I met my grandparents, I enrolled at the local high school, where Marie had been working as a librarian since I was thirteen. I entered as a junior. I loved learning, but I have to confess: I hated that place. Academically, I thrived. Socially, not so much. Despite my grandmother’s provision of stylish attire, makeup, and a haircut, I never managed to fit in there. College has been better. People are much more forgiving than in high school, much less judgmental. They’re interested in my unique upbringing, and my friends understand that sometimes certain places are too loud, too full for me, and that I must slip away.

There are days when I find my mind drifting to the girl in the woods. Not often, but sometimes. It has been over a decade now, and what I wonder is this: what life, in the woods or elsewhere, might she have lived? Would we have become friends? How long would she have stayed? Sometimes, even now, I envision her as Ovid’s Daphne, who, just as Apollo was about to overtake her, slipped from those forceful hands and metamorphosed into a laurel tree.

I think, more often, of Scotland, the neighbor from my childhood, a man whose face has grown vague to me over the years, as much as I try to hold on to it. When I was twelve and could still remember him vividly, my father told me the truth about what he’d done. I took the news hard. I never got to say goodbye, I never got to say thank you, and knowing what had happened to him hung heavily on me. For a long time that knowledge burdened me, but over time, Cooper and Marie helped me understand that Scotland never would’ve wanted that for me. That, rather, if we accepted his gift, if we lived life as he must’ve pictured it for us, then we honored not only his final wish but the sacrifice itself. Marie pointed me to the words of Scotland himself: The thing about grace is that you don’t deserve it. You can’t earn it. You can only accept it. Or not.

Lately I’ve been pondering my father’s decisions to get me from my grandparents and head to the woods. Would I have done the same thing? I like to think that I’m not so instinctive, but perhaps if I were about to lose the one and only thing I considered dear in this life, I might surprise myself. I’ve thought, too, about the childhood I might’ve had at my grandparents’ sprawling home—the people who might’ve buzzed in and out of my world, the abundance of toys and clothes and opportunities that would’ve been at my fingertips—all of it punctuated by occasional visits with my father.

I never wish for that life.

I pull into the front yard and turn off the engine. Cooper is waiting on the porch, whittling, and he sets the knife to his side and rises. Starlings have gathered in the yard between us, pecking at seed or maybe crumbs that Marie has tossed for them. I step out of the car and for a moment I watch. I step closer and then—I can’t say why, and I know I am nineteen and too old for it, but the impulse takes hold and I let it—I dart ahead, rushing into them. They take flight, the sound of their wings like a thousand heartbeats, whirling at first in chaos but then they are overhead, a hundred black spots lifting into a broad, blue sky: separate but also together, in some kind of magical union, soaring higher and higher and then out of sight.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS



Writing this book was a spiritual endeavor for me. I spent countless hours praying, walking in the woods, and sorting out the stories that these characters were meant to live. Eventually, the time came to bring other readers into the fold, and by the point it is in its published state, this work will have passed through many generous hands. My heartfelt gratitude goes out to all those who’ve helped make this book into what it is today:

To my dear friend and always-first-reader, Bethany Spicher Schonberg, who, long before anyone else set eyes on this story, read it and told me that it was good. I’m deeply grateful for your literary guidance and friendship, and for all the delicious vegetables as well.

To Beth Loretto and Lauren Salinas, thank you for your willingness to read a very unpolished manuscript early on and offer feedback. I’m thankful for your time and support.

To Heather Holleman, for reading and planting the idea that the story shouldn’t end where it did. You are always such a beacon of encouragement and wisdom.