These Silent Woods: A Novel(9)

She’s at the table, finishing her meal, and I’m wandering aimlessly through the house, trying to determine how to do it. Should I sit and hold her hand? Pull her onto my lap? She isn’t too old for that, not yet. I’m at a loss here, never done this before. She uses the paring knife to slice an apple, careful and precise, just like I taught her.

“Well, what is it, Cooper?” She looks at me, pushes a chunk of apple in her mouth, and chews slowly.

“What?”

“Something’s got you riled up.”

“How—”

“You’re pacing.” She presses the knife down, struggles at the red-green skin, wiggles it back and forth. “Go on, spit it out.”

I’m fairly certain she’s reciting that part, that I’ve said those exact words to her before. Go on, spit it out. I slide into the chair beside her and take a deep breath. “Jake isn’t coming.”

She holds my gaze for a moment, her wide green eyes taking this in, then her face flinches, a flicker of something. Pain, confusion. “No. He’s just running behind. You’ve got to be patient. You’re wrong.” She picks up the knife and cuts another slice.

“Finch, I’m not.”

She shakes her head, presses the blade of the knife into the table. “How do you know? You didn’t talk to him.” Her mouth turns downward, a scowl.

“You’re right. But we had an agreement, the two of us. An understanding. If he ever just didn’t show up on the fourteenth, it’s because he couldn’t. That’s what he said. So, something must’ve changed for him. Something happened where he isn’t coming now.” I think of the pump in his leg, the way he grimaced as he climbed onto the porch. All the years, all those antibiotics, fighting that infection. Was he lying in a hospital bed somewhere, suffering? Or had he finally succumbed?

I reach out and try to pull her onto my lap but she resists, tugs her wrist from my hand because, in that moment, I’m the one causing her pain. I’m the one to blame.

Lucky, I think to myself then, that we never went through this with Cindy. All this time, I’d been thinking it was too bad that Finch never really knew her mother, that she had no recollection of her at all, that when I showed her the picture or talked about Cindy, Finch would listen and smile politely, but there was no memory at the sight of her, no pain that would twist and burn. But now I see that if we had to lose her, we were lucky to have lost her when we did.

“You should’ve told me.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Who’s taking care of him? Does he have someone?” She wipes her eyes with the purple sleeve of her shirt. “We should go help.”

“Aw, Finch. That’s nice of you to think about. But you know we can’t do that.” I pat her back.

“I know we have rules. But it’s Jake,” she says, biting her lip. “Don’t you think we could make an exception?”

“Sorry, sugar. We can’t.”

“But why?”

She’s been pushing back, this past year. Wanting to know more about why we’re here and why we can’t leave. I take a deep breath, run my thumb along a crack in the table. We’ve been over the story, many times. Well, an abbreviated version. I look at her, waiting. “You know why.”

“Because you did something you shouldn’t have, once. To keep the two of us together.” She pauses, raising her eyes. “And there are consequences for that. One of which is that we can’t go into the world.” A recitation: same words each time.

“Good girl.”

She winds a strand of hair around her finger. “What you did, Coop—was it something bad?”

A thorny question. “I did what I had to do.” I reach out and press my hand over hers. “He has a sister,” I say, remembering: many years ago, a girl who tagged along on that fishing trip, her nose in a book. The last I heard, she was living in England.

Finch seems to take some comfort in this. Still, she picks up the rest of the apple and climbs onto my lap and cries hard, her sobs filling the cabin with a sound that lances and burns. Stomach, chest, throat. This is a new agony for me—to hear her suffer, to not be able to take it away. It’s not like the cuts and bruises and bee stings of life, hurts that will throb but then fade away: the skin healing, the swelling going down.

“It’s not fair,” she sobs. “It’s not fair at all.”

I rest my chin on top of her head and hold her and tell her I know: I know it’s not fair. She sits there with me, knees tucked beneath her chin, and it’s a long time before she stops shaking.





FOUR




Scotland materializes in the yard. I say it that way because that’s what he does each time, just shows up, appears out of nowhere, like a ghost, like fog. We never see him coming through the woods, we never hear him, and let me assure you: I keep an eye out. Never once have I seen him before he got to the yard. Never once have I heard a noise. No sticks cracking, no rustle of leaves. He’s that quiet. I am fairly certain he takes some sort of sick pleasure in surprising us because each time, I know the look on my face must be one of sheer terror, and each time, he breaks into a laugh at the sight of it. He throws back his head and shows his ugly teeth and roars, his whole body shaking hard, delighted.