Every Single Secret(25)

“But you already had your session,” I said. “It’s our free block. Remember, the free block you were so excited about?”

“Oh, God. Yes. I’m sorry. I’ve got to fill out some paperwork. Personality assessments. Aptitude and diagnostic tests and stuff like that. And the releases—I’ll pick yours up too, while I’m at it. You going to be okay up here by yourself?”

“Sure. Of course. I may head down to the library. Find a book to read.”

He caught my fingers. “Thank you. For doing this. I know what you’re sacrificing.”

I squeezed his hand. “Well. I’d rather be here for you than assembling shared workspace pods. That much I can promise you.”

He grinned. “That’s not really much of a compliment.”

“Always us.” I kissed him.

After he left, I slipped on my shoes and headed downstairs. I circumnavigated the foyer, listening for anyone, opening cabinets and pulling out the drawers of every big sideboard. No one happened along, and the furniture yielded nothing—not a set of keys, not even the smallest scrap of paper. There were no keys in the library either. Reggie must’ve stashed them in a more secure place: the doctor’s sunroom office or maybe even up in his suite. I’d have to wait for a more expedient time to find out, when his office was empty. For now I’d have to find something else to occupy my mind.

I drifted to the carved bookcase. Most of the dust-coated books looked like they hadn’t been read in ages. Which stood to reason. I was probably the only person who came to Baskens who actually had time to read. I perused the shelf. All the oldies but goodies. Dickens, Shakespeare, Hawthorne. Every last one of the Bront? sisters’ titles: Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette, The Professor, Agnes Grey, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and Wuthering Heights.

I thought back to Cerny’s strange toast last night in the kitchen: I wish I were a girl again, half-savage and hardy, and free.

I took Wuthering Heights to the sofa and flipped the pages, the story coming back to me in bits and pieces. Mr. Earnshaw, appearing back at his home, Wuthering Heights, presents a surprise to his children, Catherine and Hindley. Heathcliff, a dark-skinned, dark-eyed Gypsy child who speaks gibberish. The interloper immediately sparks in Hindley an intense jealousy, as Hindley is a bully, racist, and overall dickbag. Catherine, on the other hand, is instantly smitten and sticks to Heathcliff like an imprinted duckling.

I read for a while, then let the book drop to the floor and stretched out on the sofa, my legs and lower back aching from the hike. I knew how the story ended, how Heathcliff and Catherine devoted their lives to loving, then destroying, each other. Emily Bront? may have been melodramatic, but she’d hit on something real. It was true—similar souls sought each other out. Damaged gravitated to damaged, the same way Heath and I had recognized ourselves in each other, then locked into our unshakable orbit. It was too bad the story ended so tragically. Too bad Heathcliff and Cathy couldn’t have just admitted that they belonged together.

Because surely they did belong together.

Sleep stole over me quickly. I woke sometime later, and the book was gone, returned to the Bront? section of the shelves. Whoever had done that had also left a bottle of water and a plate of small coconut-dusted cookies on a nearby table. I swung my feet down and chugged the water. In a daze, I headed for the front stairs. My legs felt like tree trunks, my head three sizes too big. Even after the nap, I still felt wrung out. Maybe it was the hike—or the fact that I’d told Glenys about the ranch. I checked the clock on the mantel in the front hall. Five after three. Great. In our room, the camera would be up and running again.

I climbed the stairs, thinking about Catherine’s and Heathcliff’s lovely doomed lives. About how good it had felt to tell Glenys about the Super Tramps and Chantal and Mr. Al while standing at the precipice of a mountain. Maybe there was a pattern to it all. Maybe the universe had brought me here because it knew what I needed—to be hardy and free, to finally let go of my burden and soar.



Friday, October 19

Evening

I’m standing in the middle of the road before it occurs to me that I’ve finally made it out of the woods. The sun is obscured by clouds, but I can feel the knife edge of twilight in the air. I know I still have a long way to go before I get to town.

There are no sounds—no car engines in the distance, no crunch of feet through the leaves. But it feels like there’s a hurricane whipping up in my head, so it’s possible I’m not hearing so well. I’m also panting like someone who’s never done a jumping jack. I failed to factor in the concentration it requires not to trip on a path studded with boulders and roots and hidden holes.

Part of me knows it’s not the exertion that’s getting to me, it’s the fear. Which is ironic. All those times I was charging around the track like a lunatic, I never considered the way fear could fill a person, weigh them down. I never knew fear had actual mass.

Suddenly I realize why the silence is bothering me so much. I thought the police were coming. I’ve been expecting them the whole time, but there are no sounds of cars or sirens. The police aren’t coming. They never were.

I take a minute to get my bearings—make sure I’m headed down, not sideways across the mountain or, God forbid, back up. I adjust the iPad in the back of my jeans and set off at a trot down the gravel road.