Every Single Secret(35)
I stopped too, still several yards back, and watched her. She stared past the creek at a row of red-leafed dogwood trees, then closed her eyes and tilted her head back. Whatever she was thinking about, it couldn’t be good. It set my nerves thrumming, knowing she was spiraling into her own dark thoughts.
I approached her. “Glenys.”
She turned. Broke into a smile. “Oh, Daphne. Hello.” She shifted her weight. “I’m sorry about that. I’m afraid I had a moment and got a little emotional.” She waved me over and patted my arm when I reached her side.
“No, I’m sorry for intruding. Are you thinking of your son?” I asked.
She surveyed the creek. “And other things.”
“I’m sorry.”
She waved her hand. “Ah, well. Life is full of so many things that can break a heart, isn’t it? I’m glad to see you, though. Very glad, actually.”
“You are?” I felt an unexpected rush of warmth in my chest.
“You’re a comforting presence, Daphne.” She reached out for me, and I let her catch my hand. “I’m sure that’s one reason why your fiancé loves you so much. You seem to be a very safe person. Very trustworthy.”
“I hope so.”
“You’re what they call a deep well.” She squeezed my hand, then held it up, inspecting it. “What a beautiful ring.”
“It was Heath’s grandmother’s.”
“Lovely.” She released my hand. “How are you?”
“Oh, fine, I think.” I sent her a rueful grin.
“I know how hard it was for you to share those things you did. I hope you don’t regret confiding in me.”
“I don’t. You were right. It was a relief to let it out.”
“This place rattles the nerves, doesn’t it?” She looked off into the dense woods. “Which is strange. Since it’s supposed to be a place of healing. I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder if there’s anywhere we can go to escape. The pain that’s been inflicted upon us or that we’ve inflicted.”
She sat on a large rock on the bank of the creek, and I sat beside her. Wind rustled the canopy of leaves, and the water burbled below over rocks and submerged branches. I thought of Heath back up at the house, sitting in the doctor’s sunroom office pouring out more stories. Stories about obsessions that he wasn’t sure he could share with me. But could I honestly say I wanted him to? Wouldn’t that mean that sooner or later I would have to open myself up to him in return?
The red-leafed dogwoods on the other side of the creek swam into focus. There were three of them, I noticed, planted in a straight line, parallel with the water’s edge. How odd.
Glenys nudged me. “They’re lovely, aren’t they? Pink dogwoods. Spectacular in the spring. Fiery in the autumn.”
“Yes.”
“Would you like to talk now?” Glenys said. “I have some time.”
I toed at the wet leaves. Underneath, a trio of mushrooms had sprung up, pale white, crusted with dirt. I wondered if they were the poisonous kind. I was a city girl, though, unable to tell the difference between an edible mushroom and one that killed you.
“It was a complicated situation,” I heard myself saying. “What happened at the ranch. I was a child, and I didn’t know what I was doing . . . what I had done, until it was too late.”
Chapter Twelve
After a couple of days at the girls’ ranch, it became clear that Chantal had decided she was my own personal earthquake.
My third day there, I’d satisfied my itch to explore every inch of our house and yard. We were the last house at the end of a long dirt road, backed up against the woods, and I’d grown curious about the other houses and the rest of the place. Sunday, after church, Mrs. Bobbie said Chantal could show me around the expansive sixty acres.
The girl took me behind the house and through the woods, looping back around to the entrance, where the ranch’s mile-long red-clay drive turned off the state road. A hand-carved wooden sign swung on the branch of a gumball tree, and even though I’d seen it before, I smiled.
“Welcome to Piney Woods Girls’ Ranch,” Chantal announced in a tour-guide voice and then took off, jogging down the drive. I followed her, panting and struggling to keep up in the sticky south-Georgia September heat, until she slowed at the main offices. The buildings were designed to look like an Old West town, ramshackle and shingled and hung with old-timey signs that said “Office” and “Library” and “General Store.” A boardwalk connected them, and our feet made satisfying clomping sounds as we walked over it.
The building on the end was where the director, Mr. Cleve, and his staff worked. I’d met him that first night—he was a jovial man with a white beard. There was a sparse library with homemade bookshelves, a game room with a Ping-Pong table and board games in cabinets, and one other building, for group activities and meetings. From the Old West town we walked down a hill past two large vegetable gardens, to an open-air pavilion where Chantal said everybody from each house gathered together on Sunday evening for something called Vespers. Past the pavilion, we started back down the dirt road where all the houses, including ours, sat in two untidy rows. We dawdled for a minute in our front yard, which was mostly dirt and crabgrass.
“If we go in, we’ll have to finish our Sunday-school lesson,” she said. “Wouldn’t you rather go to the lake? And maybe somewhere else, a place I haven’t showed you?”