The Familiar Dark(28)
She wasn’t wrong, though. That was the thing about Barren Springs; for all its ugliness, there was hidden beauty, too. The way people relied on each other when things got bad, the resourcefulness of a community that most of the world ignored, the sheer stubborn willfulness that kept people breathing when it might have been easier to give up. The rolling hills and the wind in the trees. I had to remind myself of those things on the days I wanted to burn the whole place to the ground.
“When I met Zach and then got pregnant, it seemed like the perfect excuse to drop out of school and come home. Maybe part of me even planned it that way. And God love him, Zach never uttered a word of protest, even though he’d always wanted to move to a big city, get a job at some fancy company. I thought he might resent me for it at some point. But he never has. I’m the one who gets itchy feet sometimes, tries to talk him into moving, and he’s the one who wants to stay. God knows why.” She glanced at me. “He gave up all his dreams for me and Izzy, and right now I could kill him for it.” Her eyes glistened with tears, a few of them spilling over onto her pale cheeks. “I’m furious with him for agreeing to this life because if he hadn’t none of this would have happened.” She flapped a hand at me. “And I know how unfair and awful that is of me. You don’t have to say it.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
That startled a laugh out of her, whisking tears off her cheeks with the backs of her fingers. “You’re a breath of fresh air, Eve, honestly. Nothing seems to surprise you.”
I shrugged. “It takes more than what you just told me, that’s for sure. You’re not the only one who looks back after all this and wishes for different choices.”
Jenny stared at me like she was trying to unravel my thoughts, crawl inside my brain and fish out the things I wasn’t saying. “Like what?” she asked.
“Nothing in particular,” I said, eyes drifting away. “Whatever choices led to our daughters dying in this park.”
“It wasn’t our fault, though,” Jenny said, voice small.
“Maybe not,” I said, not sounding convincing. “But it definitely wasn’t theirs.”
Across from the park, a screen door slammed and we both looked up, caught the tail end of Mrs. Stevenson retreating into her house. “God,” Jenny said, “you’d think that nosy old bag could have done us a favor and been peering out her front windows when . . .” She gestured toward the tunnel. “She watches this park like a hawk every other day of the year.”
“How do we know she wasn’t?” I asked.
“Land already talked to her. She said as soon as the snow started, she pulled her drapes and hunkered down. Didn’t want to run her furnace in April.” Jenny snorted. “Sounds about right. My mom knew her growing up and said she’s never met a woman as tight with a dollar. And that’s saying something around here.”
I squinted into the weak sunlight poking through a tear in the wispy clouds. “You get regular updates from Land?”
“Yeah, pretty regular.” Jenny paused. “You don’t?” When I shook my head, little plumes of embarrassment flared on her cheeks. “Well, maybe he figured your brother tells you everything anyway.”
“Yeah,” I said, voice dry. “Either that or he’s too busy stuffing his fat ass with doughnuts to bother.”
I let my gaze wander the perimeter of the park, but whoever had chosen this spot to go after the girls had chosen well. The Stevenson house was the only one around, and even it was partially obscured by trees. Barren Springs wasn’t laid out like the small towns I saw on television, everything extending neatly from a center square. It was almost as if the original settlers hadn’t anticipated it ever becoming much of an actual town and so they’d built their houses wherever they pleased, no thought of a master plan. More every man for himself rather than a collective endeavor. Streets were added in over time to accommodate the houses, not the other way around, so that some streets had only a single house or ended with no warning. It was a maze of a place, the thick green woods crowding the edges of everything the only constant.
I started to scoot forward, ready to hop down from the table and end this conversation, but Jenny put a hand out, laid it gently on my forearm. “I liked Junie,” she said. “I wanted you to know that. Really liked her. Sometimes better than my own daughter, if I’m being honest. Izzy was in that awful preteen phase where you never know if you’re going to get a hug or an insult.” She sighed. “The last six months felt like an endless eggshell walk around her. Was Junie like that with you?”
I settled back on the table, moved my arm out from under her hand. “No.”
Jenny smiled a little. “Yeah, that’s what I figured. Junie had a . . . gravity about her, I guess is the best way to describe it. She seemed more settled in herself than Izzy. More settled than I was at that age, that’s for sure.” Jenny elbowed me gently. “Did she get that from you?”
I was stumped by her question. Not because I didn’t have an answer but because I didn’t know how to explain it to her. As a child, I’d had Junie’s seriousness about life and my place in it because I learned early that to be frivolous, to take things for granted around my mama, was asking for a world of hurt. I hoped that Junie’s gravity came from somewhere else entirely, that it was because she was born a little wiser than other babies, a little surer of herself, more secure in the love I always, always gave her. “I don’t know,” I said finally. “I’d better get going before the reporters figure out where we are.”