True Places(101)

Tinsley jumped in. “But what about Whit and the children? And your work at the school and your other responsibilities?”

“Reid and Brynn are nearly grown. I’m not abandoning them. The property is only an hour and a half away. I’m carving out a life for myself, something I care about.”

“That’s selfish.”

“Maybe. But maybe it’s not a terrible thing for my children to see that a woman can do more than serve the family.” Tinsley’s eyebrows shot up. “I’ve done that, and now I’d like to try something different.” What she wanted to say was that she felt her family had been misguided and, indeed, broken, for many years, but sharing that with Tinsley would be pointless. Her mother expected families to be broken, and Suzanne had come to believe her mother was invested in Suzanne’s staying that way.

Anson said, “Well, I don’t see anything wrong with the idea on the face of it. God knows we’ve wasted money on worse ideas.”

Tinsley began to protest.

“Mother,” Suzanne said, “I’d be happy for your help.”

“I’m not keen on forests.”

“I meant with the house, for starters.”

Her mother glanced at her husband with a mixture of resignation and annoyance.

Anson pressed his hands against his knees and stood. “Draw up a proposal, Suzanne. With numbers. Then we’ll talk again.” He extended his hand.

Suzanne rose and shook it. In that moment she caught something of what had transpired, or failed to, between Whit and Reid. She understood what it meant to have been granted approval by a successful man to whom you belonged, whether you admired the man or not, whether the bargain struck was mutually agreeable or only a truce.





CHAPTER 45

The first time Iris went to see her father, he was standing by the window of the visiting room, looking outside as if he expected her to fly by the glass. Detective DeCelle had tracked him down to a drug abuse treatment center in Durham, North Carolina, about three hours away from the brick house in Buchanan. The outline of his story came to Iris through Suzanne, who heard it from the detective. Nearly two years ago, after Iris’s father had written the note and left the cabin, he’d given up caring what happened to him. He got tangled up with some hard types and started taking drugs, painkillers, mostly, although the kind of pain he had wasn’t physical. No one knew how he ended up in North Carolina, least of all him. The detective had discovered a quilt in the cabin with “M. Colton” sewn in one corner—Iris’s mother’s maiden name—and a search for James Colton had led to Iris’s father, James Smith, who had given the false name at the treatment center, afraid of being arrested again.

Iris hadn’t wanted to be the one to tell her father about how Mama had died, so Detective DeCelle took care of it and told her father what had happened to Iris, too. Her side of the story was all filled in before she made the trip to see him, giving him plenty of time to think how to explain himself, if he could.

Iris entered the visiting room, and Suzanne hovered behind. Iris’s father’s clothes hung loosely on him—she remembered him big and strong—but it was his face that alarmed her the most. He looked old and so tired she wondered how he managed to stay standing. She stopped as soon as she saw him, her feet rooted into the floor. He turned as if someone had tapped him on the shoulder and noticed her. His face changed, going soft all at once, like someone had let the air out of him; then he smiled, his blue eyes shining. He stretched out his arms.

Iris could feel Suzanne behind her and almost turned back. It would’ve been easy. But the man was her daddy, and there was nothing she could do except step forward, like walking on black ice, and let him hold her. There was nothing else she could’ve done. Once he had his arms around her, she remembered how she loved him. It welled up in her and spread out from her chest so fast she couldn’t breathe.

They sat at a little table. Suzanne, too, all three of them wiping their eyes. He asked if Iris wanted to know the story. She said she did. He told her about carrying Ash down off the mountain and hitching a ride into Roanoke, to the hospital. They had taken Ash in, but asked too many questions he didn’t want to answer. He told Iris that her mother would never have forgiven him if he’d revealed where they lived and ruined the life they’d made. Iris recognized this was true. Mama would never come out of the woods. She said she would rather die, and that was her solemn promise. So once Daddy was sure the nurses and doctors were taking care of Ash, he’d slipped out. But he couldn’t stay away, and when he came back late that night, he told a nurse he was Ash’s uncle, that the boy’s father had gone missing. The nurse told him Ash had died.

Daddy said, “I ran off. I don’t remember where, but I ended up at a bar.” He hung his head and clasped his hands together to stop them shaking. “Some guy said the wrong thing. I don’t even know what. I was blind.”

Iris nodded. She already knew what had happened next from the police, but she let him talk. He’d gotten into a fight and knifed a man. When the police showed up, he fought them, too, and ended up in prison. That’s why he didn’t come back to the cabin. He couldn’t, not for four years.

“I went to the cabin as soon as I could, but I was on probation and couldn’t stay. You and your mama were gone, but I kept coming back. I almost ended it a couple times, I’m ashamed to say.” He turned away from her. “When I finally got off probation, I went back up and stayed, but you were long gone by then.” He reached out and took Iris’s hand in his. He looked her in the eye, struggling to hold himself there against the weight of regret. “I’m sorry.”