True Places(103)

Now, as Suzanne observed Brynn moving stealthily behind the camera, she understood how quiet work—observing, waiting, listening—had been a boon to Suzanne herself as a young woman, offering the chance to become immersed without the risk of being overwhelmed, and how Suzanne, unlike her daughter, had not had to suffer the crush of social media during her adolescence. Brynn still drew her energy from her friends and their cultish obsession with posing, rather than being. But her new hobby—this quiet work—might become her daughter’s salvation, Suzanne believed, providing a neutral space into which to withdraw, a space without mirrors, or even glass.

Brynn turned and waved. “Lunchtime?”

“If you’re ready.”

Brynn collapsed the tripod with the camera still attached and carried it over to where Suzanne waited.

“Show me the photos later?” Suzanne said.

“Sure. Is Iris back?”

Iris’s room was upstairs in the farmhouse next to Brynn’s, but she stayed at the cabin, too. “I wouldn’t expect her until tomorrow at the earliest.” Suzanne’s phone beeped. She pulled it from her pocket and checked the screen. “It’s Dad. I’ll be five minutes.”

Brynn started off. “Tell him hi.”

Suzanne accepted the call. “Hey. How’s everything?”

“Great. Just checking to see if tomorrow’s still good.”

She smiled. Call it politeness or walking on eggshells—or dating. “Tomorrow’s very good. I’ll even cook.”

“Best news yet. Reid’s been trying. He’s better than me by a long shot, but, you know.”

“It’s okay to say you miss my cooking.”

“I miss your cooking.”

“Thank you.”

“And many other things.”

“Best not to mention cleaning or laundry.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it. I know what probation means.” He paused. “Yesterday in the car I heard that Elton John song on the radio.”

“What song?”

“The karaoke one.” His voice grew thick. “I took it as a sign.”

About a year after they started seeing each other, they’d spent a weekend in Virginia Beach and landed in a bar. Karaoke duets were the featured entertainment. Whit had convinced Suzanne they should give it a shot.

“You know I’m not much of a singer,” she said.

“Same.” He grinned at her. “Let’s do it anyway.”

Whit chose Elton John’s duet with Kiki Dee, “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart.” Suzanne’s microphone shook in her hand as the intro played. What was she doing up here? Whit sang the opening line—badly. She missed her first line and looked at him in apology.

He held her gaze and sang the title line again. Suzanne croaked hers in response. After the first chorus, she began to relax. She forgot the audience. She forgot she couldn’t sing because together they could, perhaps not beautifully, not even competently, but the joy and the promise in the song was theirs.

Remembering that night, Suzanne realized Whit had given her more than a safe place to hide. He had given her belief in them, in what would become their marriage. He wasn’t afraid to love.

“Oh, Whit,” she said, “I’m so glad you’re coming down.” She hadn’t been sure at all when she launched this project how Whit would react, or how she would feel about him and their marriage. Now that she was choosing him not out of fear, but out of desire, her love for him felt genuine in a way it never had before.

“I can’t wait to see what you’ve been up to. Sounds like it’s coming along great. Did Reid tell you he was skipping this trip?”

“He texted me yesterday. He said it was his job, but I’m guessing that’s mostly cover.”

“I doubt it. That’s not like him.”

“True.”

After she placed an offer on the farmhouse, Suzanne had lived at home in Charlottesville, with Whit bunking on an air mattress in his office. The atmosphere had been civil but awkward. The sale went through in June, and Suzanne announced her plans to spend the majority of the summer in Buchanan. Reid had surprised her by opting to stay with his father. “We’ve got stuff to figure out,” he had said. Whit and Reid had taken up karate together and seemed to be getting along so much better that Suzanne was ashamed to admit she felt left out. Reid had taken a job at a nonprofit promoting climate-change awareness and was absolutely dedicated to it, as he was with everything he did, but his schedule meant Suzanne didn’t seen him often. Practice for fledging, she supposed. Maybe if she invited Mia and her son Alex for the following weekend, Reid would be more likely to accept.

She said goodbye to Whit and ended the call. While she had been talking, she had wandered and now found herself on the far side of the barn and close to the margin of the woods. Surrounded by a low picket fence were the graves of Iris’s mother and brother. Iris had spent more time choosing the flowers and shrubs for the site than the markers themselves, small pale granite rectangles flush with the ground, engraved only with their names and the years Mary and Ash had been born and had died. It was a beautiful spot, nestled against the protective wall of trees and overlooking the rolling fields now dotted with black-eyed Susans, ironweed, and golden aster.

Iris hadn’t been sure about creating the grave site. The police had retrieved Iris’s mother’s remains from the cave into which she had fallen and, days later, had located Ash, who had been buried in a municipal plot in Roanoke. Suzanne had insisted on a creating a proper site for the burials. The girl had had no experience of memorials, or family tradition, or indeed of any of heritage extending behind her and stretching in front, to become part of her future and the future of the children she might have. But once Ash and Iris’s mother had been laid to rest, Iris gradually came to accept the site, and to rely on it. After each visit with her father, Iris came to sit by the graves, no matter the weather, and afterward walked into the woods to stay at the cabin by herself for a time. She was there now.